The Walls Come Down: No Travel Betwen US and Europe for 30 Days

[loomer]

Well, he is right that injecting disinfectant will do a number on your lungs. Along with the rest of your organs.

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, we're literally at the place where the cult leader tells his followers to drink the Kool Aid (or inject it, as the case may be).

[Zaune]

Bet you a roll of toilet paper it's going to be Miracle Mineral Supplement next.

[mr friendly guy]

https://www.vox.com/2020/4/23/21226484/ ... irus-china

Better article from Vox where they just let the scientist speak without journalist interjecting too much with their own spin.

Why these scientists still doubt the coronavirus leaked from a Chinese lab
A Wuhan lab studied SARS-related viruses. But there’s no evidence it discovered or was working on the new virus.

By Eliza Barclay@elizabarclayeliza.barclay@vox.com Apr 23, 2020, 8:20am EDT
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One of the great mysteries of the Covid-19 pandemic is how, exactly, the SARS-CoV-2 virus made the leap from wildlife into humans. Scientists who’ve analyzed the virus’s genome believe it came from a bat, likely in China. But Chinese epidemiologists have revealed little about how or where the first patients were infected.

One focus has been a wet market in Wuhan, where live wildlife was sold for food, because 66 percent of the first cluster of 41 cases in December 2019 had exposure to this market. Yet there is also genomic evidence and reports the virus could have been circulating earlier, in November. Which means there are many other possible places it could have jumped from a bat, or an intermediary species, to humans.

Finding the index case, or “patient zero,” for an infectious disease that’s just emerged can take months or years, if the person can even be found at all. So it’s not unusual we still don’t have one, especially for a disease with so much asymptomatic transmission.

Into the vacuum has seeped a potent, speculative, and confusing discussion about the virus’s origin, particularly in the US, where the GOP is intensifying its efforts to blame China for the pandemic.

In March, I offered explanations from virus experts for why they dismiss two of the theories that have surfaced about the coronavirus origin: that Chinese scientists bioengineered it in a lab and/or deployed it as a bioweapon.

In this piece, I’ll address the theory du jour: that a Chinese researcher was infected with the new virus inside a high-containment Wuhan laboratory and accidentally spread it, after which China attempted to cover it up.

This hypothesis has been circulating in US, UK, and Chinese media since February, with fresh reporting and speculation this month in the Daily Mail, Vanity Fair, Fox News, and the Washington Post. A Tuesday op-ed drawing solely from circumstantial evidence by chief “labber” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) in the Wall Street Journal raised the question anew.

Riding the wave of these reports, President Donald Trump is also now using this potential avenue for blaming China; on April 15, he said his government was looking into whether the virus came from the Wuhan lab. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has also said Beijing “needs to come clean” on what it knows about the virus’s origin.

Trump and the GOP’s motivation to establish new ways to blame China for the pandemic is clear: The president’s response to the pandemic has been abominable, and he faces an election in six months, with more than 22 million people unemployed and an economy heading toward recession. The lab-escape theory joins a variety of arguments he and his supporters are using — including scapegoating the World Health Organization and former President Barack Obama — to divert attention from his failures.

The Wuhan lab may also be the most tantalizing of the diversions, not just for Trump’s supporters but also for some political journalists and China hawks. What if the catastrophe is a result not of nature but of China’s incompetence with handling viruses and habit for suppressing information?

Such a spy-novel-worthy plot may seem plausible for a number of reasons: the Chinese government’s poor record of transparency; the fact that the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a research center with facilities in the same city where the virus first appeared, was studying dangerous pathogens, including bat coronaviruses; and US officials’ concerns about the lab’s safety standards in 2018, per the Washington Post.


Yet five scientists I interviewed, some of whom have worked extensively in China with researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, say the pandemic can’t logically be pinned on an accident at that lab. (Researchers at the institute didn’t respond to my request for comment.)

The scientists I did speak to all acknowledge it’s not possible to definitively rule out the lab-escape theory. “The trouble with hypotheses is that they are not disprovable. You cannot prove a negative,” said Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance and a disease ecologist who has studied emerging infectious diseases with colleagues in China. Yet he also sees the lab-escape theory as “ironic and preposterous.”

The scientists I spoke to also noted that all countries with high-level containment facilities, including China and the US, must be vigilant to prevent accidental leaks of dangerous diseases from labs. “I think we all are concerned about the increasing presence of high-consequence pathogens in laboratories and the issue of inadequate biosecurity,” said Dennis Carroll, the former director of USAID’s emerging threats division who helped design Predict, a surveillance program for dangerous animal viruses that the Trump administration chose to shut down in October. “We’ve seen examples of inadvertent release in the past and I’m sure we will see it in the future. So it’s a very major concern that we need to pay attention to.”

But scientists told me that based on what they know about the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the likelihood of a natural spillover event, they didn’t see lab escape as probable. And one expert added that it could be dangerous to get too preoccupied with this theory when the threat of another disease with pandemic potential from wildlife is so high.

Since politics will continue to propel this theory into the public sphere, let’s walk through six reasons a lab leak is unlikely.

1) The probability of the virus jumping from animals to humans outside the lab is much higher than the virus infecting humans inside the lab
Daszak is a scientist who has spent the past 15 years collaborating with scientists in China and other emerging disease hot spots around the world to find out where dangerous viruses lurking in wildlife — like the first SARS virus, MERS, and Ebola — are, how they get into people, and how to stop people from spreading them and spiraling into pandemics.

He says he’s confident SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus, originated in bats and jumped into people somewhere, likely in China, because he and his colleagues have established that viruses like it are out there and there are so many opportunities for this to happen.

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“This is not the bat’s fault”: A disease expert explains where the coronavirus likely comes from
“If you do the math on this, it’s very straightforward. ... We have hundreds of millions of bats in Southeast Asia and about 10 percent of bats in some colonies have viruses at any one time. So that’s hundreds of thousands of bats every night with viruses,” Daszak says. “We also find tens of thousands of people in the wildlife trade, hunting and killing wildlife in China and Southeast Asia, and millions of people living in rural populations in Southeast Asia near bat caves.”

Next, he says, consider the data he’s collected on people near bat caves getting exposed to viruses: “We went out and surveyed a population in Yunnan, China — we’d been to bat caves and found viruses that we thought could be high risk. So we sample people nearby, and 3 percent had antibodies to those viruses,” he says. “So between the last two and three years, those people were exposed to bat coronaviruses. If you extrapolate that population across the whole of Southeast Asia, it’s 1 million to 7 million people a year getting infected by bat viruses.”


Compare that, he says, to what we know about the labs: “If you look at the labs in Southeast Asia that have any coronaviruses in culture, there are probably two or three and they’re in high security. The Wuhan Institute of Virology does have a small number of bat coronaviruses in culture. But they’re not [the new coronavirus], SARS-CoV-2. There are probably half a dozen people that do work in those labs. So let’s compare 1 million to 7 million people a year to half a dozen people; it’s just not logical.”


The biosafety level-4 (BSL-4) laboratory (left) at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, on April 17. Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images
But he told me he gets why people in the US, who aren’t regularly exposed to bats, have a hard time understanding how great the risk is of humans getting infected with novel coronaviruses circulating in bats.

“I understand — it’s a weird thing. Bats live out there, we don’t see them that often, we don’t realize how common, how abundant, how diverse they are,” he says. “In Southeast Asia, they carry their own viruses, and there’s just this really big interface between bats and people, every night, every day. People live in caves, people shelter from the rain in caves, people hunt bats.”

Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University, also sees the lab-leak theory as very unlikely. “This virus came from bats under unknown circumstances,” she told me. “While I cannot rule out the lab-accident theory, there are so many other possibilities for how it could have happened. It could have been someone collecting bat guano for fertilizer, somebody cleaning out a barn, somebody exploring a cave. It could be any situation like that of someone in contact with animals who then spread it to other humans. There are so many other options than a lab leak.”

2) Yes, the Wuhan lab studied bat coronaviruses and SARS-related viruses. But there’s no evidence it discovered or was working on the new virus.
One of the big arguments “labber” theorists make for why we should suspect the Wuhan Institute of Virology of accidentally leaking the virus: Researchers there were already studying bat coronaviruses.


This is true; they published studies on the first SARS coronavirus that infected humans in 2003 and other bat coronaviruses, noting presciently in one paper, “it is highly likely that future SARS- or MERS-like coronavirus outbreaks will originate from bats, and there is an increased probability that this will occur in China.”

In 2020, they reported on a virus called RaTG13 that they’d discovered in a cave in Yunnan, China, in 2013. This virus shares 96 percent of its genome with the new coronavirus, which makes it the new virus’s closest known relative.

Some have speculated that perhaps the new coronavirus is derived from RaTG13. Yet virologists say it’s very unlikely: A 4 percent difference in genome is actually huge in evolutionary terms.

“The level of genome sequence divergence between SARS-CoV-2 and RaTG13 is equivalent to an average of 50 years (and at least 20 years) of evolutionary change,” said Edward Holmes, a professor at the University of Sydney who has published six academic papers this year on the genome and origin of SARS-CoV-2, in a statement. “Hence, SARS-CoV-2 was not derived from RaTG13.”

Another questionable assumption is that the mere existence of a related virus in the lab signals the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 was also there.

Daszak, who collaborates with the Wuhan bat coronavirus researchers and has co-authored papers with them, says this is false. He and the researchers there were indeed looking for viruses related to the first SARS virus, also known as SARS-1, in the hope of finding ones that might be a threat to humans. He confirmed that they had collected samples of bat feces that contained viruses and brought them back to the Wuhan lab.

