JustOneMinute

The Deep State In Action

Newly released documents in the Gen. Flynnn drama are shocking:

FBI discussed interviewing Michael Flynn 'to get him to lie' and 'get him fired,' handwritten notes show

Explosive new internal FBI documents unsealed Wednesday show that top bureau officials discussed their motivations for interviewing then-national security adviser Michael Flynn in the White House in January 2017 -- and openly indicated that their "goal" was "to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired."

The handwritten notes -- written by the FBI's former head of counterintelligence Bill Priestap after a meeting with then-FBI Director James Comey and then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Fox News is told -- indicated that agents planned to get Flynn “to admit to breaking the Logan Act” and catch him in a lie. The Logan Act is an obscure statute that has never been used in a criminal prosecution; enacted in 1799, it was intended to prevent individuals from falsely claiming to represent the United States abroad in an era before telephones.

“What is our goal?" one of the notes reads. "Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?”

The bombshell documents strongly suggested the agents weren't truly concerned about Flynn's intercepted contacts with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, except as a pretext. Former President Obama personally had warned the Trump administration against hiring Flynn, and made clear he was "not a fan," according to multiple officials. Obama fired Flynn as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014.

So basically the interview was exactly the set-up it looked like. Does Trump pardon Flynn now or let the Durham investigation play out?

Here We Go Again

It's Tuesday, right? The days are running together a bit just now...

Jim Geraghty at National Review is reliably excellent. 

Southern Men

The shooting of Ahmaud Arbery in Satilla Shores, Georgia looks like the sort of story that would draw national attention in another time. Two white guys grab their guns, hop in their pickup truck and chase down a 25 yr old black man running through the neighborhood. A confrontation, a scuffle over a shotgun, shots fired and.... the black man is dead and the white guy is claiming self-defense. Come on, man.

Add to the mix that the two white guys were father and son. The son hopped out of the truck and had the fatal showdown. The dad was a former investigator for the local DA (now recused) and before that a local police officer. Hard to believe the local law enforcement community is pressing hard for an arrest and conviction.

So, what was the probable cause that sparked the pursuit? Previous break-ins in the area and this:

When retired district attorney investigator Greg McMichael saw a man he suspected of burglary sprinting down Satilla Drive on the afternoon of Feb. 23, he alerted his adult son and both men grabbed their guns, according to a Glynn County police report.

An adrenaline-infused pursuit ensued, which ended a block away when Travis McMichael’s shotgun fired twice as he and the man struggled for possession of it, Greg McMichael told police. Ahmaud Marquez Arbery, 25, died on the spot, “bleeding out” in a matter of minutes, the police report said.

...

The McMichael men and others were fed up with burglaries and auto break-ins by the time that fateful February afternoon unfolded, the police report indicated. The senior McMichael told police the surveillance video in the neighborhood had earlier captured Arbery in suspicious circumstances. McMichael told police they saw Arbery “the other night” and that he reached in his pants, as if readying to draw a gun, the report said

Sometime around 1 p.m., McMichael was in his son’s front yard at 230 Satilla Drive when he saw Arbery running down the street, the report said. McMichael dashed inside the house and called to his son. “’Travis, the guy is running down the street, lets go,’” he told police. McMichael grabbed a .357 magnum handgun and Travis grabbed his shotgun, “not knowing if the male was armed or not,” the report said. Then they ran back outside and hopped in a truck, the report said.

The "reached in his pants" reeks of cop bullshit. As to whether they could have IDed Arbery from earlier neighborhood surveillance, well, the DA with the case has some videotapes. Back to the story, and then some potentially exculpatory stuff from the Times.

Travis McMichael drove down Satilla Drive toward the intersection of Buford Road, the report said. They spotted Arbery running down Buford Road. Travis drove down Burford Road and tried unsuccessfully to cut off Arbery’s escape with the truck, the report said.

The Brunswick man then turned and started “running back in the direction from which he came,” the report said. Travis McMichael again tried without success to cut Arbery off with the truck.

Greg McMichael jumped into the truck’s bed at this point and the pursuit resumed. At one point in the pursuit, the two McMichaels hailed, “’Stop, stop, we want to talk to you,’” the report said.

Travis McMichael pulled up beside Arbery and again made it known they wanted to talk, the report said. At this point, Travis McMichael exited the vehicle, shotgun in hand.

