Here’s a picture that I took last year in Colombia. This guy was practicing social distancing before social distancing was cool.

From the Washington Post:

Did Mitch McConnell seriously think he could pass a bill that contains a blank-check $500 billion corporate bailout? Both parties objected when a Republican Treasury Secretary tried to ram through a $700 billion blank-check bank bailout in 2008, and both parties ought to be objecting now. To their shame, though, Republicans no longer care about this, even though giving Donald Trump a blank check is far more dangerous than giving George W. Bush a blank check ever was. Without tighter direction, there’s simply no reason to believe that Trump won’t use his authority over this bailout fund as leverage to help his friends and punish his enemies. This is the way Trump works, and everyone knows it. It would be insane to pretend otherwise.

I don’t know precisely how the bailout fund should be structured, but it should be kept very far away from Trump’s mercurial disposition. McConnell can’t possibly believe that Democrats will ever vote for it otherwise.

A team of researchers has written a paper about the possible seasonality of COVID-19. Here’s a map of the major outbreaks so far:

As you can see, the biggest centers of infection have occurred within a fairly narrow band of cool temperatures and low absolute humidity:

In the months of January 2020 in Wuhan and February 2020 in the other affected cities, there was a striking similarity in the measures of average temperature (4-9 ºC at the airport weather stations). Average temperatures from a period of 20-30 days prior to the first community spread death in the area showed similar temperatures (3-9 °C at the airport weather stations)….These cities had varying relative humidity (44-84%), but consistently low specific (3-6 g/kg) and absolute humidity (4-7 g/m3).

The authors draw two conclusions. First, we might soon see major outbreaks in a band to the north of the current outbreaks (Manchuria, Central Asia, the Caucuses, Eastern Europe, Central Europe, the British Isles, the Northeastern and Midwestern United States, and British Columbia). Second, this behavior is typical of a seasonal coronavirus, and “it is tempting to expect COVID-19 to diminish considerably in affected areas (above the 30° N’) in the coming months and into the summer.”

This is very tentative stuff, and the authors warn that the coronavirus is new and there is no immunity to it. In previous cases like this, “the initial epidemic acted unpredictably.” So there might be some good news here, but it’s pretty thin. Stay home and keep washing your hands.

Here’s the coronavirus growth rate through Sunday. If you squint, it looks like a couple of countries are flattening slightly compared to the Italian trendline, but it’s way too early to tell if this is for real or not.

I get asked a lot why I don’t just show the absolute number of deaths (or deaths per million) on the y-axis. The answer is simple: what matters is the growth rate, and that’s what I want everyone to focus on. The countermeasures we started taking last week—if they’re working—will start to show up as a flattening of the growth curve in another week or two. That flattening is what we’re aiming for.

Right now, for example, the growth rate for the United States is roughly 25 percent per day. That will get us up to 50,000 deaths in three weeks and a quarter of a million in four weeks, so we’d better hope that we start to flatten that curve sometime very soon.

Here’s how to read the charts: Let’s use France as an example. For them, Day 0 was March 5, when they surpassed one death per 10 million by recording their sixth death. They are currently at Day 17; total deaths are at 112x their initial level; and they have recorded a total of 10.1 deaths per million so far. As the chart shows, this is slightly below where Italy was on their Day 17.

The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

It is remarkably difficult to get precise details about the coronavirus rescue bill that’s currently stalled in the Senate. But here are the main pieces:

The negotiations over this bill have been almost a parody of modern American political polarization. Republicans cared only about the loans to businesses and the flashy $1,200 checks for all Americans. Democrats insisted on unemployment insurance replacing 100 percent of income; money for hospitals; and making the $1,200 checks equal for everyone.

Republicans mostly caved in on the Democratic demands, but their price was an increase from $200 billion to $500 billion in the loans for big corporations. You might wonder why there was a price for this stuff. Why did Republicans have to be talked into it in the first place? There was some muttering about not trusting the states to disburse the unemployment insurance money, but in the end it was just because they’re Republicans. Putting corporations first is in their DNA or something.

Oh, and the $500 billion loan pool would be under the control of the Secretary of the Treasury and would have virtually no strings attached. It’s just a giant slush fund that the Trump administration can do anything with. Does anyone think for a second that Trump wouldn’t use this as leverage to help his friends and punish his enemies? Of course he would.

This was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Democrats were willing to vote for the loan pool, but they weren’t willing to make it a Trump slush fund. Even West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who’s conservative enough that he could pass for a Republican most of the time, was apoplectic: “They’re throwing caution to the wind for average workers and people on Main Street and going balls to the wall for people on Wall Street,” he said.

So the bill failed its first vote. Negotiations will continue on Monday.

From New York City mayor Bill de Blasio on the coronavirus crisis:

The president of the United States is from New York City and he will not lift a finger to help his hometown, and I don’t get it.

This is not a mystery. For years New York has sneered at Donald Trump. It mocked him when he went bankrupt. It called him vulgar and tasteless when he unveiled his buildings. It laughed at his wives and his children. It sued him for fraud after he started Trump University. It ruined his plans to build the world’s tallest skyscraper. It called him “short fingered.” It jeered at his TV show. And then it voted for Hillary Clinton in a landslide by 79-19 percent.

Now Trump has his revenge. Any other questions?