However, he said, the new coronavirus is only 80 percent similar to SARS-1 — again, a very big difference. “No one [in Wuhan] cultured viruses from those samples that were 20 percent different, i.e., no one had SARS-CoV-2 in culture. All of the hypotheses [of lab release] depend on them having it in culture or bats in a lab. No one’s got bats in a lab, it’s absolutely unnecessary and very difficult to do.” (Cell culture is a way of storing viruses in vitro in a lab so they can be studied over long periods.)

3) Scientists like to gossip about new viruses. There was no chatter before the outbreak about the virus that causes Covid-19.
Carroll, the former director of USAID’s emerging threats division who also spent years working with emerging infectious disease scientists in China, agrees that there’s no evidence the Chinese researchers were working with a novel pathogen. His reasoning? He would have heard about it.

“The reason I’m not putting a lot of weight on [the lab-escape theory] is there was no chatter prior to the emergence of this virus to a discovery that would have ended up bringing the virus into a lab,” he says. “And if nothing else, the scientific community tends to be very gossipy. If there is a novel, potentially dangerous virus which has been identified, circulating in nature, and it’s brought into a laboratory, there is chatter about that. And when you look back retrospectively, there’s no chatter whatsoever about the discovery of a new virus.”

“IF NOTHING ELSE, THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY TENDS TO BE VERY GOSSIPY”
Carroll is confident he would have heard about it because, in his current role as head of the Global Virome Project, he has his ear to the ground and remains active in the community.

When I asked if the Chinese researchers would have kept it secret, he replied, “People will come back and say China is China, they would have suppressed that information. But Chinese scientists, I think, are just as gregarious as everyone else.”


Rasmussen, for her part, also thinks there’s no suggestion of a cover-up. “I haven’t seen evidence of a grand conspiracy to cover up that there was a lab leak of this virus,” she said.

4) The US military chief reviewed the evidence and says “the weight of evidence seems to indicate natural” origin
As the lab-escape theory has gotten more attention in the media, we’ve learned that US military and intelligence officials have also been reviewing the possibility.

On April 14, we got a window into what those ongoing investigations have revealed so far about whether the virus leaked from a lab or jumped to people outside a lab, in nature.

“There’s a lot of rumor and speculation in a wide variety of media, blog sites, etc,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told reporters at the Pentagon. “It should be no surprise to you that we’ve taken a keen interest in that, and we’ve had a lot of intelligence look at that. And I would just say at this point, it’s inconclusive, although the weight of evidence seems to indicate natural [origin]. But we don’t know for certain.”

Brig. Gen. Paul Friedrichs, the Joint Staff surgeon, has also said “there is nothing to” the idea that the virus originated in a laboratory as a bioweapon experiment.

What’s more, as the New York Times reported in its sweeping April 11 review of the administration’s failed coronavirus response, intelligence officials couldn’t find evidence for the lab theory after Matthew Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser who was one of the earliest advocates for Trump to refer to Covid-19 as the “Wuhan virus,” pushed them to look for it:

With his skeptical — some might even say conspiratorial — view of China’s ruling Communist Party, Mr. Pottinger initially suspected that President Xi Jinping’s government was keeping a dark secret: that the virus may have originated in one of the laboratories in Wuhan studying deadly pathogens. In his view, it might have even been a deadly accident unleashed on an unsuspecting Chinese population.

During meetings and telephone calls, Mr. Pottinger asked intelligence agencies — including officers at the C.I.A. working on Asia and on weapons of mass destruction — to search for evidence that might bolster his theory.

They didn’t have any evidence. Intelligence agencies did not detect any alarm inside the Chinese government that analysts presumed would accompany the accidental leak of a deadly virus from a government laboratory.

Again, the US government’s investigation into the theory is ongoing, so it’s possible it will turn up new information. But so far, officials have looked into it, and they’ve said the natural origin is more likely.

5) Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists deny a lab leak
There’s no question the Chinese government and ruling party made grave errors in managing the outbreak from the outset that contributed to its spread around the world. And according to Nature, the government is putting in place new rules in reviewing research on the virus origin.

As Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) put it to my colleague Alex Ward, “We don’t know the true extent of the Chinese government’s complicity in the spread of the virus, and we may never have a full picture due to their obfuscation and control of information. We do know that they lied to their own people and the world about the details and spread of the virus, and today we face a pandemic that has left no country untouched.”

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But the scientists I interviewed say that we shouldn’t conflate the work of the highly regarded Chinese scientists who work at the lab with the transgressions of their government.

We also have the word of one of the top virologists at the Wuhan lab, documented in news articles, that she too wondered if the virus could have originated in her lab and then took steps to verify it didn’t match any of the viruses they had in culture.

In this excellent article by Jane Qiu in Scientific American, we learned that the team at the Wuhan lab led by Shi Zhengli, known as China’s “bat woman” for her 16 years of work collecting samples of bat viruses in caves, sequenced the genome of the new virus in early January and published it on January 23:

Shi instructed her team to repeat the tests and, at the same time, sent the samples to another laboratory to sequence the full viral genomes. Meanwhile she frantically went through her own laboratory’s records from the past few years to check for any mishandling of experimental materials, especially during disposal. Shi breathed a sigh of relief when the results came back: none of the sequences matched those of the viruses her team had sampled from bat caves. “That really took a load off my mind,” she says. “I had not slept a wink for days.”

Yuan Zhiming, vice director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, also recently spoke up on Chinese state broadcaster CGTN. “As people who carry out viral study, we clearly know what kind of research is going on in the institute and how the institute manages viruses and samples. As we said early on, there is no way this virus came from us,” he said, according to NBC News.

I asked Jim LeDuc, head of the Galveston National Laboratory, a level-4 biosafety lab in Texas, for his thoughts on Yuan’s statement. “I like to think that we can take Zhiming Yuan at his word, but he works in a very different culture with pressures we may not fully appreciate,” he said. In other words, we don’t know what kind of pressures he might be under from his government to make such a statement.

LeDuc says the hypothesis that the animal market played a role in the virus jumping to humans also remains strong. “The linkage back to the market is pretty realistic, and consistent with what we saw with SARS,” said LeDuc. “It’s a perfectly plausible and logical explanation: The virus exists in nature and, jumping hosts, finds that it likes humans just fine, thank you.“

6) State Department officials worried about safety issues at the Wuhan lab in 2018. This is concerning but doesn’t prove its scientists were incompetent.
In an April 14 piece, Josh Rogin, a global opinions columnist for the Washington Post, reported that in January 2018, the US Embassy in Beijing dispatched science diplomats to the Wuhan Institute of Virology who later sent back cables that warned of “safety and management weaknesses at the WIV lab and proposed more attention and help.”


Rogin went on to cite an anonymous senior administration official’s belief that “the cables provide one more piece of evidence to support the possibility that the pandemic is the result of a lab accident in Wuhan.”

The article sparked a rich discussion on Twitter, with Rasmussen of Columbia pointing out, “The bottom line is that those vague diplomatic cables do not provide any specific information suggesting that #SARSCoV2 emerged from incompetence or poor biosafety protocols or anything else.”


Dr. Angela Rasmussen
✔
@angie_rasmussen
I had a great exchange with @JeremyKonyndyk about the state department cables reported yesterday by @joshrogin and the credence they supposedly lend to the "lab accident" origin story of #SARSCoV2. Jeremy distilled this into the perfect meme: https://twitter.com/JeremyKonyndyk/stat ... 5092386816 …

Jeremy TEST/TRACE/ISOLATE Konyndyk
✔
@JeremyKonyndyk
Replying to @JeremyKonyndyk
Or to put this all much more simply:

View image on Twitter
517
1:44 AM - Apr 16, 2020
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217 people are talking about this
In a follow-up conversation with me, she reiterated: “This line that they’re incompetent, it doesn’t hold water with me.”

Other scientists who have worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology have spoken up about its standards and practices in the face of the theory it leaked the virus.

“I have worked in this exact laboratory at various times for the past 2 years,” wrote Danielle Anderson, scientific director of the Duke-NUS Medical School ABSL3 Laboratory, in a March 2 post on Health Feedback, a site where scientists review the veracity of news reports. “I can personally attest to the strict control and containment measures implemented while working there. The staff at WIV are incredibly competent, hardworking, and are excellent scientists with superb track records.”


Gerald Keusch, a professor of medicine and international health and associate director of Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories, also doubts the lab would have been prone to accidents.

“The Wuhan lab is (as far as I know because I have never visited) state of the art in terms of safety and security systems and protocols, and because [the Galveston National Laboratory in the US] helped to train many of them and has collaborations I would bet they are highly professional, which makes the likelihood of an accident remote,” he said. “Is it possible? Yes. Is it likely? In my opinion, no.”

We may never find out exactly when this virus made the leap into humans. But focusing too much on the shoddy lab-leak theory could ultimately be dangerous.
Since there’s no robust evidence in support of the lab-leak theory, Daszak says he’s worried that it could become a conspiratorial distraction with serious consequences.

“There is a group of people who do not want to believe that this is a natural, unfortunate incident,” he said. “And the real bad part of that is that if we don’t believe that we won’t try and stop other viruses in wildlife. Instead, we will focus on labs and close them down when they’re the ones trying to develop vaccines to cure us right now. I mean, how ironic could we go?”

Carroll says the lab-leak theory, even if there isn’t evidence to support it, is a healthy reminder that lab accidents can happen and that biosecurity needs attention in country studying dangerous pathogens. But he’s also much more concerned with preventing the next pandemic.

