BuzzFeed:
The CDC Lost Control Of The Coronavirus Pandemic. Then The Agency Disappeared.
The world’s premier health agency pushed a flawed coronavirus containment strategy — until it disappeared from public view one day before the outbreak was declared a pandemic.
More than 120,000 US deaths and counting later, public health experts disagree whether the CDC — which only resumed its briefings on the coronavirus in June after its three-month vanishing act — could have ever contained SARS-CoV-2. Everyone agrees, though, that the US response has been a disaster across the federal government, with the CDC the most visible face of failure.
Abigail Tracy/Vanity Fair:
“We Need Them to F--king Do Something”: Former Pandemic Officials Call Trump’s COVID-19 Response a National Disaster
The lack of federal leadership has doomed us to a second spike when “no other comparable peer country” has one. And, ex-Trump and Obama officials warn, managing a vaccine when it arrives may be even more difficult.
We need a goddamn federal response,” Jeremy Konyndyk, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development who ran USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance in the Obama administration, told me on Wednesday. As countries around the world that have managed COVID-19 have cautiously begun to shift back toward normalcy, the United States continues to break records of new reported cases. Among public health officials and pandemic experts that I spoke to, the blame rests squarely with the White House. “We need them to fucking do something. It really remains the biggest weakness and it is why we’re seeing this kind of a second spike when no other comparable peer country is,” Konyndyk added.
CNBC:
Dr. Anthony Fauci says U.S. coronavirus cases are surging because nation didn’t totally shut down
- White House coronavirus advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said the U.S. is seeing a surge in new Covid-19 infections because the country never shut down entirely.
- The U.S. has reported more than 3.3 million Covid-19 cases and at least 135,205 deaths as of Monday, Johns Hopkins data shows.
Alexis C Madrigal/Atlantic:
A Second Coronavirus Death Surge Is Coming
There was always a logical explanation for why cases rose through the end of June while deaths did not.
The deaths are not happening in unpredictable places. Rather, people are dying at higher rates where there are lots of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations: in Florida, Arizona, Texas, and California, as well as a host of smaller southern states that all rushed to open up.
The deaths are also not happening in an unpredictable amount of time after the new outbreaks emerged. Simply look at the curves yourself. Cases began to rise on June 16; a week later, hospitalizations began to rise. Two weeks after that—21 days after cases rose—states began to report more deaths. That’s the exact number of days that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated from the onset of symptoms to the reporting of a death.
Larry Hogan/WaPo:
Fighting alone
I’m a GOP governor. Why didn’t Trump help my state with coronavirus testing?
The federal government had recently seized 3 million N95 masks purchased by Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker. We weren’t going to let Washington stop us from helping Marylanders.
This should not have been necessary. I’d watched as the president downplayed the outbreak’s severity and as the White House failed to issue public warnings, draw up a 50-state strategy, or dispatch medical gear or lifesaving ventilators from the national stockpile to American hospitals. Eventually, it was clear that waiting around for the president to run the nation’s response was hopeless; if we delayed any longer, we’d be condemning more of our citizens to suffering and death. So every governor went their own way, which is how the United States ended up with such a patchwork response. I did the best I could for Maryland. Here’s what we saw and heard from Washington along the way.
Alternate subheader: I mean, we knew he’d screw Democratic governors, but WTF? And is this the party of Larry Hogan or the party of Tom Cotton? Is this the beginning of the split?
Nate Cohn/NY Times:
Even if the Polls Are Really Off, Trump Is Still in Trouble
Joe Biden’s lead is sufficient to cover a sizable error. And several of the biggest problems with polling in the last election have either been addressed or become less relevant.
With Joe Biden claiming almost a double-digit lead in national polls, one question still seems to loom over the race: Can we trust the polls after 2016?
It’s a good question. But for now, it’s not as important as you might guess. If the election were held today, Mr. Biden would win the presidency, even if the polls were exactly as wrong as they were four years ago.
The reason is simple: His lead is far wider than Hillary Clinton’s was in the final polls, and large enough to withstand another 2016 polling meltdown.
Quinnipiac:
Biden Widens Lead Over Trump To 15 Points In Presidential Race, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; Trump Job Approval Rating Drops To 36 Percent
"Yes, there's still 16 weeks until Election Day, but this is a very unpleasant real time look at what the future could be for President Trump. There is no upside, no silver lining, no encouraging trend hidden somewhere in this survey for the president," said Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy.
AARP:
New Poll Shows 50+ Iowa Voters Broadly Support Option to Vote Absentee
The poll of registered Iowa voters age 50 and over was taken between July 6-8 and has a margin of error of ±3.5 percentage points. Commissioned by AARP, the survey questions focused on older Iowa voters’ views of actions taken by the Iowa Secretary of State during the June Primary Election to encourage absentee voting during the COVID-19 pandemic, along with general views about voting methods and voting safely in the upcoming General Election.
Take a look at Joni Ernst’s underwater job approval with the over-50 crowd.
And a nice thread on teachers: