(CNN)“You know who’s in charge of it? I am.”

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/30/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-vaccine/index.html

Many liberal and centrist pundits seem to believe that the Covid-19 crisis is the dawn of a new progressive era or at least the end of the populist wave that has swept the world in recent years. The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently argued that President Trumps handling of this crisis, particularly his Lysol moment, has caused a psychological turning point that could force even Trump diehards to face up to his essential unfitness.

Weve been here before. Trump has been declared dead as often as hes been declared newly presidential, but pundits somehow believe this time is different. After all, populists cannot lie and cheat their way out of a deadly pandemic right?

Maybe they dont have to. While Trump clearly botched his response to the pandemic, he has found a successful way out of it: refocusing the debate on Reopening America. By downplaying the health costs of the pandemic and emphasizing the economic costs, Trump hopes to come out of the crisis as the savior of the US economy. While the grim unemployment numbers might not seem to support this strategy, there are reasons to believe it might work.

It is true that, compared with other democratic leaders, Trump has received a smaller and shorter electoral bump from this pandemic. He has, however, benefited from the usual rallying-around-the-flag effect. He has also benefited from the relative invisibility of the Democrats, most notably the partys presumptive presidential nominee, Joe Biden, who has a hard time establishing himself in the debate as he holds no political office at the moment.

Many anti-Trump pundits take hope from public opinion polls that show that a majority of Americans, including a plurality of Republicans, support the current lockdown measures and oppose the anti-lockdown protests. But, as time passes, the US will inevitably have to reopen as even Democratic governors like Andrew Cuomo have argued and Trump will be able to claim, with some credibility, that he was the one to put this on the political agenda.

Moreover, Trump has always been vague enough about the details of reopening America that he can easily distance himself from possible outbreaks of new cases in the most irresponsible states. For example, he criticized Georgias governor, Brian Kemp, who, ironically in an attempt to please Trump, reopened the state in defiance of both the data and the White Houses recommendations.

Recent polls already show that the mood is shifting, particularly among Republicans. Three weeks ago, 55% of Republicans were more concerned about the pandemics public health impact than the economic impact; that number has dropped to 44%. Although majorities of Democrats (72%) and independents (57%) are still more concerned about the public health impact, we are starting to see some shifts there, too.

There is no doubt that Biden will make Trumps poor handling of the Covid-19 crisis a key part of his campaign. The opening salvo was a much-praised, but also criticized, video that argues that Trumps incompetence, ignorance and soft position on China has made the crisis worse than it should have been and would have been, under a President Biden.

Although this is probably true, I doubt this message will resonate much beyond the Democratic base. Even with over a million Covid-19 cases in the US, and almost 60,000 deaths, Trump will find a way to argue that he prevented a worse disaster, perhaps by pointing to actual predictions of millions of deaths.

And if that does not work, there is always Trumps most effective backup card: racism. Like all far-right politicians, the president has emphasized the foreignness of the virus from the beginning. He has consistently used the term China virus and increasingly blames China for the whole pandemic a strategy enthusiastically endorsed by the Republican party.

But it could get uglier. With a disproportionate number of Covid-19 cases and deaths in New York and California, the far right is working hard to characterize coronavirus as an urban, coastal disease that does not threaten so-called Heartland America. This fits perfectly into an existing far-right narrative that casts California and New York as multicultural dystopias.

The Democrats are caught in a classic catch-22. Faced with a misinformation campaign from the White House and conservative media, they might be tempted to overemphasize the Covid-19 threat in an attempt to ensure that even reluctant Americans follow public health guidelines. Yet Democrats have to be careful not to raise the bar too high, and thereby give Trump an opening to trumpet his Reopen America policy despite severe casualties. After all, populists dont need to be correct. They just need mainstream politicians to not be correct either.

• Cas Mudde is a Guardian US columnist and the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor in the school of public and international affairs at the University of Georgia. His latest book is The Far Right Today

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/29/donald-trump-coronavirus-response-elections-2020

Donald Trump has a share in a New York property development that borrowed tens of millions of dollars from China, it was reported on Friday.

The debt derived from a 30% share the US president owns in a billion-dollar building on the Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan, which was refinanced in 2012 with $211m of the funding coming from the state-owned Bank of China, Politico reported on Friday.