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Pandemics, says Carroll, do not have to happen. “They are a consequence of the way we live. You can pick [viruses] up earlier if you’re really including in your surveillance those places where animals and people are having high-risk interaction, those hot spots.”

If you have that surveillance, “you would never get a virus sweeping out of hand. You would never get a repeat of an uncontrolled, unrecognized event.”

Which means it’s time for the whole world to invest in studying the viruses in the bat caves and beyond, and building up the systems to stop them from spreading in humans, so this doesn’t happen again. Because otherwise, it will.

[The Romulan Republic]

Moscow Mitch is now literally saying states should file for bankruptcy instead of asking for Federal aid:

https://nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/coron ... uptcy.html

WASHINGTON — Senator Mitch McConnell took a hard line on Wednesday against giving cash-short states more federal aid in future emergency pandemic relief legislation, saying that those suffering steep shortfalls amid the coronavirus crisis should instead consider bankruptcy.

“I think this whole business of additional assistance for state and local governments needs to be thoroughly evaluated,” Mr. McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, said in an interview with the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. “There’s not going to be any desire on the Republican side to bail out state pensions by borrowing money from future generations.”

Mr. McConnell’s comments were an explicit rejection of a top priority of Democrats who have pushed to spend tens of billions of dollars to help states. His staff members highlighted their partisan cast in a news release circulated a short time later, in which his statement appeared under the heading “Stopping Blue State Bailouts.” The phrase suggested that the top Senate Republican was singling out for scorn some of the hardest-hit, heavily Democratic states such as California, Illinois and New York.

The remarks drew a caustic reaction from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, who called the bankruptcy suggestion “one of the saddest, really dumb comments of all time.”

“OK, let’s have all the states declare bankruptcy — that’s the way to bring the national economy back,” he said.

Representative Peter T. King of New York, a fellow Republican, called Mr. McConnell’s remarks “shameful and indefensible.” “To say that it is ‘free money’ to provide funds for cops, firefighters and healthcare workers makes McConnell the Marie Antoinette of the Senate,” Mr. King said on Twitter on Wednesday night.

States do not now have the ability to declare bankruptcy to reduce their financial obligations, but Mr. McConnell raised the possibility of letting them do so rather than pouring federal money into rescuing them, which would push the federal government deeper into debt.

“I would certainly be in favor of allowing states to use the bankruptcy route,” he said. “It saves some cities. And there’s no good reason for it not to be available.”

The Democratic push for more federal aid to states and cities contending with a budget crunch because of the pandemic was a major sticking point in the latest round of legislation to respond to the outbreak, slated to clear Congress on Thursday, with Senate Republicans refusing to budge on the issue in negotiations.

Mr. McConnell had already made it clear on Tuesday that he would approach the next round of emergency funding much more cautiously. He went further in his comments on Wednesday, saying that he did not want Washington rescuing the pension plans of states that were struggling to keep up with their commitments to an array of union workers.

“We’ll certainly insist that anything we’d borrow to send down to the states is not spent on solving problems that they created for themselves over the years with their pension programs,” he said.

Mr. McConnell is likely to run into considerable resistance to his position from the White House, congressional Democrats, governors of both parties and even some lawmakers in his own party.

After the Senate vote Tuesday, top Democrats said that President Trump was open to the idea of helping states with their pension issues and that Mr. McConnell had been the chief obstacle to getting money for local governments this time around.

In a pair of Twitter posts on Tuesday, Mr. Trump said that after he signed the latest round of emergency pandemic legislation, he was ready to open discussions on help for “State/Local Governments for lost revenues from COVID 19, much needed Infrastructure Investments for Bridges, Tunnels, Broadband, Tax Incentives for Restaurants, Entertainment, Sports, and Payroll Tax Cuts to increase Economic Growth.”

Democrats were also confident that Congress would move forward with more relief for states, with Democratic leaders of the House and Senate promising a robust program. Several Republican lawmakers have introduced or signed on to proposals to provide huge sums to struggling states.

In his rebuke to Mr. McConnell, Mr. Cuomo said the most recent round of coronavirus relief was woefully inadequate, complaining that the lack of money for states was ridiculous.

“They funded small businesses,” he said. “Great, good move. How about police? How about fire? How about teachers? How about schools?”

Mr. McConnell is a longtime rival of the labor movement and will be in no hurry to move forward with anything resembling pension relief for what he considers overly generous benefits that states mistakenly provided.

“We all have governors regardless of party who would love to have free money,” he said.

I'm about as hostile as you can get to the idea of "States' Rights" in general, in part because its often been a pretext for bigotry and treason in American history. But the Federal government's conduct here is so utterly appalling that I am forced to side entirely with the states in any conflict.

Representative Peter T. King of New York, a fellow Republican, called Mr. McConnell’s remarks “shameful and indefensible.” “To say that it is ‘free money’ to provide funds for cops, firefighters and healthcare workers makes McConnell the Marie Antoinette of the Senate,” Mr. King said on Twitter on Wednesday night.

That's a fairly ominous comparison, considering what historically happened to Marie Antoinette.

[Zaune]

You know, I have to admit that when I imagined the breakup of the United States, I was expecting it to be sparked by the Confederacy refusing to accept that Trump lost. Not the Republicans running the government so far into the ground that the blue states get fed up and moved in with Canada.

[The Romulan Republic]

The governor of California has developed a habit of referring to California as a "nation-state":

https://bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/ ... irus-plans

California this week declared its independence from the federal government’s feeble efforts to fight Covid-19 — and perhaps from a bit more. The consequences for the fight against the pandemic are almost certainly positive. The implications for the brewing civil war between Trumpism and America’s budding 21st-century majority, embodied by California’s multiracial liberal electorate, are less clear.

Speaking on MSNBC, Governor Gavin Newsom said that he would use the bulk purchasing power of California “as a nation-state” to acquire the hospital supplies that the federal government has failed to provide. If all goes according to plan, Newsom said, California might even “export some of those supplies to states in need.”

“Nation-state.” “Export.”

Newsom is accomplishing a few things here, with what can only be a deliberate lack of subtlety. First and foremost, he is trying to relieve the shortage of personal protective equipment — a crisis the White House has proved incapable of remedying. Details are a little fuzzy, but Newsom, according to news reports, has organized multiple suppliers to deliver roughly 200 million masks monthly.

Second, Newsom is kicking sand in the face of President Donald Trump after Newsom’s previous flattery — the coin of the White House realm — failed to produce results. If Trump can’t manage to deliver supplies, there’s no point in Newsom continuing the charade.

Third, and this may be the most enduring effect, Newsom is sending a powerful message to both political parties. So far, the Republican Party’s war on democratic values, institutions and laws has been a largely one-sided affair, with the GOP assaulting and the Democratic Party defending. The lethal ruling this week by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Republican bloc, which required Wisconsin residents to vote in person during a pandemic that shut down polling stations, is a preview of the fall campaign. The GOP intends to restrict vote-by-mail and other legitimate enfranchisement to suppress turnout amid fear, uncertainty and disease.

At some point this civil war by other means, with the goal of enshrining GOP minority rule, will provoke a Democratic counteroffensive. Newsom, leader of the nation’s largest state, is perhaps accelerating that response, shaking Democrats out of denial and putting Republicans on notice. California, an economic behemoth whose taxpayers account for 15% of individual contributions to the U.S. Treasury, is now toning up at muscle beach.

What that means, of course, is left to the imagination. But not much is required to envision what might evolve.

Newsom, a former lieutenant governor who won the top job in 2018, has used the “nation-state” phrase before. It’s a very odd thing to say. California, like its 49 smaller siblings, qualifies only as the second half. But it’s obviously no slip of the tongue. Democratic state Senator Scott Wiener, a leader in California’s cumbersome efforts to produce more housing, said soon after Newsom took office in 2019 that reorienting the state’s relationship to Washington is a necessity, not a choice.

“The federal government is no longer a reliable partner in delivering health care, in supporting immigrants, supporting LGBT people, in protecting the environment, so we need to forge our own path,” Wiener said. “We can do everything in our power to protect our state, but we need a reliable federal partner. And right now we don’t have that.”

The statement appears prescient in light of the Trump administration’s failure to protect against a pandemic. Newsom was the first governor to issue a stay-at-home order, on March 19. Though his state is chock-full of cosmopolitan centers, and rural threats loom as well, California is weathering the virus in far better shape than New York, which has many fewer people and many more deaths.

Federalism has always had rough spots, but conflict is rising and resolutions are not. California is a sanctuary state while the Trump administration is fond of immigration dragnets. Marijuana is grown, marketed and used in abundance in the state while the White House conjures more restrictions. The Trump administration endorses extreme gun rights; California has other ideas. Most of all, Trump’s failure to act, or even take responsibility for acting, in the face of pandemic has required California, like other states, to look out for itself.

One conflict, however, encompasses all others, and could galvanize Californians into new ways of thinking about their state and its relationship to Washington. The GOP war on democracy is inspired by a drive for racial and cultural supremacy that jeopardizes the democratic aspirations and human rights of California’s multiracial citizenry.

From Fort Sumter to Little Rock to Montgomery, the blueprint for states opposing federal control has a recurring theme. But there is no reason that states can’t adopt a racist playbook for other ends. If California and other 21st-century polities withhold revenue, or otherwise distance themselves from Washington’s control, legal and political battles will escalate. Republicans will have a legitimate constitutional argument — but it will be a morally tainted and politically illegitimate one so long as they continue to subvert majority rule.

