Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, listens during the coronavirus task force daily briefing in Washington, March 25, 2020. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

A grim sign of the times: “Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top medical expert on the coronavirus pandemic and a member of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force, is facing threats to his personal safety and now requires personal security from law enforcement at all times, including at his home, a source confirms to CNN.”


Those wondering who could possibly want to harm Dr. Fauci at a time like this must have missed the maniac who crashed a train yesterday because he had some nutty conspiracy about the U.S. Navy hospital ship Mercy. We have no shortage of nut-jobs and conspiracy theorists in this country, and they tend to fixate on people who are on television a lot.

A dispiriting number of people believe that those in authority are choosing to communicate bad news. It appears to be beyond their comprehension that the news actually could be that bad. When the reality is as grim as the current situation, communicating the situation clearly is not pessimism, it is realism. Sure, someone could discover the cure for coronavirus later today. But the world cannot operate as if that sudden miraculous solution will imminently appear.

Maybe we’re at the point where we need to ask people to sit down before they read the news. The news is bad. Very, very, bad. It is probably going to get worse before it gets better.


Yesterday 1,049 Americans died from the coronavirus, and we’re probably going to have about the same amount today. We’re hoping it will be a little lower, but it may be a little higher. It could well be significantly higher; 912 Americans died Tuesday and 558 died Americans Monday.


We have now just about depleted the national stockpile of personal protective equipment. Some of the ventilators in the national stockpile don’t work anymore. New York City has already set up 45 new mobile morgues, because the funeral homes are full.

This morning, we learned 6.6 million people filed for unemployment insurance last week, twice as many as the week before, which was more than four times the previous record.

As laid out in the Morning Jolt today, the situation in most countries overseas is going to be much, much worse. If you think our society is having a hard time mitigating this threat, picture the slums and poorer neighborhoods in Calcutta, Mexico City, Lagos, Jakarta, or Rio de Janeiro.


This doesn’t mean the world is ending. But it does mean we’re headed for a once-in-a-century challenge. That’s not Anthony Fauci’s fault, or the fault of anyone else telling you something you don’t want to hear.