GG

AP News jumping on board - putting here & China thread.

We'll probably see the effect today. Yesterday's statewide total increase was 779, but city is saying that 3,700 will be added to the count.

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. These were the cases where the deceased never went into the hospital, died at home and were never tested. Don't know the certainty of the cause, but according to EMTs they were making up to 5x the number of these pick ups than normal.

It's highly doubtful any FA RBs sign before the draft. Best guess is that on Monday after the draft, Hyde goes to the team that didn't get their guy over the weekend.

Here we go "Although the the U.S. intelligence community early on dismissed the notion that the coronavirus is a synthesized bioweapon, it is still weighing the possibility that the pandemic might have been touched off by an accident at a research facility rather than by an infection from a live-animal market, according to nine current and former intelligence and national security officials familiar with ongoing investigations."

Of course they are, and with Trump it's a lethal mixture because neither can effectively knock each other out. Trump had the perfect opportunity to put the final nail into China and WHO, he missed wildly and hit his thumb. So now they have an opening that he is blaming WHO for his failures. When they were badgering him on why he was praising China in January and February for their openness, the perfect response would have been to throw it back at China and WHO, by saying that "We believed they were being honest with us and that's what set much of our early policy response. Instead, we found out they lied and now we have 10s of thousands people who died unnecessarily, because they didn't tell us the truth until it was too late." Now imagine how powerful that response would have been from a POTUS. The press would have no choice but to cover what China and WHO did in January & February. Instead he pivoted to the great trade deal he made with China. WTF?

Of course it's a lesson. The myth is that Singapore conquered the virus.

Need another reason to be suspicious of China? For yesterday, Singapore reported 4x as many Wuhan virus infections in the second wave than all of China.

Looks like there's a run on the boys who would be king in this crisis. Which thin skinned narcissist can outdo one another?

Isn't it the same as the state redrawing the state's building code requirements?

In a nod to TYTT, all he wants is for gov's to kiss the ring. Ugly optics. But optics nonetheless.

He will as soon as Cuomo and Newsome give him public praise. He essentially admitted that he'll open the states after the consultation with the governors. Highly unlikely he will overrule the governors. This is all optics.

Are liquor stores or pot dispensaries? Heck, there's a dollar store that's still open nearby.

Probably not to atheists

So is a church & a temple.

He probably doesn't. He probably wants somebody to say a nice thing to him, and then he'll let the governors do their jobs.

And this season's flu was a bear and a half for those who got it.

Speaking of the Singaporean myth, especially in applying it to the US .... Had a chat with a colleague there this morning, and she gave a quick recap. The city-state had stellar precautions with a hard & fast response early on. Those efforts worked initially, and the city wasn't totally clamped down. However, a second wave just hit, largely from foreigners and the city is on full lock down now, when it wasn't for the first wave. New case growth is double digits after they thought it was contained. Now the border is shut completely, everyone is required to wear a mask, no group gatherings are allowed and the extreme contact tracking is in force. She said that life was fairly normal there until a week ago.

This has been discussed, but I will repeat. Every executive wants an optimistic scenario, base scenario and downside scenario from his subordinates. Plans are always made on the base scenario. It sounds like Navarro prepared the downside scenario. So yeah, the administration knew how bad it COULD get, but nothing that was coming from the health officials in January or February indicated that the downside scenario was playing out. It's easy to say so in retrospect, knowing that that the downside scenario played out. But it was far from the case in January and February. And now that Navarro is warning about the risks of holding too long to reopen the economy, it surely doesn't square with a guy who was supposed to have issued a dire warning in January. Sounds more like he prepared the downside considerations in January (and likely the probability of that downside coming to pass) for Trump to make a decision.

You're probably aware that there are a few things that bosses hate more than alarmist memos that don't offer a solution to the alarm. Unless of course, the memo was written specifically to provide the downside scenario, which we discussed before.

On his presser today, Cuomo broadly outlined some of the criteria they're looking at for allowing people back to work. The tri-state (CT, NJ, NY)will open together, and only for people who've tested for anti-bodies. Another option is to only allow "younger" people back. No more details provided, but a clue into what the 3 Govs are talking about.

Know of at least 6 people who had/have it. Two have died. Many more if you apply the Kevin Bacon rule.

I wonder about the spin of the new articles. Remember eons ago (last week) when Peter Navarro was hailed for his prescient "warning" to shut down the economy? Well, here's the Revered Peter, courtesy of the paper of "record."

It's fair for AP to look at the deterioration of the federal stockpile. It's not fair for AP to ignore the hospitals' and states' roles for inadequate supplies. Kushner was right in the article. Federal stockpile is for times when the primary supplies run out, not to be the first source. Also interesting is that prior to March 30, media was running a lot of stories about thefts of critical PPE equipment. Suddenly on March 30, the narrative changed on a dime. Wonder what happened?