The experience of states battling Covid-19 while the White House devotes its energy to winning the news cycle may be instructive. What is the difference, conceptually, between a state deploying its power to protect its population’s health and a state using it to protect its population’s democratic rights?

John C. Calhoun, who used the theory of states’ rights to defend the institution of slavery, is not generally a philosophical lodestar for liberal Democrats such as Newsom. But if Republicans (or foreign friends) succeed in sabotaging democracy in November, Calhoun’s theory of nullification, which posited that states have the power to defy federal law, could be ripe for a comeback on the left coast. With the heirs of the Confederacy now reigning in Washington, turnabout might be very fair play.

While the current situation forces states to defy the Federal government to protect their own residents, I do not wish to see the ideas of nullification by the states make a come back, much less serious secession movements. Even in the worst case scenario of a civil war, I would rather the goal be to reclaim the Union, rather than to permanently disolve the United States into dozens of feuding nation-states.

[FireNexus]

California will stop being a “nation-state” the minute they can’t import water. Newsome is playing a dangerous game here, repeatedly hinting at California seceding. And it’s a game he can’t win because his “nation state” has an economy as large as France but no water or prospects for getting water without cooperation from US states (or the federal government if they secede).

Even if a full-on civil war didn’t come from secession, California would be stuck toeing the US line or it’s people and industries would die of thirst.

[FireNexus]

The more I think about it, the more I think Newsome is probably the only Democrat with real power that has a rhetorical line which even approaches Trump’s league in terms of how stupid it is and how foundationally dangerous to the country it is. It’s more subtle than Drink Bleach, but it’s not much less stupid or dangerous.

[The Romulan Republic]

Indeed. Newsom has also declined to endorse Joe Biden:

https://politico.com/states/california/ ... en-1277317

I had figured that he was just kissing up to Trump to keep the COVID-19 aid flowing, but that doesn't square with him declaring California a nation-state. I'm starting to think that he's got inflated ambitions, and is hoping the crisis gets bad enough that he can make a serious bid for California secession, and is therefore positioning himself as independent rather than a supporter of the Democratic Party.

Which means that in any conflict, we're potentially looking at a (at least) three-way war between Blue States concentrated in the Northeast/Midwest, Trump Land, and California. And the opposition to Trump will be heavily divided and start at a disadvantage.

In other news, a former Federal prosecutor has argued that once out of office, Trump could (in addition to the existing cases for campaign finance violation and obstruction of justice) be potentially charged with Negligent Homicide in every jurisdiction in America where people have died of Coronavirus due to his actions, and anticipates that charges will likely be filed in multiple states once Trump leaves office (there's also some tidbits in there about possible future releases of redacted portions of the Mueller Report):

https://theintercept.com/2020/04/02/is- ... us-deaths/

DEATHS FROM COVID-19 continued to mount this week as the U.S. surpassed 200,000 confirmed cases, more than any other country in the world. Experts increasingly point to President Donald Trump’s willful negligence as a primary cause of the pandemic’s intensity, but MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirscher takes things a step further, arguing controversially that Trump could be legally liable for coronavirus deaths after he leaves office. He makes the case to Mehdi Hasan on this week’s podcast.

Glenn Kirschner: I actually think he will see charges brought in each jurisdiction in which people have died as a result of his gross negligence. So I have a feeling that he has got a lot of criminal legal exposure coming at him beginning in January 2021.

[Music interlude.]

Mehdi Hasan: Welcome to Deconstructed, I’m Mehdi Hasan. Broadcasting once again from home, because of the coronavirus of course. I hope you’re all staying safe and indoors because our lives are literally at stake.

GK: He acted in a grossly negligent way, and he failed to act. And that failure was a product of gross negligence. He hit the homicide bonanza.

MH: That’s my guest today, Glenn Kirschner, former federal prosecutor with 30 years of trial experience who’s upset many on the right with this very provocative suggestion of his: that Trump could be prosecuted for negligent homicide.

But aside from triggering the MAGA snowflakes, is he right? Could the president really one day be prosecuted, put on trial for his role in exacerbating and worsening this deadly crisis?

Newscaster: New projections indicating that without drastic action, the United States could face a catastrophic loss of life from coronavirus, a death toll topping one million.

Newscaster: President Trump says he’s considering putting New York and two other states under quarantine to slow the spread.

Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro: The United States is now the center of a global pandemic. Cases of the coronavirus are rising exponentially.

MH: The number of deaths in the United States has now topped 4,000 – that’s more than the number of Americans killed on 9/11, on George W. Bush’s watch, and more than the number of Americans killed in Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria in 2017, which was of course on Donald Trump’s watch.

Now let’s be clear: President Trump is not responsible for the existence, or the deadliness, of the coronavirus. He is however responsible for the catastrophically botched response to the spread of the virus inside of these United States since January.

Many experts believe that the number of deaths we’re seeing, and the rapid spread of the disease caused by the coronavirus, Covid-19, which is now fast approaching 200,000 confirmed U.S. cases, the highest number on the planet, is a result of Trump’s willful negligence; that this president has American blood on his hands.

I mean, just listen to an exchange I had with a Harvard epidemiologist, Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, on my Al Jazeera English show, UpFront, just a few weeks ago:

MH: When you look at whether as Prime Minister Boris Johnson say, well, maybe we should let it go through. I’ve shaken lots of hands or Donald Trump playing golf saying I don’t need to get tested and my opponents are treating, it’s a new hoax from my opponents. Do these people potentially have blood on their hands?

Eric Feigl-Ding: I think so.

MH: People are dying because of their negligence.

EFD: Because Boris Johnson’s own health minister already came down with Covid-19. The fact that you’re neglecting the testing and U.S. had frozen testing for two and a half weeks. That is almost three-fold higher multiplication in terms of cases —

MH: Can we say at this point that there are people dead who might be alive had the governments handled it differently over the last six weeks?

EFD: I am pretty confident that is the case.

MH: Of course, some more cautious figures don’t agree with this, or at least don’t want to say so in public. Take the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee this past weekend:

Chuck Todd: Do you think there is blood on the president’s hands considering the slow response or is that too harsh of a criticism?

Joe Biden: I think that’s a little too harsh.

MH: Oh Joe. Joe, Joe, Joe. Pulling his punches there again. But look discussing Joe Biden’s bad judgement or his failure to stand up to the Republican right is a topic for another show.

I want to talk today about something much more urgent: the threat that Trump poses, continues to pose, to the lives of people in this country. Right now. As I speak. The blood that continues to be on his hands every day, as more and more Americans contract the virus and die from it.

Don’t be fooled by the change of tone which we heard at his daily political rally, sorry his daily White House press briefing, on Tuesday, where he very somberly and soberly talked about how bad the coming weeks will be, and held up charts showing the death toll could hit 240,000, even if the social distancing measures that he himself wanted to lift until the other day, even if they were to stay in place.

What Trump’s been doing this past week, pretending to take things seriously with his blasé talk of 100,000 to 200,000 deaths from the coronavirus in the U.S. — more than double the American death toll in the Vietnam War, almost half as many Americans who died in World War II — and saying , ‘Well, that’s better than the 2.2 million deaths we would have had if I did nothing,” all of that is simply him moving the goalposts, trying to make you forget that just a week ago he wanted churches open and packed for Easter, he wanted people back at work, and he was still comparing the impact of the coronavirus to the flu:

Donald J. Trump: We lose thousands and thousands of people a year to the flu. We don’t turn the country off every year.

MH: And yet here he was on Tuesday evening:

DJT: A lot of people have said, a lot of people have thought about, ‘Ride it out. Don’t do anything, just ride it out and think of it as the flu.’ But it’s not the flu. It’s vicious.

MH: Don’t be gaslit by this president. Remember: no matter the lies, the facts are the facts. The reason he has blood on his hands, the reason the US is looking at such a crazy high death toll right now, even with social distancing measures in place and testing ramped up, is because of him: his negligence, his incompetence, his conspiracy theories and denialism and coronavirus trutherism; his deliberate willful wasting of the months of January, February and half of March.

Never forget: South Korea and the United States had their first confirmed COVID-19 case on the same day back in January. South Korea took the threat seriously and by the start of March had tested 100,000 people for the virus. The United States under Trump didn’t take it seriously and had tested just 1,000 people by the start of March.

The South Koreans tried to flatten the curve; Trump went off to play golf and hold rallies with his base; he ignored warnings from his intelligence agencies and top scientists and health officials, and when he did publicly comment on the coronavirus it was to tell us that it was all under control. It was locked down. It was contained. It was going to disappear miraculously. It was one guy from China. It was such a small, tiny, irrelevant issue, which had been turned into a political hoax, he said, by the Democrats.

In fact, on February 27th, just over a month ago, he said this:

DJT: When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.

MH: Now he says 100,000 American deaths wouldn’t just be fine with him, they’d actually be evidence of his success. His success!

DJT: You’re talking about 2.2 million deaths, 2.2 million people from this. And so, if we can hold that down, as we’re saying, to 100,000 — that’s a horrible number — maybe even less, but to 100,000, so we have between 100 and 200,000, we all together have done a very good job.

MH: A very good job! Kill me now. Even Dr. Antony Fauci, his top scientific expert on the coronavirus, even he kinda semi-admitted at the briefing on Tuesday that fewer Americans might be dead right now if Trump had taken things seriously back in January and done the testing that was needed:

Jim Acosta: What would the models have looked like that Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci shows if we had started the social distancing guidelines sooner in February or January? I don’t mean to put you on the spot.