“McMichael stated he saw (Arbery) begin to “violently attack Travis and the two men then started fighting over the shotgun, at which point Travis fired a shot and then a second later there was a second shot,” the report stated. “McMichael stated the male fell face down on the pavement with his hand under his body.”

McMichael then searched Arbery for a gun, the report said.

“McMichael stated he rolled the man over to see if the male had a weapon,” the report said. “I observed blood on McMichael’s hands from rolling (Arbery) over.”

The county police report ends without stating whether Arbery was in possession of a gun. Attempts by The News to contact Barnhill Wednesday were unsuccessful.

Arbery was arrested in December of 2012 by Glynn County Schools Police for bringing a handgun into the Brunswick High gymnasium during a basketball game. When an officer spotted the .380 caliber handgun in his waistband, the then 19-year-old Arbery attempted to flee.

Hmm, if he was 19 in Dec of 2012 he should be 26 or 27 today. Paper says 25. Moving on, back to the Times:

But others contend that Mr. Arbery was up to no good. On the day of the shooting, and apparently moments before the chase, a neighbor in Satilla Shores called 911, telling the dispatcher that a black man in a white T-shirt was inside a house that was under construction and only partially closed in.

“And he’s running right now,” the man told the dispatcher. “There he goes right now!”

Well. Apparently there is video of the home burglary that day AND the fatal confrontation.

Mr. Barnhill also wrote that he did not believe there was evidence of a crime, noting that Gregory McMichael and his son had been legally carrying their weapons under Georgia law. And because Mr. Arbery was a “burglary suspect,” the pursuers, who had “solid firsthand probable cause,” were justified in chasing him under the state’s citizen’s arrest law.

In a separate document, Mr. Barnhill stated that video exists of Mr. Arbery “burglarizing a home immediately preceding the chase and confrontation.” In the letter to the police, he cites a separate video of the shooting filmed by a third pursuer.

Mr. Barnhill said this video, which has not been made public, shows Mr. Arbery attacking Travis McMichael after he and his father pulled up to him in their truck.

The video shows Mr. Arbery trying to grab the shotgun from Travis McMichael’s hands, Mr. Barnhill wrote. And that, he argued, amounts to self-defense under Georgia law. Travis McMichael, Mr. Barnhill concluded, “was allowed to use deadly force to protect himself.”

He noted that it was possible that Mr. Arbery had caused the gun to go off by pulling on it, and pointed to Mr. Arbery’s “mental health records” and prior convictions, which, he said, “help explain his apparent aggressive nature and his possible thought pattern to attack an armed man.”

Our long national nightmare has resumed. Probable cause and self-defense let you chase a guy down, jump out of a truck and start waving a shotgun? That's a Grand Canyon between "legal" and "common-sensical".

Social distancing has made the usual protests difficult. But now the NY Times is featuring it and since the case is from Georgia, I expect Stacy Abrams to leverage this into her campaign for the Vice Presidential nod. Definitely murkier than Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown, since those were only murky to folks who were relying on emotion and pre-disposition.

How long until these tapes go public?

 

Another Day In Paradise

Not to be whiny and yes, I try very hard to let a smile be my umbrella but... rain again? Where is the sunshine that will kill the coronavirus?

I'm starting to crack.

Catnip From Bygone Days

Who remembers that Russian collusion thing? Barr and Durham, evidently:

Durham Inquiry Includes Scrutiny of a Media Leak

The attorney general has suggested that the Justice Department review of the Russia investigation has uncovered “troubling” findings without going into details.

The leak relates to a January 2017 column by Ignatius in the WaPo about Flynn. This must be it:

Question 3: What discussions has the Trump team had with Russian officials about future relations? Trump said Wednesday that his relationship with President Vladimir Putin is “an asset, not a liability.” Fair enough, but until he’s president, Trump needs to let Obama manage U.S.-Russia policy.

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, Trump’s choice for national security adviser, cultivates close Russian contacts. He has appeared on Russia Today and received a speaking fee from the cable network, which was described in last week’s unclassified intelligence briefing on Russian hacking as “the Kremlin’s principal international propaganda outlet.”

According to a senior U.S. government official, Flynn phoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on Dec. 29, the day the Obama administration announced the expulsion of 35 Russian officials as well as other measures in retaliation for the hacking. What did Flynn say, and did it undercut the U.S. sanctions? The Logan Act (though never enforced) bars U.S. citizens from correspondence intending to influence a foreign government about “disputes” with the United States. Was its spirit violated? The Trump campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

If the Trump team’s contacts helped discourage the Russians from a counter-retaliation, maybe that’s a good thing. But we ought to know the facts.

