x FAUCI: "This is going to be a bad week... Things are going to get bad. We need to be prepared for that. It is going to be shocking to some." — Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) April 5, 2020

Frank Bruni/NY times:

Has Anyone Found Trump’s Soul? Anyone? He’s not rising to the challenge of the coronavirus pandemic. He’s shriveling into nothingness. Do you remember President George W. Bush’s remarks at Ground Zero in Manhattan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks? I can still hear him speaking of national grief and national pride. This was before all the awful judgment calls and fatal mistakes, and it doesn’t excuse them. But it mattered, because it reassured us that our country’s leader was navigating some of the same emotional currents that we were. Do you remember President Barack Obama’s news conference after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., that left 28 people, including 20 children, dead? I do. Freshest in my memory is how he fought back tears. He was hurting. He cared. And while we couldn’t bank on new laws to prevent the next massacre, we could at least hold on to that. One more question: Do you remember the moment when President Trump’s bearing and words made clear that he grasped not only the magnitude of this rapidly metastasizing pandemic but also our terror in the face of it? It passed me by, maybe because it never happened.

x Confirming Ã¢ÂÂ¦@jonathanvswanÃ¢ÂÂ© great reporting in here about yesterdayÃ¢ÂÂs task force tensions. The president wasnÃ¢ÂÂt supposed to do a briefing today, but has told several advisers they are free tv and high ratings for him. https://t.co/f43f8h5uNc — Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) April 6, 2020

Then why cover them live?

Media response to Trump in next two tweets (aka not buying the bullshit):

x first ballot Chyron Hall of Fame pic.twitter.com/70il4yfqfC — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 6, 2020

x President Trump is pitching a medicine for COVID-19 sufferers that has yet to be determined effective or safe for the virus. His advocacy of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine runs counter to what his own health experts say. @APFactCheck https://t.co/JDPohGMFfK — The Associated Press (@AP) April 6, 2020

Politico:

Spin Won’t Save Trump History shows us that theatrical press briefings can’t disguise bad policy. [Herbert] Hoover, then, could have been expected to handle the news media as president as well as anyone who had served in the White House. But when the Great Depression came, Hoover dragged his feet in taking bold action, and in the absence of substantive results, his vaunted skill with the press and with media suddenly proved unavailing. In fact, the problem couldn’t really be boiled down to poor communication; he remained as modern and as dedicated a public relations president as America had seen. Washington correspondent Frederick Essary judged Hoover’s “White House publicity machine” to be “the greatest propaganda establishment in the world.” It produced, he noted with awe (and not a little derision) “daily presidential speeches, messages, proclamations, pronouncements, executive orders, appointments … guest lists, dinner and reception arrangements (not forgetting the flowers on the table), and tributes to deceased football coaches and foreign potentates.” The problem was that Hoover was extremely reluctant to take the bold steps necessary either to stimulate the economy or to provide relief to those thrown out of work. And in the face of the persistent bad economic news, Hoover’s exertions in the realm of public relations did little to restore him popularity.

That articles compares Trump to Herbert Hoover. Probably unfair to Hoover.

x this is the reality of the November election, the dominant factor pic.twitter.com/VxMSCacmsM — Greg Dworkin (@DemFromCT) April 5, 2020

Adam Serwer/Atlantic:

Donald Trump’s Cult of Personality Did This The autocratic political culture that has propped up the Trump administration has left the nation entirely unprepared for an economic and public-health calamity. Neither the tide of pestilence sweeping the nation nor the economic calamity that will follow was inevitable. They are the predictable outcomes of the president’s authoritarian instincts, his obvious incompetence, and the propaganda apparatus that has shielded him from accountability by ensuring that the public is blinded to his role in the scale of this disaster.

x Given that Trump brought back the Ã¢ÂÂcure worse than the diseaseÃ¢ÂÂ rhetoric yesterday, worth noting that the % of voters saying the opposite hit record high yesterday in the Nav Research (D) tracking poll. pic.twitter.com/JRyxnQajUJ — Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) April 5, 2020

Matt Lewis/Daily Beast:

Trump’s Failed Coronavirus Response Cost Him Incumbent’s Edge The coronavirus did what nothing else has: It neutralized Trump’s ability to humiliate a foe, while giving Biden the perfect reason to lay low.

Click the link, it’s animated:

x When outbreaks start leaders say, "It's trivial. More people die of flu, of car crashes, of cancer.." as if that justifies lack of urgent concern.

This interactive brilliantly shows how #COVID19 has compared to other causes of death over time. https://t.co/XxxC2r3b5i — Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) April 5, 2020

ICYMI, this important Helen Branswell interview:

An interview with the CDC director on coronavirus, masks, and an agency gone quiet In this incredibly polarized time something that should be pretty basic — a virus is looking for throats to infect and it doesn’t care which way those throats vote — has become utterly polarized. Having the messaging come from the CDC, which is completely agnostic on a political basis, could strip out some of that politicalization that is just really not helpful. I don’t think there’s any way you can even overstate how aggressively the CDC is involved throughout this nation in operationalizing the response. You know, we do think that we have a calming effect in being viewed as being basically … But you’re invisible now, sir. Your agency is invisible. You may see it as invisible on the nightly news, but it’s sure not invisible in terms of operationalizing this response. And all you have to do to find that is go talk to your state and territorial health departments. Go out and look at the outbreaks. Go look in the field. So I guess it depends on how you define visibility. Who is in charge of the outbreak response at the CDC now? Anne Schuchat [CDC’s principal deputy director] is running the day-to-day response down at CDC. So was Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, sidelined? It was an evolution. Nancy really activated her center for the response in very early January when China probably still had less than 50 cases. But it was clear that this was going to be a broader agency wide response. Nancy is a very important technical person involved in the response. So this has nothing to do with the fact that it was felt that she was contradicting the messaging from the White House?

x This could be a problem Ã¢ÂÂ> pic.twitter.com/wRS3xiRmJb — Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie) April 4, 2020

Best list (The Verge) of coronavirus models you can follow:

THE BEST GRAPHS AND DATA FOR TRACKING THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC Where to find the curve and how to see if it’s flattening

Best kind of graph to look for: New vs Total cases. Makes improvement easier to see.

x HereÃ¢ÂÂs the transcript of Fauci on Face the Nation today. https://t.co/J9IiYbNWYK — Eric Columbus (@EricColumbus) April 5, 2020

x And don't forget, it was squandered for a reason. It was squandered bc the president wanted to protect the economy bc of his reelection needs.



YOU might value your life more than the economy- but your president doesn't. https://t.co/Lx1qAXpZwh — Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer Ã°ÂÂÂÃ°ÂÂÂ­Ã°ÂÂÂ (@RachelBitecofer) April 5, 2020

x Ã¢ÂÂ...hospital officials, doctors, public health experts and medical examiners say that official counts have failed to capture the true number of Americans dying in this pandemic, as a result of inconsistent protocols, limited resources...Ã¢ÂÂ https://t.co/Iq5DXNlXtt — Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) April 5, 2020