Navigating Coronavirus — August 31

5 min readAug 31, 2020

In today’s email, we have new polling on school reopening, and we dive into the latest ways Trump is actively spreading the virus with his reckless disregard for science. And it’s now been one month since Trump pushed the economy and 30 million workers into crisis, so we take a look at the consequences and what must be done now.

Read on for today’s Navigating Coronavirus…

It’s been 187 days since President Trump said we’d soon have zero cases in the U.S. We now have 6.1 million cases and more than 187,000 deaths.

NEW NAVIGATOR POLLING…

A majority of Americans continue to oppose reopening schools this fall (55%), even as there has been some small movement in favor of reopening, especially among parents.

THE LATEST

Message guidance on the latest developments with President Trump’s handling of the crisis.

1. TRUMP IS NOW ACTIVELY SPREADING THE VIRUS WITH HIS RECKLESS DISREGARD FOR SCIENCE AND PUBLIC HEALTH.

We are already starting to see potentially devastating warnings of a week spent denying the existence of coronavirus: some attendees at the GOP convention tested positive for COVID-19. Trump and the GOP ignored safety measures and are now actively contributing to the spread of the virus — and what’s the White House’s official stance? “This is unavoidable.”

But that’s a lie: it never had to be this bad, and still doesn’t, if Trump would just listen to experts, take action, and stop politicizing the pandemic.

WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL >> “Everybody is going to catch this thing eventually.”
THE TRUTH >> It didn’t have to be this way. Trump’s failed response is costing Americans lives.
LOCKDOWN DELAYS COST LIVES: “Lockdown Delays Cost at Least 36,000 Lives, Data Show: Even small differences in timing would have prevented the worst exponential growth”
REOPENING TOO EARLY COST LIVES: “An internal Trump administration report expects about 200,000 daily cases by June … As President Trump presses for states to reopen their economies, his administration is privately projecting a steady rise in the number of coronavirus cases and deaths over the next several weeks.”
FOREGOING MASKS COST LIVES: “Nearly 70,000 lives could be saved in the next 3 months if more Americans wore masks, researchers say”

But Trump refuses to learn from these mistakes. Instead, he’s doubling down on strong-arming scientists and independent regulatory agencies to bend to his political will.

Washington Post: “Inside Trump’s pressure campaign on federal scientists over a COVID-19 treatment”
“The misrepresentations became a stunning debacle for the FDA, shaking its professional staff to the core and undermining its credibility as it approaches one of the most important and fraught decisions in its history amid a divisive presidential election — deciding when a covid-19 vaccine is safe and effective. Yet again, the president had harnessed the machinery of government to advance his political agenda — with potentially corrosive effects on public trust in government scientists’ handling of the pandemic.”
CNBC: “‘FDA willing to fast track coronavirus vaccine before phase three trials end’: The comments come about a week after President Trump accused the FDA for intentionally moving slowly to hurt him politically.”

2. TRUMP’S PANDEMIC HEALTH CARE PROGRAM DUPED AMERICANS, LEAVING MANY WITHOUT INSURANCE BUT WITH COSTLY BILLS.

Millions of people lost health coverage because of the pandemic, and Trump’s quick-fix “program” turned out to be a scam. His program has created chaos and confusion as sick Americans try to navigate the health system — leaving them unknowingly without coverage or with piles of surprise bills.

EYE-OPENING REPORT >> NYT: “Trump Program to Cover Uninsured COVID-19 Patients Falls Short of Promise: Some patients are still receiving staggering bills. Others don’t qualify because conditions other than COVID-19 were their primary diagnosis.”
“Critics say the stopgap program is among the strongest evidence that Mr. Trump and his party have no vision for improving health coverage, and instead promote piecemeal solutions, even in a national health crisis.”
“It has caused confusion at participating hospitals, which in some cases have mistakenly billed patients like Ms. Cortez who should be covered by it. Few patients seem to know the program exists, so they don’t question the charges. And some hospitals and other medical providers have chosen not to participate in the program, which bars them from seeking any payment from patients whose bills they submit to it.”
“Large numbers of patients have also been disqualified because COVID-19 has to be the primary diagnosis for a case to be covered (unless the patient is pregnant). Since hospitalized COVID patients often have other serious medical conditions, many have other primary diagnoses. At Jackson Health in Miami, for example, only 60 percent of uninsured COVID-19 patients had decisively met the requirements to have their charges covered under the program as of late July, a spokeswoman said.”

ECONOMIC CRISIS IN CONTEXT

The latest on how the economic crisis sparked by coronavirus is being fueled by President Trump’s actions and years of conservative economic policies, focusing today on how a month has now passed since Trump pushed 30 million workers and the economy into a completely unnecessary crisis.

It has now been a month since President Trump cut the incomes of 30 million Americans and pushed the economy into a completely unnecessary crisis.

Last week we learned that another 1.4 million workers filed for unemployment — bringing the total to nearly 60 million over the last 23 weeks.
Remember: Economic data is lagging, but we are already seeing the impact of Trump’s actions on workers and the economy, and as more data comes in, it will be even clearer how devastating they were for families and the economy.
READ >> An economist lays out how the fall in wages from February to July was offset by the $600 emergency unemployment benefits that Trump cut off.
Reminder: Nearly 40 percent who lost their job in pandemic say they don’t have a month’s worth of savings and we’re already seeing debt, evictions, and hunger starting to increase following Trump’s cutoff of critical economic support.
Trump is still trying to spin the economic damage away with weak and convoluted executive actions that even Goldman Sachs says are “too little, too late” — and his economic advisors are still saying that “the economy would scrape by without another relief package.”

The bottom line: Congress needs to move quickly to fix Trump’s mistakes and extend the $600 unemployment benefit lifeline for 30 million families and the overall economy.