POLITICO NIGHTLY: The pandemic's outrage outbreak

By Ryan Heath and Renuka Rayasam

Presented by

NEW WORLD ORDERS — There are two possible paths for global development after the Covid-19 pandemic, according to former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair. The first, more optimistic path is one of “enlightened self-interest”: It involves the world’s leaders working with tech companies to green their economies, while focusing on “practical cooperation” like sharing health data, instead of debating who is a “globalizer and non-globalizer," Blair said during a POLITICO online event today. To take the enlightened path, governments would need to reopen their economies as soon as possible, but based only on a rigorous “infrastructure of containment.” That means they would need national multi-level lockdown plans based on formal metrics. Citizens must wear masks in public, and agree to be isolated away from their homes if they’re infected — unlike the home isolations common in the U.S. Governments would need to “elevate” the World Health Organization into “a body with much greater heft and weight” but fewer levels of bureaucracy. And Blair recommends using the G20 as the “forcing mechanism” for global coordination, because the United Nations Security Council isn’t working and isn’t “really representative of the world today.” The unenlightened alternative world — the dark timeline, assuming we’re not already on it — sees an absence of global cooperation that makes life “worse for everyone.” The world is at risk of “double or even triple” last year’s deaths from starvation and malnutrition in 2020, Blair said — meaning an additional 9 million to 18 million deaths. Blair also worries about a “sub-class of people cut adrift” because they can no longer get the education they need to be part of the modern world. How to get to the bright side? Blair says it’s important not to sweat the small stuff. “You can complain about a slogan like America First but no politician is ever going to campaign on a slogan like Britain Second. We all put our countries first in the end,” he said. That self-awareness should extend to China: “We have to understand China from the Chinese point of view,” he said. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition. Texas Monthly profiles the Pulitzer Prize-winning editor of The Palestine Herald-Press, an East Texas paper with three full-time journalists. Reach out with tips: rrayasam@politico.com or on Twitter at @renurayasam.

A message from PhRMA: In these unprecedented times, America’s biopharmaceutical companies are coming together to achieve one shared goal: beating COVID-19. We are sharing learnings from clinical trials in real time with governments and other companies to advance the development of additional therapies. Explore our efforts.

