Wondering on Wednesday (v199)

Ready... Set... Wonder!

Let's wonder about the coronavirus, for starters.

Remember when the House held impeachment depositions in the SCIF - the secure, compartmentalized info filing cabinet, or whatever you call it? And how horrible that was?  Well, I wonder why it is that, according to multiple sources who have spoken to Reuters, the administration is holding coronavirus meetings in a similar SCIF?

The officials said that dozens of classified discussions about such topics as the scope of infections, quarantines and travel restrictions have been held since mid-January in a high-security meeting room at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), a key player in the fight against the coronavirus.

And I wonder how it is that an NSC spokesman could make the following statement without snickering?

"From day one of the response to the coronavirus, NSC has insisted on the principle of radical transparency,” said the spokesman, John Ullyot. He added that the administration “has cut red tape and set the global standard in protecting the American people under President Trump’s leadership.”  (Emphasis added.)

Need an example of how we have NOT "set the global standard" under the president's leadership? Let's not try and wrap our arms around the entire response to the virus here in the US, let's wonder just about testing, OK?  Because testing, much more than hand-washing, is the key to identifying and dealing with the virus.

Here's a chart from March 8th published by Science Alert, showing the tests per million people stats from several countries. You'll see the US at the top of the chart, which is where we want to be, right? #MAGA and all? Well, no.

Now, the asterisk there on the US notes that the data is what the CDC has, and it "doesn't include accurate test counts from state, local, private and commercial labs." Which in and of itself is a problem, if you ask me, that the CDC doesn't even know what the heck is going on. 

But fear not; people are trying to figure it out for us. According to this March 9th article in The Atlantic,  

Nearly two weeks after the new coronavirus was first found to be spreading among Americans, the United States remains dangerously limited in its capacity to test people for the illness, an ongoing investigation from The Atlantic has found.

After surveying local data from across the country, we can only verify that 4,384 people have been tested for the coronavirus nationwide, as of Monday at 4 p.m. eastern time. These data are as comprehensive a compilation of official statistics as currently possible.

Now, let's compare that to the example of South Korea, as reported in this article, published today, in The Guardian:

The country is conducting about 15,000 tests a day, free of charge, and has carried out almost 200,000 screenings so far. It has also set up about 50 drive-through testing centres and distributed smartphone alerts about the movements of people who have tested positive.

So, NSC spokesman John Ullyot, if we've only tested around 5000 people, and South Korea is testing 15,000 each day, I'm not interested in having whatever swill you're selling. Thanks but no thanks, as they say.  But I do wonder how you people do this day in and day out, threatening us with "radical transparency" and delivering the exact opposite?

And no, I'm not panicking about the virus. I understand why people might be, but I'm much more panicked by the pandemic of lying permeating the Trump administration. Here are some links - ABC News, the NY Times, and Slate, and there are others -reporting on actual experts testifying before Congress today. I encourage you to take a look and get educated. The bottom line is, all of the news outlets are reporting that this is much worse than the president pretends it is - or wants it to be. 

What else is on the wondering agenda today? Well, there was that 'big Tuesday' thing yesterday, and it was, again, not what That Guy from Vermont was hoping for. He went home to Vermont without addressing supporters.  

Here are the results as we know them, as of around 7:30 PM here in NY. 

If you're a TGFV fan, this was not good, on the heels of Super Tuesday being not good, and on the heels of Iowa and New Hampshire being underwhelming, at best. 

In a statement earlier today, TGFV talked about the issue of electability, and how (per the email I got from him today)

while we are winning - very clearly - the ideological debate, we are losing, right now, the electability debate.

I cannot tell you how many people I and our campaign have spoken to that tell me that they like what our campaign stands for but they are going to vote for Joe Biden because they believe he is the best candidate to beat Trump.

Now. you may wonder if that's enough for him to step aside, and I can assure you, as he did today, that he's not. That will not be happening, at least not before the next round of primaries. He plans on debating hard on Sunday, and it seems he plans on asking all of the questions, not just answering them. During his remarks, he mentioned more than a handful of questions he planned on asking his friend Joe.   

So, what's the wondering about? Well, TGFV has regularly attacked the media for not reporting fairly, and for being part of the massive establishment that wants to take down his campaign. And so, I wonder if the reporters who were there today, or watching on TV were fast and furiously scribbling down the questions he wants to ask Papa Joe?  And I wonder whether reporters are going to ask Papa Joe what questions he wants to ask TGFV, so the moderators can ask those questions, too? 

A couple of other things I'm wondering about? 

The president plans on addressing the nation tonight (9PM, if you're interested) and I don't know yet whether he made enough headway with Congressional Republicans to get his now-til-election-day payroll tax waiver moving (not that he's trying to buy votes or anything), or if he's beaten Fed Chair Jerome Powell enough to get him to drop interest rates again, or what he has up his sleeve.  I wonder about that stuff, a little. 

But I heard on tonight's news that he went to Jared for help. That's right -- Jared of the ever-expanding portfolio has apparently been called in to write the speech that we'll hear later. And I wonder even more what the message will be with him behind the pen. Will we see new settlements of patients, maybe? You know, unilateral movements of them behind fences in areas that we can simply call coronavirus-free, and assume everyone will believe it? 

And I wonder, I do, about all the people who say this is "just the flu" and "just wash your hands" and whatnot, and how they feel about an economic stimulus for something so insignificant? I'm guessing they're up in arms, but you never know. (Well, wait -- we do know, of course. They are conspicuously quiet.)

Finally, let's turn to the sports world. 

We learned today that the NCAA is going to do March Madness without the madness that comes from having bodies in the seats. Other than game-essential folks and limited family members in attendance, the arenas will be empty. And so, I'm wondering if they'll get recordings of rabid fans from all the participating teams and blast them into the arenas during games? Because March Madness in silence? Yeah, there's no madness there. 

And last, we've got some fascinating stuff from the soccer world. As you may know, the US women's national soccer team has sued their governing body for equal pay with the men's team. There are some complicated issues here, from a legal responsibility perspective, but there's also this kind of stuff that makes one wonder.

That US men's team players often face openly hostile fans at their own home games, US Soccer argued, was also evidence that men work a different, more demanding job than women. The US men’s opponents, like Mexico, sometimes attract more supporters to games played on US soil than the US men do, especially in the wake of the men’s failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup.

Got it? You get paid more when you lose because it's hard to deal with fans who are mad at you for losing, than you do for winning because, I guess, the fans are nicer?

That should make anyone wonder.