Crooked Media - What A Day: Mr. Bright's side

The Trump administration plans to wind down the coronavirus task force, even as the rate of new cases and deaths continues to rise in much of the country. Sort of like hanging a “Mission Accomplished” banner on an aircraft carrier in the middle of a war, if that carrier was also visibly on fire.
 

• It's not clear what, if anything, will replace the task force, which has already begun to meet less frequently. President Trump has made it clear that new projections of a dramatically increased death toll don’t give him pause about his rush to reopen the economy. He said so explicitly today, before heading off on a day trip to Arizona to demonstrate that life is returning to normal, by wandering around a mask factory without a mask on while "Live and Let Die" blasted from a loudspeaker. Notably, Trump said he feels safe traveling because everyone in his vicinity has been tested frequently—we’re not sure if anyone has thought of this, but it could be cool for a leader of some kind to roll out that strategy on some sort of national level.
   
• The administration has restricted coronavirus task force members from testifying before Congress this month, unless they have “express approval” from White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. The White House’s official justification for stonewalling oversight is that task force members are simply very busy, which is somewhat undermined by Trump regularly forcing them to stand behind him on TV for hours, and extremely undermined by Trump declaring today that he blocked Dr. Anthony Fauci from appearing before a House panel because it’s a “set up” with a “bunch of Trump haters.” 
   
• Some testimony will be harder to block: Dr. Rick Bright, who was abruptly ousted as the director of Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), has filed a whistleblower complaint. The complaint alleges that the Department of Health and Human Services ignored his early concerns about supply shortages, and that Robert Kadlec—the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at HHS—and others pressured Bright to buy drugs and supplies for the national stockpile from companies with political links to the administration. Bright says he was removed from his post as retaliation for resisting that pressure, as well as efforts by HHS leadership to make unproven drugs like hydroxychloroquine widely available.

In other colossal fuck-ups the White House is trying to hide: 
 

• Jared Kushner’s response effort has relied on volunteers from consulting and private equity firms who didn’t have experience in their assigned tasks, and bungled them accordingly. Fortunately those tasks were just minor chores like “securing PPE for hospitals.” None of the volunteers on Kushner’s PPE team had experience in health care, procurement or supply-chain operations, or were well-versed in customs requirements or FDA rules. They were told to prioritize leads about equipment from “VIPs,” which included luminaries like Fox hosts Brian Kilmeade and Jeanine Pirro. 
   
• The damage caused by the administration’s sidelining of scientists and experts is far from over. Texas, for example, is now bracing for a surge in infections, after reopening on Friday without a decline in cases, and with one of the lowest testing rates in the country. Trump praised Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R-TX) decision to ease restrictions, even though Texas didn’t meet the reopening requirements in his own (already lax) federal guidelines.
   

Rather than face up to the challenges of a safe reopening, Trump has decided to declare success and move on, even if it means many more Americans die. He told the New York Post on Monday, “The one thing that the pandemic has taught us is that I was right.” If the pandemic has taught us one thing (and hopefully it’s a whole lot more), it’s that Trump is constitutionally incapable of caring about anything else.

On today's America Dissected: Coronavirus, Abdul looks at why stay home orders still matter. He’ll talk with Dr. Jason Bae, who spent ten days in Queens at the peak of COVID-19, and Zenei Cortez, co-president of the National Nurses United who’s also working on the front lines. Subscribe now, wherever you listen to podcasts → 

Fifteen children in New York City have been hospitalized with a mysterious syndrome that may be tied to COVID-19. Many of the patients, who range from age two to 15, began showing symptoms of a “multisystem inflammatory syndrome” after contracting the coronavirus. The symptoms are those associated with toxic shock or Kawasaki disease, a rare illness in children that causes inflammation of the blood vessels. (For parents: if your child has symptoms like fever, rash, abdominal pain or vomiting, call your doctor immediately.) Cases have been reported in several European countries, with no recorded deaths, and while doctors don’t yet understand the syndrome, they believe it to be a rare COVID-19 complication. That development could impact decisions about when to reopen schools, as could two new studies which offered compelling evidence that children can transmit the virus.

• The FDA has tightened its regulations on antibody tests, reversing a policy that led to over 165 unauthorized tests flooding the market. Manufacturers now have ten days to submit data proving the accuracy of their tests.
   
• A security guard at a Family Dollar store in Flint, MI was shot and killed after telling a woman she needed to wear a mask. Three of the woman’s family members have been charged with first-degree premeditated murder. 
   
• Costco has limited meat purchases to three per customer, as coronavirus outbreaks at meatpacking plants begin to strain the national supply. Wendy’s is already out of beef at one in five of its locations. 
   
• Venezuela claims to have arrested two Americans who were plotting to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro's government, as part of a group of “mercenaries” who tried to invade by sea the previous day. President Trump has denied any involvement by the U.S. government in...whatever this is.
   
• The chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has advanced a progressive group’s call for an inquiry into a vacancy on the court. Specifically: Did Mitch McConnell pressure Judge Thomas Griffith to retire, in order to secure his protégé Justin Walker a seat? Walker’s confirmation hearing is set for tomorrow.
   
• At least three Russian doctors have mysteriously fallen from hospital windows in the last two weeks. One had complained on social media about being forced to keep working after testing positive for the coronavirus, while another had criticized a lack of protective equipment and training at the hospital where she worked. Anyway, weird coincidence about the windows!
   
• YouTube has announced a virtual commencement ceremony for the class of 2020, featuring speeches from Barack and Michelle Obama. June 6, 2020: The day we all cry to a YouTube video.
   
• Nicolas Cage will play Joe Exotic in a scripted Tiger King TV series, a casting choice so thoroughly inevitable that it hardly seems worth the work of typing it out, but there you go.

Thousands of Americans will be uninsured during the pandemic because Republican-led states rejected Medicaid expansion. An estimated 25 million to 43 million Americans will lose their employer-sponsored health insurance along with their job, according to the Urban Institute. In the 36 states that have expanded Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act, less than a quarter of those people are expected to go uninsured. But in the 14 states that still refuse to expand Medicaid, roughly 40 percent of people who lose employer-based coverage will end up with no coverage whatsoever. To make matters worse, rural hospitals in those states, which were already at a higher risk of closing, have now been pushed to the brink of bankruptcy. This is all the result of obstinate partisan resistance, and it was all completely avoidable. But sure, Kellyanne Conway, go off about how Trump is the “healthcare president.” 

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Pfizer has begun human trials of a potential coronavirus vaccine in the U.S., as one of several companies on an accelerated timetable.

Scientists at Utrecht University in the Netherlands have created an antibody that can defeat the coronavirus in the lab, a promising step in finding treatments.

A new CRISPR-based COVID-19 test might prove to be an easy, cheap way for people to diagnose themselves at home.