...

UPDATE: The Trump transition team did not respond Thursday night to a request for comment. But two team members called with information Friday morning. A first Trump official confirmed that Flynn had spoken with Kislyak by phone, but said the calls were before sanctions were announced and didn’t cover that topic. This official later added that Flynn’s initial call was to express condolences to Kislyak after the terrorist killing of the Russian ambassador to Ankara Dec. 19, and that Flynn made a second call Dec. 28 to express condolences for the shoot-down of a Russian plane carrying a choir to Syria. In that second call, Flynn also discussed plans for a Trump-Putin conversation sometime after the inauguration. In addition, a second Trump official said the Dec. 28 call included an invitation from Kislyak for a Trump administration official to visit Kazakhstan for a conference in late January.

Well, OK. His Question 4 should have been asked more often:

Question 4: Finally, what’s the chance that Russian intelligence has gamed its covert action more subtly than we realize? Applying a counter-intelligence lens, it’s worth asking whether the Russians hoped to be discovered, and whether Russian operatives fed the former MI6 officer’s controversial dossier deliberately, to sow further chaos.

No kidding.

 

Hit The Beach

Trump lost the plot by suggesting we might clean the COVID-19 out of our system by mainlining Clorox but there was good news from the scientists at his Thursday event - warmth, humidity and especially sunshine crush the coronavirus.

And thirdly, the virus dies the quickest in the presence of direct sunlight under these conditions.  And when you — when you look at that chart, look at the aerosol as you breathe it; you put it in a room, 70 to 75 degrees, 20 percent humidity, low humidity, it lasts — the half-life is about an hour.  But you get outside, and it cuts down to a minute and a half.  A very significant difference when it gets hit with UV rays.

Which way to the beach?

Answering The Bell

Forty-three guys at a plant making polypropylene (used to make hospital masks and gowns) staged a 28 day "live-in", rotating twelve hour shifts to keep the product moving. Everyone stayed at the plant so no one would get sick.

“We were just happy to be able to help,” Boyce, an operations shift supervisor and a 27-year veteran at Braskem America, told The Washington Post. “We’ve been getting messages on social media from nurses, doctors, EMS workers, saying thank you for what we’re doing. But we want to thank them for what they did and are continuing to do. That’s what made the time we were in there go by quickly, just being able to support them.”

Ok, wow. On the one hand, what these guys did is special. On the other hand, I think plenty of their fellow citizens are going above and beyond every day right now, and many more would if given the chance.

Alright, enough with the feel-good moment. Judging from the title, John Harris of Politico has got to be Irish:

Stop Looking on the Bright Side: We’ll Be Screwed By the Pandemic for Years to Come

Yeah! Not only is the glass half-empty, its a damn specimen cup. Oy!

 

Dr. Bright Dimmed

Dr. Bright has is now part of a furor. Naturally he claims to stand for Science in the face of petty Trump appointees, which is all the NY Times needs to hear. As to the truth? Who knows - per Politico his issue shave been brewing for a year.

Here We Go Again

Wall Street Pandemonium! Oil trading at negative prices was not something many had in the office pool.

In the same vein as "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" we're wondering what an economy looks like when no one can buy anything. Oil - who needs it?!?

Bracing For Another Week

The Last Dance, about Michael Jordan and his final Bull Run, looks very cool.

Let's Do This!

Liberate Michigan!?! I am firmly of two minds on this. As I noted a few days back, we have a serious Two Americas problem. The Acela corridor from Boston to Philly is as hard hit as anywhere in the world (IMHO China was more devastated but they are choosing to defy common sense with their numbers letting.)

But what's right for major urban centers may not be right for the rest of the country. Right now, that is playing out in microcosm in Michigan. Detroit and neighboring counties have a major problem; rural upstate, just as with upstate NY, is relatively unaffected.

The NY Times presents the DNC memo on the Governor Whitmer and the problem in Michigan. Henry Olsen, in the WaPo, is more sympathetic to alternative visions.

As to my opinion? Some of the Whitmer Rules seem absurd and almost designed to indulge some Social Justice Warrior fantasy. Plant nurseries closed? I can hear some ardent urban progressive explaining that the urban poor don't have room for shrubs and gardens so its not fair to allow plant sales anywhere. But that's just me - maybe there is a real rationalization. If so I'd be curious to hear it because in My Blue Heaven (CT, near Metro NYC) people are dropping like flies but plant nurseries remain open.

On the other hand, some of the anti-shutdown people have roughly zero credibility with me. I say "roughly" because I am not sure of the mathematics of negative and imaginary credibility. But irrational numbers definitely! So let's say some of these protestors have credibility equal to Pi/e^10.  Itsy-bitsy.

Among the 'no shutdown' advocates have been many noting we see more deaths in a normal flu season. Please stop. The idea that comparing this to a normal flu season makes sense was and remains silly. So were the "hospitals are empty" arguments offered a month ago. Yes, a month later they remain empty in some places and that is worth understanding.

I side with expert opinion on how to manage a Smart Restart - in my quest for a snazzy mnemonic I have hit on "Triple-T, Triple-P E":

Testing: important but not easy.

Tracing of contacts

Temperature checks at offices, malls, stores, bus, rail and train stations - see video of S. Korean poll stations.

Purell everywhere - as in Korea

Protective Personal Equipment - as a basket for hospital readiness - PPE, rested staff, now-controversial ventilators, no drug shortages.

I wonder what I left out? I'm sure something will come to me. Meanwhile, Triple-T, Triple P E is something even Rick Perry can remember. The Trump plan is more specific but not that different.

ERRATA: On the South Korean temperature checks - I actually kind of like the idea of voting with a gun to my head. An outdoor wet bar would help ease the pain too.

As to noting the bad arguments for re-opening but short-shrifting good ones - is there a Gresham's Law for debates?That said, when I read this Rush Limbaugh tirade I get a headache, my eyes hurt and I feel nauseated. Are those COVID-19 symptoms?

There still is no HIV vaccine. HIV was discovered in the early 1980s, mid-eighties. There’s no vaccine. There are now really powerful treatments for it, but there’s no vaccine. Most viruses don’t have vaccines. That’s why the talk of a vaccine here, that’s another mollifying tactic designed to make you, “Hey, if it’s only a year and a half, I can do that, I can wait that long.”

Wow. Let me just sat that if HIV could be transmitted by casual contact, including breathing and talking, it would be a different world today. Fortunately almost all of us were able to give up having sex with random strangers in public. Harder to avoid sharing air and surfaces.

As to the idea that the alternative to re-opening is to wait for a vaccine - come on, man. The sort of guidelines I'm suggesting are quite mainstream, not rocket surgery, but require a bit more preparation (eg, we are short of the chemicals that power the tests. Fixable, but not by Monday.)

Do Tell

Wow, Russian intel operatives may have been spoofing Mr. Steele of the infamous dossier! Who could have seen that coming, other than anyone who asked themselves what Putin was up to in 2016?

Just as important is that electing Joe Biden this fall will be a restoration of the above-the-law crowd that figured abusing the FISA process to spy on the other party would never be uncovered.

I do love the word "botched" in this classic NY Times sentence. As if misleading the FISA court was just a stray accident rather than their specific intent:

Some of the most important ways the F.B.I. botched the wiretap applications targeting Mr. Page related to the Steele dossier, the inspector general report found. For example, in mid-January 2017, after the first of three renewals, the F.B.I. interviewed the primary sub-source, who contested how the dossier portrayed his information. But the F.B.I. failed to tell the court in the last two applications for permission to continue eavesdropping on Mr. Page that it had a new reason to be suspicious of the dossier’s credibility.

Forget it, Jack - it's the Times.

Two Americas

The greater New York City area stands alone on a map of the US with coronavirus cases and deaths.

 

On a per-capita basis I've done some quick calculations. Numbers get updated but the flavor remains the same:

With apologies to the good people of the great (but suffering) states of Illinois, Michigan and Louisiana, the US is basically two countries. New York (by which we mean, the Greatest City in the World and the surrounding counties) and New Jersey are having a death toll comparable to the most afflicted countries in Europe. 90% of the country, however, is running as well as Germany, which is widely regarded as a "How did they do it" success story.

And California?!? They had early inflows from China and the same President, FDA, and CDC as the rest of the US. Testing? Limited. Yet there they are, half the German per capita toll. Hard to credit Trump for that. Or blame him.

