"The Senate Republican Caucus' audit of the Maricopa County votes from last November's election has no stopping point," Penzone said in a statement. "Now, its most recent demands jeopardize the entire mission of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office."
Penzone's criticism comes after Maricopa County failed to provide "certain routers that the state Senate sought in its original subpoenas" of 2020 election material. According to the Arizona Republic, "the county has provided all 2.1 million voter general election ballots, voter information and election equipment in response to state Senate subpoenas," but is warning of a "significant security risk to Sheriff's Office law enforcement data" if the routers are released.
The Senate is also demanding "passwords to the county's ballot tabulators used on Election Day at voting centers." Bennett said auditors need the passwords so they have have "administrative access to voting machines," according to the Arizona Republic.
But County Attorney Allister Adel, in a letter to Bennett, said no such passwords exist. "The county has provided every password, user name and security key in its custody or control, as commanded by the Senate's subpoenas, and does not have any others," Adel told Bennett.
As for the routers, Sheriff Penzone in his statement said "access to this information would adversely affect the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office ability to protect critical evidence, data shared between law enforcement agencies, protected private information and individual passwords, all of which could be used to the detriment of citizens and law enforcement infrastructure."
Such a move "puts sensitive, confidential data belonging to Maricopa County's citizens — including social security numbers and protected health information — at risk as well," Adel wrote in that letter to Bennett.
Republican Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers likewise said releasing the routers would "cripple County operations and cost as much as $6 million."
Penzone also suggested the Senate is misrepresenting tropes of "transparency and accountability" in an effort to secure the routers.
Per the Arizona Republic:
The sheriff said transparency and accountability are democracy's foundation. "But when these words are misrepresented, it defies the fragile balance that exists between freedom and order and all that we believe in."
Some Republican members of the House and Senate are trying to take credit for elements of the American Rescue Act after refusing to support the bill, prompting social media users to remind them: "YOU VOTED AGAINST IT!"
That phrase trended on Twitter Sunday after at least four Republican congresspeople tried to convince their constituents they played a role in the broadly-backed $1.9 trillion stimulus package. President Joe Biden signed the bill into law on Thursday. No Republican in either the House or Senate supported the bill.
On Friday, Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) took to Twitter to "announce that the Biden Administration has just implemented my bipartisan COVID relief bill." Despite insisting she was "proud" that her "bipartisan legislation has officially become SBA policy," Salazar failed to mention that she, herself, voted against the bill.
Here are some reactions to Salazar's post:
Salazar isn't alone. As previously reported by AlterNet, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) on Wednesday
tweeted his approval for a provision in the bill that grants $28.6 billion to independent restaurant operators — despite voting against the legislation. That tweet immediately garnered criticism from social media users:
Another Republican catching flak for her comments on the popular legislation is Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), who called the stimulus checks "money that you and your fellow countrymen already paid into the system" (duh).
We honestly aren't going to waste time talking about Boebert, save a series of reactions that really hone in on how disingenuous her tweet was:
And finally, we have Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), who released a statement accompanying his "no" vote that can only be described as walking a tightrope:
"Today, I'm glad to know my constituents will be receiving an additional relief payment and funding to help improve their access to vaccines, PPE, and unemployment insurance.
…
I fully support getting assistance to Americans to help keep food on their tables and to help those who are struggling. I fully support continued funding for emergency essentials like vaccines, COVID testing, PPE, school reopening resources, unemployment insurance, and research. And I'll continue to work with my colleagues in the House to ensure the American people have what they need to fight through this pandemic."
Unsurprisingly, Kinzinger's statement didn't go over well:
On Saturday, the New York Times singled out Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) as a member of Congress who "played a significant role" in former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election — and now, lawmakers in Perry's home state are calling for the congressman's resignation.
According to the Times, while Perry was hardly a main character in the president's unsuccessful attempt to usurp President Joe Biden's electoral victory, he played an integral role in Trump's plan to fire acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen. Trump was hoping to replace Rosen, "who stood by the results of the election and had repeatedly resisted the president's efforts to undo them."
Perry introduced Trump to Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department official who "was sympathetic to Mr. Trump's view that the election had been stolen," the Times reported.
Per the Times:
As the date for Congress to affirm Mr. Biden's victory neared, Mr. Perry and Mr. Clark discussed a plan to have the Justice Department send a letter to Georgia state lawmakers informing them of an investigation into voter fraud that could invalidate the state's Electoral College results.