Students wait to have their pictures taken during a graduation ceremony at Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High School today in Bradley, Ill. | Scott Olson/Getty Images First In Nightly NOVEMBER REIGN — Senate Republicans are settling on their pandemic message as they fight to save their majority: President Donald Trump did a tremendous job, Burgess Everett and John Bresnahan write. The coronavirus has killed more than 70,000 Americans, tanked the once-soaring U.S. economy and shows no signs of abating. And Trump’s ineffective leadership is largely to blame, say Democrats who are growing optimistic they can seize the Senate after being relegated to the minority for six years. But nearly all GOP senators running for reelection have decided there’s little utility in breaking with the president , particularly after seeing some fellow Republicans collapse at the ballot box with such a strategy. And if the economy recovers and the virus dissipates by the fall, Republicans could benefit by sticking with Trump. It’s the latest sign Republicans see their own political fortunes tied to the president’s, amid a global pandemic that will dominate both the presidential race and the battle for the Senate over the next six months. There are only two GOP senators fighting for reelection in states that Trump lost, and among them, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) has been the most willing to criticize Trump’s press conferences and overall erratic message.   JOIN TOMORROW - A WOMEN RULE VIRTUAL INTERVIEW WITH MELINDA GATES: As the coronavirus pandemic continues to devastate communities around the world, women are disproportionately affected. Join Women Rule Editorial Director Anna Palmer tomorrow at 4 p.m. EDT for a virtual conversation with Melinda Gates, co-chair of The Gates Foundation, to discuss the ramifications of this global crisis on gender equality, her thoughts on the need to overhaul the caregiving system and how The Gates Foundation is applying the lessons learned over the past 20 years to tackle Covid-19. Have questions? Submit yours by tweeting it to @POLITICOLive using #AskPOLITICO. REGISTER HERE.     Around the Nation Matt Wuerker/POLITICO THE OUTRAGE OUTBREAK — Everyone has suddenly become the Indian aunties your host grew up with: When I gained weight, they told me I was fat, and when I lost it, I looked unhealthy. Likewise, there’s just no winning with Covid-19. Remember when wearing a mask meant that you were selfish and impervious to the supply needs of front-line health care workers? Now mask wearing has become the ultimate virtue-signaling symbol. Whatever politicians on the left or right do to try to fight the pandemic, whatever public health experts advise, however companies respond, it’s met with the collective rage of people who are frustrated from being locked in their houses and confused by a fast-moving virus. Case in point: In a recording leaked Tuesday, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott admitted that lifting coronavirus restrictions will result in an increased infection rate in his state. He was echoing the matter-of-fact messages that public-health experts — and Abbott himself — have been saying for weeks: Reopening comes with risks. More people will get sick as moribund businesses get moving again. Still, Texas Democrats painted Abbott’s remarks as a sinister plot to kill Texans. And when President Donald Trump said he’d rather be a “cheerleader for the country” than “Mr. Doom and Gloom,” he was criticized for not giving the American people the truth. But a key job of wartime presidents has always been a little strategic morale boosting. (Though, of course, that cheerleading has to be grounded in reality to keep from turning into the Baghdad Bob show.) Democrats are getting publicly raked over the coals too. Even as Detroit’s Covid caseload skyrocketed, Michigan’s Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s statewide lockdown ignited national protests. The GOP sued Wisconsin’s Democratic Gov. Tony Evers for a stay-at-home order. Yet both orders were similar to what many red state governors have done. Back in Texas, a Democratic Dallas judge has now become a villain for sentencing a hair salon owner to a week in jail for repeatedly violating a state order by Abbott, a Republican, that shut down businesses like hers — and she received a hard-to-get federal loan, too. Big companies aren’t exempt from the outrage outbreak: Conservative groups are defining airline policy requiring masks as a civil rights issue. Never mind that air travel has long required accepting a host of privacy-violating safety measures, including bodily searches. Others are upset with Frontier airlines for charging passengers to sit next to an empty seat. But airlines, especially Frontier, have long charged passengers for every imaginable measure that would increase your safety and comfort. Who will we shame next? As Kacey Musgraves sang, “Follow your arrow wherever it points.” Weigh the data and follow the science, but in this crisis, no one’s totally certain what the next move should be. Public officials and business leaders risk being paralyzed by the pandemic’s newest fear: becoming the target of a shame mob. “We’re all struggling to do what we think is right. That’s the dilemma,” Glen Whitley, head of Tarrant County, which includes Fort Worth, said to your host today. “What I think is right may be different than what the judge in the counties on all sides of me might think. And nobody is gonna really know what the right answer is. We will know the financial burden that we placed on folks. We will never know how many lives we may have saved. That is the struggle I have every night.” Palace Intrigue LAW & ORDER: PPE — It sounds like a collection of scenes from the latest network drama: In early March, a tractor-trailer that was supposed to be loaded with medical supplies turned up empty in Rhode Island late on a Saturday night. In Colorado, a shipment of coronavirus test kits from South Korea were kept secret. In Maryland, members of the National Guard were deployed to protect testing kits held at an undisclosed location. The governors of these states — two Democrats and a Republican — aren’t pointing their fingers at a masked band of international smugglers for these actions. Instead, they’re blaming the federal government for seizing shipments of medical supplies. FEMA emphatically denied the charge that they are stealing the equipment in a statement today, but also points out in a “rumor control” post that it has the ability to reallocate resources under the Defense Production Act. When the White House invoked the DPA in late March, it gave the feds the legal authority to intercept shipments and redirect them to a national stockpile, national political reporter Betsy Woodruff Swan told your host today “Jurisdictions are frantically trying to get as much PPE as they can,” said Betsy. So it would make sense that feds try to make sure equipment is going to the right hotspot. But FEMA adamantly denies it is covertly reallocating state shipments. Those denials, along with governors who are undertaking dark-of-night missions for PPE, deepen the mystery. Origin story — Top Democratic lawmakers say the Trump administration should share with Congress the allegedly “enormous” evidence showing that the coronavirus sprang from a Chinese lab, Nahal Toosi and Natasha Bertrand write. The House and Senate Intelligence committees have been continuing their regular oversight of the intelligence community, which has been providing updated intelligence to the panels on the coronavirus and its origins, according to people with direct knowledge of the oversight. As of this week, however, they said there was still no intelligence to back up Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s claims that the virus appears to have spread from a Wuhan lab.     Ask The Audience Our question for our readers this week: What routines and activities, if any, are you resuming this week? Use the form to send us your responses, and we plan to feature several later this week. The Global Fight SAME PROBLEM, DIFFERENT TOOLS — The number of Covid-19 cases is not necessarily the best way to measure the severity of an outbreak. EU nations with similar caseloads do not necessarily have the same health care infrastructure, such as critical care beds. Warsaw seesaw — On Monday, we told you about the mystery surrounding whether Poland would hold a presidential election on Sunday. Today brought some clarity: The country's ruling party said it plans to delay the vote and hold a postal election at a later date.   TOMORROW – WHAT IS SILICON VALLEY’S ROLE AMID THE PANDEMIC?: With shelter-in-place orders and social-distancing rules in effect, our day-to-day lives rely on virtual connections now more than ever, and tech companies play an even bigger role than before. What does this mean for Washington's efforts to rein in Big Tech, mergers and the ongoing antitrust investigation in Congress? Join POLITICO technology reporter Cristiano Lima tomorrow at 9 a.m. EDT for a virtual conversation with House Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.). to discuss what's next for Silicon Valley and Washington in the era of Covid-19. Have questions? Submit yours by tweeting it to @POLITICOLive using #AskPOLITICO. REGISTER HERE.     Parting Words VIRUS IN THE STREAM — Most researchers are working a lot longer than 9 to 5 to come up with vaccines and therapeutics, but one effort has some notable backing: Dolly Parton’s $1 million donation to the Vanderbilt University-AstraZeneca antibody-based treatment search. Parton isn’t the only big name associated with the Vanderbilt work: The Pentagon’s emerging technology arm, DARPA, and Anthony Fauci’s NIAID are also backers. The team hopes to find the most effective antibodies against Covid-19 that could be cloned for use in drugmaking. The Daily Beast dove into the research work being done in Nashville, as Dr. Robert Carnahan’s team joins many others racing worldwide to find cures and therapies.   A message from PhRMA: In these unprecedented times, America’s biopharmaceutical companies are coming together to achieve one shared goal: beating COVID-19. The investments we’ve made have prepared us to act swiftly: · Working to protect our workforce and the communities where we live and work, having employees work from home whenever possible and keeping our salesforces out of hospitals and physicians’ offices · Remaining steadfast in our commitment to research and develop new medicines to prevent, treat and cure disease in all its forms, not just COVID-19 We all have unique roles to play and are confident that together we can be successful. And we won’t rest until we are. Explore our efforts.   Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam   Follow us

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