NYTimes | For about
$80,000, an individual can purchase a six-month plan with Private Health
Management, which helps people with serious medical issues navigate the
health care system.
Such a plan
proved to be a literal lifesaver as the coronavirus pandemic descended.
The firm has helped clients arrange tests in Los Angeles for the
coronavirus and obtained oxygen concentrators for high-risk patients.
“We
know the top lab people and the doctors and nurses and can make the
process efficient,” said Leslie Michelson, the firm’s executive
chairman.
In some respects, the pandemic is an equalizer: It can afflict princes
and paupers alike, and no one who hopes to stay healthy is exempt from
the strictures of social distancing. But the American response to the
virus is laying bare class divides that are often camouflaged — in
access to health care, child care, education, living space, even
internet bandwidth.
In New York, well-off city dwellers have
abandoned cramped apartments for spacious second homes. In Texas, the
rich are shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars to build safe
rooms and bunkers.
And across the
country, there is a creeping consciousness that despite talk of national
unity, not everyone is equal in times of emergency.
“This is a white-collar quarantine,” said Howard Barbanel, a Miami-based
entrepreneur who owns a wine company. “Average working people are
bagging and delivering goods, driving trucks, working for local
government.”
Restaurant sales dropped 47% across the U.S. from March 1 to March
22, and 54% of operators now offer off-premise services only, according
to an NRA survey of more than 4,000 restaurant operators.
Seventy percent of restaurants surveyed have had to lay off
employees and reduce workers' hours, and about half of restaurants
expect further layoffs and hourly reductions in the next 30 days. More
than 60% of restaurants have had to reduce their operating hours.
Guardian | Hundreds of US counties and all 50 states now have confirmed coronavirus cases
– despite a widespread lack of testing – underscoring the indifference
of the virus to the familiar political boundaries separating red states,
dominated by Republicans, and blue ones, dominated by Democrats.
But while the virus does not select for party affiliation,
contrasting emergency responses at the state and local levels have split
dramatically along partisan lines.
States with Democratic governors have been quicker
to declare emergencies, close schools, shutter non-essential businesses
and impose limits on bars and restaurants, according to data collected by the Kaiser Foundation. Fifteen of 21 states to have issued stay-at-home orders have Democratic governors.
States with Republican governors, meanwhile, have been less eager to
ask businesses to close, and more likely to downplay the threat. “Go to
the grocery stores. For crying out loud, go to the grocery stores,”
Governor Jim Justice of West Virginia told residents on 16 March. “If
you want to go to Bob Evans and eat, go to Bob Evans and eat.”
The night before, Oklahoma’s Governor Kevin Stitt tweeted a picture of himself and his two sons at a restaurant, boasting: “It’s packed tonight.” The tweet was later deleted.
The divergence in state responses to coronavirus does not cleanly
split along the red-blue line, with Republican governors in states such
as Ohio and Maryland among the most proactive in responding to the
threat, said University of Southern California professor Manuel Pastor.
All partisan disagreements in the United States in 2020 seem to
emanate from or end with Donald Trump. But the president has encouraged a
partisan divide on the coronavirus threat, analysts said, pitting state
governors against each other and setting off bidding wars for medical
equipment.
While states and localities have primary responsibilities for public
health under the American system of federalism, the president has an
important role in focusing the national attention on the emergency and
channeling the massive resources of the federal government to the states
most in need, said Lawrence O Gostin, a professor of public health at
the Johns Hopkins University.
“This is something that’s really unprecedented and clearly American
federalism is not well equipped to do it. You need every oar to work
together. We have fragmentation, name-calling and wildly different
responses,” Gostin said.
forward | If you’re not part of the political or chattering classes, you might
have missed two recent tempests that erupted in tiny teacups on the
devil’s banquet of the coronavirus pandemic. Last week, the President
insisted on calling the virus that causes COVID-19 the “Chinese virus.”
And this week, he’s insulted a number of reporters at his press
conferences. For days, the media couldn’t stop talking about the incidents (yours truly was not exempt).
But while the media obsessed over the President’s nomenclature and
attacks against themselves, no one else seemed to care. As of this
writing, 60% of Americans approve of his handling of the COVID-19
crisis, according to a new Gallup poll. His approval rating is the highest of his entire presidency.