Deborah Birx: Yeah, we understand that we can’t answer until we see that —

JA: If we had started this sooner, we might not have 100,000 to 200,000 Americans dying.

Anthony Fauci: If there was no virus in the background, there was nothing to mitigate. If there was virus there that we didn’t know about, then the answer to your question is probably yes.

MH: Fauci later said he was worried about that answer of his being taken out of context — but of course he’s also clearly worried about being fired by President Trump!

Look: You have a narcissistic, egomaniacal, megalomaniacal, amoral, compassion-free, soulless, self-obsessed pretend-president, who from the very beginning put his own personal and political interests above the welfare of the nation he’s supposed to be leading; over and above protecting American lives as his job description demands.

I mean, just listen to Trump, he says it all out in the open. He says the quiet part loud. Why didn’t he want to let sick Americans off of the Grand Princess cruise ship?

DJT: Because I like the numbers being where they are. I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship.

MH: Why didn’t he get urgent resources — masks, gowns, ventilators — to the governors of struggling states like Washington and Michigan?

DJT: I say, Mike, don’t call the governor of Washington. You’re wasting your time with him. Don’t call the woman in Michigan. It doesn’t make any difference what happens.

Reporter: The governor of Washington?

DJT: You know what I say, if they don’t treat you right, I don’t call.

MH: He’s literally letting Americans die, because of his ego and especially Americans, by the way, in blue states, in states that didn’t vote for him. It’s beyond sociopathic.

And of course he has form on this, Trump has a track record of letting Americans in places he doesn’t care about die. Remember Puerto Rico, 3,000 Americans dead because of his incompetence and ignorance:

DJT: The response and recovery effort probably has never been seen for something like this. This is an island surrounded by water, big water, ocean water.

MH: And because of comments like this:

DJT: I hate to tell you Puerto Rico but you’ve thrown our budget a little out of whack because we’ve spent a lot of money on Puerto Rico.

MH: And because he tried to divert essential humanitarian aid money away from Puerto Rico and towards red states like Texas and Florida instead. When it comes to the coronavirus, he’s doing it all again just on a nationwide level. Florida gets all the supplies it needs, New York doesn’t. And just a few days ago, he was even suggesting that nurses in New York were stealing all the face masks from the hospitals!

DJT: Something’s going on. And you ought to look into it as reporters. Where are the masks going? Are they going out the backdoor?

MH: So it’s clear there is a moral and political case against this president’s deliberate and shameful and cruel mismanagement of the coronavirus crisis, but could you, could you, make a legal case, a criminal case, against this behavior? Because no one with a brain, with two eyes and two ears could deny the evidence in front of us that Trump has been negligent in terms of his response to this pandemic – the question I want to ask is has he been criminally negligent and should he, could he, be punished for that negligence?

[Music interlude.]

MH: My guest today is a very senior lawyer who says he very well could be. And he’s someone who’s a bit of an expert too in this particular field. Glenn Kirschner is a former federal prosecutor with three decades of trial experience. He served in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia for 24 years, rising to the position of Chief of the Homicide Section, in which capacity he prosecuted more than 50 murder trials, and oversaw all homicide grand jury investigations and prosecutions in Washington, D.C.

He’s now retired, he teaches, and he’s a regular commentator on cable news. And he joins me now.

Glenn, thanks for coming on Deconstructed.

GK: Thanks for having me, Mehdi.

MH: You attracted a lot of right wing attention and hate a couple of weeks ago when you did a Twitter thread, which began and I quote, “Can we talk about one of the few topics I may actually know too much about homicide, specifically, whether Donald Trump may have criminal exposure for some level of negligent homicide or voluntary/involuntary manslaughter for the way he’s mishandled the coronavirus crisis?” Glenn, walk us through what is a pretty controversial legal argument you seem to be making. And these crimes you mentioned to negligent homicide, voluntary/involuntary manslaughter that may or may not apply to Donald Trump.

GK: Sure, and if you know anything about me, you’ll know that rarely do I claim to know too much about any topic. However, after 30 years as a federal prosecutor first as an army JAG and then as an assistant U.S. Attorney in Washington D.C. working for the Department of Justice, and then 22 of those 30 years, I handled murder cases in Washington, D.C. in both federal and in local court. So murder is one of those things that I’ve been immersed in for a couple of decades. So let me, I’m not going to talk about first degree premeditated murder or second degree depraved heart murder, or frankly, voluntary manslaughter. I want to talk about the crime that I think squarely fits Donald Trump’s conduct, and is a relatively low level of homicide. It’s involuntary manslaughter.

There are three things, what we call elements —elements is just a fancy word for facts that we have to prove in order to hold somebody accountable for involuntary manslaughter. One, that a person acted in a grossly negligent way or importantly for our purposes, failed to act and that failure was a product of gross negligence and I’ll talk about those two things in a minute. But number one, somebody acted in a grossly negligent way. Number two, their conduct was reasonably likely to involve serious bodily injury or death to another as a product of that grossly negligent act or failure to act. And three, that they thereby caused the death of another.

Now, causation is tricky, because when we think of someone causing the death of another we think about someone firing a gun at someone, someone stabbing another person, someone strangling another person. But, you know, that is not the way the law, criminal law or the law of homicide defines causation. Causation in the law is defined as conduct that is a substantial factor in bringing about the death of another and I think, undeniably Donald Trump’s conduct of lying to the American people and downplaying the risk, giving them information that they then use to make their everyday behavioral decisions that put them in harm’s way that enhanced their chances of contracting this virus. That was a substantial factor in infecting and ultimately killing people.

So, and let me talk a little bit for a minute about how he also failed to act and how his failure to act was gross negligence. So this is one of the — and I prosecuted a lot of murder cases in my day. This is one of the unusual circumstances where a perpetrator actually fulfills both theories of liability because he acted in a grossly negligent way and he failed to act and that failure was a product of gross negligence. You only have to prove one or another. He hit the homicide bonanza. He actually committed involuntary manslaughter in both of those ways.

MH: So you also said in your Twitter thread that it’s not an easy question to, you know, make this kind of decision and make this kind of case. And it isn’t clearly, I talked to a couple of other retired federal prosecutors off the record before we came on air. And I put your arguments to them just to get a sense of what others think in your field and they said they sympathize with you. But they were skeptical about the case you’re making one of them said to me, and I quote, “If you’re seriously talking about prosecution, the real issue here will be one of causation. You’d have to line up causation for each individual death you wanted to indict for. There’s no group crime here.” Another told me, “A prosecutor would need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump’s action or inaction actually caused someone’s death. And I just don’t see how one could do that here. Maybe there’s a civil suit, but not a criminal prosecution.” What’s your response to both of those criticisms?

GK: That’s the beauty of our criminal justice system. We have people who make these decisions. In the first instance it is the judge as the gatekeeper. Please, if somebody would only give me the opportunity to investigate these deaths in the grand jury to prove that some of them are a product of Donald Trump’s gross negligence, I will ask a grand jury to indict. The grand jury is the first gatekeeper. I predict based on what I have seen in the public reporting alone, even before I begin to dig into family history and medical records, I predict the grand jury would indict. The next gatekeeper is the judge and trust me, Mehdi, if I brought a case. And it was not on sound legal footing, a judge is going to dismiss it.

And I have, you know what? I’ve lost cases before in my 30 years, but I was always fighting for justice for the victims and for the safety of the community. And I fear no loss as long as we think we’re doing the right thing based on the evidence. So the judge will be the next gatekeeper and the final and perhaps the most important gatekeeper, it is that jury of one’s peers, it’s citizens who will sit in judgment of whether Donald Trump acted in a grossly negligent manner. And whether his gross negligence in acting or failing to act was a substantial factor in bringing about deaths. I will take that to a jury seven days a week.

MH: But what about the argument that says, look, it’s beyond reasonable doubt, you know that, you’re former criminal prosecutor, maybe there’s a civil suit here, but not a criminal prosecution? Because how do you link Trump beyond reasonable doubt, to an individual death and you can’t do it to a group of people. It has to be each and every person as you said digging into their circumstances and records?

GK: Sure, you have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it was a substantial factor not that it was —

MH: The only factor.

GK: The cause, the main cause, but it was just a substantial factor. Let me use an analogy. So people may be familiar with the horrific Ghost Ship warehouse fire in Oakland, California in 2016. Two guys owned and operated a converted warehouse. They turned it into an artist’s space where the artists could work. They could display their artwork. Some of them were sleeping there. But it was in pretty horrible shape. It didn’t meet any safety codes. And as a result, the fire started. So that fire resulted in 36, I believe, or maybe 39 people dying in the fire.

Now, the fire was not a product of arson. The owners of the Ghost Ship warehouse did nothing to personally kill those people. They didn’t start the fire. They didn’t close the doors so that they couldn’t flee the flames. However, their conduct of having this warehouse in a condition where it was putting people at risk was a substantial factor in bringing about the death. They were, I think, indicted for 36 or 39 counts of involuntary manslaughter. It’s a similar principle where Trump has let this virus run roughshod not unlike a fire running through a rickety warehouse, run roughshod through our country. And you also have examples of his corrupt intent, of his motive because he has said things publicly.

MH: He has said on the record, you know, I don’t want these tests to be done, because I like the numbers where they are.

GK: Exactly, I want my numbers to stay low. He has said don’t return the phone calls of the governors of Washington and Michigan. They’re not being sufficiently nice to us. There’s a lot to unravel. And that’s what criminal investigations are for. But if we don’t at least take the first step on the road to investigate what I believe is criminal conduct then we are lost.

