It was a bit surprising when a group of six counties in the Bay Area announced a “shelter in place” order back on March 16. Santa Clara county in particular was the first to do so in the nation. Today the San Francisco Chronicle describes the small study of just a couple hundred people that

China shut the barn door too late on Wuhan and we shut the barn door too late on China. But how could it have been otherwise? Trump banned travel from China by foreign nationals on January 31, a point he’s returned to repeatedly lately as proof that he was taking the crisis seriously. Not true

Well, it’s not every day that a former Obama staffer honestly assesses the state of the upcoming November election, much less Obama’s former campaign manager, yet, here we are. President Trump is “very dangerous” to Joe Biden’s bid for president because of his loyal supporters, according to David Plouffe. Plouffe, speaking on the “Fox News

Or so she says now. With $2.2 trillion in massive relief funds in play, the US needs a robust oversight mechanism for the distribution and efficacy of this historic rescue package. The question will be whether that is what Nancy Pelosi and James Clyburn have in mind — or whether they will turn it into

As I understand it, there are three potential pharmaceutical defenses to COVID-19 (or any other virus). One is a vaccine, the holy grail, which durably prevents infection. The second is antiviral medication, to treat those who’ve already been infected. The third is antibody therapy, which can be used either to prevent infection or to treat

As we all navigate the great hunkering down of America, churches are struggling to manage the balance of spiritual needs of worshippers while abiding by orders put in place about social distancing. Texas Governor Greg Abbott seems to have struck a decent compromise. Tuesday Governor Abbott issued an order to re-open churches. Churches are have

To paraphrase Lord of the Rings, a day will come when we can conduct a fair and impartial look at our pandemic preparation, but … today is not that day. Nor will it be tomorrow, or next month, for that matter. Rather than focus on the crisis at hand, however, Democrats in Congress want to kick-start an

If Trump’s impeachment trial were such a distraction from COVID-19, it’s strange that Mitch and Senate Republicans didn’t bang that drum at the time. They weren’t shy about using pragmatic arguments against the process. Lindsey Graham, for instance, made the point repeatedly that impeachment is always bitterly divisive and would hurt the country, which is

There is a new video out by James O’Keefe. The founder of Project Veritas and a colleague took a trip to a drive-thru COVID-19 testing site in New Rochelle, a community that has been labeled as a hot spot. The location of the testing site in New Rochelle is Glen Island Park. O’Keefe explains at

Did anyone really think that the Carter Page FISA warrant was a one-off? The Department of Justice’s audit of twenty-nine other FISA warrants pursued by the FBI found errors in every single application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Seventeen of them were serious errors, the Inspector General reported today: The Justice Department inspector general revealed Tuesday

You can treat this as a sequel to the last post if you like. Will it really be safe to allow in-person voting in the midst of a second wave of coronavirus?, I asked. Fauci doesn’t answer that specific question but watch him here and you get the sense that, yes, it might be generally

Via Nate Silver, most of us are way out of our depth in trying to understand this stuff. I feel more out of my depth each day as I try to reconcile the increasingly hair-raising projections being made by most epidemiologists with the implications of the Oxford model of the disease, which speculates that asymptomatic

The coronavirus has resulted in stay-at-home restrictions in 27 states so far. Of course people are still allowed to go out to work at an essential business or to go shopping for food, but overall the amount of traffic on the roads is down dramatically. Some people seem to believe this means we’re now living

The Trump-deranged power couple, Prince Harry and his American wife Meghan will have to swallow their pride and ask President Trump if they want help in securing strong security measures in the United States. Will they ask for and receive special security, like Secret Service protection? The newly non-working royals, the Duke and Duchess of

When John Sexton wrote about New York City residents failing at social distancing, I don’t think he expected it to go this far. Stopping New Yorkers from keeping the party going in the city that never sleeps is proving even harder than expected. As John pointed out, the Mayor still hasn’t closed the parks, so

It’s never happened in the history of the United States but a British political journalist thinks now would be a swell time for Vice-President Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment. As a matter of fact, he is demanding that Pence act right now because President Trump isn’t mentally capable of leading us through the coronavirus

We haven’t touched on this topic in a while, but in my desperate search to find some news (any news!) not having to do with the you-know-what, I ran across this interesting item. A physicist from the University of Albany and a former scientist for NASA, Kevin Knuth, was interviewed about his recent work involving

I’m picking on New York not because it’s unique. In fact, people all around the country seem to be doing this. I’m picking on New York because, according to the Governor, it is facing a peak infections rate that will overwhelm hospital capacity in 2-3 weeks. So if there’s one place in the nation where

Could one of the more controversial decisions made in the early stages of the coronavirus crisis have set the stage for Donald Trump’s leadership moment? Like most if not all other polling series, Pew Research sees Trump hitting the peak overall approval rating of his presidency, albeit a lower peak than in some other series.

This afternoon I came across this excellent timeline highlighting the ways in which China has used it’s propaganda resources to reframe the story of the coronavirus outbreak. The entire thing is quite long and can’t be easily summarized, but I think a few highlights help to point out the way in which China has been

Three days ago I read a piece in The Intercept about Tara Reade, a former Senate staffer in Joe Biden’s office, coming forward with a really disturbing story of sexual abuse in the workplace. If you have not already read Ed’s post today, go and do that. He perfectly goes through the story, explaining it

Prince Harry and his American wife Meghan have relocated to Los Angeles in what is being described as a permanent move. It looks as though Meghan’s career in Hollywood is more important than Harry being a working member of the royal family. I’m old enough to remember when the two of them promised they would

The foreign ministers of the G-7 countries had their delicate sensibilities offended by the language during a video conference call — and guess who is to blame. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is the bad guy in this scenario. The traditional joint statement released at the end of G-7 meetings is not happening this year.

Something new and timely from three economists who work for the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and MIT, respectively. It’s possible that 1918 and 2020 are too apples-and-oranges for a study of the former to usefully guide the reality of the latter. 1918 was a wartime economy. Certain

Anti-pipeline activists have found a friend in Judge James Boasberg in the U.S. District Court for the D.C. Circuit. Boasberg, an Obama appointee, sided with the opponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and ordered further environmental analysis in a 42-page decision Wednesday. Judge Boasberg denied permits for the pipeline and ordered environmental studies. The

Joe Biden has largely been missing in action during the mitigation phase of the coronavirus pandemic. While I don’t think that most Americans are sitting around pondering where good old Joe is, his absence from the national conversation has been noticed. That is why his presidential campaign has made a calculated decision – get Joe

The city is already locked down, with residents asked to remain at home as much as possible per one of Andrew Cuomo’s orders a week ago. What Tom Bossert has in mind is a lock-in. No one in or out, except suppliers. Wall the city off until the spread of infection there is under control,

This made me laugh just because of how “on brand” it is. None of the MAGA diehards who’ve embraced the idea of getting back to work ASAP are recommending that *older people* lead the way. Just the opposite. They want older people to stay home because they’re more vulnerable to the disease while younger people

This would be fantastic news if true, although I’m having trouble squaring the observed reality here and in the UK with the thesis. Remember this study, from Britain’s Imperial College? That’s the one that convinced Boris Johnson to abandon his plan to ask older people to stay home while letting younger, healthier people essentially go

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry that DeWine feels he has to humor Trump by framing his argument here as a case of him agreeing with the president when he’s actually disagreeing with him strongly. Trump’s position is that an economic freeze of one or two months might exact a steeper human cost