According to the Times, the former president "backed down" on his plan to fire Rosen and install Clark "only after top department officials threatened to resign en masse."
As Pennsylvania's York Daily Record reports, Perry also "led a House floor objection to Pennsylvania's election results" when Congress met to certify the Electoral College votes. That meeting was interrupted by a mob of angry Trump supporters after the president held a rally and promised to "fight like hell" for the presidency.
Following the publication of the report, officials in Pennsylvania on Saturday called for Perry's resignation. One such official was Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D-PA), who offered this succinct message for his Republican colleague.
And Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania attorney general, insisted there "must be consequences" for Perry's actions.
Eugenio DePasquale, who lost out to Perry in 2020's 10th Congressional District election, likewise demanded the representative's resignation, tweeting "Perry must go!"
Perry has not commented on the New York Times report.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has some "free advice" for Sarah Huckabee Sanders: "if you are losing tens of thousands of followers the moment Twitter starts taking down Neo-Nazis and violent insurrectionists, maybe don't advertise that!"
Huckabee Sanders, the former Trump White House press secretary who is planning a run to become Arkansas's next governor, took to the social media platform that just banned President Donald Trump to lament not Wednesday's domestic terrorist attack and attempted coup incited by her former boss and not the death of a Capitol police officer, but her loss of Twitter followers.
Huckabee Sanders was responding to a tweet from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who attacked Twitter by suggesting it was intentionally removing massive numbers of followers from top Republicans, including himself, and intentionally increasing the number of followers to top Democrats to "create an echo chamber."
Twitter appears to have purged or expelled large numbers of far right wing extremists. NCRM Saturday night was first to report Rudy Giuliani lost 60 followers whose accounts were suspended or otherwise deleted – although he himself unfollowed 25 top Republicans including Vice President Mike Pence.
Over the weekend, Fox News aired a stunning point-by-point fact check to claims made on programs hosted by the network's most pro-Trump voices -- after voting technology company Smartmatic sent a 20-page legal letter demanding "a full and complete retraction of all false and defamatory statements and reports."
The segment, which features an interview with Palo Open Source Election Technology Institute voting technology expert Eddie Perez, aired on Lou Dobb's Friday show, Jeanine Pirro's Saturday show, and Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, among others.
In its Dec. 10 letter to Fox News Media, Smartmatic charged the company and its hosts with waging "a concerted disinformation campaign against Smartmatic. Fox News told its millions of viewers and readers that Smartmatic was founded by [the late Venezuelan President] Hugo Chávez, that its software was designed to fix elections, and that Smartmatic conspired with others to defraud the American people and fix the 2020 U.S. election by changing, inflating, and deleting votes." The company also demanded the company "match the attention and audience targeted with the original defamatory publications."
During Friday night's fact-checking segment, the questioner asked Perez: "Have you seen any evidence of Smartmatic sending U.S. votes to be tabulated in foreign countries?"
This appeared to be a reference to Giuliani's Nov. 12 claim on the show that with Smartmatic software, '"he votes actually go to Barcelona, Spain.'" Perez responded, "No, I'm not aware of any evidence that Smartmatic is sending U.S. votes to be tabulated in foreign countries."
Speaking with CNN, Perez said that while he was unaware of the nature of the interview when he spoke to Fox News about Smartmatic, it's important to clear up any confusion the network's viewers have about voting integrity in the United States.
"I felt it was important to talk to Fox News," Perez said. "Of anything potentially more important to be speaking the facts to their audience because there are a lot of consumers of Fox News that have doubts about the election."
At a campaign stop in Marietta, GA, on Saturday, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel struggled to explain to voters why they should cast ballots in the upcoming Senate runoffs when, as one voter expressed, "it's already decided."
McDaniel was appealing to voters to return to the polls on January 5 and cast their ballots for incumbent Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler. If Democrats defeat those Republican candidates in Georgia, the party will control the House, Senate and White House at the onset of President-elect Joe Biden's presidency.
But Republican voters, who've faced an ongoing effort by President Donald Trump and his allies to delegitimize the results of the 2020 election, cornered McDaniel about the alleged vote rigging the leader of her party has continuously insisted occurred.
One voter pressed McDaniel about "switching the votes" as she took questions from the crowd.
"We go there in crazy numbers and they should have won—" the attendee said.
"Yeah, we haven't seen that in the audit," McDaniel replied. "That evidence, I haven't seen, so we'll wait to see on that."