Why the difference? NYC is a major hub for international travel, its mass transit usage dwarfs other cities, its population density is 50% higher than San Francisco at number two, and who knows what else. [Another guess: California and Washington were hit from Wuhan and may have gotten some help from the Jan 31 China travel ban; NYC got more infections from Europe than Asia.]

Politically, one size clearly does not fit all across the US. Trump is a New Yorker. Its likely he and the media are very New York-centric (I know I am.) But we will be re-opening the economy by regions, not all at once.

DO NOTE: Official coronavirus deaths in NY have to be under-reported. "Excess deaths" above a typical year are off the charts. Yes, including off the charts that go back to 9/11.

MORE: The NY Times on:

 - the lost January during which the professionals at the CDC and FDA were given a long leash and failed on both test design and Emergency Use Authorizations for other labs (but did a good job of protecting their turf!). IMHO, Trump ran in part on a "Don't trust the DC bureaucracy" platform; he picked a bad time to trust them.

 - Everything Trump did wrong. History is written by the winners, so a story like this is shot through with hindsight bias. Just for example, everybody who was right shouts out; folks who were wrong aren't rushing forward to tell the Times.

 - Everything Cuomo and deBlasio did was wrong. Same caveat about the Times and their 2020 Hindsight project.

A Happy Easter To All

Enjoy the day, please.

A Goofy Poll On The Origin Story Of Coronavirus

Pew Research does an odd poll on the origin of the coronavirus.

They pose a range of choices: the virus

(a) came about naturally

(b) was developed intentionally in a lab

(c) was made accidentally in a lab

(d) doesn't exist

(e) not sure.

An incredibly obvious choice is missing - it occurred naturally and was discovered in a lab, whereupon an accidental release occurred. James Geraghty has lots on that scenario.

As to the science, Mediaite quotes this widely cited paper:

The belief in the artificial creation of the coronavirus was widespread enough to prompt a team of researchers to conduct a study, which found that SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes the Covid-19 illness — “is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus,” and that the researchers “do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”

However, by "laboratory-based scenario" they do not mean "lab accident". What they mean is a lab process - either deliberate bio-engineering or random mutation and recombination of cells in a test tube.

And they may be right, for all I know. But I'd love to hear a scientist explain how it is possible that an infected bat or pangolin could infect humans at the Wuhan Market but could not infect lab workers who mishandled it.

Fortunatley, that is not the claim these scientists made. From an interview on their paper:

Andersen says the analysis probably won’t lay conspiracy theories to rest. Still, he thinks the analysis was worth doing. “I was myself skeptical at the beginning and I kept flipping back and forth,” Andersen says, but he’s now convinced. “All the data show it’s natural.”

Fine, but "natural" does not mean that Ground Zero was not a Wuhan lab rather than the Wuhan Market. It's interesting to see how eager the press is to report it that way.

Good Friday

Another somber day.

We Can Blame China!

The stately NY Times is slowly turning towards the recognition that China can be a villain in this story even if Orange Man says they are.

This piece is about the Chinese propaganda push to rewrite the narrative with themselves as the heroes, imposing draconian measure to buy precious time for the world.

It lets them off easy - just for starters, China concealed the fact of an outbreak for weeks, then misled WHO about human-to-human transmission, then refused to let the CDC or WHO put boots on the ground. Some of this has been covered in the MSM but the general arc - this is a Chinese push for global influence - has been sidetracked by Orange Man Bad coverage.

The Times was actually very good on Feb 1, which means they had a story in the works just as Trump announced the travel ban with China. And they have picked up the cudgels again - here is a WHO basher with an unexpected headline:

Trump Slammed the W.H.O. Over Coronavirus. He’s Not Alone.

Weird, right? I think they decided to shift gears last week when the "story" emerged that  - brace yourselves - US intelligence agencies believed the Chinese were cooking the numbers:

C.I.A. Hunts for Authentic Virus Totals in China, Dismissing Government Tallies

Intelligence officials have told the White House for weeks that China has vastly understated the spread of the coronavirus and the damage the pandemic has done.

We'll see how the Times coverage evolves. Can their readers handle a story with multiple villains? And some of the villains are not rich white males?!? It's Game of Thrones complexity!

The Comeback Kids

The NBA is planning to defer their planning. Maybe in May they'll know what they're doing, although I think a lot of us know now.

