The Train Wreck Interview

Ken AshfordEbola/Zika/COVID-19 Viruses, Election 2020, Trump & AdministrationLeave a Comment

Trump’s interview with Axios’s Jonathan Swan is iconic, and an instant classic. Good God. Trump’s handlers should have staged a diversion to stop that disastrous interview. Pulled a fire alarm. Pumped laughing gas into the room. Set themselves on fire. Whatever it took. “Train wreck” is too gentle a description. It was like a nuclear-armed jet crashed into a train, … Read More

Breaking: Trump’s Tulsa Rally Just Killed Presidential Candidate Herman Cain

Ken AshfordBreaking News, Ebola/Zika/COVID-19 Viruses, Trump & AdministrationLeave a Comment

Here’s just a few of the #BlackVoicesForTrump at tonight’s rally! Having a fantastic time!#TulsaRally2020 #Trumptulsa #TulsaTrumprally #MAGA #Trump2020 #Trump2020Landslide pic.twitter.com/27mUzkg7kL — Herman Cain (@THEHermanCain) June 20, 2020 Former Republican presidential contender Herman Cain has died due to COVID-19. Cain was hospitalized on July 2 for COVID-19 symptoms; his last apparent public appearance was at Donald Trump’s Tulsa, Oklahoma rally two weeks prior, on June 20. That … Read More

Trump Can’t Understand Why Dr. Fauci Has Higher Approval Ratings. It Seems Glaringly Obvious Why.

Ken AshfordEbola/Zika/COVID-19 Viruses, Trump & AdministrationLeave a Comment

For Trump, taking the virus seriously was apparently little more than a short-lived experiment, given the president’s retweet of a video in which a doctor claims that the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine is the cure for the coronavirus. The video was later deleted by Twitter: Twitter has pulled a video of doctors making false claims about the novel coronavirus after it was shared … Read More

Covid-19 Phase 3 Testing To Begin Today

Ken AshfordEbola/Zika/COVID-19 VirusesLeave a Comment

Phase 3 of an experimental COVID-19 vaccine begins today in the U.S. According to Dr. Stephen Hoge, president of Massachusetts-based Moderna, they are “optimistic, cautiously optimistic” that the vaccine will work and that the data will eventually prove it: The biggest test yet of an experimental COVID-19 vaccine got underway Monday with the first of some 30,000 Americans rolling up their sleeves … Read More

GOP Governors Not Good At Handling COVID, Public Says

Ken AshfordEbola/Zika/COVID-19 Viruses, PollsLeave a Comment

Oh look. It seems that people aren’t impressed with their GOP Governors following the Trump model of lying, blowing smoke, blaming and otherwise acting like assholes during a major public health crisis: While governors’ ratings for communicating about the virus and caring about their communities are down slightly, this is not uniform across the country but varies by the party of the … Read More

White House Takes Control Of COVID Hospitalization Data

Ken AshfordEbola/Zika/COVID-19 Viruses, Trump & AdministrationLeave a Comment

The administrtion is telling hospitals to bypass the CDC and send their numbers directly to them: The Trump administration has ordered hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and, beginning on Wednesday, send all coronavirus patient information to a central database in Washington — a move that has alarmed public health experts who fear the data will be … Read More

Trump’s Second Term Strategy: Ignore The COVID Deaths

Ken AshfordEbola/Zika/COVID-19 Viruses, Election 2020, Trump & AdministrationLeave a Comment

The dreaded 'alligator mouth' continues to open. pic.twitter.com/EFSDXNYR16 — Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) July 7, 2020 It would appear that President Trump is quite serious about the new strategy for dealing with the surging COVID-19 pandemic that was reported earlier in the Washington Post: White House officials hope Americans will grow numb to the escalating death toll and learn to accept tens of … Read More

Trump Endears Himself To White Supremacists… And Putin, Again… While America Gets Sicker

Ken AshfordEbola/Zika/COVID-19 Viruses, L'Affaire Russe, Trump & AdministrationLeave a Comment

The nation is full of racial strife, although on the whole, the BLM movement is peaceful and making rapid progress. A couple pointed guns at protesters in St. Louis as a group marched toward the mayor’s home to demand her resignation. https://t.co/5EqDd43QCd pic.twitter.com/KWNaif77ch — ABC News (@ABC) June 29, 2020 Trump retweet shows supporter yelling "white power" White House spokesman: … Read More

A Tale Of Two Curves

Ken AshfordEbola/Zika/COVID-19 VirusesLeave a Comment

The US is having a consistent plateau of 20,000-25,000 new COVID cases per day. However the location of those cases are moving. The Northeast has effectively crushed the epidemic spread. The Great Lakes is making progress. The South and Sunbelt however are heating up. One of the metrics that is useful to look at to determine spread is how many … Read More

Trump’s Tulsa Rally Could Kill People

Ken AshfordEbola/Zika/COVID-19 Viruses, Election 2020, Trump & AdministrationLeave a Comment

CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta went off on the Trump campaign’s plans to hold a massive, indoor rally this Saturday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the number of Covid-19 cases are currently spiking: “I can’t imagine anyone is telling him this is okay.” On Cuomo Prime Time, the eponymous host asked Gupta to explain President Donald Trump’s reasoning for bringing together tens of thousands of … Read More

Trump Lacks Object Permanence Development Skill

Ken AshfordEbola/Zika/COVID-19 Viruses, Trump & AdministrationLeave a Comment

Object permanence is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, heard, touched, smelled or sensed in any way. Anderson Cooper just pointed out that this is something humans usually learn at about 18 months of age. The president hasn’t reached that stage yet: Trump: If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any … Read More

COVID-19: Second Wave?

Ken AshfordEbola/Zika/COVID-19 Viruses, Local InterestLeave a Comment

North Carolina ‘s Gov. Roy Cooper in his coronavirus briefing on Monday urged citizens to get a COVID-19 test if they have been exposed to any crowd: “We are seeing more viral spread, and these numbers are concerning,” Gov. Cooper said. “If you have been in any kind of crowd, please go get tested. When you’re around people, wear your masks … Read More