It was a stark reminder of how little the media’s concerns reflect
those of the nation more widely. It’s a gap that’s only growing,
reflected in the incredulous and disgusted tweets of major media figures
when they come across the president’s polling numbers. In fact, the
true polarization in American life is not between Republican and
Democratic voters, but between the American electorate and its
representatives in government and in the media, who exist in a radically
polarizing feedback loop that has disconnected them from the American
people like two moons orbiting each other that have lost the centripetal
pull to the planet they once circled.
Of course, this is hard to see if you’re on one of those moons. So
it’s no surprise that media personalities think that the polarization
that’s happening in their class is representative of how Americans feel.
Thus, Ezra Klein’s new book “Why We’re Polarized.”
The “we” in the title is presumably America, though the question in
Klein’s title is not the one he ultimately answers. “This is not a book
about people,” Klein admits in the introduction. Instead, he focuses on
braiding together the insights of two other sources of information —
“politicians, activists, government officials” and “political
scientists, sociologists, historians” – to make the case that politics
has become more polarized to appeal to a more polarized public,
effectively polarizing the public further in a feedback loop.
The book explores the history of American politics, showing how the two
parties used to be a lot more similar to each other, resulting in a
large percentage of Americans splitting their votes between Republicans
and Democrats. This essentially kept politics from being too polarized
because people’s identities weren’t bound up in it; the parties were
just too similar to allow for that kind of investment. Klein argues that
as the parties differentiated themselves, different kinds of Americans
began sorting themselves into the parties, merging racial, religious,
geographic and cultural identities with political ones and making
politics more personal, more urgent, and crucially more defined against
the other side.
America’s joke of a healthcare system is being highlighted as uninsured COVID-19 patients are racking up $35,000 medical bills and even insured COVID-19 patients are looking at out-of-pocket expenses in excess of $1,300.
Combine this with the millions of Americans getting thrown off of
employer-provided health insurance and you’re looking at a huge number
of people who will avoid getting tested and avoid treatment as much as
possible. Both heads of America’s two-headed one-party system have spent
decades forcefully creating this dynamic.
America’s income and wealth inequality is being highlighted in a nation suffering from all of the above problems while most Americans were already unable to afford a mere $1,000 emergency expense.
A one-time $1,200 payment to a population already stretched that thin
guarantees that millions will be plunged into crushing debt and
destitution in a nation with a historically unprecedented billionaire
class raking in even more unearned wealth.
guardian | In Kansas City’s poorest neighbourhoods, they wait and they watch.
The city’s most vulnerable residents wait for coronavirus to reveal
itself as they watch its daily progression from the edges of the country
to the heartland. But they face another wait too. For the money to run
out, uncertain which of these two potential calamities will arrive first
but dreading the day the two collide.
Chris Brown lost his job as a waiter as soon as Kansas City’s mayor
ordered the closure of restaurants and bars. “I was lucky that I had a
little money in my pocket when this happened. Not a lot. Maybe $100. But
that’s more than a lot of people, especially in my industry. I know a
lot of my comrades out there only had $20 in their pocket when the
restaurant closed. I don’t know what they’re doing,” he said.
Until the end of last week, Brown and his wife, Alex Smith, still had
a lifeline. Smith worked as a bartender at a hotel which remained open
in a neighbouring county. But that closed on Friday and now the couple,
both in their mid-40s, are down to the cash in their pockets with no
savings and no health insurance.
“We took the little money we have and came down to get groceries so
we at least had some food for the next few weeks,” said Brown outside
the Save A Lot discount food store on Kansas City’s east side, one of
the poorest parts of the city.
Coronavirus has been relatively slow to reach the sprawling plains of
Missouri and Kansas, although deaths have been creeping up. But its
impact is already felt among the hardest-up residents of Kansas City,
which straddles the Missouri
River dividing the two states. Both are reporting a spike in
unemployment claims and they’re likely to go on rising with the Kansas
City metro area under a stay-at-home order from Tuesday and more
businesses closing.
Even when they were working, Brown and Smith earned only $2.15 an hour, the federal minimum wage for servers, plus tips.
dailymail |President Trump is considering quarantining New York, Connecticut and New Jersey in desperate efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
The move will restrict travel to and from the three states, which are some of the hardest-hit by the outbreak.
'Some
people would like to see New York quarantined because it's a hotspot —
New York, New Jersey maybe one or two other places, certain parts of
Connecticut quarantined. I'm thinking about that right now,' he said
Saturday.
