"Today I am pleased to make a truly historic announcement in our battle against the China virus that will save countless lives," Trump said at a White House briefing last night. "Today's action will dramatically increase access to this treatment.”
Expect Trump and his supporters to play up the move at the Republican convention starting today – if they talk about the pandemic at all.
Trump will spend the week in which he's formally nominated entreating Americans for another four years – from under the dark cloud of a pandemic which has thrust the United States into protracted and unprecedented turmoil.
The president needs a pitch for how he plans on restoring the country to normalcy, and he has seized upon the use of convalescent plasma, trying to sell a moderately promising therapy as a monumental breakthrough in treating the most seriously ill covid patients. He called it “a powerful therapy” with “an incredible rate of success," at the news briefing where he was flanked by Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.
There's certainly evidence that taking blood plasma from recovered covid-19 patients and transfusing it into ill people can be helpful – but more research is needed to determine just how much.
The Infectious Diseases Society of America said that while there are “some positive signals that convalescent plasma can be helpful in treating individuals with covid-19,” its benefits needed to be demonstrated in clinical trials that randomly assign patients to receive either plasma or a placebo before it is authorized for wider use.
The emergency use authorization will make it easier for hospitals to access the treatment, said Kate Fry, chief executive of America’s Blood Centers, which represents blood banks.
She told my colleagues the FDA authorization would ease the burden for clinicians and physicians because an expanded access program administered by the Mayo Clinic was never designed to provide plasma supply long term. “It really has gotten so large that it has sort of gone past its intended purpose,” she said.
Yet other experts stressed Trump was overselling convalescent plasma – and suggested he was putting inappropriate pressure on the FDA to suit his political aims.
Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute:
Andy Slavitt, director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under President Obama:
“The Sunday briefing came on the eve of the Republican National Convention where Trump hopes to resurrect his flagging popularity, which has nosedived over his handling of the pandemic,” my colleagues write. “He has put extraordinary pressure on federal agencies to test and approve treatments and a vaccine against the novel coronavirus, which has killed more than 170,000 Americans.”
Trump is promising a vaccine will be ready by the end of the year, as part of his second-term agenda released yesterday. A day earlier, he accused the FDA of impeding enrollment in clinical trials for coronavirus treatments and vaccines:
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, on the blood plasma authorization:
A similar tone from FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn, a Trump appointee:
Julie Rovner, chief Washington correspondent for Kaiser Health News:
But Trump's announcement on plasma reminded many of the president's previous, repeated claims about the unproven treatment hydroxychloroquine.
The FDA issued an emergency use authorization for that drug last spring, as the president claimed it would act as a miracle cure. But the agency in June revoked the EUA for use on covid-19 patients, citing evidence of serious heart problems.
Vox's Matthew Yglesias:
Trump seems aware the pandemic has endangered his reelection prospects.
As Republicans launch their four-day gathering, they face a thorny task: convincing Americans that Trump deserves another four years in office, even though under his watch a highly infectious virus has spread around the country, killing more than 170,000 Americans.
My colleague James Hohmann, author of The Daily 202:
Kate Bedingfield, deputy campaign manager for Joe Biden:
The president will be front-and-center all week long. He is expected to address the convention every night with remarks he described to Fox News as “very, very positive," in an interview last night.
The RNC playbook seems to be this: Don’t focus on the coronavirus. If you must mention it, paint Democrats as overreacting.
Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said the convention will present a positive case for how Trump has handled the pandemic. But speakers will also draw a contrast with how Democrats handled their all-virtual convention last week, portraying the party as out of touch with the normal life American yearn for, she said.
“They did a convention that didn’t balance health and safety with what most Americans are dealing with,” McDaniel told The Post’s Philip Rucker and Dan Balz over the weekend.
“The president is going to give a different and more optimistic message, which is, we can fight this pandemic and get back to our lives — and if Joe Biden had his way, he’d keep us locked in our basements,” McDaniel added.
Republicans are taking a less-cautious approach with their convention, following a hybrid model with some in-person events like a roll cal of states and some virtual programming. There won’t be tens of thousands of people crowded into a convention hall, but there will be several hundred people in Charlotte, N.C., to provide at least some sort of audience response to the speeches.
“The GOP event will not take place in a cavernous arena as planned, but some of the marquee speeches — including Trump’s on Thursday night on the South Lawn of the White House — still are set live before hundreds of people, even at the risk of flouting public health guidelines,” Philip and Dan write.