However, the Bank of China said it had sold the loan in the commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) market less than a month after the loan was made, and so Trump was not even indirectly indebted to the bank.

But the Trump Organisations far-flung real estate business has involved dealings with Chinese state-owned firms on several occasions, complicating Trumps emerging election strategy of portraying his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, as being soft on China. In a briefing on Saturday, Trump said that China will own the United States if Biden was elected in November.

But among the known Trump Organisation business dealings with Beijing, a Chinese state-owned construction company is helping build the Trump World Golf Club in Dubai, and Beijing has awarded trademarks to the presidents daughter, Ivanka. In the past, Ivankas husband (and a White House adviser), Jared Kushner, has sought Chinese finance for at least one major real estate deal.

The president is a passive minority investor in the 1290 Avenue of the Americas office tower which received the Bank of China funding in 2012. The main investor is Vornado Realty Trust, which owns 70%.

A Bank of China spokesperson said: On November 7, 2012 several financial institutions including the Bank of China participated in a commercial mortgage loan of $950 million to Vornado Realty Trust. Within 22 days, the loan was securitized and sold into the CMBS market, as is a common practice in the industry. Bank of China has not had any ownership interest in that loan since late November 2012.

Neither the White House nor the Trump Organization responded to requests for comment. Trump has officially handed over the day-to-day running of his business empire to his sons, but he benefits financially from its profits, producing multiple conflicts of interest. The Trump Organization has recently applied for coronavirus compensation from the government.

Trumps approach to China has alternated between combative and unctuous, particularly in relation to the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, with whom Trump has consistently claimed to have an excellent personal relationship.

Trump tweeted on 24 January, in the early stages of the pandemic: China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!

This article was amended on 25 April 2020 to include a response from representatives of the Bank of China concerning the 2012 loan. The original headline, which wrongly suggested Donald Trump had a current debt with the bank, was also amended.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/24/donald-trump-bank-of-china-debt-report

Donald Trump had been intending to run a re-election campaign based on a strong economy and a socialist opponent. Both have vanished in the past month. But the US president still has his ultimate weapon: xenophobia.

Trump this week announced in a late-night tweet that he would temporarily suspend immigration into America. Two days later, when he signed an executive order, it only applied to people seeking green cards to move to the country permanently, not to temporary workers, and there were plenty of loopholes.

But by then the headlines had been written, the outrage expressed and the objective achieved: Trump was cracking down on immigration again because, he claimed, he was putting America and its workers first. The exercise was arguably less about policy than politics.

A nativist, populist message helped him win the presidency in 2016. He tried it again in the 2018 midterm elections for Congress with mixed results. Now, with his handling of a deadly pandemic under scrutiny and the economy in freefall, critics say he is ready to bet the White House on his ability to stir nationalist and racist sentiment with little subtlety.

This is a president who doesnt use the dog whistle of Republicans in the past, and even Democrats in the past who used dog whistle politics to talk about race in code, said Juan Cartagena, president and general counsel of Latino Justice, a civil rights organisation. This guy talks about it openly. Under normal circumstances he would have been a one-term president, but his base is pretty loyal and were still talking about a country that barely comes out in large turnout numbers.

Apart from antipathy towards globalised trade, Trump is said to be a man of few core political beliefs and little ideology. But when he descended an escalator at Trump Tower in New York in June 2015 to declare his long-shot candidacy for president, he started as he meant to go on. Mexico, he complained, was not sending its best people across the border. Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists.

Trump also announced his signature issue: I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and Ill build them very inexpensively, I will build a great, great wall on our southern border. And I will have Mexico pay for that wall.

There followed an incendiary, taboo-busting election campaign in which Build that wall! became a familiar chant at Trump rallies, where he railed against the presidency of Barack Obama and threw red meat to his base. He lashed out at a judge of Mexican ancestry and a Muslim whose son died fighting for the US in Iraq. He threatened to ban Muslims from the country. He promised America first. And he won.

Two years later, campaigning on behalf of senators and representatives, Trump used rallies to stoke fears that caravans of undocumented immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were set to pour into the US from Mexico. To the frustration of Republicans who wanted him to focus on economic achievements, he used vivid language to demonise criminal gangs and human traffickers and put victims families on public display.

This time, the strategy was only partially successful: Republicans expanded their majority in the Senate but lost 40 seats in the House of Representatives, where the new Democratic majority went on to impeach Trump.