MH: Is there any precedent for something like this Glenn, that you know of in U.S. presidential history or even at lower levels of government, state or municipal levels where elected officials are held to account criminally in this way?

GK: Yeah, I can’t speak to every jurisdiction. I will say, let’s assume there is certainly no precedent to try a criminal president for these kind of crimes once he leaves office. We know we can’t do it while he’s in office because of this horrific Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel memo that says you cannot indict a sitting president, a criminal president, even if he shoots somebody on Fifth Avenue. That’s a position that was expressly taken by Department of Justice lawyers in a Second Circuit Court of Appeals argument. But let’s assume there’s no precedent, the only way we make precedent Mehdi is by doing something the first time by taking a maiden voyage. If we were always required to wait to prosecute a novel case until there was precedent, guess what? We would never prosecute a novel case. That only makes sense, right?

MH: And if anyone is a novel case, it’s Donald J. Trump. And what about this distinction between state and federal law? That these crimes would be state crimes, and therefore he’s more susceptible to it. Is that what you believe?

GK: Yeah, I actually think he will see charges brought and civil suits brought frankly not only federally but in each jurisdiction in which people have died as a result of his gross negligence. So every state has its own state law defining things like involuntary manslaughter and some jurisdictions call it negligent homicide. There are slightly different elements and every jurisdiction defines it in its own way.

Here’s what will happen when state charges are brought against him — and I predict they will be when he leaves office — they will make a modified Supremacy Clause argument. They’ll say, even though the Supremacy Clause in the Constitution doesn’t directly apply, they will say, “Listen, this is a federal matter and a former president cannot be made to stand up as a defendant in 50 states and defend himself in all of these criminal cases.” So there will be a modified Supremacy Clause argument made. I can’t predict how each state jurisdiction will resolve that issue. But I have a feeling that he has got a lot of criminal legal exposure coming at him beginning in January 2021.

MH: So, I’ll come back to that in a moment. Just in terms of the actual, we talked about precedence one slightly different though related precedent that I just came across from last week, Glenn, was the utility company PG&E, which just accepted criminal responsibility for starting the deadliest wildfire in California’s history, the Camp fire of 2018, which killed 85 people. But though the company pled guilty to manslaughter, none of the executives were prosecuted or jailed for that crime. PG&E just agreed to pay a 3.5 million dollar penalty, which is the statutory maximum. Isn’t that the problem that you can go after a corporation, individuals on this on these crimes, you mentioned, much tougher?

GK: Much tougher indeed, especially when there is collective criminal action by, for example, a board of directors. And let me tell you, Mehdi, I’ve been in the federal government long enough, a little over 30 years, the federal government is often looking to recover money. Even if they could sort of if they wanted to stretch their criminal law muscles, they could try to put some of these white collar corporate wrongdoers in prison, or narrowly they let them get away with a little something as long as they’re willing to fill the government’s coffers with money and that is a sad fact of our criminal justice system. But I think you have a point person in this instance and it is Donald Trump. So I do think that the criminal justice systems plural need to focus like a laser beam on him once he leaves office.

MH: So you have the point person Donald J. Trump, Republican President of the United States. So there’s a big partisan angle, Glenn. What would you say to critics who say once you open this very controversial, unprecedented legal door, it’ll be used against other presidents by Republicans against Democrats?

GK: Sure.

MH: They’ll say Barack Obama should have been prosecuted for U.S. deaths in Benghazi or Eric Holder, then Attorney General for the deaths that resulted from the fast and furious gun walking scandal in Arizona and beyond. A future Democratic president who presides over natural disasters, he’ll get prosecuted too.

GK: So yes, there is something called victor’s justice. And that’s a pejorative term, right? It just, loosely defined, means when the party that comes into power prosecutes the party that has lost power just for the sheer revenge value for the partisan value of it. It’s not victor’s justice if you have crimes being committed, that the party in power is unwilling to address while they are in power.

Here’s an example that I’ve used before. Let’s assume that somebody commits a bank robbery. That is a federal offense. So let’s assume that the person who commits bank robbery is a really good friend and a high-dollar donor of Donald Trump. So Bill Barr, the sitting Attorney General, being Donald Trump’s protector says I am not authorizing federal charges to be brought against that bank robber because he’s a high-dollar donor of Donald Trump’s. Would it be improper for the next administration to prosecute that bank robber when he is no longer being protected by Bill Barr?

That’s not revenge. That’s not partisanship or victor’s justice, it’s just plain old justice. It’s doing the right thing. And we can’t decline to do the right thing for fear of how the wrong people will criticize us for it.

MH: But you would accept that a Democratic president who presided over a natural disaster in a similar way could be prosecuted?

GK: If crimes are committed while a Democratic president or a Republican president are in office, and the party in power refuses to address it in a timely manner. That doesn’t mean you give the president or the ex-president a pass once power changes hands because that is how we went from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump and God help us if we don’t wrestle Donald Trump’s criminality to the ground and hold people accountable because we’re going to get something 10 times worse than Donald Trump next time.

MH: And you mentioned Trump’s criminality. You’ve also talked in the past about prosecuting Trump for all his other crimes committed in office once he leaves office because as you say, there’s this horrific DOJ guidance that says you can’t indict a sitting president. You’ve talked about a Trump Crimes Commission that should be set up in January 2021 if he’s out of office then. How would that commission even work? And what other crimes are you referring to? Because I know we’ve discussed a few of them on this show over the past couple of years.

GK: Sure. I mean, first of all, you have to set it up to the extent you can find non-partisan people, people who are hopeful — I know, hopefully, retired prosecutors, retired FBI agents. I mean, we have so many great law enforcement agencies to draw from, former you know, FBI, ATF, DEA, Park Police, Capitol Police, Secret Service Uniformed Division, you know, it goes on and on and on. The crimes that have been committed that I see kind of hiding in plain sight: you’ve got conspiracy to defraud the U.S. You’ve got obstructing justice. You’ve got obstructing Congress. These are all separate statutory crimes. I can rattle off the numbers but it probably wouldn’t be all that interesting or helpful.

You’ve got tampering with a witness. We saw a tweet in real time while Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was testifying, he was tweeting and let me tell you as a career prosecutor, when you’re tweeting and you’re trying to chill the ongoing testimony of a witness, it is tampering with a witness under 18 USC 1512. There’s no two ways about it. He bribed President Zelensky. He committed campaign finance violations with Michael Cohen. He made false statements to the FBI as part of the Mueller probe. He has been an accessory after the fact to, of all people, Vladimir Putin by standing up in Helsinki and giving him aid and comfort. That is the crime of accessory after the fact under 18 USC, Section Three, and I could go on but we probably don’t have enough time.

MH: Yeah, there’s so many things to do with kind of trying to extort Amazon and using the U.S. Postal Service against them and also many campaign finance violations, Stormy Daniels. We know there is a long list that we’ve discussed on this show before. One thing I would say is that you said earlier in the interview that you’re optimistic that on this crime, this alleged crime of negligent homicide, that he could face some kind of indictment, charges from the states, from different jurisdictions. I’m not so optimistic myself. For a start, you mentioned the Trump Crimes Commission and drawing from the FBI. Come on, Glenn, Robert Mueller was a Republican former head of the FBI and they didn’t take him seriously. They discredited and demonized him very quickly and have never ever taken anything he said, seriously. So I’m not sure that you can find the people that anyone’s going to take seriously on the Republican side.

And then I think the Democrats just don’t have the backbone for this. Because right now you’re talking about, you know, the extreme position of prosecuting Trump for a crime. Meanwhile, Joe Biden the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, aides of his are briefing journalists that they don’t think this is the right time to even criticize Trump, to attack him. They think the country needs to get behind the president. I mean, I just think it’s mad right now that you know, here you are making a very good case for why he could be criminally responsible for Americans dying and yet members of the opposition party aren’t saying anything even close to that.

GK: Yeah, I share your skepticism and your pessimism. And I hope that my optimism doesn’t become Pollyanna-ism. There’s a lot of isms going on there. When you look at the Mueller report, it is expressly a blueprint for future prosecutions. Now, we had one sort of quasi-prosecution which was the Senate impeachment trial, which was not based on the evidence. That was based on politics. But you know, it is a blueprint for a future prosecution for the many counts of obstruction of justice that are documented in volume two of Mueller’s report. Now, we all have yet to see the full unredacted Mueller report.

But we are one giant step closer to that because in recent days, Judge Reggie Walton who was a lion of the federal district court here in Washington D.C. now has a copy of the unredacted Mueller report that he figuratively had to wrestle out of Bill Barr’s hands after publishing an opinion that said, and I quote, “Bill Barr lacks candor, and he tried to spin the findings and conclusions of the Mueller report, and he dubiously handled the release of the Mueller report and he has been directly contradicted by the Mueller report.”

It was a scathing legal opinion authored by Judge Reggie Walton. He now has the unredacted Mueller report and he is making decisions about what should be released to we the people. It’s a FOIA suit. It will first be released, BuzzFeed and EPIC, Electronic Privacy Information Center, and then hopefully we the people will see what’s under all of those redactions, those black bars in the Mueller report. That will have evidence that can be used come January 2022 to investigate and if the evidence supports it, prosecute Donald Trump.

MH: Just before we finish, Glenn, you upset a lot of people when you tweeted out about Trump and negligent homicide by daring to link the president to such a serious crime. I believe you even got death threats from MAGA people, from Trump supporters online. Were you surprised by that? Does it bother you?