That Was A Good Day

Monday was a day for believers. The coronavirus tide may have turned in Italy and Spain. Even NY had two days below 600 new deaths. After a Saturday figure of 630 new deaths, Gov. Cuomo said Sunday's 594 figure may be a "blip". But with Monday at 599, we have a shot at an actual trend developing!

As always, his presentations were filled with an array of detailed statistics. Though New York’s daily death toll peaked at 630 on Saturday, it hovered around 600 on both Sunday and Monday, he said. That followed a long stretch in which hospitalizations in the state were growing at a rate of 20 to 30 percent a day, but are now increasing at a single-digit rate.

“While none of this is good news, the flattening — or possible flattening — is better than the increases we have seen,” Mr. Cuomo said.

On the other hand, British PM Boris Johnson is in intensive care, which is grim news.

NY State New Deaths graph.

That chart shows 539 deaths in NY state on Apr 6. Weird, because Cuomo said 599. The site uses Johns Hopkins data, so what gives?

Sunday Morning Open Thread

Here we go again.

Here's something to chew on. In a month, maybe literally:

Coronavirus may cause some food shortages, warns government task force

WASHINGTON — The nation could begin to see food shortages for some products if the people working on the supply chain lack personal protective equipment, warns an internal Trump administration document obtained by Yahoo News.

Empty supermarket shelves have become one of the most jarring images of the coronavirus pandemic, which has sickened 270,000 Americans and killed 7,000. But so far, there have been no food shortages, despite 90 percent of the American population being under state-enforced lockdown orders.

And despite the difficulties people have had in obtaining certain foods, like pasta, grocery stores are generally well stocked. Government officials have argued that any temporary shortages are the result of unprecedented demand, as people have bought more than usual, rather than an actual supply-chain breakdown.

“I want to assure you that our food supply chain is sound,” Sonny Perdue, the secretary of agriculture, said on March 20.

That, however, could change if the people who make, package and deliver food lack personal protective equipment, or PPE, including face masks and gloves, according to the internal document shared with Yahoo News, which provides a daily update on various aspects of the coronavirus response, including details ranging from state-by-state infections to hospital capacity and test sites.

The document, titled “Senior Leadership Brief COVID-19” and dated April 2, 2020, bears the seals of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services. It contains a brief description of findings made by the Food Supply Chain Task Force on the availability of PPE. 

Such equipment has been in short supply in hospitals, where doctors and nurses are routinely exposed to high amounts of coronavirus. The food industry also relies on a variety of protective equipment for food safety.

The April 2 briefing warns that the task force had completed an analysis and there could be “commodity impacts if current PPE inventory is exhausted.” There would be shortages of milk within 24 hours and of fresh fruits and vegetables “within several days.” The document estimates that “meat, poultry, seafood, and processed eggs” would become scarce within a period of two to four weeks, while “dry goods and processed foods inventories” — that is, the non-perishables that are pantry staples — could become scarce “as soon as four weeks” after face masks and gloves run out across the food supply chain.

The document is a warning, and is not descriptive of the current situation. There are no signs of a food shortage across the nation. But the coronavirus pandemic is putting strain on every aspect of the food supply chain, from the people who raise and grow what we eat to the people who deliver it to our supermarkets.

Here's hoping.

Drafting Doctors?!?

The greatest city in the world is teetering on the brink so its Mayor seizes the opportunity to remind us he is a useless buffoon:

Covid-19: De Blasio urges US enlistment program for doctors and nurses

• • Mayor calls for medics to be moved to places in greatest need
  • New York City prepares for surge in coronavirus cases

 

"Enlistment program"?!? WHAT did he say?

New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, has called for a national enlistment program for doctors and nurses, to handle an expected surge in coronavirus cases in New York and across the US.

 

“If we’re fighting a war, let’s act like we’re fighting a war,” he told reporters on Friday.

...

"...unless the military is fully mobilized and we create something we’ve never had before, which is some kind of national enlistment of medical personnel moved to the most urgent needs in the country constantly … if we don’t have that we’re going to see hospitals simply unable to handle so many people who could be saved.”

OK, that won't be happening. As a minor point, there is no time for Congress to pass the relevant legislation. As a major point, this is still America, we abandoned the draft decades ago, and we don't force people to work at gunpoint.

