The Abbreviated Pundit Round-up is a daily feature at Daily Kos.
Here is a timely article as cases are about to grow. Flu is something we are familiar with. Coronavirus is different, but not so different. We need a framework to compare (hence coronavirus and flu), as we assess what it means to have an outbreak of a novel threat.
Scientists look at it one way, the public looks at it a different way, and public officials have to look at it both ways.
Numbers are great but don't tell a story like narrative does.
It's not easy to get the narrative right, just see any attempt to cover politics. Sure the polling numbers back up the narrative (but subject to interpretation and crosstabs!). IA is not SC, etc.…
Oh, and it changes over time!!! IA is not SC etc…
This analogy is presented as a public service for folks who think "but you said before...." We did. Things change. Now this guy is front-runner but wasn’t last week. Don't yell at us. See IA but then SC....
Oh, and tell the truth. Always tell the truth.
Meanwhile an important observation: the number of cases in the US will now increase, maybe quickly, because we now have testing, and some level of virus penetration has already occurred. No need for undue alarm over that, it is expected. And it is what Trump’s press conferences should have been explaining all along, and would have had he let the public health officials speak.
Today’s coronavirus resources:
Tara Haelle/Forbes: No, You DO NOT Need Face Masks For Coronavirus—They Might Increase Your Infection Risk
Tara Smith/Self: 5 Things to Do If You’re Worried About Coronavirus in the U.S.
Seasonal flu and coronavirus can be compared responsibly. NY Times:
How Does the Coronavirus Compare to the Flu?
As new cases appear on the West Coast, some — including the president — see comparisons to the seasonal flu. Here’s a close look at the differences.
As the United States recorded its first coronavirus death on Saturday — and as other cases popped up in people without known risks on the West Coast — Americans wondered how to measure this new threat against a more familiar foe: influenza.
President Trump, a self-described germophobe, said on Wednesday he was amazed to learn that tens of thousands of Americans died from the flu each year, contrasting that number with the 60 or so known to be infected with the coronavirus. On Friday, Mr. Trump accused the news media and Democrats of exaggerating the dangers of the virus.
“The flu kills people,” Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, said on Wednesday. “This is not Ebola. It’s not SARS, it’s not MERS. It’s not a death sentence.”
To many public health officials, that argument misses the point.
Yes, the flu is terrible — that’s exactly why scientists don’t want another contagious respiratory disease to take root. If they could stop the seasonal flu, they would. But there may yet be a chance to stop the coronavirus.
Have I mentioned that you don’t need a mask?
Pandemic flu and coronavirus can be compared responsibly. God bless the historians, for they will narrate a tale we can all understand. WaPo:
Trump is ignoring the lessons of 1918 flu pandemic that killed millions, historian says
The first wave wasn’t that bad. In the spring of 1918, a new strain of influenza hit military camps in Europe on both sides of World War I. Soldiers were affected, but not nearly as severely as they would be later.
Even so, Britain, France, Germany and other European governments kept it secret. They didn’t want to hand the other side a potential advantage.
Spain, on the other hand, was a neutral country in the war. When the disease hit there, the government and newspapers reported it accurately. Even the king got sick.
So months later, when a bigger, deadlier wave swept across the globe, it seemed like it had started in Spain, even though it hadn’t. Simply because the Spanish told the truth, the virus was dubbed the “Spanish flu.”
Political bumbling can be reported responsibly. WaPo:
Inside Trump’s frantic attempts to minimize the coronavirus crisis
Minutes before President Trump was preparing Wednesday to reassure a skittish nation about the coronavirus threat, he received a piece of crucial information: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had identified in California the first U.S. case of the illness not tied to foreign travel, a sign that the virus’s spread in the United States was likely to explode.
But when Trump took to the lectern for a news conference intended to bring transparency to the spiraling global crisis, he made no explicit mention of the California case and its implications — and falsely suggested the virus might soon be eradicated in the United States….
Interviews with nearly two dozen administration officials, former White House aides, public health experts and lawmakers — many speaking on the condition of anonymity to share candid assessments and details — portray a White House scrambling to gain control of a rudderless response defined by bureaucratic infighting, confusion and misinformation.
“It’s complete chaos,” a senior administration official said. “Everyone is just trying to get a handle on what the [expletive] is going on.”
The Scientist:
Why Some COVID-19 Cases Are Worse than Others
Emerging data as well as knowledge from the SARS and MERS coronavirus outbreaks yield some clues as to why SARS-CoV-2 affects some people worse than others.
Fourteen percent of confirmed cases have been “severe,” involving serious pneumonia and shortness of breath. Another 5 percent of patients confirmed to have the disease developed respiratory failure, septic shock, and/or multi-organ failure—what the agency calls “critical cases” potentially resulting in death. Roughly 2.3 percent of confirmed cases did result in death.
Scientists are working to understand why some people suffer more from the virus than others. It is also unclear why the new coronavirus—like its cousins SARS and MERS—appears to be more deadly than other coronaviruses that regularly circulate among people each winter and typically cause cold symptoms. “I think it’s going to take a really, really long time to understand the mechanistic, biological basis of why some people get sicker than others,” says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
In the meantime, the latest data from China and research on other coronaviruses provide some hints.
Excellent On the Media with guest Laurie Garrett, covering the WH and CDC message debacle.
What to do? Dr Emma Hodcraft has great advice:
"If the virus is everywhere, what's the point of preparedness?"
On neither why continuing about your day as usual OR buying every can in the shop are helpful responses to
#COVID19 #SARSCoV2 #Coronavirus #SARSCoV19 :
A main component of preparedness is about *putting slack in the system*. This manifests in a few ways here:
- Public mentality
- Supply chains & medical systems
- Your personal life
1 - Govts/health agencies preparing the public allows the public to prepare themselves - physically & mentally. The 2nd is a big one.
A slowly increasing case # with early discussion of cancelling schools/events & possible disruption means less panic if these later happen.
In non-coronavirus news:
Nate Silver/FiveThirtyEight:
What Biden’s Big South Carolina Win Might Mean For Sanders
Saturday was Joe Biden’s first-ever win in a presidential primary or caucus. It was an awfully big one: Biden won South Carolina by nearly 30 percentage points over Bernie Sanders. And it made for one heck of a comeback: Biden’s lead over Sanders had fallen to as little as 2 to 3 percentage points in our South Carolina polling average in the immediate aftermath of New Hampshire.
What explains the big swing back to Biden in South Carolina? And what does it mean for the rest of the race — and in particular for Sanders, who had entered this weekend as the frontrunner?
Here are five possible explanations — ranging from the most benign for Sanders to the most troubling for his campaign.
Nobody knows nothing™. But in a few days, we will know a lot more.
Sophia A. Nelson/USA Today:
Trump and his 2020 campaign team are trying to win over black voters, but they will fail
Black voters aren’t buying what Trump is selling. How do I know? I'm a black person who recently left the GOP after decades of being a loyal Republican.
The interesting thing about this brochure was that the banner on the cover read: “Make Black America Great Again.” It boldly proclaims: “Exposing how modern day Jim Crow Democrats are keeping black Americans under heel, and how Trump’s conservative agenda will set them free.”
What really struck me was the last sentence: that somehow Trump is going to set black people “free.”
Free from what? Policies that have protected the civil rights and voting rights of black voters? Provided health care for black Americans? Free school lunches and prenatal care for black women and children? All policies, by the way, that the president and his party have cut and restricted since taking office.
Let me be direct: Black voters aren’t buying what Trump is peddling.
Great thread: