This year it will be even more somber than usual with over 90,000 americans killed over the past 2 1 2 months by the coronavirus, with over 1. 5 million americans infected with the virus. But memorial day this year, again, one week from today, is also going to be more notable than normal this year because memorial day this year is also the day by which Vice President pence said this whole thing, this whole epidemic, was going to be over, done and dusted in the United States. Vice president pence is, of course, not just the Vice President. Hes the head of the White House Coronavirus task force. Even as he went to the mayo clinic and talked to coronavirus patients while not wearing a mask, even when he caused all the senior Political Leadership of the state of iowa to have to go into quarantine after he visited with them with no mask and no gloves literally hours after one of his top staffers tested positive, despite all of the stuff he has done in public, Vice President pence nevertheless gets credited with being less [ whistle ] than the president when it comes to the epidemic. But i think this should be constantly revised because for one thing, here he is announcing on the Geraldo Rivera radio show that by memorial day this year, by a week from today, this would be done. It should be all wrapped up by this time next week. I think honestly if you look at the trends today, that i think by memorial day weekend, we will largely have this coronavirus epidemic behind us. Well, from your lips to gods ears. Your lips to gods ears, mr. Vice president. I think honestly if you look at the trends, i think by memorial day weekend, we will largely have this coronavirus epidemic behind us. Wouldnt that be awesome if this thing was going to be over next week . This thing is not going to be over next week. I mean as ridiculous as that is, though, coming from the Vice President while he is running the Coronavirus Task force for the white house, that thinking and that specificity about when its going to be over by turns out to be kind of an important piece of the puzzle in terms of us figuring out, us understanding why our National Response to the epidemic has been so terrible over time. I mean, look, heres a really simple way to look at whats going on with us as a country right now. This is total deaths from coronavirus in our country over time in the United States. The red line there is the deaths just in the tristate area, so thats no, new jersey, connecticut. New york was the epicenter. The tristate area got walloped, it dominated in deaths for the initial weeks of the epidemic. So thats the red line there. You see its shape sort of flattening out. The blue line there is the deaths from coronavirus in the rest of the country, which surpassed the tristate area about a week ago and is still just climbing on up. So what this is a very simple idea, right . But what this is showing is that the first worsthit areas in the country are finally starting to get better. But the rest of the country now is not only catching up to how bad those first three states were, the rest of the country is now getting inexorably worse. Its even easier to see when you dont look at deaths but instead look at total cases. The red line is the tristate area, new york, new jersey, and connecticut. And the other line, the blue line, is the whole rest of the country other than those three states. You see the tristate area flattening out as they start to get a handle on their epidemic. And the rest of the country is just a ramp straight up. This is whats going on in our country right now. One epidemic is finally flattening and waning. Thats in the first hardesthit part of the country. And the rest of the country is going great guns, not letting up at all. Thats not the kind of graph, thats not the kind of growth you would want or expect to see in a country where people are being told to open up, its all behind us, everythings fine. Heres another look at the same situation. This is the list of where the outbreak is worst now, which is something that the New York Times has been tracking on a daily basis. This is new cases per capita over the past two weeks. This is the same portrait of the same country, just painted a different way. Number five, where the outbreak is worst now, new cases over the last two weeks, worst is pine bluff, arkansas. Number four is st. Cloud, minnesota. Number three is amarillo texas. Number two, sioux city, iowa. The number one worst place in the country in terms of where the outbreak is the worst right now is gallup, new mexico. Thats where the epidemic is worst right now in terms of the case numbers piling up over the past two weeks. Its a whole swath of the country. Thats not one place where its bad and everybody else is all right. Thats the whole country, right . You could also just look at where the case numbers are growing the fastest right now, and its a similar portrait. The top five there is arizona, texas, north carolina, north carolina, and then texas again. If the epidemic is bad and worsening the fastest in all of these heartland places, right, growing this fast in all of these heartland and southern towns, why is there all this political pressure that now is the time to open up, particularly in republicancontrolled states . Well, it doesnt come from nowhere. It comes from a very specific place in washington. It comes from a specific kind of magical thinking that weve had out of the Trump White House, which is traceable to a very specific decision that they made. And that is what has brought us to this weird place where Vice President pence is fantasizing out loud on the radio with Geraldo Rivera that by this time next week, this whole thing will be in the