From Politico’s roundup of the coronavirus rescue bill:

Senate GOP leaders and the White House conceded to a Democratic demand for tens of billions of dollars for hospitals and health-care providers as part of the rescue package.

Republicans “conceded” to a “Democratic” demand to assist health care providers in the middle of the biggest global pandemic in a century. Were Republicans really opposed to this? Seriously?

Kevin Drum

I suspect that many people still don’t get quite how bad the coronavirus pandemic is likely to get. President Trump has a big soapbox, and he continues with the happy talk on a daily basis. Experts try to walk back his nonsense, but even they’re reluctant to tell the bald truth. Is this the right thing to do? Maybe. Avoiding panic is good, after all, and the bald truth would most likely do little except increase sales at gun shops even more.

Right now, New York City is the canary in the coal mine. Whatever happens there over the next month is most likely what will happen to the rest of the country in the month or two after that. Even if we’re successful in flattening the curve a little bit, that won’t change the eventual rate of infection or the number of deaths. It just spreads it out a bit.

Meanwhile, the federal government continues to dither and refuse to take charge, and Republicans in Congress refuse to pass a bill that will keep worker income flowing and get makeshift hospital beds built. What the hell are these people thinking? The business bailout will be needed, but it can wait. Right now we need to mobilize, and we need to do it right now.

Best guesses right now:

• 40-50 percent of country infected by June.
• Half a million deaths.
• 10-20 million people basically broke. Maybe a lot more.

Here’s the coronavirus growth rate through Saturday. There’s nothing new to report. Just about everyone is still at or above the Italian trendline, with Switzerland and the US a bit below it.

Here’s how to read the charts: Let’s use France as an example. For them, Day 0 was March 5, when they surpassed one death per 10 million by recording their sixth death. They are currently at Day 16; total deaths are at 94x their initial level; and they have recorded a total of 8.4 deaths per million so far. As the chart shows, this is very close to where Italy was on their Day 16.

The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

Oliver Contreras/CNP via ZUMA

The Washington Post informs us today that Anthony Fauci is everyone’s favorite doctor, the “grandfatherly captain of the corona­virus crisis” who not only has limitless energy to appear everywhere at once but has even performed the miracle of ending political polarization:

Now a public-health catastrophe has remade our reality and pushed Fauci into the spotlight as a figure that might have seemed impossible less than a month ago: a government expert with an unwelcome message who is nonetheless regarded as a truth-teller, if not a godsend, by the president, Democratic leaders and media figures alike. Surviving may require a single set of facts; and Fauci — a slight, bespectacled man with a Brooklyn accent and sympathetic eyebrows — has them.

Hmmm. On Friday Fauci appeared with President Trump and was asked about Trump’s latest infatuation:

Q And to Dr. Fauci, if I could. Dr. Fauci — this was explained yesterday — there has been some promise with hydroxychloroquine as potential therapy for people who are infected with coronavirus. Is there any evidence to suggest that, as with malaria, it might be used as a prophylaxis against COVID-19?

DR. FAUCI: No. The answer is no.

Trump then spent the next ten minutes in a back-and-forth with reporters extolling the virtues of hydroxychloroquine and arguing that he felt really, really good about its potential. And people should listen, because he’s a smart guy. It ended with this final follow-up to Fauci:

Q I would like Dr. Fauci, if you don’t mind, to follow up on what the President is saying. Should Americans have hope in this drug right now? . . .

DR. FAUCI: No, there really isn’t that much of a difference in many respects with what we’re saying. The President feels optimistic about something — his feeling about it. What I’m saying is that it might — it might be effective. I’m not saying that it isn’t. It might be effective. But as a scientist, as we’re getting it out there, we need to do it in a way as — while we are making it available for people who might want the hope that it might work, you’re also collecting data that will ultimately show that it is truly effective and safe under the conditions of COVID-19. So there really isn’t difference. It’s just a question of how one feels about it.

Am I the only one who’s noticed that Fauci does this a lot? Obviously he has a tightrope to walk with Trump, and I shudder to think what he has to do to stay in Trump’s good graces. But that doesn’t make him a truth-teller. It just makes him a fairly ordinary politician. It’s obvious what he really thinks, after all: hydroxychloroquine is nonsense, period. But by the time the press conference had moved on, he was basically saying that Trump was right, the stuff might work, and it’s all a matter of how one “feels” about it. Trump could say today that Fauci agrees with him about hydroxychloroquine and he wouldn’t really be stretching things much.

So is this truth-telling? Not so much. Here’s another excerpt from the Post story. It’s from the mid-80s, when Fauci was focused on finding cures for AIDS and hosted regular dinner parties for activists:

As the activists drove down from New York, they would remind one another to be firm and focused with their demands and to be careful not to fall fully into the Tony Fauci charm vortex, according to Peter Staley, an activist with a New York-based group named ACT UP.

….The activists were aware that the dinner parties were as strategic as they were friendly, he says, and afterward they would try to sort out when Fauci had been handling them and what details he’d been carefully hedging on. “We knew he was playing a game of ingratiating, which he has done with every president that he has worked under. He’s incredibly skillful at it.”

All fine and good! Under the circumstances I think Fauci does a good job. But is it truth-telling? Several weeks ago I found myself wondering just how much I could trust Fauci, and today I find myself wondering even more.