Trump addressed the nation (and the world)
Last night, Trump gave a live address to the world from the Oval Office, announcing sweeping travel restrictions on people coming from most European countries, on top of the existing restrictions on travelers from China, South Korea, Iran, and other nations where there has been sustained community spread of the virus. He discussed some economic relief measures, but aside from travel restrictions, he gave scant details on plans for dealing with the disease itself. in
The key takeaways from Trump’s speech:
- Inbound travel to the U.S. from European countries will be barred for any non-U.S. permanent residents. U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents (i.e. green card holders) will still be allowed to come home, but they will likely be placed in quarantine.
- Trump will be asking congress to pass (unspecified) economic relief measures to minimize the financial impact to workers who cannot work due to being sick, needing to stay home to take care of family members who are sick, office or plant closures due to quarantine or social distancing measures, and so on.
- He is instructing the Small Business Administration (SBA) to provide economic relief loans with low interest rates in affected states and regions. He is asking congress to increase the available funding for existing SBA small business loan programs by $50 billion.
- He will instruct the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to defer tax payments without penalty for “certain individuals and businesses negatively impacted” in a move that will provide up to $200 billion of additional liquidity to the economy.
But many people are unsatisfied with Trump’s or the general federal government’s response.
‘It’s just everywhere already’: How delays in testing set back the U.S. coronavirus response (MSN / NYT)
One thing to agree on: There is a mounting consensus among experts, pundits, and the public alike that government intervention can have a hugely positive impact on controlling the spread of the outbreak, so any proactive moves by government should be welcomed, regardless of one’s political leanings. According to the WHO Director General yesterday, “We have never before seen a pandemic sparked by a coronavirus. This is the first pandemic caused by a coronavirus. And we have never before seen a pandemic that can be controlled, at the same time.”
The bottom line: The U.S. needs to act fast. If the red line continues outward on its current path, the U.S. will quickly be the worst-off country in the world with regards to coronavirus control.
A Financial Times graphic showing the rapid spread of COVID-19 in Iran, Europe, and the U.S. in comparison with cases in Hong Kong and Singapore.
Stock markets nosedive
U.S. stock markets opened down almost 9%, putting them on track for their worst one-day decline since the crash of 1987.
Indeed, the current course looks pretty bad when compared to other recent global crises.
Crisis mentality spreads in U.S.
- From Harvard to Stanford, universities are emptying their campuses (CNN). Some colleges are making preparations to cancel the entire next semester (University of Virginia website)
- Chaos has ensued as colleges cancel classes. What about students who have no family home to return to and truly live on campus? What about foreign students who may lose their visas if they are not attending in-person classes as their visas legally require? (NYT)
- A growing number of celebrities have been diagnosed with the disease, providing a palpable reminder that neither wealth nor power provide immunity to disease. High profile infections include:
- Companies have begun to work from home en masse. Google ordered its entire workforce to work from home. So did Twitter.
- The National Cathedral in Washington, DC, and other churches have abandoned plans to be a refuge for people amid the turmoil (Episcopal News Service)
China getting better marks as other countries botch response
Just a few weeks ago, the world was lambasting China for delaying its own response to the virus by suppressing the voices within its own medical community who sought to raise alarm bells.
But today, Donald McNeil of the New York Times said on their Daily Podcast:
“China has cut its epidemic from over 3,500 new cases per day in late January, to only 24 new cases yesterday. It’s stunning. No one thought it could be done. Public health experts say to me, if they can keep the number of new cases down — as they let millions of people back out of their houses and back into factories and subways and restaurants — if they can keep it up, they’ve done something that nobody else has ever done before.”
The Harvard Business Review went so far as to compile a list of lessons that U.S. companies can learn from their Chinese counterparts, with regards to responding to the challenges and opportunities presented by the coronavirus.
Yet other experts think the crisis is just beginning for China, in that recent events have revived political dissent in the country, after years and indeed decades of increasingly stable and uncontested Communist Party control.
Time will tell whether the coronavirus has strengthened or weakened the Communist Party of China, much as time will tell whether it helps or hurts Trump in a critical election year.
Around the world in 30 seconds
- Middle Eastern countries have begun to fear that outbreak numbers are much worse than publicly reported, led by Egypt and Qatar (NYT)
- Cruise ships have been an unsavory petri dish for highly concentrated outbreaks — that then send their infected travelers back around the globe if and when the cruise ends before symptoms of the outbreak appear (Houston Chronicle)
- Four new countries have announced cases — Bolivia, Jamaica, Burkina Faso, and Democratic Republic of Congo (WHO)
- The Philippines have locked down their capital and largest city, Manila (SCMP)
- France will hold mayoral elections even as the virus spreads through its national parliament (Reuters)
Cure and vaccine radar
A lot of prognostication, but not much real, good news:
- Why a coronavirus vaccine is more than a year away, despite medical researchers’ progress (USA Today)
- RNA vaccines are coronavirus frontrunners (Chemistry World)
- Scientists were close to a coronavirus vaccine years ago. Then the money dried up. (NBC)
- All the coronavirus treatments and vaccines in the trial pipeline (Clinical Trials Arena)
