We're Going to Have to Live With It

As I previously posted, the rain was unimpressive yesterday.  It's humid, but I guess not humid enough for rain to fall.  Well, radar did show yellow and red rain cells out east, just not here.  We did get some good looking clouds and a rainbow.

In news of the virus, and the administration's lack of a good response to it, they're changing their messaging.  The new message is that we'll just have to deal with it.

At the crux of the message, officials said, is a recognition by the White House that the virus is not going away any time soon — and will be around through the November election.

As a result, President Donald Trump's top advisers plan to argue, the country must figure out how to press forward despite it. Therapeutic drugs will be showcased as a key component for doing that and the White House will increasingly emphasize the relatively low risk most Americans have of dying from the virus, officials said.

There are no really good therapeutics!  Remdesivir has not been adequately studied to know what good it does, maybe it shortens the course of the disease, but many of  the papers are not double blinded placebo studies.  Dexamethasone shows promise with quelling the cyctokine storms, and convalescent plasma is looking good.  However, there's not a lot of the plasma available.  People who don't die from covid frequently suffer forever from neurological deficits, kidney damage and liver damage.  It's survival, but it's not good.

On Thursday, the president claimed that when Pence held a recent call with governors and asked the state executives what they might need, none of them requested federal assistance.

"Not one governor needed anything. They don't need anything. They have all the medical equipment they can have. Thank you, U.S. government," Trump said.

That  is so not true.  Texas wants the feds to continue paying for testing.  Arizona needs doctors and nurses because they're overwhelmed.  This is just stupid.  Changing your messaging does not change the reality that testing needs to be ramped up, test processing needs to be much faster, and we need more contact tracing.  The article I quoted from is here.

He really is going to kill us all.

Update to post 7/5/2020:  The US government has bought all of the Remdesivir in the world.  According to the BMJ, this is actually a good thing for the rest of the world.  They can develop drugs that actually work.  Article here.