Rearview Mirror. Well be looking back on all this and laughing, right . This is whats brought us to the point where the president has been saying its all just going to go away right away like magic, and we dont even need a vaccine because by the time we have a vaccine, it will be all gone by then. Why are the president and the Vice President saying those things . Why are they telling everybody to open up in the country as if our curves are the opposite of what they actually are . This has sort of been hiding in plain sight. The Washington Post reported this out at the beginning of this month, and we are now seeing it come to fruition as the deadlines set by the white house from their magical thinking that theyve been working on for the past month have now started to come to pass. This is from the Washington Post just a couple of weeks ago. Quote, the epidemiological models under review in the white house situation room in late march were bracing. In a bestcase scenario, it showed the Novel Coronavirus was likely to kill more than 100,000 americans. President trump was apprehensive about so much carnage on his watch yet also impatient to reopen the economy, and he wanted data to justify doing so. So the white house considered its own analysis. A small team led by Kevin Hassett, former chairman of trumps council on economic advisers, with no background in Infectious Diseases, quietly built an econo mettic model to guide. White house aides interpreted the analysis as prediktsing that the daily death count would peak in midapril before dropping off substantially and that there would be far fewer fatalities than nationally seen. This model was embraced inside the west wing by the president s soninlaw, jared kushner, and other powerful aides helping to oversee the governments pandemic response. The model affirmed their own skepticism about the severity of the virus and bolstered their case to shift the focus to the economy, which they firmly believed would determine whether trump wins a second term. By the end of april, though, with more americans dying in that one month than in all of the vietnam war, it became clear that the Kevin Hassett econometric model was too good to be true. A former Senior Administration official briefed on the data described it as, quote, a catastrophic miss. The president s course, however, would not be changed. Trump and kushner nevertheless began to declare a great victory against the virus while urging america to start reopening businesses and schools. They didnt like the real models, and so they invented their own model inside the Trump White House about a month ago. And that model from a white house economist with no background whatsoever in health, let alone infectious disease, told them that this thing was soon to be done. It was going to be over. What did they call this . They called this an econometric model created by Kevin Hassett, this economist with no background in Infectious Diseases. That was the Washington Post on may 2nd. Two days later, white house officials gave this model a name. Quote, white house officials have been relying on models including a, quote, cubic model prepared by trump adviser and economist Kevin Hassett and the council of economic advisers. What is this cubic model thats telling them we should get the whole country open right away because this thing is going away magically on its own and soon . It will be in our Rearview Mirror by the time we get to memorial day. What is this cubic model . Nobody really knows, but the Washington Post did get multiple white house sources to tell them what that model said. Quote, the model shows deaths dropping precipitously in may and essentially going to zero by may 15th. Zero deaths by may 15th. May 15th was this past friday, three days ago. American deaths from coronavirus did not go to zero by may 15th. Why are they calling this a cubic model . Why did the white house decide this was the model they were going to follow . That seems obvious. What is a cubic model . Where did they get this . Nobody really knows. A cubic function is a mathematical concept that has nothing to do with how viruses work or contagion works. It is a sort of a math way to put a meaningless line over a bunch of numbers on a graph that makes the numbers look like theyll drop to zero or less than zero right after they peak. You can do that. You can draw a line like that on any amount of data on an excel spreadsheet without having any understanding of Infectious Diseases or contagion whatsoever. And im sure its very comforting if you decide to believe if that line is a real thing. But that line isnt a real thing. Its just a thing you can put on a graph. Kevin hassett and the council of economic advisers eventually tweeted out this sharpie look at this. This isnt somebody else drawing on it. This is actually what they tweeted out. This sharpie looking thing to defend how rigorous their model was. But this is their model created by an economist that the white house used to base decisions on reopening around the country. But it is literally just a thing they made up about what they hoped might happen with the epidemic that has nothing to do with real epidemiology. It said the deaths would be zero by may 15th, and so they cranked to get the whole country open, to take advantage of the fact that deaths would be zero. Jason fuhrman was chairman of the Economic Council under president obama. He said in response to this from the Trump White House, quote, this might be the lowest point in the 74year history of the council of economic advisers. The stakes on the epidemiological questions are so high that this utterly superficial and misleading modeling has no place whatsoever in any discussion