The Abbreviated Pundit Round-up is a daily feature at Daily Kos.
So yesterday was a day of rumors and fears, not helped by the early performance of this administration, the stock market or Trump himself. Having committed early on to lie about anything and everything from inaugural crowd size to poll numbers, no one trusts Trump (he got a 10% when polled on that). So the thing is to bring in the trusted health professionals and get out of their way. Which he didn’t do. And here we are.
Credibility is precious and when squandered, you can't get it back (see Larry Kudlow). So it is imperative for Trump/Pence to shut Mick Mulvaney and Mike Pompeo up (see CPAC) and let Tony Fauci and CDC do the talking. I have almost no hope this will happen, but we need it to.
Here are your daily coronavirus resources:
BBC: What is coronavirus and what are the symptoms?
BuzzFeed:Here's What These Public Health Experts Had To Say About 6 FAQs On The Coronavirus
NBC: Face masks are not the best protection against the virus — but that's not stopping the scammers
Catherine Rampell/WaPo:
With coronavirus, Trump’s lies and his reassurances backfire
It mattered when the White House press secretary, in his first day on the job, lied about President Trump’s inaugural crowd size.
It mattered when he claimed that a half-dozen steel mills had reopened when they hadn’t. It mattered when he promised that his health-care plan (and his infrastructure plan and his wife’s immigration records) would be released in “two weeks,” and those weeks passed without such promises materializing.
Maybe that stuff seemed minor at the time. But the smallness of the lies was actually critical. People learned that if Trump can’t be trusted about little things, he definitely can’t be trusted about big things. Such as, say, a possible pandemic. Even if, miraculously, Trump and his underlings told only the truth from here on out — an about-face that seems unlikely — their record would still endanger public health and the economy.
Everything the politicians do, especially Mike Pence, needs to be focused on supporting public health. it is imperative because public trust is shaky and confidence even shakier.that's why the 'muzzling' stories are an unappreciated PR disaster. As it happens, they aren’t true, but the damage has been done. Pence’s comms team is dreadful.
Paul Waldman/WaPo:
How coronavirus has deeply flummoxed conservative media
Imagine you were the host of a show on Fox News right now, with the entire country focused on the potential for the coronavirus to turn into a pandemic. What would you be saying?
In a world where even a hint of ambiguity or uncertainty goes against everything they stand for, conservative media are positively flummoxed. Is this a threat, or isn’t it? Is it dramatic, and therefore all the more important that we rally behind President Trump’s heroic and inspiring efforts to keep us safe, or is it all a big hoax? And how can we blame the whole thing on the Democrats?
This is the dilemma they’re facing, and they haven’t yet figured out how to resolve it. Let’s take a quick tour around some of the madness:
In any case the public isn’t impressed with anyone:
WaPo:
As stock markets tumble because of coronavirus, this time feels different
Traditional methods for arresting an investor panic might be no match for fallout from global pandemic
Typically, the Fed responds to economic trouble by lowering interest rates to make credit easier to obtain. It also can offer loans to banks via the “discount window” or buy large quantities of U.S. Treasury securities to offset any general tightening in financial conditions. Congress, meanwhile, can approve new spending or tax cuts to flood the economy with money.
But the best remedy for the coronavirus — which has sickened more than 83,000 people worldwide and killed nearly 3,000 — could lie beyond Washington’s immediate powers.
“Central banks don’t make vaccines,” said David Kotok, chairman of Cumberland Advisors.
NY Times:
The World Health Organization on Friday raised its assessment of the global coronavirus risk from “high” to “very high,” the most serious assessment in its new four-stage alert system.
“This is a reality check for every government on the planet,” said Dr. Michael J. Ryan, deputy director of W.H.O.’s health emergency program. “Wake up. Get ready. This virus may be on its way.”
The assessment addresses the risks of both uncontrolled spread of the virus and the resulting impacts.
Rachel Bitecofer/WaPo:
Five myths about elections
No, higher turnout would not necessarily help Democrats
The real change was who showed up to the polls — more women, young people (who increasingly live in suburbs), Latinos, Asian Americans and African Americans — not loyal voters who flipped. That meant electorates favorable for Republicans in 2014 became electorates favorable for Democrats in 2018. The real “swing” is the decision to vote at all, a choice driven largely by the backlash to Trump.
Nate Silver/FiveThirtyEight:
What The Race Looks Like If Biden Wins — Or Wins Big, Or Loses — In South Carolina
A big Biden win could reorder the race
Rather than project all the way through the end of the primaries — we’ll save that for later — I’m going to restrict our focus to what happens on Super Tuesday depending on these three South Carolina scenarios. Here, according to our model, is what the post-Super Tuesday delegate count could look like following a big Biden win in South Carolina. Keep in mind that these represent the average of thousands of simulations; individual outcomes will vary based on factors such as Biden’s margin of victory in South Carolina, whether anyone drops out before Super Tuesday, and so on.
Here is a 27 min podcast featuring an epidemiologist who is a subject matter expert on pandemics and did a great deal of modeling back in 2008-9 for the flu pandemic.
The Coronavirus Isn't Going Away
Deep Background with Noah Feldman
Molly Roberts/WaPo:
Why Trump can’t console us about the coronavirus
This consoler in chief has a problem: He can’t console us. And while President Trump’s chronic lack of candor is a clear culprit, it’s far from the only one. Trump can’t easily deploy either of his two favorite devices — scaremongering and dividing — at a time like this. So he’s lost.
The president is supposed to reassure Americans during times of crisis, and all the experts say a crisis named coronavirus is coming our way. Yet what did Trump have to offer when he spoke to the country Wednesday night? A first-grader’s explanation of what the flu is, a couple of 8½-by-11 sheets of paper and a strong dose of over-optimism.
Trump said that “because of all we’ve done, the risk to the American people remains very low.” (Earlier he said the warm spring weather could make the disease “go away.”)
Robert R. Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, put it a little differently: “Prudent to assume this pathogen will be with us for some time to come.”
Philip Bump/WaPo:
A poll from Trump’s favorite network has him losing to his most likely 2020 opponents
It also shows how perceptions of electability deviate from reality
There is no better indicator of how electability is more a function of support than sober analysis of the state of play than a comparison of views of electability with the actual polling of how Democratic candidates fare against Trump. Biden, Bloomberg and Sanders all lead him by at least 7 points and are seen by the most people as being able to beat Trump, but polling suggests that any of the other candidates might beat him, too.