Navigating Coronavirus — August 5

In today’s email, we have new Navigator polling on mask mandates, school reopening, Trump and Governors’ approval, and Americans’ ongoing concerns with the pandemic — which is getting worse as Trump gives up on fighting it, accepting 1,000 deaths a day as routine. We also spotlight the outsized impact on Black and Latinx communities as unemployed people continue to suffer while Republicans delay action on a relief package.

Read on for today’s Navigating Coronavirus…

It’s been 161 days since President Trump said we’d soon have zero cases in the U.S. We now have 4.9 million cases and more than 160,000 deaths.

TOP TREND …

• NEW NAVIGATOR POLL >> For the first time, a majority of Americans (51%) now know someone who has gotten coronavirus.

THE LATEST

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

1. AS MORE THAN 1,000 AMERICANS DIE EVERY DAY, TRUMP HAS GIVEN UP ON FIGHTING THE VIRUS.

In his now infamous interview with Axios, Trump shrugged off the deaths of more than 159,000 Americans. He consistently downplays the pandemic — even bragging that “we have done a great job” battling coronavirus — yet the reality is that because of his failed response, the United States has the highest number of deaths in the world.

• Washington Post: “The most dangerous false positive: Trump’s ongoing insistence that the pandemic is under control”
• TIME: “Here’s What Trump Got Wrong About America’s COVID-19 Death Rate”

Trump’s refusal to take the pandemic seriously and use his authority to actually fight it has left the country in a worsening crisis, and now governors from both parties are having to go it alone in finding solutions.

• CNN: “19,000 more Americans could die from COVID-19 in the next 20 days, CDC composite forecast shows”
• CNN: “CNN asked more than 20 public health and lab industry sources whether Giroir and the administration were doing all they could to fix the country’s testing problems and there was an overwhelming consensus: No.”
• CNN: “A bipartisan group of six governors has joined forces with the Rockefeller Foundation to pursue a deal for 3 million coronavirus antigen tests, which would help create the country’s first coordinated testing strategy in the absence of a national plan.”

2. CORONAVIRUS IS SPREADING WORSE THAN EVER BEFORE AND PUTTING OUR HEALTH CARE SYSTEM IN CRISIS.

Coronavirus isn’t sparing anyone or any area of the country — it has spread to urban, suburban, rural areas and now even U.S. islands. Communities are reeling as hospitals face bed shortages and testing remains unreliable.

• Politico: “New rural hot spots are ICU bed deserts, study finds”
• STAT: “Nearly half of low-income communities have no ICU beds in their area”
• Fortune: “Why COVID-19 testing in the U.S. is still plagued with delays and inconsistencies”

And as he dismisses the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans as routine, Trump clearly cares more about painting a rosy picture than actually tackling this crisis.

• Vanity Fair: “Trump Cares More About ‘Credit’ Than COVID”
• AP: “Trump nursing home plan limits supply of free COVID-19 tests”
• Chicago Tribune: “Here’s what dozens of educators across Illinois say about schools reopening: ‘I’m scared. I want to do my job, but I don’t want to die.’”

*NEW* NAVIGATOR TRACKING POLL

TODAY’S FULL SLIDE DECK >> HERE

• Mask mandates — and punishments for violating them — are overwhelmingly popular. More than three-quarters of Americans support mask mandates, and two-thirds would support fining people who don’t follow them, as Americans continue to view Trump as anti-mask.
• MORE >> Among seniors, support for mask mandates is even higher. 83% of Americans over the age of 65 support mask mandates.

• Opposition to reopening schools has gone up 24 points in two months, even as Trump continues to demand they open. A majority also continues to want more aggressive social distancing, not less, as the pandemic worsens.

• More and more Americans see the U.S. pandemic response as worse than other countries, as Trump falsely claims the opposite. Even among Republicans, the number who say so is up 14 points in the past few months.

• Most Americans don’t trust Trump to be honest about coronavirus data, as disapproval for his handling of the pandemic remains high. 57% oppose his recent effort to wrest control of data away from the CDC, as his pandemic response approval is 22 points underwater.

• Governors in high-infection states are seeing their approval ratings drop rapidly, as Trump remains underwater on every issue. In the past three weeks, governors in states where the pandemic is getting worse have seen their approval ratings drop 14 points.

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 Trump-McConnell’s continued obstruction of expanded unemployment benefits and the disparate impact this crisis is having on Black workers and women.

Republicans are scrambling to retreat from their push to cut the incomes of 30 million Americans during a pandemic and Trump is now floating unilateral action to fix the problem he caused — but workers and the economy are still paying the price for the GOP’s continued delay, dysfunction, and obstruction.

• REMINDER >> The House passed legislation extending enhanced unemployment benefits on May 15th — more than two months ago — and Democrats have been united in making it clear that extending further was a critical provision for any deal.
• The best path forward for workers and the economy is for Trump and his allies to accept that they were wrong and agree to extend the expanded unemployment benefits for as long as this crisis continues.

While Trump and his allies have extended and deepened the public health and economic crisis for everyone, Black and Latinx workers and women continue to be disproportionately impacted.

• A new study came out showing that Black women and Latinas are struggling to buy food or build savings as this crisis continues.
• The Federal Reserve released a new paper showing that Black-owned businesses have suffered disproportionately during this crisis.
• At the same time, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve says he lacks the tools to fight the Black-white unemployment gap, which is one reason that Groundwork’s Janelle Jones and CBBP’s Jared Bernstein proposed that the Federal Reserve be given the tools to target the Black unemployment rate directly.
• Must-read from new outlet The 19th >> “America’s first female recession”

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Navigating Coronavirus is a joint project of Governing for Impact, Groundwork Collaborative, The Hub Project, and Navigator Research.

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