'We might not have to do it
but there's a possibility that sometime today we'll do a quarantine -
short term - two weeks for New York, probably New Jersey, certain parts
of Connecticut.'
The move would help tackle the issue other
states are facing where New Yorkers are fleeing the city and traveling
to other states and areas, where they are potentially risking more lives
and spreading the disease further afield.
'Restrict
travel, because they're having problems down in Florida, a lot of New
Yorkers going down. We don't want that,' he said.
New York state Governor Andrew Cuomo hit back at the president's plans in a press conference Saturday.
'I don't even know what that means. I don't know how that could be legally enforceable,' said Cuomo.
'And from a medical point view, I don't know what you would be accomplishing.
'But I can tell you, I don't even like the sound of it.'
bloomberg | Rhode Island police began stopping cars with New York plates Friday.
On Saturday, the National Guard will help them conduct house-to-house
searches to find people who traveled from New York and demand 14 days of
self-quarantine.
“Right now we have a pinpointed risk,” Governor Gina Raimondo said. “That risk is called New York City.”
New York is the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S., on Friday reporting a total of 44,000 cases.
Rhode
Island has just over 200, and it has begun an aggressive campaign to
keep the virus out and New Yorkers contained, over objections from civil
liberties advocates.
Raimondo, a Democrat, said she had consulted lawyers and said while she couldn’t close the border, she felt confident she could enforce a quarantine.
Many New Yorkers have summer houses in Rhode Island, especially in
tony Newport, and the governor said the authorities would be checking
there.
“Yesterday I announced and today I reiterated: Anyone
coming to Rhode Island in any way from New York must be quarantined,”
the governor said. “By order. Will be enforced. Enforceable by law.”
Raimondo signed an executive order Thursday that applies to
anyone who has been in New York during the past two weeks and through at
least April 25. It doesn’t apply to public health, public safety, or
health-care workers.
CTH | Governor Gretchen Whitmer from the
Michigan Directorate has threatened to turn the eye of the state upon
any doctor or pharmacist who would attempt to prescribe chloroquine to
treat their patients suffering from coronavirus. Medical licenses may
need to be revoked.
The agency’s March 24 letter
warns physicians and pharmacists of professional consequences for the
prescribing of hydroxychloroquine (and chloroquine). Beyond the rational
recommendation against hoarding, the letter includes threats of
“administrative action” against the licenses of doctors that prescribe
hydroxychloroquine.
MICHIGAN
– Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s Department of Licensing and Regulatory
Affairs warns that prescribing hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine for
treatment of COVID-19 ‘without further proof of efficacy’ may be
investigated for administrative action; reaction from Dr. Jeff Colyer,
former Kansas governor. (video)
It should be remembered that comrade
Whitmer was selected by the party apparatchik to deliver the State of
the Union rebuttal on behalf of the DNC’s totalitarian interests. Heir
Whitmer’s foreboding warnings are in the interest of the State comrades.
However, in defiance of the
dictates from governing officials intent on increasing the body count
to retain narrative favorable to the state, several independent medical
communities have gone rogue.
Studies have shown
significant reduction in viral loads and symptom improvement when
combining these medications in COVID-19 patients. Though these studies
do not prove efficacy, the results were so promising the authors of the most famous study concluded:
“We therefore recommend that COVID-19 patients be
treated with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin to cure their infection
and to limit the transmission of the virus to other people in order to
curb the spread of COVID-19 in the world.”
Additionally, it is
certainly interesting that Bayer gave the US Government 3,000,000
Chloroquine tablets. According to the reports at the time 750,000 doses
went to NY, the rest were never discussed (whereabouts unknown). [LINK]
Why would Bayer provide U.S. authorities 3
million tablets of a medication if there was no curative value to the
distribution? Think about it…
asiatimes | What’s going on in the fifth largest economy in the world arguably
points to a major collusion scandal in which the French government is
helping Big Pharma to profit from the expansion of Covid-19. Informed
French citizens are absolutely furious about it.
My initial question to a serious, unimpeachable Paris source, jurist
Valerie Bugault, was about the liaisons dangereuses between Macronism
and Big Pharma and especially about the mysterious “disappearance” –
more likely outright theft – of all the stocks of chloroquine in
possession of the French government.
Respected Professor Christian Perronne talked about the theft live
in one of France’s 24/7 info channels: “The central pharmacy for the
hospitals announced today that they were facing a total rupture of
stocks, that they were pillaged.”