Expect to hear more tonight about racial protests than about the pandemic.
The coronavirus is clearly a losing issue for Trump; more than half of Americans say they don’t approve of how the president has responded to the pandemic and more voters said they trust Biden on handling it, per a recent Washington Post/ABC poll.
But in that same poll, more voters said they think safety from crime will worsen under Biden compared to Trump.
Consequently, the Trump campaign has been seeking to capitalize off calls to defund the police in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, running law-and-order-themed ads. Trump and campaign staff have highlighted protests in Portland and elsewhere that have turned violent and the spike in violent crime in several major U.S. cities.
Tonight’s lineup of speakers include Mark and Patricia McCloskey, a St. Louis couple who stood outside their home pointing guns during a Black Lives Matter demonstration, and George state Rep. Vernon Jones, a Democrat who has endorsed Trump saying his policies have helped Black voters.
Also on the roster is Tom Scott of South Carolina, the only Black GOP senator, who wrote a police reform bill after Floyd’s killing (which Democrats blocked, saying it didn’t go far enough).
The lineup also includes Tanya Weinreis, the first small business owner in Montana to receive a loan for her coffee shop through the Paycheck Protection Program.
“Trump’s political advisers have signaled that the president and others will focus on his accomplishments, hoping to persuade people not to base their votes entirely on the pandemic and the economic crisis,” my colleagues write.
“GOP strategists note that a majority of Americans agree with at least some of the president’s initiatives. Although he has negative marks on his handling of the coronavirus, for instance, he still enjoys a slight, if narrowing, advantage over Biden on the economy.”
Ahh, oof and ouch
AHH: RNC attendees will be required to wear masks and undergo coronavirus testing in Charlotte.
“Delegates and employees attending the Republican National Convention in Charlotte next week have already begun taking enhanced health precautions to reduce the risk of spreading the coronavirus at the 2020 RNC,” WBTV in North Carolina reports.
The convention has been significantly scaled down due pandemic worries, but the Republican National Committee has made it a priority to keep at least some in-person elements. Around 336 delegates and 164 contractors or employees are preparing to attend the event, which will take place in the city’s Westin hotel and the Charlotte Convention Center.
Masks will be required at the RNC in accordance with a North Carolina mandate. All attendees are required to test negative for the virus before traveling to Charlotte and they will be tested again upon arrival.
“We’re going to be able to do those rapid swabs. We’ll have the results back in a number of hours that we can share with the delegates and the people planning,” Sid Fletcher, the chief clinical officer of Novant Health, one of the companies providing the testing, told WBTV.
Fletcher told WBTV that even the scaled down convention was still a “high-risk” event that required mitigation efforts before, during, and after.
Local residents have expressed optimism that visitors could provide money for struggling businesses but some also worry the event could contribute to the spread of coronavirus, despite precautions.
OOF: The Trump administration tied billions in coronavirus aid to a requirement that hospitals send data to a private vendor.
“The Trump administration tied billions of dollars in badly needed coronavirus medical funding this spring to hospitals’ cooperation with a private vendor collecting data for a new Covid-19 database that bypassed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” the New York Times reports. “The highly unusual demand, aimed at hospitals in coronavirus hot spots using funds passed by Congress with no preconditions, alarmed some hospital administrators and even some federal health officials.”
HHS Secretary Alex Azar instructed hospitals in an April 21 email to make a one-time report of their covid-19 admissions and intensive care unit beds to TeleTracking Technologies, a Pittsburgh-based company with a five-month government contract.
The email described submitting the information as a “prerequisite” to receiving ongrcessionally allocated coronavirus relief funds, even though Congress had not placed any such conditions on the funds, which were part of the original coronavirus stimulus package.
The request came as part of an effort to shift hospital data to a new database managed by HHS. The plan faced widespread criticism for sidelining the Centers for Disease Control and for a messy rollout that led to erratic and missing data.
“The disclosure of the demand in April is the most striking example to surface of the department’s efforts to expand the role of private companies in health data collection, a practice that critics say infringes on what has long been a central mission of the C.D.C.,” Sheryl Gay Stolberg reports.
While the administration said the changes were necessary to streamline data collection, critics described the private vendor as unproven and untested. Many hospital administrators were reluctant to make the switch away from the CDC’s hospital reporting system.