"How are we going to spend money and work when it's already decided?" another demanded.
"It's not decided!" McDaniel insisted. "This is the key. It's not decided."
"How do we know?" another asked.
The event highlighted a key issue Republicans face as the president digs in his heels on his refusal to acknowledge Biden's victory. As the party hopes to maintain control of the Senate, the president continues to undermine the very system that will allow them to do so.
"Well, I told [Perdue and Loeffler] today, I think you're dealing in a very fraudulent system," Trump said during a press conference Thursday. "I'm very worried about that."
Saturday, McDaniel attempted to tamp down the president's complaints about the electoral system, urging voters "to focus on the mission at hand" and promising to deal with the allegations of widespread voter fraud in the future.
"We've got to focus on January 5 right now," McDaniel said. "We can deal with those other things later."
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) says President Donald Trump has "exhausted all plausible legal options" as he encouraged the Trump administration to "facilitate the presidential transition process" with President-elect Joe Biden.
Toomey referenced U.S. District Judge Matthew W. Brann's decision Saturday to dismiss a Trump campaign suit that sought to block the certification of Pennsylvania's election results. In his decision, Brann said the suit "strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations" as it urged the court to give the state legislator legal authority to assign Pennsylvania's electoral votes.
"In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state," Brann wrote in his opinion.
"This is simply not how the Constitution works," he noted.
Pointing to that suit's dismissal, Toomey explained the Trump campaign is out of legal options in Pennsylvania.
"With today's decision by Judge Matthew Brann, a longtime conservative Republican whom I know to be a fair and unbiased jurist, to dismiss the Trump campaign's lawsuit, President Trump has exhausted all plausible legal options to challenge the result of the presidential race in Pennsylvania," Toomey said in a statement Saturday.
"I congratulate President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on their victory," the senator continued. "They are both dedicated public servants and I will be praying for them and for our country."
"We're on a path it looks likely Joe Biden is going to be the next president of the United States," Toomey told Pittsburgh's Action News on November 11. "It's not 100% certain but it is quite likely. So I think a transition process ought to begin."
In his statement Saturday, Toomey once again called for the Trump team to cooperate with Biden on the presidential transition.
"To ensure that he is remembered for these outstanding accomplishments, and to help unify our country, President Trump should accept the outcome of the election and facilitate the presidential transition process," the statement said.
Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) on Sunday slammed the Trump administration for "admitting defeat" in the fight against COVID-19 after White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told CNN "we are not going to control the pandemic."
Meadows made the remark Sunday on CNN's State of the Union, telling host Jake Tapper that the president's strategy is "to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigation areas," even as cases skyrocket across the United States.
"They are admitting defeat," Harris told reporters when asked about Meadows' comment. "This is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of America."
Noting that Meadows told Tapper that COVID-19 "is a contagious virus just like the flu," Harris ripped the administration for once again "suggesting to the American people that this is like the flu."
"We have known from the beginning — and they knew since January — that it's five times more deadly than the flu," Harris said.
"We are breaking records for the number of people that are contracting a deadly virus," she continued. "And this administration fails to take personal responsibility or responsibility in terms of leading the nation through this dangerous and deadly mass casualty event. And that's why they have forfeited their right to a second term."
Asked about Vice President Mike Pence refusing to quarantine despite his chief of staff Mark Short testing positive for coronavirus, Harris argued her team has been a model for how to handle outbreaks during a tough campaign season.
According to an anonymous attendee who spoke with the Post, Trump claimed "there are a couple senators" who are struggling with races he "can't really get involved in."
"I think the Senate is tough actually," Trump said. "The Senate is very tough. There are a couple senators I can't really get involved in. I just can't do it. You lose your soul if you do. I can't help some of them. I don't want to help some of them."
Despite his pessimistic outlook on the Senate, Trump also told donors he thinks Republicans "are going to take back the House." The president echoed that sentiment later Thursday evening during a debate with former Vice President Joe Biden.
National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman Jesse Hunt tried to downplay the president's lack of support for certain senatorial candidates, arguing "The Republican-led Senate and President Trump have had a great partnership over the last four years."
Dr. Anthony Fauci said an advertisement from the Trump campaign that featured a quote from the renowned immunologist was taken out of context, telling CNN's Kaitlan Collins that he did not consent to be the president's ad.