With input from another, anonymous source, it’s now possible to
establish a timeline that puts in much-needed perspective the recent
actions of the French government.
Here’s the timeline:
On January 13, Agnes Buzyn, still France’s Health Minister,
classifies chloroquine as a “poisonous substance,” from now on only
available by prescription. An astonishing move, considering that it has
been sold off the shelf in France for half a century.
On March 16, the Macron government orders a partial lockdown. There’s
not a peep about chloroquine. Police initially are not required to wear
masks; most have been stolen anyway, and there are not enough masks even for health workers.
In 2011 France had nearly 1.5 billion masks: 800 million surgical masks
and 600 million masks for health professionals generally.
But then, over the years, the strategic stocks were not renewed, to please the EU and to apply the Maastricht criteria,
which limited membership in the Growth and Stability Pact to countries
whose budget deficits did not exceed 3% of GDP. One of those in charge
at the time was Jerome Salomon, now a scientific counselor to the Macron
government.
On March 17, Agnes Buzyn says she has learned the spread of Covid-19 will be a major tsunami,
for which the French health system has no solution. She also says it
had been her understanding that the Paris mayoral election “would not
take place” and that it was, ultimately, “a masquerade.”
What she does not say is that she didn’t go public at the time she
was running because the whole political focus by the Macron political
machine was on winning the “masquerade.” The first round of the election
meant nothing, as Covid-19 was advancing. The second round was
postponed indefinitely. She had to know about the impending healthcare
disaster. But as a candidate of the Macron machine she did not go public
in timely fashion.
In quick succession:
The Macron government refuses to apply mass testing, as practiced with success in South Korea and Germany.
Le Monde and the French state health agency characterize Raoult’s research as fake news, before issuing a retraction.
Professor Perrone reveals on the 24/7 LCI news channel that the stock
of chloroquine at the French central pharmacy has been stolen.
Thanks to a tweet by Elon Musk, President Trump says chloroquine should be available to all Americans.
Sufferers of lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, who already have supply
problems with the only drug that offers them relief, set social media
afire with their panic.
Morocco buys the stock of chloroquine from Sanofi in Casablanca.
Pakistan decides to increase its production of chloroquine to be sent to China.
Switzerland discards the total lockdown of its population; goes for
mass testing and fast treatment; and accuses France of practicing
“spectacle politics.”
Christian Estrosi, the mayor of Nice,
having had himself treated with chloroquine, without any government
input, directly calls Sanofi so they may deliver chloroquine to Nice
hospitals.
Because of Raoult’s research, a large-scale
chloroquine test finally starts in France, under the – predictable –
direction of INSERM, which wants to “remake the experiments in other
independent medical centers.” This will take at least an extra six weeks
– as the Elysee Palace’s scientific council now mulls the extension of France’s total lockdown to … six weeks.
If joint use of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin proves definitely
effective among the most gravely ill, quarantines may be reduced in
select clusters.
The only French company that still manufactures chloroquine is under judicial intervention.
That puts the chloroquine hoarding and theft into full perspective. It
will take time for these stocks to be replenished, thus allowing Big
Pharma the leeway to have what it wants: a costly solution.
It appears the perpetrators of the chloroquine theft were very well informed.
armstrongeconomics | One of the people who has assisted in this panic over the coronavirus has been Neil Ferguson, who led the @imperialcollege
authors who warned of 500,000 deaths and 2.2 million people would be
infected from the coronavirus. Now, low and behold, Ferguson has himself
tested positive for the virus and has suddenly announced a change of
view. Ferguson has been a major contributing factor in causing the world
economy to collapse. He has advocated locking down the economy which has been behind the movement around the world.
I find this very curious that he would
advocate shutting down the economy when he knows the economic damage
this would have. The number of people whose jobs will be lost, and small
businesses destroyed around the world is incalculable. Ferguson
now says both that the U.K. should have enough ICU beds and that the
coronavirus will probably kill under 20,000 people in the U.K. and
interestingly he now admits that more than half of whom would have died
by the end of the year in any case because they were so old and sick.