Early in 2020, the Trump re-election campaign appeared to be built on firm foundations. There were economic talking points unemployment at its lowest for half a century, the stock market at record highs even if it did not always feel that way on the ground. Meanwhile, Senator Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist, was leading the Democratic presidential primary race, prompting Trump and allies to warn darkly of the radical left.

These scripts have been torn up. The coronavirus pandemic has killed about 50,000 Americans and is likely to surpass US losses in the entire Vietnam war. Since the outbreak also put the economy into a coma: at least 26 million people have requested unemployment benefits, wiping out all the job gains since the great recession of 2008.

Rick Wilson, a political strategist and author of Running Against the Devil, an analysis of how the 2020 election could play out, said: The predicates of Donald Trumps campaign were fundamentally: The economy is great and I made the economy great and also, by the way, this is my great economy. Have you noticed my great economy? Thats gone. If you claim you have sole control and credit for something, then when it goes wrong, the shoe gets placed on the other foot rather quickly, and it has.

In the Democratic primary, meanwhile, Sanders quickly fell away against former vice-president Joe Biden, a moderate who served under Obama and will be much harder to caricature as a socialist menace.

Short of ammunition, his record in tatters, Trump can still fall back on the politics of division and made-for-TV partisan outrage. His daily White House coronavirus taskforce briefings have become a substitute for campaign rallies and regularly include progress reports on the border wall. The executive order on immigration, probably bearing the fingerprints of senior adviser Stephen Miller, was billed as a way to ensure that American workers take priority over foreigners in any economic recovery.

It has struck a chord with some of Trumps supporters. Douglas Collins, 86, a neurologist from Pensacola, Florida, said: Weve got to get the economy up and running, and people who live pay cheque to pay cheque and are American have to be the first consideration. Is prejudice a major factor? I dont think so.

Doug Peltier, 69, from Forest Lake, Minnesota, said: Its a valid position to be concerned about the economy and immigrants coming and taking jobs from Americans. Im not a bigot, Im not against immigrants, I have a great deal of respect for Mexicans and blacks. I do believe Americans should come first. I guess you could call me a nationalist.

Peltier, a retired school administrator who attended a Trump rally in Minneapolis last year, added: I think Trump has more support than a lot of people believe. We dont boast; we tend to be more silent. I would never put a Donald Trump sticker on my car because I know it would get keyed.

But opponents see something else: a president whose world collapsed around him, suddenly flailing in strange surroundings and grabbing on to a familiar lifeline. Wilson, the political strategist, argues that bigotry, hatred and prejudice arent a bug of the Trump program those are a feature.

He will pursue what he looks at as something that was highly effective for him in the last campaign and that is a racially and ethnically inflected campaign that tries to tell Republican voters in particular that all of their problems and concerns and issues come from the brown people.

Already Trump and Republican allies have hardened their line on China, fuelling a theory that the coronavirus might have accidentally escaped a laboratory in Wuhan and condemning the country for not raising the alarm earlier. They hope to couple this with an attack on Biden, dubbing him Beijing Biden and claiming he had a cosy relationship with China in the past.

Wilson, who is co-founder of the Lincoln Project, a political action committee aiming to prevent Trumps re-election, added: What you will absolutely see this fall is that Donald Trump will come out and he will make up a story and it will be something like, Theres boats full of diseased Chinamen coming our way, bar the door.

Democrats are braced for another bitter fight with a president who looks certain to lose the popular vote again but hopes to squeeze by in a few battleground states that decide the electoral college.

Neil Sroka, communications director for the progressive group Democracy for America, added: What we should expect in 2020 is, because of the economic implosion, because of his massive mishandling of this crisis, he will pursue a xenophobic campaign that makes the 2016 effort look like patty cake.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/26/donald-trump-xenophobia-re-election-campaign-2020

New York (CNN Business)A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. You can sign up for free right here.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/25/media/trump-goes-into-hiding-reliable-sources/index.html

Donald Trump has stunned viewers by suggesting people could receive injections of disinfectant to cure the coronavirus, a notion one medical expert described as jaw-dropping.

At Thursdays White House coronavirus taskforce briefing, the US president mused on new government research into how the virus reacts to different temperatures, climates and surfaces.