GK: OK, was I surprised by it? You know, I was somewhat surprised because I have tweeted out that he’s committed lots and lots and lots of crimes. And nobody seemed to be all that bothered by it. But when I had the temerity to suggest that his conduct actually fulfills the elements, the legal elements of involuntary manslaughter, I got a whole bunch of death threats. Now, I was followed by an actual hitman when I was trying RICO cases in the District of Columbia so you know, bring it on my friends. But yes, I was a little surprised that they seemed to sit up and take note and be offended by that, whereas they weren’t offended by the fact that he had obstructed justice, obstructed Congress, engaged in campaign finance violations, bribery of President Zelensky etc. I’m not sure why I offended the MAGA sensibilities saying that he also has committed involuntary manslaughter.

MH: I love by the way, I love the irony of people saying “How dare you accuse my president of trying to kill people? I’m gonna kill you for saying that.” But anyways, let’s not try and reason too much with the irrational.

GK: Yes, yes, the irony is lost on some people.

MH: Glenn, thanks so much for boldly making the case and do stay safe in these crazy times. Thanks for coming on Deconstructed.

GK: Thank you, Mehdi. I appreciate it.

MH: That was Glenn Kirschner, former federal prosecutor in Washington D.C., former head of the D.C. homicide section in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, making the case that Trump can be criminally prosecuted for coronavirus-related deaths in the United States. Do you agree with him? I do, but I’m no lawyer and I have no faith in the Democrats or in prosecutors to make the case for his prosecution come January 2021 — assuming he’s even out of power then, and with Joe Biden as his opponent, there’s a very good chance he could get re-elected for a second term. God help us all.

The thing is, whether we’re lawyers or not, I think we can all agree that at some point Trump needs to be held to account for his many crimes and abuses of power, in some shape or form, especially now when people are dying as a result of his clear negligence, whether it’s criminal or not. I hope and pray that the death toll doesn’t hit the quarter of a million mark that the White House was suggesting it might earlier this week, though even tens of thousands of deaths are crazy excessive, hugely tragic and many of them could have been avoided.

So, we all need to do our part, at least, stay indoors, do social distancing, wash your hands, help flatten the curve. Good luck.

[Music interlude.]

MH: That’s our show. We’ll be taking a break next week but will be back in two weeks time.

Deconstructed is a production of First Look Media and The Intercept. Our producer is Zach Young. The show was mixed by Bryan Pugh. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. Betsy Reed is The Intercept’s editor in chief.

And I’m Mehdi Hasan. You can follow me on Twitter @mehdirhasan. If you haven’t already, please do subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. Go to theintercept.com/deconstructed to subscribe from your podcast platform of choice, iPhone, Android, whatever it is. If you’re subscribed already, please do leave us a rating or review – it helps new people find the show. And if you want to give us feedback, email us at Podcasts@theintercept.com. Thanks so much for listening. See you back here in a couple of weeks.

[The Romulan Republic]

New York will issue absentee mail ballots to all registered voters:

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watc ... tee-ballot

Meanwhile, Dickless is using coronavirus loans to try to gain greater control over the Postal Service, including high-level hirings (ie, he will be able to purge the Postal Service of career civil servants and replace them with loyalist hacks like he did to the DOJ):

https://washingtonpost.com/business/202 ... -loan-usps

Sanders is on the attack as well, alleging that he's trying to break up the union and privatize the Postal Service.

[FireNexus]

More likely it’s in service of a future Presidential run. He’s trying to frame his job in a certain way for when he goes after the big job. He’s trying to light that candle with this match while there is a gas leak, of course. And if he does light his house on fire, there is no water to put it out. But I doubt he is actually dumb enough to really think California is seceding. Just dumb enough to not see how dangerous the sentiment is.

[mr friendly guy]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... uqMoj-VcFs

Coronavirus came to New York from Europe, not China, governor says
Nathan Layne, Jessica Resnick-Ault
4 MIN READ

(Reuters) - New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Friday pointed to research showing that strains of the novel coronavirus entered his state from Europe, not China, and said that travel bans enacted by U.S. President Donald Trump were too late to halt its spread.

Cuomo cited research from Northeastern University estimating that more than 10,000 New Yorkers may have contracted the disease by the time the state had its first confirmed case on March 1. He said he believed Italy was the likely source.

The governor noted that Trump ordered a ban on travel from China on Feb. 2, more than a month after news reports had emerged about an outbreak in the city of Wuhan, and decided to restrict travel from Europe the following month. By that time, the virus had spread widely in the United States, he said.

“We closed the front door with the China travel ban, which was right,” Cuomo told a briefing. “But we left the back door open because the virus had left China by the time we did the China travel ban.”

With his comments, Cuomo thrust himself into a heated and politically fraught debate about when and how the virus first entered the United States and whether officials like Trump and himself could have saved more lives if they had acted sooner.

Cuomo defended his own actions by pointing to the 19 days between New York’s first confirmed case and his lockdown order, arguing that he had moved faster than any other state.

He also said Trump, who last week halted U.S. contributions to the World Health Organization after accusing it of promoting China’s “disinformation” about the outbreak, was right to question whether the WHO responded properly to the crisis.

But Cuomo took aim at what he described as a slow reaction by the country’s leaders, even as increasingly disturbing reports emerged out of China in January and February about how quickly the virus was spreading and killing people.

Cuomo said as many as 2.2 million people took flights from Europe to New York and New Jersey airports in those two months, many of them likely carrying the highly contagious respiratory illness COVID-19.

“We acted two months after the China outbreak. When you look back, does anyone think the virus was still in China waiting for us to act two months later?” Cuomo said. “The horse had already left the barn by the time we moved.”

Cuomo said it was important that the country learns from the mistakes that were made because the virus could surge again in autumn or a new virus could emerge. “It will happen again. Bank on it. Let’s not put our head in the sand,” he said.

He said it was too early to reopen his state, which is in lockdown until at least May 15. He said the three-day rolling average for people newly admitted for COVID-19 was holding stubbornly around 1,300 per day, a worrisome sign.

But on a positive note, he said hospitalizations for COVID-19 totaled 14,258 on Thursday, declining for the tenth straight day. He reported 422 additional deaths, the lowest daily total since March 31.

Reiterating what we already know, America's strain of covid came from Europe.

Now Cuomo claims in the article to be the fastest governor to implement a lockdown within 19 days. However he had the advantage that we already knew a bit about covid by that time it spread to the US. Remember, the coronavirus was identified on Jan 8 by China. Wait, didn't the Chinese lockdown on Jan 23 (although they had partial lockdown earlier). So they took 15 days after identifying the agent to locking down. But they were too slow, because Western media said so.

[mr friendly guy]

Apparently China has now mastered necromancy.

https://www.rcrwireless.com/20200421/5g ... cribers-q1

China Mobile adds over 29 million 5G subscribers in Q1
By Juan Pedro Tomás on APRIL 21, 20205G, APAC, Business, Carriers, LTE, Network Infrastructure, Wireless

China Mobile, the world’s largest operators in terms of subscribers, added 29.17 million 5G subscribers in the first quarter of 2020, the company said in its earnings release.

The carrier said it ended March with a total of 31.72 million 5G subscribers, compared to 2.55 million 5G customers at the end of last year.

Remember when the Chinese carriers lost 21 million accounts and certain aspects of Western media kept on going about how China was hiding their numbers of deaths. The more logical explanation is that people have multiple accounts, personal and business, and with the economy not so great during a lockdown, people closed their unused accounts.

But apparently certain people interpreted that as 21 million died. Well ok, I guess the Chinese just resurrected 21 million and added an extra 8 million too.

[bilateralrope]

WHO warns against idea of Covid-19 'immunity passports'

The World Health Organisation is cautioning against the idea of "immunity passports." It says there is currently no evidence that people who have recovered from Covid-19 and have antibodies are protected against a second infection.

The concept of "immunity passports" or "risk-free certificates" has been floated as a way of allowing people protected against reinfection to travel and return to work.

But the Geneva-based UN health agency says in a scientific brief released Saturday that more research is needed.

It says that "at this point in the pandemic, there is not enough evidence about the effectiveness of antibody- mediated immunity to guarantee the accuracy of an 'immunity passport' or 'risk- free certificate."'

It argues that people who assume they are immune to reinfection may ignore public health advice, and such certificates could raise the risks of continued virus transmission.

WHO adds that tests for antibodies of the new coronavirus also "need further validation to determine their accuracy and reliability."

Sounds like an idea just asking to fall apart when people start issuing fraudulent certificates even after we settle the question of immunity.

[The Romulan Republic]

Its begun: New York City sees a spike in people ingesting household cleaners following Dear Leader's advice:

https://nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny- ... story.html

An unusually high number of New Yorkers contacted city health authorities over fears that they had ingested bleach or other household cleaners in the 18 hours that followed President Trump’s bogus claim that injecting such products could cure coronavirus, the Daily News has learned.

The Poison Control Center, a subagency of the city’s Health Department, managed a total of 30 cases of possible exposure to disinfectants between 9 p.m. Thursday and 3 p.m. Friday, a spokesman said.

None of the people who reached out died or required hospitalization, the spokesman said.

But compared to last year, the number of cases was worthy of a double-take.

According to data obtained by The News, the Poison Control Center only handled 13 similar cases in the same 18-hour period last year.

Moreover, out of the cases reported between Thursday and Friday, nine were specifically about possible exposure to Lysol. Ten were in regards to bleach and 11 about household cleaners in general, the spokesman said.

In last year’s 18-hour period, there were no cases reported about Lysol exposure and only two were specifically in regards to bleach, the data shows.