Ferguson now predicts that the epidemic in the U.K. will peak and
subside within “two to three weeks” after advocating 18+ months of
quarantine would be necessary.
nakedcapitalism | We can make a highly suggestive correlation between globalizers and COVID-19 if we look at two simple maps. First, as is
well known, one of the main distinctions between the places that are “optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward”
(i.e., globalizers) and the
dull provincials in flyover is the possession of passports. (A passport
is a likely marker for the sort of person who asks “Why don’t they just
leave?”; “front-row kids,” in Chris Arnade’s parlance, as distinguished
from, say, grocery workers, who he calls
“back-row” kids.) Here is a map of passport ownership by state:
The correlation is rather neat, don’t you think? It
makes sense that the first case was in a globalist, passport-owning
city like Seattle on the West Coast; and it makes sense that the world
capital of globalization, passport-owning New
York City, now has a major outbreak.
SCMP | Doctors in the central Chinese city of Wuhan plan to embark on a long-term study of
the effects of the coronavirus on the male reproductive system, building on small-scale research
indicating that the pathogen could affect sex hormone levels in men.
Though
still preliminary and not peer reviewed, the study is the first
clinical observation of the potential impact of Covid-19, the disease
caused by the coronavirus, on the male reproductive system, especially
among younger groups.
In a paper published on the preprint research platform medRxiv.org,
the researchers – from Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University and the
Hubei Clinical Research Centre for Prenatal Diagnosis and Birth Health –
said they analysed blood samples from 81 men aged 20 to 54 who tested
positive for the coronavirus and were hospitalised in January.
The
median age of the participants was 38 and roughly 90 per cent of them
had only mild symptoms. The samples were collected in the last days of
their stay in hospital.
Using
the samples, the team looked at the ratio of testosterone to
luteinising hormone (T/LH). A low T/LH ratio can be a sign of
hypogonadism, which in men is a malfunction of the testicles that could
lead to lower sex hormone production.
The average ratio for the Covid-19 patients was 0.74, about half the normal level.
Testosterone is the main male sex hormone critical for the development
of primary and secondary sexual characteristics including testes,
muscle, bone mass and body hair. Luteinising hormone is found in both
men and women, and best known for its ability to trigger ovulation.
securityreform | On March 13, the White House declared the COVID-19 pandemic a national emergency. The profound impact of the outbreak will persist for months, and steps to contain and mitigate its effects have been hampered by congressional, presidential, and federal agency malfeasance. In every sense, the crisis is both national and an emergency.
In that respect, the situation differs markedly from the nearly three dozen ‘national emergencies’ that the U.S. government currently recognizes. As a result of congressional indifference and the expansion of the national security state, Donald Trump today claims extraordinary emergency powers to address ‘emergencies’ that were declared as far back as 1979, or in response to issues ranging from “the anchorage and movement of vessels” to the U.S.-Mexico border. In terms of urgency, these are outliers. Most of the national emergencies that remain active are simply procedural vehicles to slap sanctions on foreign government officials. All of this begs the question: are any of these ‘emergencies’ at all relevant to the health, well-being, or livelihoods — to say nothing of the actual physical security — of the majority of Americans? When weighed against a genuine public health crisis like COVID-19, do these events even constitute emergencies, in any meaningful sense of the word?
“... the bipartisan security framework that allows the
president to declare emergencies with virtually unchecked impunity is
itself a perpetuation of working-class insecurity.”
Taking a hard look at what the U.S. government considers a national emergency — and who has the power to define them[1] — says a great deal about the conditions that our government and the leaders of both parties deem to be ordinary and sustainable. The record is not encouraging.
None of the 34 currently active national emergencies relates to the persistent crises of healthcare access, social mobility, and student debt. No emergency proclamation addresses the immanent risk of climate change. Instead, each emergency was declared by the president (Republican or Democrat) over the narrow policy preferences or political interests of the national security establishment. As it turns out, the bipartisan security framework that allows the president to declare emergencies with virtually unchecked impunity is itself a perpetuation of working-class insecurity.
Emergencies all the way down
The U.S. has been in a state of persistent national emergency since November 1979, when President Jimmy Carter declared the first national emergency of the modern era, in response to the U.S. embassy takeover in Tehran. Following the declaration, Carter seized Iranian government assets and set off on an unsuccessful covert mission to free the U.S. diplomatic staff and intelligence operatives held captive in Tehran. Without doubt, the hostage-taking constituted an acute crisis for those involved, but compared to the steady erosion of personal dignity and economic stability caused by the austerity policies of the post-war period, such an event is hardly an emergency, and it is by no means national.