"In my nearly five decades of public service, I have never publicly endorsed any political candidate," Fauci said. "The comments attributed to me without my permission in the GOP campaign ad were taken out of context from a broad statement I made months ago about the efforts of federal public health officials."
The ad, which can be seen below, features Fauci appearing to praise the Trump administration's COVID-19 response, insisting "I can't imagine that anybody could be doing more."
That quote came from a Fox News interview in March during which Fauci praised the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
"Since the beginning, that we even recognized what this was, I have been devoting almost full time on this," Fauci said in that interview. "I'm down at the White House virtually every day with the task force. It's every single day. So, I can't imagine that under any circumstances that anybody could be doing more."
The White House refused to allow expert immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci or another medical expert on President Donald Trump's Coronavirus Task Force to appear on ABC's This Week, the network's chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl said Sunday.
Karl told viewers that while Fauci was "more than willing to join" the program to discuss the nation's faltering response to COVID-19, as well as the White House's current status as a coronavirus hot spot, "the White House wouldn't allow you to hear from the nation's leading expert on coronavirus."
"In fact, they wouldn't allow any of the medical experts on the president's own coronavirus task force to appear on this show," Karl said.
On Twitter, the correspondent added that "The White House press office would not allow anyone on the President's task force to be interviewed."
"Quite remarkable that they would muzzle the health experts in the middle of a pandemic," Karl said.
Axios reporter Jonathan Swan likewise said he's tried to book interviews with top Trump administration health officials "for months," but "the interview requests keep getting rejected or slow-walked."
The press blackout comes as the White House struggles to contain an outbreak inside its own walls. As the Washington Post reports, Trump and at least 34 White House staffers have tested positive for the virus. Per the Post:"The CDC began offering help last Friday, after President Trump announced he had tested positive, only to be repeatedly spurned, according to a CDC official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. On Wednesday, an arrangement was made for 'some limited CDC involvement,' the official said."
As the battle over replacing Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — who died Friday from complications of pancreatic cancer — takes shape in Washington, D.C., Republican senators who previously refused to hold a vote on former President Barack Obama's Supreme Court pick are now having their words thrown in their faces.
CNN anchor Anderson Cooper on Saturday played a devastating supercut that features Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) explaining why they would not vote on Obama's nominee to replace Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016.
"I want you to use my words against me," Graham said in 2016 — laying out what Cooper described as an "eerily similar" situation as the one currently playing out in Congress. "If there's a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say, 'Lindsey Graham said let's let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination,' and you could use my words against me and you would be absolutely right."
"We're setting a precedent here today, Republicans are, that in the last year, at least of a lame duck eight-year term, I would say it's going to be a four-year term, that you're not going to fill a vacancy of the Supreme Court based on what we're doing here today," he added. "That's going to be the new rule."
In his own floor speech on the matter in 2016, McConnell likewise urged Congress to give the American people a say in the Supreme Court pick.
"The next justice could fundamentally alter the direction of the Supreme Court and have a profound impact on our country. So, of course, of course the American people should have a say in the court's direction," McConnell said.
Cruz — who was shortlisted by Trump as a potential SCOTUS pick earlier this month — also insisted in 2016 that Congress should not move to replace Scalia until after the election.
"I don't think we should be moving forward on a nominee in the last year of this president's term," Cruz said. "I would say that if it was a Republican president."
"President Obama is eager to appoint Justice Scalia's replacement this year," he continued. "But do you know in the last 80 years we have not once has the Senate confirmed a nomination made in an election year and now is no year to start. This is for the people to decide. I intend to make 2016 a referendum on the U.S. Supreme Court."
Of course, all three men have now signaled they're much more likely in 2020 to jam a conservative Supreme Court justice down voters' throats on the eve of an election. After President Donald Trump on Saturday tweeted that the Senate has an "obligation" select a replacement for Ginsburg, Graham said he "fully" understands where the president is coming from.
In case that statement seems vague, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman added: "I will support President [Trump] in any effort to move forward regarding the recent vacancy created by the passing of Justice Ginsburg."
And McConnell has also insisted "President Trump's nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate."
And in perhaps the least surprising flip-flop of all, Cruz on Saturday wrote an opinion piece for Fox News that outlined 3 reasons why the Senate must confirm Ginsburg's replacement before Election Day. In it, he touted Trump's "list of extremely qualified, principled constitutionalists who could serve on the Supreme Court" — which, of course, included himself — and argued that going into an election with an eight-person bench could trigger a constitutional crisis in the event of a contested election.