of the governments response. He continued, quote, faux expertise is even worse than ignorance. To the degree that this crowded out input from genuine experts and confused other participants into thinking that the council of economic advisers or other economists had any sort of real or valid model of the epidemic, it is really and truly terrible. But here we are in the world in created to some degree by policies pushed by a white house that decided to believe this model that they invented out of whole cloth. Here we are three days after the white houses imaginary model made by their economist friend said that u. S. Deaths would be at zero. And of course u. S. Deaths are not at zero. We have the biggest coronavirus epidemic in the world. U. S. Deaths continue their inexorable climb over 90,000 at this point. The only question right now in terms of the milestones here is whether were going to hit 100,000 dead americans by the beginning of next month, or are we going to hit it sooner . But policy in the United States, policy from the white house, policy aped and praised particularly by republican governors around the country, was created at the white house on the basis of that deaths will go to zero fantasy. And it really did lead the head of the Governments Task force to say on the radio that this would be done and over by this time next week. It really has driven the president ial led national imperative to open back up. The deaths are about to go to zero. Anybody who says otherwise is just a democrat. And so were opening up all over the country. And, you know, this isnt a National Story because these deaths happen in local places and governors are being responsible for what their policies are going to be state by state to a certain degree. But as we open up, as the imperative to open up is led from the white house every day, every day all over the country there are stories like this one. As texas reopens, coronavirus cases are increasing while testing misses benchmarks. Minnesotas case numbers and deaths rise as stayathome order ends. This from arkansas. With 130 new covid19 cases reported on thursday, arkansas saw one of its biggest jumps in confirmed cases since the virus reached the state in march. Arkansas businesses began to reopen under lighter covid19 restrictions last week. It is understandable to want this thing to be over, but just proclaiming it so doesnt get you there. And, you know, theres obviously still a lot going on every day. Some of it still harder to believe than is comfortable for this far into this epidemic. Today a reuters investigation showed that the cdcs National Numbers on coronavirus cases in jails and prison, those cdc numbers are dramatically, dramatically wrong, dramatically way too low. Cdc official numbers on infections in meatpacking plants also appear to be dramatically wrong, dramatically low. And cdc numbers on testing in this country appear to be dramatically wrong. The cdc has now started posting National Numbers on testing that happen to vary wildly and radically and in unpredictable ways from the numbers you can get from the 50 states. The cdc has got bad numbers on meatpacking plants, on jails and prisons, on testing overall. Thats bad. The cdc is the Public HealthGold Standard in our country. They used to be the Gold Standard for Public Health worldwide. But if all their numbers writ large and writ small are garbage, that is going to be bad not only for now in terms of making good decisions but for the long run in terms of how this thing is handled and who is held accountable. Today also the president announced somewhat blithely with a sort of gleam in his eye that he is taking personally this unproven malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine, as well as zinc. He says hes taking it because a doctor wrote him a letter, and the doctor who wrote him a letter told him it really works. And so the president is taking that now. At least he says he is, and the white house today is affirming that the president really is taking that now, even after multiple studies were stopped because of danger to patients taking it and no provable benefit to patients taking it. Even after the fda, the actual fda formally cautioned, quote, against use of hydroxychloroquine for covid19 outside of the hospital setting or a Clinical Trial due to the risk of heart rhythm problems. Dont we know from the president s relatively meager personal Health History that hes got some heart issues . So now hes just taking drugs that are off label and unproven for coronavirus that he says he doesnt have despite the fact that one of its known complications is heart trouble . And the White House Medical Office is like, yeah, he said he wanted to, so. And the president is kind of advertising this as his approach to this Public Health crisis now. We also got intriguing news, worrying news today that a number of sailors on board the u uss Theodore Roosevelt, sailors who had tested positive and then recovered it. They all initially tested positive and then tested negative at least twice, a number of those sailors, more than a dozen of them have now tested positive again even though they tested negative twice before. Positive and then negative, making it seem like theyd had it and theyd cleared it. And now theyve got it again. That raises a whole bunch of different worrying questions about, you know, the testing for one. Is the testing showing false positives or false negatives . But if the testing is all right, then theres also the worrying prospect that this might mean that people who got coronavirus once before might be reinfectible so they could get it again despite all the hopes that we have that at least being infected with it on