Connecting the Dots:  With the coronavirus pandemic in the US still growing, President Trump is already talking about ending isolation and re-opening business.

  At the daily press briefing yesterday, Trump said, “Our country wasn’t built to be shut down.” He said, “America will again and soon be open for business,” but how soon, he didn’t say. 

  Once again defying scientific and medical advice, Trump declared, “If it were up to the doctors, they’d say let’s shut down the entire world. This could create a much bigger problem than the problem that you started out with.”

  He promised that, “It will end soon, normal life will return and our economy will rebound very, very strongly.” 

  The country is in the middle of a 15-day “social distancing” period in which non-vital businesses are closed and people are encouraged to stay away from each other. It ends Monday. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Americans, are out of work.

 For the first time, more than 100 people in the US have died in a single day, bringing the total to 593.  This morning, the number of infections in this country is 46,000 and rising rapidly. 

 As the states still order as many as 158 million Americans to stay home, New York has become the epicenter of the pandemic in this country. As of his morning, 187 people in New York have died, 125 of them in New York City. The city has about a third of the cases with what is described as an “attack rate” of 1 in 700 people.

  Twenty-eight percent of the tests in the New York region are coming up positive compared to eight percent for the rest of the country.  

  On a national map of coronavirus cases, the red dots are beginning to blend into solid masses, particularly on the East Coast. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams said, “Everyone needs to act as if they have the virus right now. So, test or no test, we need you to understand you could be spreading it to someone else. Or you could be getting it from someone else. Stay at home.”

Scrubs: While doctors and hospitals say they are desperate for medical gear, President Trump claims FEMA is sending out pallets of equipment. He said yesterday, “We’re having millions and millions of masks made as we speak.”

  New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been among the loudest voices asking, “Where is it?” Cuomo said yesterday that he’s in bidding wars for basic medical equipment. “I’m competing with other states,” he said during his daily briefing. “I’m bidding up other states on the prices, because you have manufacturers who sit there, and California offers them $4, and they say, ‘Well, California offered $4.’ I offer $5, another state calls in and offers $6.”

  He has called for President Trump to actually use his emergency powers and order companies to make and deliver what’s needed, in particular 30,000 ventilators for what Cuomo believes will become a crush of deathly ill patients. 

  Short of the hospital beds Cuomo believes the state will need, FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers are building emergency hospitals, one of them a 2,000 bed hospital in the Jacob Javits Convention Center on Manhattan’s West Side. The governor said,  “We have 53,000 (beds), we may need 110,000. We have 3000 ICU beds, we may need between 18,000 to 37,000.” 

Pandemic Politics: After the Senate failed for another day to agree on a $1.8 trillion pandemic bailout and stimulus bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi countered the Republicans with a $2.5 trillion bill. The basic complaint of the Democrats is that the Republican bill is a corporate slush fund that doesn’t do enough for people who work for a living.

  Parts of the Pelosi proposal, though, have nothing to do with the current crisis. The Democrats are trying to use the emergency as leverage to get things they wanted for a long time, among them, for instance, requiring companies receiving federal assistance during the epidemic to pay a $15 minimum wage.

  The Republicans are not innocent. Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell tried to ram through a bill that would give a lot of help for corporations and not so much for employees. It would let the Treasury Department hand out hundreds of billions without requiring companies to preserve jobs and wages. The bailouts, under the McConnell demand, would remain secret for six months.

The Bulletin Board: An announcement that the Tokyo Summer Olympics will be postponed is expected as soon as today. — Texas and Ohio have listed abortions among the nonessential surgeries and medical procedures they are requiring to be delayed during the pandemic. Both states are among the leaders in the anti-abortion movement, although their governments say the decision is intended to save vital medical gear. — Pacific Gas and Electric has agreed to plead guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the state’s devastating 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed Paradise, California. — The Supreme Court ruled that states are not required to allow an insanity defense in criminal cases.

Broadcast News: CNN host Chris Cuomo has taken to interviewing his brother Andrew, the governor of New York, about the crisis. Last night Chris said, “Thank you for coming back to the show” and Andrew said, “Mom told me I had to.”

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