Amazing how none of the senators was concerned with such a problem when Obama named his nominee.
Watch the video below to see the blatant hypocrisy for yourself:
Bipartisan leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee last year notified the Department of Justice that members of President Donald Trump's family and close circle "might have presented misleading testimony" to the panel during its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, the Washington Post reports.
According to the Post, then-Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) and Vice Chairman Mark R. Warner (D-VA) referred a list of individuals, including Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner to federal prosecutors after their accounts of a pre-election meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya "were contradicted by the president's former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates" during former special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.
In a separate section, the congressional panel said it had reason to believe Steve Bannon, Erik Prince and former campaign co-chair Sam Clovis "had lied to congressional investigators — a potential felony," the Post reports.
According to the Los Angeles Times, which first reported on the referrals and viewed a copy of the panel's letter, the committee believes Bannon may have lied about his knowledge of a meeting Prince held in the Seychelles with a Russian official tied to the Kremlin. Per the Post, "Prince had told Mueller's team that he briefed Bannon on the meeting, which occurred before Trump's inauguration in early 2017; Bannon denied the conversation took place."
While the Cook Political Report still has Texas as a "lean red" state in its 2020 Electoral College Ratings, a Quinnipiac poll released last week showed former Vice President Joe Biden leading President Donald Trump 45 percent to 44 percent among registered voters. And according to the Houston Chronicle, a decisive number of anti-Trump Republicans could be contributing to Biden's lead in the state.
Jacob Monty, an immigration attorney in Houston, became a Republican years ago — attributing his party affiliation to an affection for the Bush family.
"I never had to apologize for them," Monty told the Chronicle. "I always felt welcome. I never had to explain, 'Oh, what Bush meant was …'"
"It was very easy to be a Republican," he said. Now, he worries Trump's impact on the party's agenda will doom the future of the Grand Old Party.
"His whole persona is white nationalism," Monty said of Trump "He's not going to ever adopt the mainstream Republican position. What's scary is there is no mainstream Republican position, because he's kind of co-opted the party."
Monty briefly served on Trump's National Hispanic Advisory Council in 2016, but left in August, before Trump was elected to office.
"The fundamental policies that make people a Republican — American exceptionalism, limited government, free trade, free enterprise — no one's talking about those," Monty told the Chronicle. "Those aren't Trump values, for sure."
Abel Guerra, who works with Monty on The Lincoln Project's Texas leadership team, argued "Trump has been emboldened to normalize bigotry and use it as a strategy for his benefit."
The bishop who overseas the Washington, DC church that Donald Trump visited following his speech on Monday admonished the president for using a place of worship as a "prop," noting the police deployed tear gas against peaceful protestors to clear a path for Trump's walk from the White House to St. John's Church.
As The Washington Post's Michelle Boorstein reports, Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde said she is "outraged" and had no idea the White House "would be clearing with tear gas" in order to use the church for Trump's photo op.
"That they would be clearing with tear gas so they could use one of our churches as a prop, holding a bible — one that declares that God is love and when everything he has said and done is to enflame violence," Budde said. "I am beyond."
"We need moral leadership and he's done everything to divide us and has just used one of the most sacred symbols of the Judeo-Christian tradition," the bishop continued.
Budde later spoke with CNN's Anderson Cooper, insisting Trump's actions were "antithetical to everything we stand for."
Speaking at a media briefing last week, the executive director of the World Health Organization made it clear that things are simply not clear. The epidemic of 2019-novel coronavirus that has generated tens of thousands of cases around the city of Wuhan may become a broad global pandemic … or not. Meanwhile, officials at health agencies around the world are bracing for the possibility of a broader outbreak. That’s a good thing. But no one should be assuming that a global pandemic is a foregone conclusion. Because it’s not.
In the same way, no one should be dismissing the possible effects of a widespread pandemic as “like a cold” or “no worse than the flu,” because we have all the evidence we need to see that is not true. A worldwide pandemic of novel coronavirus would be devastating both in terms of the lives and economic effects.
Over and over again, from the television pundits to the comments on every Daily Kos post, we’ve been reminded that the flu affects millions of Americans and has already killed over 11,000 in this year alone. That’s absolutely true. Flu, in the best year, is simply a horror we’ve learned to live with, and which many people treat far too casually. This isn’t even one of the best years.
