There's an interesting slice of political life in this Washington Post story about the scramble for tests in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Once again, we see political aides winning arguments over public health experts and, once again, we see the president* putting the lives of some citizens at risk, and that those people happen to be people who were not likely to have voted for him the last time, and who are even less likely to do so this time.

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Some White House officials want to ship many of the tests, which were approved Friday and can deliver results in five to 13 minutes, to areas where there are fewer cases, such as rural states and parts of the South. But officials in hard-hit areas and some public health experts favor directing them to the outbreak’s current hotspots, arguing that delays in test readings have sidelined many first responders and health-care workers and made it harder to isolate the most contagious patients. During a Tuesday meeting of the White House coronavirus task force in the Situation Room, Vice President Pence and other officials discussed diverting new tests to areas where there are relatively few cases, according to two individuals familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.

Meanwhile, in Detroit...

Five hundred twenty-five officers in Detroit’s more than 2,500-person police force are quarantined, according to Sgt. Nicole Kirkwood, a spokeswoman. Eighty-five members are expected to return to work by the end of this week, she said, and 91 have tested positive.

And in Maryland..

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said in an interview that his state needs at least 100,000 more tests than it has right now. “We’ve talked to Abbott. They’re shortly supposed to have a small amount of testing machines out to the states. No governor in America has received any yet,” Hogan said. “They’ve said they are available. They are not yet available. They say, ‘Get on the phone, governors can get all these things.’ I just got off the phone with all the governors, no governors have these things.”

This is enough to make anyone want to Elvis their TV the next time Mike (Extreme Unction) Pence comes on to praise the president* for his masterful job of controlling the situation through his brilliant public-private partnership. Almost a quarter of the Detroit P.D. is under quarantine. Meanwhile, tests are being sent to states that had to be dragged kicking and screaming into enacting statewide lockdowns, or to places that refuse to accept even now the FREE MONEY! available under the Affordable Care Act, which was passed a mere decade ago. This includes places like Nebraska, where Pete Ricketts won’t take the FREE MONEY!, but Ricketts is making sure that one of his primary constituents, a Canadian energy corporation, is being taken care of. From Courthouse News Service:

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Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts, a Republican, praised the project for its potential to “bring great-paying jobs to our state.” At a press conference, Ricketts spoke of a measure he enacted that asks every person who enters Nebraska to self-quarantine for two weeks to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19. Truckers and pipeline workers are exempt from this directive, however.

Grift never sleeps.

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