Trump said: And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute! And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, youre going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds interesting to me.

Dr Deborah Birx, the taskforce response coordinator, remained silent. But social media erupted in outrage at the president, who has a record of defying science and also floated the idea of treating patients bodies with ultraviolet (UV) light.

Several doctors warned the public against injecting disinfectant or using UV light and a leading household cleaner manufacturer urged users not to inject it into their bodies.

Reckitt Benckiser, the British-based maker of Dettol and Lysol, said in a statement: We must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route).

Political commentators joined the condemnation. Robert Reich, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and a former labor secretary, tweeted: Trumps briefings are actively endangering the publics health. Boycott the propaganda. Listen to the experts. And please dont drink disinfectant.

Walter Shaub, the former director of the Office of Government Ethics, added: It is incomprehensible to me that a moron like this holds the highest office in the land and that there exist people stupid enough to think this is OK. I cant believe that in 2020 I have to caution anyone listening to the president that injecting disinfectant could kill you.

Trump was already facing a backlash over his championing of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug, as a therapy for the coronavirus, a quixotic effort amplified by the conservative network Fox News. Research has found no evidence that it is beneficial and a government vaccine expert has claimed he was fired for limiting its use.

Undeterred, on Thursday Trump showcased an emerging result from Department of Homeland Security research that indicates coronavirus appears to weaken more quickly when exposed to sunlight, heat and humidity, raising hopes that it could become less contagious in summer months.

Bill Bryan, the acting homeland security undersecretary for science and technology, said at the briefing: Our most striking observation to date is the powerful effect that solar light appears to have on killing the virus both surfaces and in the air. Weve seen a similar effect with both temperature and humidity as well, where increasing the temperature and humidity or both is generally less favourable to the virus.

Researchers found that the virus survives best indoors and in dry conditions, and loses potency when temperatures and humidity rise. Bryan said: The virus dies the quickest in the presence of direct sunlight under these conditions.

He showed a slide summarising the results of the experiment that were carried out at the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center. He also said tests had been carried out with disinfectants and isopropyl alcohol, specifically in saliva or in respiratory fluids.

And I can tell you that bleach will kill the virus in five minutes; isopropyl alcohol will kill the virus in 30 seconds, and thats with no manipulation, no rubbing just spraying it on and letting it go. You rub it and it goes away even faster. Were also looking at other disinfectants, specifically looking at the Covid-19 virus in saliva.

Trump seized on the findings to refer back to a claim he made on 14 February that warm weather might kill the virus, like common flu, noting that he had been criticised by the media. I think a lot of people are going to go outside, all of a sudden, people that didnt want to go outside, he said.

And he asked Bryan an extraordinary question: So I asked Bill a question that probably some of you are thinking of, if youre totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous whether its ultraviolet or just very powerful light and I think you said that that hasnt been checked, but youre going to test it.

And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said youre going to test that too. It sounds interesting.

Bryan responded: Well get to the right folks who could.

UV rays are an invisible type of radiation that can penetrate and damage skin cells, and overexposure can cause skin cancer. How much sunlight would be needed to have an effect on the coronavirus is unknown. The virus has caused heavy death tolls in warm-weather areas such as Louisiana and Florida, and Singapore has seen a recent surge in cases.

A Washington Post reporter asked if it was dangerous for Trump to make people think they would be safe by going outside in summer heat. The president turned to Bryan and said: I would like you to speak to the medical doctors to see if theres any way that you can apply light and heat to cure.

Maybe you can, maybe you cant. Again, I say, maybe you can, maybe you cant. Im not a doctor.

In a cringeworthy moment, he asked Birx if she had ever heard of heat and light in relation to the coronavirus. Not as a treatment, she said, explaining that the body responds to the virus with a fever.

When the Post reporter pressed further, Trump retorted: Im the president and youre fake news Im just here to present talent, Im here to present ideas.

Experts questioned why the homeland security report had been promoted at the briefing. Dr Irwin Redlener, the director of the Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, told MSNBC: Everything that this scientist talked about from homeland security was basically incoherent, nonsensical, not really supported by evidence and really quite contrary to a lot of things that we do know about some of the things he was saying.

First of all, people do get Covid, have been getting Covid in warm climates. Second of all, this issue with UV light is hypothetical, but also UV light can be very harmful and we did not hear anything resembling a balanced discussion of what the evidence is for and against UV light, but its certainly not ready for prime time.