Fast forward to the present (and several dozen ‘emergencies’ later), in February 2019, President Trump declared that “the current situation at the southern border presents a border security and humanitarian crisis that threatens core national security interests and constitutes a national emergency.” Thus, a caravan predominantly consisting of tired, hungry, and poor asylum seekers and migrants was deemed to constitute a ‘national emergency’. Meanwhile, the moral emergency presented by the ineptly mismanaged and criminal system of child detention centers that was a byproduct of this border policy was entirely ignored.
Not only do these emergency declarations signal the moral indifference of the national security establishment, they also reveal the overlap between parochial military, diplomatic, and corporate interests.
bloomberg | The billionaire Tom Golisano was smoking a Padron cigar on his patio in Florida on Tuesday afternoon. He was worried.
“The damages of keeping the economy closed as it is could be
worse than losing a few more people,” said Golisano, founder and
chairman of the payroll processor Paychex Inc. “I have a very large
concern that if businesses keep going along the way they’re going then
so many of them will have to fold.”
President Donald Trump says he doesn’t want the cure for the
Covid-19 pandemic “to be worse than the problem,” and some of America’s
wealthiest people and executives are echoing his rallying cry. They want
to revive an economy that could face its worst quarterly drop ever --
even if it means pulling back on social distancing measures that public
health officials say can help stop coronavirus. These investors aren’t
prizing profits over lives, they say, they’re just willing to risk some
horrors to avoid others.
“You’re
picking the better of two evils,” said Golisano, who wants people to go
back to their offices in states that have been relatively spared by the
coronavirus, but remain at home in hot spots. “You have to weigh the
pros and cons.”
In New York, where hospitals are at a tipping point and getting pummeled by patients, Governor Andrew Cuomo says the economy shouldn’t be restarted “at the cost of human life” and that he’s developing a plan that “lets younger people get back to work.”
The question is when they should do it.
Trump, guided by a
group of hedge fund and private equity titans, wants the country up and
running again by Easter, though public health officials warn that’s too
soon for a virus that’s killed more than 18,400 and infected at least
400,000 worldwide. Only companies with less than 500 employees are
required to provide paid sick leave for workers out with Covid-19.
Economists from Northwestern University calculated that keeping social
distancing practices in place until cases decline could save 600,000
lives nationwide.
nola | Toilet paper shortages – and hoarding – during the coronavirus
outbreak have apparently led to the clogging of New Orleans area sewer
pipes, as residents have increasingly turned to nonflushable paper in
the bathroom.
The Sewerage & Water Board said Friday it has
been dealing with more sewer backups than normal, and urged residents to
"think before they flush."
"As a reminder, only human waste and
toilet paper are flushable," an S&WB spokeswoman said. "Baby wipes,
paper towels, and even 'flushable' wipes may clog your sewer line and
cause overflows."
The Jefferson Parish sewerage officials said the same thing this
week. Residents living in apartments and other concentrated areas need
to be especially careful.
The backups come as New Orleans area
grocers have struggled in recent weeks to keep toilet paper in stock.
Shoppers at Walmart, Rouses and elsewhere have been seen filling entire
carts with the toilet paper packages that have been placed on shelves.
Others seeking the household staple have had to go without. The scenario
has led to physical fights in some stores, and now, to sewer backups.
CTH | How weak and tenuous does a corporate financial position need to be such
that being closed for one week means informing all nationwide landlords
of your inability to pay the rent next week? Consider this example:
CALIFORNIA
– The Cheesecake Factory, one of the most popular sit-down restaurant
chains in the country, says it will not be able to make upcoming rent
payments for any of its storefronts on April 1 because of significant
loss of income due to the coronavirus crisis.
[…]
Company chairman and CEO David Overton writes, “Due to these
extraordinary events, I am asking for your patience, and frankly, your
help.” He continues, “we appreciate our landlords’ understanding given
the exigency of the current situation.” The letter says that the company
hopes to resume paying rent as soon as possible.
[…] The Cheesecake Factory was founded in Beverly Hills
in 1972 and maintains its original location on Beverly Drive, with 39
locations in California. In total, it operates 294 restaurants in 39
states, plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Toronto, Canada.