During Thursday night’s coronavirus briefing at the White House, Trump suggested doctors may be able to cure coronavirus by injecting disinfectants like bleach directly into the lungs of their patients.

"Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs so it’d be interesting to check that … It sounds interesting to me,” Trump said, turning to his health advisers and asking them to look into the matter.

On Friday afternoon, following widespread pushback from medical experts, Trump claimed his dangerous suggestion was a joke.

"I said it sarcastically,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Despite Trump’s sarcasm defense, health and emergency agencies took his comments seriously and warned people against listening to the president.

“To be clear, disinfectants are not intended for ingestion either by mouth, by ears, by breathing them in any way, shape or form,” New York City Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot tweeted. “Doing so can put people at great risk.”

A White House spokesman demurred Friday night when asked for comment on the Big Apple’s spike in possible cases of household product poisoning in the aftermath of Trump’s comments.

“The media has lost control with their mischaracterizations and outlandish headlines about what the president said, and completely ignore that he has consistently emphasized that Americans should consult with their doctors regarding coronavirus treatment,” said the spokesman, Judd Deere.

Latest coronavirus updates: Click here for our roundup of the most important developments from NYC and around the world.

Americans are literally poisoning themselves with deadly chemicals because their President told them it could save their lives during a pandemic.

[bilateralrope]

I'm just waiting to hear how people try to apply UV light internally.

[Captain Seafort]

Its begun: New York City sees a spike in people ingesting household cleaners following Dear Leader's advice:

Americans are literally poisoning themselves with deadly chemicals because their President told them it could save their lives during a pandemic.

Who's more foolish? The fool, or the fool who follows him?

[The Romulan Republic]

Its begun: New York City sees a spike in people ingesting household cleaners following Dear Leader's advice:

Americans are literally poisoning themselves with deadly chemicals because their President told them it could save their lives during a pandemic.

Who's more foolish? The fool, or the fool who follows him?

As much as I might despise the Trumpers, at this point they're basically brainwashed cult members being lead to their deaths by an orange Jim Jones. I'm not going to let Trump off the hook by blaming the people who listen to his "advice".

You know who's really the worst? Its the people who know how insane this is, and still go along with it for the sake of "normality" or "protocol" or keeping their jobs. I don't know if Trump actually knows how bad his "advice" is or not, but I know that he's surrounded by people who do know, and they're going along with it instead of invoking the 25th Amendment, impeaching him, or even just pulling a coup and marching him out of the White House in cuffs.

They're the worst. The ones who are not fools, just self-serving cowards.

[Zaune]

You know who's really the worst? Its the people who know how insane this is, and still go along with it for the sake of "normality" or "protocol" or keeping their jobs. I don't know if Trump actually knows how bad his "advice" is or not, but I know that he's surrounded by people who do know, and they're going along with it instead of invoking the 25th Amendment, impeaching him, or even just pulling a coup and marching him out of the White House in cuffs.

I'm actually starting to feel a bit sorry for Trump at this point. Whatever kind of man he was earlier in his life, it's becoming pretty obvious that he's been suffering from dementia for some time and it's getting steadily worse. And yet nobody in his staff has the moral courage to confront the issue even for his sake, much less the country's.

[The Romulan Republic]

While I can't feel much sympathy for him, the enablers are the biggest problem.

The Founders anticipated the possibility of a criminal or mad President. There are safeguards in place to deal with that. And yet they have one by one proven useless. Because they never anticipated that the Cabinet, Senate, and Courts would all stand by a criminal or mad President even to the destruction of the country.

We have one last conventional check to try with the election. If that fails, we're down to unconventional ones, and mostly illegal ones.

[MKSheppard]

California will stop being a “nation-state” the minute they can’t import water. Newsome is playing a dangerous game here, repeatedly hinting at California seceding.

Jefferson then secedes from California and petitions for admission to the Union.

[MKSheppard]

I'm just waiting to hear how people try to apply UV light internally.

That's actually an experimental medical treatment; there's been some experiments with it for use with catheters going back to 2018:

https://newatlas.com/far-uvc-antibacterial/56039/

And a newer one that might work:

https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/ay ... -potential

Basically, the idea seems to be that if you're going to catheterize or intubate someone, why not have a fiberoptic go in with the vent or catheter and pump low levels of UV through that fiberoptic to prevent infections from the catheter/vent?

[MKSheppard]

In other news, a former Federal prosecutor has argued that once out of office, Trump could (in addition to the existing cases for campaign finance violation and obstruction of justice) be potentially charged with Negligent Homicide in every jurisdiction in America where people have died of Coronavirus due to his actions, and anticipates that charges will likely be filed in multiple states once Trump leaves office

It's more likely that Cuomo of NY gets executed for murder.

https://nypost.com/2020/04/23/coronavir ... body-bags/

Coronavirus patients admitted to Queens nursing home — with body bags
By Gabrielle Fonrouge, Bernadette Hogan and Bruce Golding
April 23, 2020 | 8:03pm | Updated

The first coronavirus patients admitted to a Queens nursing home under a controversial state mandate arrived along with some grim accessories — a supply of body bags, The Post has learned.

An executive at the facility — which was previously free of the deadly disease — said the bags were in the shipment of personal protective equipment received the same day the home was forced to begin treating two people discharged from hospitals with COVID-19.

“My colleague noticed that one of the boxes was extremely heavy. Curious as to what could possibly be making that particular box so much heavier than the rest, he opened it,” the exec told The Post Thursday.

“The first two coronavirus patients were accompanied by five body bags.”

Within days, three of the bags were filled with the first of 30 residents who would die there after Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Health Department handed down its March 25 directive that bars nursing homes from refusing to admit “medically stable” coronavirus patients, the exec said.

Like clockwork, the nursing home has received five body bags a week — every week — from city officials.

“Cuomo has blood on his hands. He really does. There’s no way to sugarcoat this,” the health care executive added.

“Why in the world would you be sending coronavirus patients to a nursing home, where the most vulnerable population to this disease resides?”

Since March 25, the Queens nursing home has admitted 17 patients from hospitals who tested positive for coronavirus, but in a bitter irony, most of them have fared well, the exec said. Those who have died passed away without a test or while awaiting the results from one.

“The rest of the people are dropping like flies — literally like flies — and most of them have been with us for years,” the exec added.

COVID-19 has killed at least 3,540 residents of New York’s nursing homes and adult care facilities as of Wednesday, according to the most recent state Health Department data.

The Queens story is painfully repeating at a Manhattan nursing home.

Administrators there told The Post they’ve also received body bags in weekly shipments of supplies, which City Hall confirmed the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene was distributing to nursing homes.

One of the Manhattan administrators said the state’s admission mandate came with no warning or even time to prepare facilities for an influx of coronavirus patients, who the state says must be quarantined inside nursing homes and treated by separate staffers.

“By the time I even got to the work the next day, I had phone calls, emails from just about every hospital in the area,” the administrator said. Previously, the person added, the facility had required “two negative test results before we’d even consider taking someone into the building.”



Cuomo: 'It's not our job' to provide PPE to nursing homes
Officials at both nursing homes declined to have their names published because they feared retribution from Cuomo, who regulates them. The Post reviewed emails, state regulatory orders, other public documents and spoke to five employees across the two facilities to confirm their stories.

Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi called the “blood on his hands” comment about the governor “disgusting” and accused nursing home operators of “trying to deflect from their failures.”

He vowed state officials were “going to get to the bottom” of the high death count in nursing homes, where Cuomo has said COVID-19 spreads “like fire through dry grass.”

Earlier, Cuomo said that if a nursing home can’t properly quarantine and treat the patients, it was supposed to move them to other facilities or ask the Health Department to arrange a transfer.

But the March 25 mandate does not detail how, and state Health Commissioner Howard Zucker said he was not aware that DOH had received any transfer requests.

“That is the rule and that is the regulation and they have to comply with that,” Cuomo said at the coronavirus briefing in Albany.

“And the regulation is common sense: If you can’t provide adequate care, you can’t have the patient in your facility and that’s your basic fiduciary obligation — I would say, ethical obligation — and it’s also your legal obligation.”

“Now, when a person gets transferred, they lose a patient, they lose that revenue, I understand, but the relationship is, the contract is, ‘You have this resident, you get paid, you must provide adequate care,’” he said.

Cuomo also doubled down on his remark a day earlier that “it’s not our job” to provide nursing homes with personal protective equipment, saying, “We have given them thousands and thousands of PPE.”

“It’s their primary responsibility like it’s a hospital’s primary responsibility. And hospitals ran into problems, nursing homes ran into problems.”

“This is a national story, right? Turn on the national news any given time, and you have people saying, ‘We can’t get enough PPE,’ right?” he added.

A member of Cuomo’s coronavirus task force — SUNY-Empire State College president Jim Malatras — said the state had distributed 417,000 surgical grade masks, 101,000 gowns, 85,000 face shields, 422,000 gloves and 5,000 gallons of hand sanitizer to nursing homes over the last two weeks.

[mr friendly guy]

Its begun: New York City sees a spike in people ingesting household cleaners following Dear Leader's advice:

Americans are literally poisoning themselves with deadly chemicals because their President told them it could save their lives during a pandemic.

Who's more foolish? The fool, or the fool who follows him?

The followers. The foolish leaders gets tangible benefits from the followers. In this case the presidency and the financial benefits when he screws over the emolument rules, the prestige etc. What benefits do the followers get? Aside from feeling good about themselves for various reasons such as their side one/screw the libs etc, they don't really get that much benefit. And before someone says maybe these psychological benefits for "their side" winning is good for them, the leader also gets those benefits.