He added: The very fact that the president actually asked somebody about what sounded like injecting disinfectants or isopropyl alcohol into the human body was kind of jaw-dropping.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/23/trump-coronavirus-treatment-disinfectant

Donald Trump has stunned viewers by suggesting people could receive injections of disinfectant to cure the coronavirus, a notion one medical expert described as jaw-dropping.

At Thursdays White House coronavirus taskforce briefing, the US president mused on new government research into how the virus reacts to different temperatures, climates and surfaces.

Trump said: And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute! And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, youre going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds interesting to me.

Dr Deborah Birx, the taskforce response coordinator, remained silent. But social media erupted in outrage at the president, who has a record of defying science and also floated the idea of treating patients bodies with ultraviolet (UV) light.

Several doctors warned the public against injecting disinfectant or using UV light and a leading household cleaner manufacturer urged users not to inject it into their bodies.

Reckitt Benckiser, the British-based maker of Dettol and Lysol, said in a statement: We must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route).

Political commentators joined the condemnation. Robert Reich, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and a former labor secretary, tweeted: Trumps briefings are actively endangering the publics health. Boycott the propaganda. Listen to the experts. And please dont drink disinfectant.

Walter Shaub, the former director of the Office of Government Ethics, added: It is incomprehensible to me that a moron like this holds the highest office in the land and that there exist people stupid enough to think this is OK. I cant believe that in 2020 I have to caution anyone listening to the president that injecting disinfectant could kill you.

Trump was already facing a backlash over his championing of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug, as a therapy for the coronavirus, a quixotic effort amplified by the conservative network Fox News. Research has found no evidence that it is beneficial and a government vaccine expert has claimed he was fired for limiting its use.

Undeterred, on Thursday Trump showcased an emerging result from Department of Homeland Security research that indicates coronavirus appears to weaken more quickly when exposed to sunlight, heat and humidity, raising hopes that it could become less contagious in summer months.

Bill Bryan, the acting homeland security undersecretary for science and technology, said at the briefing: Our most striking observation to date is the powerful effect that solar light appears to have on killing the virus both surfaces and in the air. Weve seen a similar effect with both temperature and humidity as well, where increasing the temperature and humidity or both is generally less favourable to the virus.

Researchers found that the virus survives best indoors and in dry conditions, and loses potency when temperatures and humidity rise. Bryan said: The virus dies the quickest in the presence of direct sunlight under these conditions.

He showed a slide summarising the results of the experiment that were carried out at the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center. He also said tests had been carried out with disinfectants and isopropyl alcohol, specifically in saliva or in respiratory fluids.

And I can tell you that bleach will kill the virus in five minutes; isopropyl alcohol will kill the virus in 30 seconds, and thats with no manipulation, no rubbing just spraying it on and letting it go. You rub it and it goes away even faster. Were also looking at other disinfectants, specifically looking at the Covid-19 virus in saliva.

Trump seized on the findings to refer back to a claim he made on 14 February that warm weather might kill the virus, like common flu, noting that he had been criticised by the media. I think a lot of people are going to go outside, all of a sudden, people that didnt want to go outside, he said.

And he asked Bryan an extraordinary question: So I asked Bill a question that probably some of you are thinking of, if youre totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous whether its ultraviolet or just very powerful light and I think you said that that hasnt been checked, but youre going to test it.

And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said youre going to test that too. It sounds interesting.

Bryan responded: Well get to the right folks who could.

UV rays are an invisible type of radiation that can penetrate and damage skin cells, and overexposure can cause skin cancer. How much sunlight would be needed to have an effect on the coronavirus is unknown. The virus has caused heavy death tolls in warm-weather areas such as Louisiana and Florida, and Singapore has seen a recent surge in cases.

A Washington Post reporter asked if it was dangerous for Trump to make people think they would be safe by going outside in summer heat. The president turned to Bryan and said: I would like you to speak to the medical doctors to see if theres any way that you can apply light and heat to cure.

Maybe you can, maybe you cant. Again, I say, maybe you can, maybe you cant. Im not a doctor.

In a cringeworthy moment, he asked Birx if she had ever heard of heat and light in relation to the coronavirus. Not as a treatment, she said, explaining that the body responds to the virus with a fever.