In 2019, the company also acquired Phoenix-based Fox Restaurants,
including North Italia, Flower Child, and The Henry. Most of the
company’s landlords are malls, including Simon and Westfield. (read more)
This is one small example; however, it is
an opportunity to imagine the beginning of a process were Blue team
corporations start to tell Red team financiers they are refusing to pay
their debts.
jacobinmag | Let’s look at the state of things for a second. The world is currently
grappling with a deadly global pandemic, one that has already led to
cities across the world being placed into lockdown, and looks to be
leading to an unprecedented economic crisis. Despite bungling the response
in a way that could be called criminal, the president has now gotten
out in front, holding daily press briefings that have allowed him to feed misinformation directly to the public, and taking steps that, while grossly inadequate
for the moment, have already outstripped the Obama administration’s
economic response in 2008 — with the result that, for the moment at
least, a large majority of Americans now approves of Trump’s handling of the crisis.
Being an election year, there are several things a Democratic
challenger should be doing. One is exuding a sense of calm, stability,
and competence, to convey “presidentialness” and contrast with Trump’s
chaotic behavior. Being the Democratic Party’s prospective leader, they
should be helping to set the legislative agenda and drive the party’s
ideas about the response to this unprecedented emergency. And they
should be communicating with the public as much as possible, providing
reassurance and guidance while denying the president a monopoly of the
airwaves.
Biden, like Sanders, first held a press conference on March 12, the
day the crisis first became real for many people, which started half an
hour late due to technical difficulties. He then held a virtual town
hall the day after, which saw Biden falsely claim credit
for the Endangered Species Act before wandering off camera, an event so
marred by technical difficulties that the “disjoined effort,” in
Biden’s words, had to be ended early. Then came the debate, in which
Biden was allowed by the moderators to brazenly lie about almost every aspect of his record, a contrast from debates in the past.
In the lead up to the last Tuesday’s elections — even as the
coronavirus death toll climbed, cities went into lockdown, and health
and government officials urged people to stay inside at all costs —
Biden’s campaign encouraged voters to turn out, falsely assuring them it was safe. The result was a day of chaos and confusion that almost certainly assisted the virus’s continued spread. Biden then gave a brief victory speech that ended in another odd moment that quickly went viral, now par for the course for the campaign.
And until today, that was the last almost anyone saw of the
Democratic frontrunner. For almost a whole week, as the crisis has
exponentially worsened by day, Biden seemed to have vanished off the
face off the earth, surfacing only last Friday in a call with the press.
He was “desperately” trying to “be in daily or at least, you know,
significant contact with the American people and communicate what I
would be doing,” he told reporters, as if regular, successful livestreaming hadn’t already been accomplished by both his opponent and millions of teenagers.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo blasted FEMA during a press
conference for sending 400 medical ventilators when his state needs
30,000.
However, in 2015 the New York State Department of
Health specifically studied the issue, warned about a critical lack of
ventilators during a pandemic, and the New York Governor made a specific
decision NOT to order them: [pdf link here]
sicsempertyrannis | For the past week it appeared that NY
Governor Cuomo realized it was more important to be an adult and eschew
partisan politics. That was then. He is now in full partisan panic
pandemonium. He is now accusing the Feds of dragging their feet in
getting NYC 30,000 ventilators.
Here is the quote:
"What are you doing sending 400 when I need 30,000 ventilators," Cuomo said. "You're missing the magnitude of the problem."
No Cuomo, you do not understand. For starters, you do not have 10,000
patients on a ventilator now. The number of patients who test positive
does not mean that all will require a ventilator. The numbers available
so far indicate most who test positive for corona virus are not being
hospitalized. That means the numbers for ventilators are not going to
skyrocket and immediately outstrip the existing capability.
But Cuomo is missing a more important point. Shame on him. He has a
duty to help educate his constituency. Let us start with the production
reality--you cannot magically produce ventilators overnight. The
existing manufacturers have limited, not UNLIMITED, capabilities to
expand production. Bringing other companies, like GM on line, will
require about a month to retool and repurpose machinery and quality
control techs.
Producing the machines is the easy part. It is the human
infrastructure that is the problem. If there are 30,000 ventilators up
and running then you need an additional 45,000 ICU qualified nurses and
an additional 22,500 Respiratory Therapy Technicians. (I am assuming one
ICU nurse can handle two patients per shift. There are three eight hour
shifts per day. I am assuming that one Respiratory Therapy Tech can
handle 8 ventilators per shift and there are three eight hour shifts per
day).
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