And how would it work? NY hospitals are short of Protective Personal Equipment. So the Feds are going to threaten to arrest some doctor in Vermont unless he gets down to NY and imperils himself by treating coronavirus patients? And if the good people of the great state of Vermont need health care down the road, NY promises to send their doctor back, unless he's sick or dead or super busy saving New Yorkers in which case, well, that's a problem for another day?

I saw a poignant story of a retired 50-ish nurse from New York. She was planning to answer Gov. Cuomo's call for volunteers but had qualms  she lives with two youngsters and her elderly parents. Working with coronavirus patents all day puts her at high risk of infection; going home puts her at risk of infecting her high-risk parents.

Her intention was to respond because Duty Calls, and I applaud her fighting spirit. But I have a hard time imagining a state legislator or judge would agree to lock her up if she chose to sit this one out and take care of her mom and dad.

As a further illustration that desperate times require desperate short-sightedness, this order by Gov. Cuomo is outrageous:

Cuomo said he would sign an executive order that allows the national guard to take ventilators and personal protective equipment from institutions that don’t need them right now, and redistribute them to those that do. He said those institutions would either have their ventilators returned to them or get reimbursements. Cuomo said there may be several hundred ventilators available because of the order.

Right now, the state is fielding a daily need for about 300 additional ventilators, he said. Those ventilators, officials have repeatedly explained, make the difference between life and death.

“Am I willing to deploy the national guard and inconvenience people for several hundred lives? You’re damn right I am,” Cuomo said.

Upstate NY legislators are pushing back. I haven't studied their local budgets and planning process but I imagine some of them are thinking they spent years in investing in appropriate capacity for their town and now, at the moment of crisis, its being taken away by people who couldn't plan far enough ahead to buy hot dogs for the Fourth of July.

As to the idea that they'll will get it back if they need it - oh, stop. NYC won't start unhooking people and letting them die just to return ventilators to some upstate burg. The absence of trust makes sharing difficult and this brute expropriation outrageous.

Apparently they won't take more than 20% of the ventilators from any hospital, so the plan isn't fully insane.

Some pushback from the Rochester area upstate:

Rochester Regional Health deferred questions to Monroe County. Both County Executive Adam Bello and U.S. Rep. Joseph Morelle, D-Irondequoit, expressed concerned over Cuomo's executive order.

"While it’s reasonable to share resources across communities when available, the reality is that Monroe County’s positive cases, hospitalizations, and ventilator usage increase daily," Bello said in a statement. "We do not have excess capacity to send supplies out of the region.”

Morelle echoed those sentiments.

"Unfortunately, our regional health systems have repeatedly indicated that excess ventilator capacity does not exist at this time," Morelle offered in a statement.

Rich Azzopardi, senior advisor to Cuomo, said, "...it is essential that we all work together."

He continued, "Ventilators literally save lives. They will be returned or reimbursed to those hospitals. Moreover, when the pandemic wave hits upstate New York, the Governor will ask downstate hospitals for similar help."

I guess Gov. Cuomo's message is "tough luck".

More pushback from Erie County Republicans:

We cannot allow the state to confiscate our public health resources by force and redistribute them to New York City.  The offer to pay for them only adds insult to injury.  Once they are taken, we will not get them back when we need them, and clearly none are available for purchase.  We want to help, but if we hit our peak while our resources are elsewhere, Erie County residents will die.  We cannot let that happen.”

No trust.

Mask Up!

Trust the experts! The folks who told us not to bother with masks are changing their minds. Right the second time!

Oddly, the Bush-era guidance was that masks could be helpful even for the healthy in a crowded situation. That changed during the Obama-era preparation for the fall '09 swine flu. Weird.

2007 CDC:

2009 Updated CDC guidance:

 

Grim Forecasts

Drs. Fauci and Brix are now forecasting 100,000 to 240,000 UDS deaths due to coronavirus IF we stick with the social distancing.

I hope to track down the models they were looking at. This University of Washington/IHME model projected a cheery 82,000 deaths. It is ambitious in that it estimated hospital capacity and disease spread by state to estimate where the system will collapse (short answer - everywhere I've looked.) Check the interactive feature and do note - they update the actual deaths and forward estimates daily, so the forecast totals will change.

Caveats about the model to follow. Very briefly, it relied heavily on data from the early-stricken areas, to wit, Wuhan and Italy.  The reliability of the Wuhan data is in serious doubt.

KEY INTEL: Breitbart ran the UW/IHME model and put up the expected Peak Day for each of out 57 states. Or most of 'em.