When the Post reporter pressed further, Trump retorted: Im the president and youre fake news Im just here to present talent, Im here to present ideas.

Experts questioned why the homeland security report had been promoted at the briefing. Dr Irwin Redlener, the director of the Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, told MSNBC: Everything that this scientist talked about from homeland security was basically incoherent, nonsensical, not really supported by evidence and really quite contrary to a lot of things that we do know about some of the things he was saying.

First of all, people do get Covid, have been getting Covid in warm climates. Second of all, this issue with UV light is hypothetical, but also UV light can be very harmful and we did not hear anything resembling a balanced discussion of what the evidence is for and against UV light, but its certainly not ready for prime time.

He added: The very fact that the president actually asked somebody about what sounded like injecting disinfectants or isopropyl alcohol into the human body was kind of jaw-dropping.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/23/trump-coronavirus-treatment-disinfectant

Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-top-covid-relief-recipient-hired-trump-tied-lobbyists-weeks-before-getting-aid

(CNN)President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence both called Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Tuesday night and expressed support and praise for the Republican’s move to reopen businesses in his state starting Friday, a source familiar with the call said. Trump later said the opposite — that he told Kemp he disagreed “strongly” with the decision.

He suggested he would intervene if he saw “something totally egregious.”

“I love those people. They’re great. They’ve been strong, resolute, but at the same time, he must do what he thinks is right. I want him to do what he thinks is right, but I disagree with him on what he’s doing but I want to let the governors do (what they want),” the President said.

“Now, if I see something totally egregious, totally out of line, I’ll do (something),” Trump said, but did not provide specifics on what he would do.

Kemp, a staunch ally of Trump, on Monday announced Georgia would allow nail salons, massage therapists, bowling alleys and gyms to open Friday. In-person church services can resume. And restaurants and movie theaters can open Monday. His order also bars cities from imposing their own restrictions on businesses.

It’s the most aggressive move yet to reopen a state’s economy as Trump optimistically pushes for a May 1 end to some statewide lockdowns. It also came as a surprise to mayors and some members of Kemp’s own coronavirus task force.

Kemp made the decision to reopen the state’s businesses at least a day before announcing it but did not inform the White House beforehand, a source familiar with the matter said.

Data collected by Johns Hopkins University shows that as of Wednesday, Georgia had seen 20,166 confirmed cases of coronavirus and had recorded 818 deaths resulting from the virus.

“In the same way that we carefully closed businesses and urged operations to end to mitigate the virus’ spread, today we’re announcing plans to incrementally and safely reopen sectors of our economy,” Kemp told reporters Monday.

Kemp’s decision has drawn criticism from public health experts who have repeatedly stressed the dangers of relaxing social distancing measures too early.

Georgia hit its projected peak for daily deaths on April 7, according to an influential model often cited by the White House. But that same model, from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, says that Georgia shouldn’t start relaxing social distancing until after June 15 — when the state can begin considering other measures to contain the virus, such as contact tracing and isolation.

Mayors in Georgia are pushing back against Kemp’s decision.

“I have searched my head and my heart on this and I am at a loss as to what the governor is basing this decision on,” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, a Democrat, told CNN.

She said she is considering legal options for a city that she said is “not out of the woods yet.”

“You have to live to fight another day. And you have to be able to be amongst the living to be able to recover,” she said.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/22/politics/trump-pence-georgia-governor-brian-kemp/index.html

On Thursday evening, Donald Trump took to the dais in the White House press briefing room and declared that he was leading America in a historic battle against the invisible enemy that amounted to the greatest national mobilisation since world war two.

Warming to his theme, the US president said the country was now ready to move to the next phase in the war against coronavirus. It was time, he said, to open up. America wants to be open, and Americans want to be open.

Unveiling new guidelines for the loosening of the lockdown, he committed his administration to a science-based reopening. We are starting our life again, we are starting rejuvenation of our economy again, in a safe and structured and very responsible fashion.

Beyond the cloistered confines of the White House an alternative interpretation of events was gathering force. On a day in which the US suffered its highest death toll from Covid-19, with a total of more than 680,000 confirmed cases and 34,000 deaths, public health experts were scrutinising the presidents new guidelines and coming to rather different conclusions.

