I Don’t Think You’re Ready for This Machiavelli
“If Americans conclude that life will continue mostly as normal, they may be wrong. The United States is far less prepared than other democratic nations experiencing outbreaks of the novel coronavirus. Low case counts so far may reflect not an absence of the pathogen but a woeful lack of testing.” Juliette Kayyem in The Atlantic: The U.S. Isn’t Ready for What’s About to Happen.
+ Politico: “For six weeks behind the scenes, and now increasingly in public, Trump has undermined his administration’s own efforts to fight the coronavirus outbreak — resisting attempts to plan for worst-case scenarios, overturning a public-health plan upon request from political allies and repeating only the warnings that he chose to hear.”
+ AP: “The White House overruled health officials who wanted to recommend that elderly and physically fragile Americans be advised not to fly on commercial airlines.”
+ The president is not worried about your health. But that doesn’t mean he’s not worried about his. Vanity Fair: “Last week Trump told aides he’s afraid journalists will try to purposefully contract coronavirus to give it to him on Air Force One, a person close to the administration told me. The source also said Trump has asked the Secret Service to set up a screening program and bar anyone who has a cough from the White House grounds.”
+ Julia Lindau in Vice: “When I arrived at New York’s JFK Airport on Thursday after spending a few days outside a coronavirus hot zone in Italy, I was expecting a shakedown: a temperature check at customs and some questions about where exactly in the region I’d been and if I had come into contact with any sick people during my stay. Instead, I breezed right through security.”