Tag: GOP OK with Trump risking American lives

Top Trump Adviser’s Model Predicts Deaths At Zero By May 15

A Trump administration economic adviser with no experience in epidemiology created a coronavirus model that predicted deaths from the virus dropping to near zero by May 15, the Washington Post reported. The model offers an extremely optimistic prediction that no others have shown.

The adviser who created the model, Kevin Hassett, has denied it plays a role in decisions related to the virus. “I have never, ever said that that’s my projection of what the death count was going to be, and no administration policy has been influenced by my projections,” he told the Post.

However, according to a Post report, Trump and his aides used that model to justify plans to start reopening the economy. White House officials, like Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, were reported to have relied on it because it “affirmed their own skepticism about the severity of the virus and bolstered their case to shift the focus to the economy, which they firmly believed would determine whether Trump wins a second term,” the Post reported. Continue reading.

Trump and his allies have made a dark calculation — ‘reopening’ at any price is his only path to re-election

AlterNet logoIt seems like only yesterday that everyone was lamenting the lack of COVID-19 tests and vital medical equipment, and now we are supposedly ready to “reopen the country.” That’s because it was only yesterday — and it will be the same tomorrow. There are still not enough tests and not enough medical equipment. But because the worst hotspots, including New York City are muddling through at or near the apex of the pandemic curve — dealing with the ravages of this virus day after day as the bodies pile up but new cases level off — President Trump is trying to change the subject away from his failures to a premature declaration of victory.

His coronavirus rallies (aka “press briefings”) this week have been hostile affairs, with the president on the defensive trying to push back against the devastating cascade of reporting that has laid bare the fiasco of his response to the pandemic. But by once again attempting to downplay the current state of the crisis, he seems intent upon making exactly the same mistakes he made before.

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes astutely observed on his Tuesday night show that Trump made three essential errors at the beginning of the crisis.

  1. He failed to take it seriously and appreciate the terrible danger of a pandemic.
  2. The administration did not move quickly, with the lead time, it had to prepare adequate testing.
  3. He focused on the problem of the economy, thinking of it as somehow more important than — and separate from — the epidemic.

Continue reading.