This isnt a plan, its barely a powerpoint, spluttered Ron Klain on Twitter. Klain, the US governments Ebola tsar during the last health crisis to test the White House, in 2014, said the proposals contained no provision to ramp up testing, no standard on levels of disease before opening, no protections for workers or customers.

On 28 March the Guardian exposed the missing six weeks lost as a result of Trumps dithering and downplaying of the crisis when the virus first struck. Jeremy Konyndyk, another central figure in the US battle against Ebola, told the Guardian that the Trump administrations initial response was one of the greatest failures of basic governance and leadership in modern times.

Now that the US is contemplating a shift into the second phase of the crisis tentative reopening of the economy scientists and public health officials are agreed that three pillars need to be put into place to manage the transition safely. They are: mass testing to identify those who are infected, contact tracing to isolate other people who may have caught Covid-19 from them, and personal protective equipment (PPE) to shield frontline healthcare workers from any flare-up.

A chorus of expert voices has also begun to be heard warning that those three essential pillars remain in critically short supply throughout the US. Less than a month after the Guardians exploration of the missing six weeks, the chilling recognition is dawning that the country is heading for a second massive failure of governance under Trump, this time on an even bigger scale.

Unless testing capability is dramatically ramped up and a giant army of health workers assembled to trace the contacts of those infected right now the consequences could be devastating.

Im fearful, said Dr Tom Frieden, the former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Testing remains scarce in many parts of the country and its slow to scale up we are weeks if not months away from having enough test capacity.

Frieden, who now heads the global health initiative Resolve to Save Lives, told the Guardian in an interview conducted shortly before Trump released the new reopening guidelines that time was being wasted. The federal governments misplaced insistence in February that its China travel ban would be enough to make the virus go away had lost precious weeks in tackling the first wave of coronavirus.

Now, as the US contemplates reopening, Frieden said he was afraid a repeat performance was imminent.

I fear theres an analogous mistaken belief that sheltering in place will make this virus go away, that we can then choose a date and all come out. Its not about the date, its about data and building a national response at scale.

In a series of tweets posted in reaction to the new White House guidelines, Konyndyk echoed the anxiety about more lost weeks. He said the Trump administration had wasted February, and the White House guidance on opening up leaves me worried that were about to waste April too.

Konyndyk said that for states to reopen before they were ready would be a disaster. Its no great insight to say we need more testing, tracing, PPE [protective gear for health workers] its been obvious for a month and a half. But each of those face huge bottlenecks and the document doesnt acknowledge them, much less propose how to resolve them.

Trump, launching the new reopening guidelines on Thursday, insisted that the US was in excellent shape on testing. We have great tests. We have done more testing now than any country, in the world, by far.

The US has so far tested about 3.3m people, about 1% of its population. Per capita, that is small compared with several countries including Germany and South Korea. Iceland has tested people at 10 times the US rate.

Testing has been an unnecessary disaster, said Michael Greenberger, director of the University of Maryland Center for Health and Homeland Security. Trump says we have the best testing, but the US is in the last percentage of tests administered to its population.

Not one of the 50 states is currently in a position to carry out tracking of Covid-19 infections on the scale needed, whatever Trump said about their readiness to reopen. Many states, including the hardest hit, New York, are still experiencing testing shortages, 12 weeks after the first US case was recorded.

Individual states continue to have to compete for critical supplies against each other, and against the federal government, driving up prices. Components including nasal swabs, reagents and RNA extraction kits are running short.

Daily testing has flattened out and is now hovering around 150,000 tests a day vastly below the level that would be needed to detect localized pockets of disease as the economy reopens. Most alarmingly, the number of tests carried out by commercial labs has actually plummeted in recent days due to shortages in test samples, leaving the labs sitting idle.

At the White House briefing, Trump insisted that the phenomenon of the idle labs was a great thing, a sign that states were finding local solutions and an affirmation that testing is growing at a historic rate.

All of these impediments have put the US on the back foot as it seeks to pull off the daunting feat of getting back to work without risking a renewed surge of contagion.

We have had cases circulating in communities undetected for several weeks, and because of the delay in the roll-out of testing we never had the chance to be on top of it, said Anita Cicero. She is joint author of one of the most definitive scientific plans for reopening the US, produced by a team from the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins.

That means its going to require much more ubiquitous testing, she said.