But the idea that should the virus between COVID-19 sweep the world it would be, at worst, like a new source of flu, is way, way off base. Yes, the official case fatality rate for those hospitalized with the flu is often quite high—above 7 percent. The official case fatality rate for COVID-19 is currently only between 2 percent and 3 percent.
The two things are not comparable. They’re not comparable because, to the extent that is possible, everyone who is determined to be infected with the virus behind COVID-19 is currently being counted as a case. Whether it’s the 50,000 people who have proven to have the virus through lab testing, or the additional 20,000 who are showing clinical signs, everyone who is suspected of having COVID-19 is part of that case count. You don’t have to be in serious or critical condition to be added to the case load for COVID-19.
In the United States alone, some 20 million people will have flu this season. The actual chances that a case of flu will result in death is something less than 0.1% — and it still generates tens of thousands of deaths. If even the broadest assumptions are taken about the relationship between the cases that we’re now counting and the actual pool of coronavirus out there, the numbers are at least 6 times worse than flu. If the case count is actually close to the total pool, then the number is more like 30 times worse.
And there are very good reasons to believe that the real effect of widespread cases of COVID-19 would be hugely worse than even those numbers suggest. Because we’re seeing what that looks like on the ground in Hubei province.
Outside Hubei, the outcome for those who have COVID-19 remains optimistic, with only 3 deaths compared to 130 people who have recovered. Inside Hubei, the outcomes are very different. On Sunday, the outcome mortality in Hubei remained close to 15%. That is the difference between dealing with this infection in a handful of cases, and dealing with it in huge numbers.
The biggest reason for that difference is likely one simple factor: Oxygen. About 25% of patients with the closely-related SARS virus require some form of respiratory assistance to make it through. The for those infected with the other member of this beta coronavirus triptych, MERS, that requirement is 80%. Why did MERS overwhelm a wealthy Saudi city and generate 600 deaths in just 2,000 cases? Because it quickly exceeded the ability of the system to provide the level of treatment that patients require to survive. That’s happening in Hubei right now with COVID-19.
In short, if 20,000,000 Americans were infected with COVID-19, somewhere between 2,000,000 and 4,000,000 of those infected would probably require a hospital bed with respiratory assistance, or they would die. And guess what? The reason there are only 20,000,000 cases of flu is because many people do get flu shots and many people do have some latent resistance to the the type of flu circulating in any give year. So for COVID-19 take that 20,000,000, and multiply it by everyone.
Yes, endemic human coronaviruses cause about 15% of colds. This isn’t one them. Organizations like WHO and the CDC don’t keep novel beta coronaviruses at the top of their global pandemic threat lists because they’re worried about increasing the global need for Puffs plus lotion. They do it because these diseases are rat bastards that will kill millions if they get out.
Okay, let’s do numbers. Because those are looking pretty hopeful.
COVID-19: Total cases (including clinically diagnosed)
Several days later, it’s easy to see that the big and terrifying spike that happened when officials in Hubei province began reporting clinically-diagnosed cases wasn’t a harbinger of “Go to bunker, go immediately to bunker, do not pass grocery story for one last can of beans, just slam that door!” Instead, it was more of a cleaning of the books. Any upward movement is bad. But now it’s a helluva lot less bad.
Here’s out that looks on a daily basis.
COVID-19: New cases by day
This shows a disease that, once again, is very much on its way to being at least somewhat controlled. There are some concerns about the cases popping up outside China, and we’ll get to some of that shortly. But if you scrub the clinical cases off of those numbers, it shows numbers that peaked ten days ago and have been in a steady, if somewhat uneven, decline. Check the new chart that’s been added to the WHO dashboard if you want to see how things look with only the lab-tested cases on the books.
COVID-19: Case Fatality Rate
The case fatality rate (total deaths / total cases) took a tick down when the load of clinical cases were added. As we saw on previous days, that seems to be because the clinical cases are in general milder than those which have been lab confirmed. Considering the quarantine conditions that have been featured in some really shocking videos out of China, its likely that only a fraction of even lab-tested cases are in hospital beds. The decline in the number of clinical cases — from 13,000, to 4,000, to 2,000, to 1,000 — over just a few days hopefully indicates that health care workers have cleared up their backlog of cases. But we should all try to not get disheartened if there’s another spike of these cases ahead.