“We have a public health system that depends upon communication from hospitals to state health departments to the C.D.C.,” William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University, told the New York Times. “It’s very well established. Can it be improved? Of course. But to cut out the public health infrastructure and report to a private firm essential public health data is misguided in the extreme.”
The administration has recently indicated it might reverse course, however. In comments last week, administration coronavirus adviser Deborah Birx said it was working on a new data system that would be managed by the CDC.
OUCH: Extreme weather is complicating efforts to control the spread of coronavirus.
“Two tropical storms are expected to strike the Gulf Coast in rapid succession this week, compounding public health concerns in states fighting to keep new coronavirus cases down after a surge of infections earlier in the summer,” Derek Hawkins and Marisa Iati report.
The storms are expected to make landfall between coastal Louisiana and eastern Texas on Monday and Wednesday. Officials worry Louisiana could be battered by both storms back-to-back.
“It should not be lost on any Louisianian that in addition to twin tropical weather threats, we still have to deal with the covid-19 pandemic,” said Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards (D). “Covid-19 does not become less of a threat because of tropical weather.”
Louisiana officials have urged residents to pack masks and sanitizer in their emergency kits and to try to shelter with immediate household members if possible. But the state is also preparing for people to relocate temporarily into shelters where the coronavirus could spread.
California is facing similar challenges, as wildfires have led testing centers to close and forced people to evacuate into shelters. Many teams of prisoners who often help fight fires — a practice that has long been part of the state’s annual wildfire response but has recently come under criticism for the exceptionally low pay (often less than $1 an hour) — are not available because they have been released due to rampant spread of the virus in detention centers.
More than half of Republicans say the coronavirus death toll is “acceptable” in recent poll.
“Americans view the severity of the coronavirus pandemic and the effectiveness of the government's response through a very partisan lens,” USA Today reports.
A CBS News/YouGov poll released on Sunday found that 57 percent consider the U.S. death toll — at least 176,000 people —to be "acceptable" when "evaluating the U.S. efforts against the coronavirus pandemic.” Less than a third of voters overall said the death toll was acceptable, and 90 percent of Democrats said that it was “unacceptable.”
Nearly two-thirds of Republicans thought coronavirus deaths were being overreported, while a similar percentage of Democrats thought it was underreported.
The poll, which surveyed 2,226 registered voters, also found more than half of Republicans believe Trump is doing a “very good” job in handling the outbreak.
RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel called the poll “unfair” in an interview on CBS's “Face the Nation.”
Joe Biden he would send the country into lockdown if scientists recommend it.
“Biden’s comments represent the strongest potential action the Democratic presidential nominee has proposed to stanch the spread of the virus that has killed at least 175,000 people across the U.S. as of Friday evening,” Politico reports.
“I would shut it down. I would listen to the scientists,” Biden said on an interview with ABC News on Sunday.
The comment came after host David Muir raised the double threat of the coronavirus and flu and asked the Democratic nominee if he would be willing to do another shut down if elected.
Trump has repeatedly said that he would not shut down the country again and that such a lockdown would hurt the economy.
"We won't be closing the country again. We won't have to do that,” the president said in an interview with Fox News in June.
Coronavirus latest
- Global deaths from the coronavirus have passed 800,000 as the number of cases surpasses 23 million. Meanwhile, in the United States, nationwide deaths have remained around 1,000 a day for the past few weeks. The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimates that covid-19 deaths could reach more than 310,000 by Dec. 1. The institute was criticized early in the pandemic for overly optimistic projections, but says it has since changed its models, Bloomberg reports.
- The Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman failed to adequately enforce sanitation and social distancing measures meant to prevent the spread of coronavirus, according to a lawsuit being funded by entertainment mogul Jay-Z and rapper Yo Gotti. At least 510 Mississippi inmates have tested positive for the coronavirus, the Associated Press reports.
The ongoing debate over reopening schools
- There is no common approach when it comes to universities reopening or the safety standards they are putting in place. With little in the way of unified federal guidance to colleges, “policies for reentry onto campuses that were abruptly shut in March are all over the map,” Kaiser Health News reports.
- Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R) said that flu was riskier to school kids than covid-19 in a roundtable discussion earlier this month. Fact checking organization Politifact rated this statement as “mostly true.” So far, children who get the flu are more likely to die from it than children who get covid-19, and many public health experts have said that decisions to close schools are more about protecting adults, who are much more likely to face severe complications from the virus. The rates of covid-19 among children, however, could rise as schools reopen.