Estimates vary on how much testing will be needed, but they are all substantially greater than present provision. Even at the lower end, as posited by the former commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration Scott Gottlieb, some 2m to 3m tests a day are recommended up to three times the current level.

Harvards Safra Center for Ethics argues that is too few. It calls for tens of millions of tests every day, way beyond existing capacity.

As the Johns Hopkins plan makes clear, diagnostic testing is only the start. It must be combined with relentless detective work, called contact tracing, to track down anyone who has come into contact with an infected person and who might need quarantining to stop the virus spreading again.

The Johns Hopkins plan envisages a nationwide army of 100,000 contact tracers. That might sound eye-popping, but its reasonable and may be a low estimate, Cicero said, pointing out that in Wuhan, China, the authorities employed a workforce three times the size per capita.

With contact tracing, too, there is no sign that Trump recognizes the urgency of the moment. Frieden told the Guardian that many states were already struggling to ramp up contact tracing to a level that would support reopening. Health departments are overwhelmed, and some have trouble even conceiving the scale of operations they are going to need, he said.

Faced with a wide gap between nationwide demand for testing and contact tracing and insufficient supply, Trump has flip-flopped in his positions. He began by insisting that he had absolute authority to overrule the states in deciding when to reopen, a posture widely denounced as king-like and anti-American.

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On Thursday he effected a 180-degree about-turn and passed the buck to the 50 states. You are going to call your own shots, he told governors on a call on Thursday.

Trumps sudden switch to offloading federal responsibility to the 50 states has prompted questions about his motive. Current and former senior officials in the Trump administration told the Washington Post that he wanted to shield himself from blame should there be new outbreaks after states reopen.

The former head of Medicare and Medicaid from 2015 to 2017, Andy Slavitt, commented on Twitter that the White House guidelines were sending a clear message to the states: Your state didnt open, thats on your governor. Your state opened and people died, thats on your governor.

Trump attempted to sell the idea of devolving responsibility by presenting his vision of America as a beautiful puzzle. He said: I call it a beautiful puzzle. You have 50 pieces. All very different. But when its done a very beautiful picture.

A beautiful puzzle may be an appealing concept to the incumbent of the Oval Office in an election year. But it fits uncomfortably with a virus that is highly contagious, relatively deadly, and dismissive of state boundaries.

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The states are not islands, their borders are not closed and they do not have water around them, Cicero said. So it will be a bumpy road going forward in terms of managing the virus.

States still held in the grip of the contagion, such as New York, are finding it difficult to accept the idea that the buck stops with them in a country with the most powerful national government on Earth. New Yorks governor, Andrew Cuomo, has repeatedly called on the Trump administration to do more to help.

I understand that the federal governments not eager to get involved in testing. But the plain reality here is we have to do it in partnership, he said on Thursday.

At Trumps disposal is the formidable wartime power of the Defense Production Act, which allows the administration to order corporations to redirect their efforts to the cause of fighting Covid-19. So far the president has deployed this capability only sparingly.

The president said there were 29 states which are in extremely good shape and could reopen soon, some literally tomorrow. He declined to name them, though it has been reported that several Republican governors are champing at the bit to loosen lockdowns.

Florida, Texas, Alabama and Mississippi are at the head of the line, according to Axios. Florida began to reopen its beaches on Friday, a controversial move given that the late closure of its beaches during spring break helped spread Covid-19 across the US.

The danger of Trumps beautiful puzzle approach is illustrated by New York City, where the death toll continues to be heartwrenching. The probable tally of deaths from Covid-19 in the city now stands at more than 11,000 more than double the normal monthly loss of life from all other causes.

Im moved and crushed by whats happening in New York right now, said Frieden, who until 2009 was the citys health commissioner.

About 10,000 New Yorkers a day are currently being tested for coronavirus. Mark Levine, chair of New York City councils health committee, told the Guardian that the frequency would need to be stepped up twentyfold were the city to have a fighting chance at reopening.

Yet even now New York is just days away from running out of testing kits.

Levine said he worries that the window for federal action is rapidly closing. Trump has the authority to order manufacturers to retool to produce test kits. Unless the White House issues the order immediately, we are going to be out of time.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/18/operation-reopen-america-are-we-about-to-witness-a-second-historic-failure-of-leadership-from-trump