COVID-19: Outcomes
The number of deaths in reports on Sunday morning actually matches the worst total to date (144). But that number has been almost steady for four days (144, 125, 143, 144) while the number of recoveries has finally moved above 1,000 a day. That’s genuinely good news.
COVID-19: Outcome mortality
So even though the number of deaths per day has been more or less flat, the increasing number of cases reported as recovered is pushing outcome mortality ever lower. It’s not going down as fast as anyone would like, but today may be the first day where the number of active cases in Hubei was pretty much the same as it was yesterday. China is currently listing 11,000 cases as “severe” or “critical.” The odds of each of those severe cases receiving the treatment necessary to drastically improve outcomes could be just a few days away.
RECOVERED
DIED
CHINA
9,754 (+1,312)
1,666 (+143)
OUTSIDE
129 (+25)
4 (+1)
In Singapore, another cluster of cases appears to be connected to Grace Assembly of God church, which has already been the source for almost half the cases in the nation. These also include some secondary cases where people who appear to have acquired an infection at the church have spread it to others. To all those people who have cancelled conferences large and small … thank you.
The single new death comes from Taiwan. It involves a taxi driver who had never left the country. There have also been a burst of cases in Japan in the last few days involving taxi drivers. Apparently that plastic shield (assuming they have one in Taiwan and Japan) is far from germ proof. Considering how many people may have hopped into a cab right after someone infected, or even shared a ride from the airport, this is certainly a concerning vector.
Speaking of Japan, they had six new cases — not counting the cases on board the Diamond Princess. Japan and Singapore continue to be sources of special concern when it comes to establishment of a second epicenter outside of China.
And finally, most of the Americans on the Diamond Princess are coming home, with what seem to be pretty good precautions. Those patients already displaying symptoms, or who have tested positive for the COVID-19 virus, will remain in Japan— either on the ship, or in quarantine at a Japanese hospital. Other passengers are also being given the choice of being quarantined in Japan. Those that come back to the United States will do so on a charter flight where part of the plane is isolated to take any passengers who begin to show any symptoms in flight. All passengers will go into a 14-day quarantine when they land in the United States. It’s hard to find a lot of fault with that process.
So long as they’re careful. Because one of the cases in Japan is a quarantine officer who has been working outside the ship.
A lawyer for Lev Parnas, an indicted former associate of Donald Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani who is now cooperating with the House Intelligence Committee, on Saturday said his client has more recordings of the president.
The revelation comes after Parnas, who has been indicted on charges of campaign finance violations, released a recording this week of Trump calling for former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanavitch’s ouster. The recording was made at the Trump International Hotel by Igor Fruman, another former associate of Giuliani who has likewise been indicted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
Trump recalled Yovanavitch as the Ukraine ambassador in April 2019.
Speaking with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Parnas’ lawyer Joseph A. Bondy confirmed there are more recordings beyond the one Parnas made public on Friday, and noted that “perhaps” Parnas will release the other audio.
“We’ve sent recordings to the House Intelligence Committee also,” Bondy told CNN.
Discussing the audio already released by his client, Bondy said the recording “certainly addresses the issue of the ambassador and we thought it was really important to get that recording out in public today.”
“There’s a few aspects [of the recording] that are important,” Bondy told Cooper. “First off, we hear the president himself saying, ‘Get rid of the ambassador, fire her, get her out of there.’ And this is one of the first occasions in which he attempts to remove the ambassador.”
But Bondy suggested the president’s use of Parnas and Fruman to conduct diplomacy in Ukraine “makes no sense.”
“It’s still fascinating to me …” CNN’s Cooper told Bondy. “The fact that [Parnas] was the guy, and Igor Fruman, according the Lev Parnas, were the people on the ground in Ukraine, and they would literally go to a meeting with the former president [of Ukraine], with the man who is now heading the intelligence services in Ukraine, and hold up a phone and Rudy Giuliani would be on speakerphone saying, ‘Listen to these guys, they represent us, they represent the president, they represent me. Listen to what they have to say.”
“It’s unconventional,” Bondy agreed. “You wouldn’t expect diplomacy to be conducted that way. I can kind of wonder if there’s some reason to have Igor and Lev doing that bidding.”
Watch the video below:
Lev Parnas’s attorney, Joseph Bondy, tells @andersoncooper that his client is in possession of more recordings of President Trump, some of which they’ve sent to the House Intelligence Committee, and which they may release to the public. https://t.co/cKFCK1u2ykpic.twitter.com/PCc9jYaJNB