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HERE WE GO AGAIN — A vague sense of parental dread was made palpable with a gut punch today in California.
Within the span of 90 minutes, the state’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom shut down significant parts of the economy — again — and the state's two largest school districts, in Los Angeles and San Diego, said they will not reopen next month.
It marked an end to delusions that parents like me still had, that the fall would somehow be different. That our kids would regain some sense of normalcy and that we could return to uninterrupted work.
It wasn’t a surprise given California’s deteriorating coronavirus situation. And many districts are holding open the possibility of in-person instruction. But today served as a major reality check.
Newsom ordered houses of worship, gyms and barbershops to close across dozens of counties that collectively contain the vast majority of California’s population and most of its urban centers, as California Playbook’s Jeremy B. White writes. Statewide, bars will need to again shutter and restaurants must halt indoor dining. Hospitals in some parts of the state are staring down the prospect of running out of beds as the state’s seven-day average of new infections approaches 9,000 daily, while its positive test rate has climbed above 7 percent after hovering near 4 percent during the initial reopening process.
Newsom was heralded nationally for his early efforts to control the spread in California. He now faces criticism for greenlighting bars and other social activities that contributed to the spread. He has drawn questions about why he left reopening decisions to local officials less equipped to withstand political pressure from residents. And he will increasingly get blamed by parents and teachers who thought he had a better handle on the disease.
The Democratic governor still has political capital to burn. But he set fire to some of it today with decisions that immediately drew scorn from Republicans and frustrated business owners. And he is increasingly vulnerable to second-guessing and partisan attacks as the state heads further into coronavirus despair.
Welcome to POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition . Renu will be back Wednesday, but she still wants you to send along your thoughts, tips and questions. Drop us a line. Reach out: rrayasam@politico.com or on Twitter at @renurayasam.
A message from PhRMA:
America’s biopharmaceutical companies are sharing their knowledge and resources more than ever before to speed up the development of new medicines to fight COVID-19. They’re working with doctors and hospitals on over 1,100 clinical trials. Because science is how we get back to normal. More.
| AROUND THE NATION |
CLOSING AT THE OPEN — The Trump administration is pushing hard for schools to fully reopen, but the nation's largest districts are starting to move in the opposite direction, education reporters Nicole Gaudiano and Bianca Quilantan write. Beyond the Los Angeles and San Diego school districts announcing today they will start the upcoming school year with full distance learning, New York City schools will offer a mix of in-person classes and online learning. In suburban D.C., Maryland's largest district is proposing to start the year with virtual learning.
Florida's Miami-Dade County Public Schools — touted as a model by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for its comprehensive reopening plan — is offering up to five days of in-person learning, along with an online option. But the superintendent is now casting doubt on the possibility of kids returning to classrooms on the first day of school if the city remains the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak.
Most education spending is overseen at the state and district level and there is little the federal government can do to carry through on President Donald Trump's demands that schools reopen. Trump today was asked what he would tell concerned parents who saw news that a teacher in Arizona — another virus hotspot — recently died after teaching a summer school class online. “Yeah, the schools should be opened,” Trump responded. “Schools should be opened. Kids want to go to school. You're losing a lot of lives by keeping things closed.”
A customer wears a face mask while having her hair washed at a salon in London. | Getty Images
HAPPENING TOMORROW 9 a.m. EDT - A PLAYBOOK INTERVIEW WITH AUSTIN MAYOR STEVE ADLER : As coronavirus cases continue to spike in Texas, the city of Austin is preparing to turn the downtown convention center into a field hospital. Join Playbook authors Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman for a virtual interview with Austin Mayor Steve Adler that will reveal how he’s navigating the rapid jump in the number of cases, how cities are working with state and local governments during the pandemic, and how a city known for its restaurants, bars and concerts is planning for what's to come. REGISTER HERE.
| FIRST IN NIGHTLY |
FINDING THE COST OF A CURE — Some of the pharmaceutical companies developing Covid-19 vaccine candidates have pledged to not take a profit. But neither the companies nor the U.S. government bankrolling a great deal of the vaccine research have defined precisely what forgoing a profit means or how long that will last. And that’s feeding skepticism and uncertainty among industry watchers and doubts in Congress about who will end up paying what could be a very large tab, health care reporter Zachary Brennan writes.
Some lawmakers want to make the vaccine companies live up to their “nonprofit” promise — or at least to guarantee that any profits are not excessive. The U.S. government has already poured $4 billion to accelerate vaccine development; lawmakers don’t want cost to be an obstacle to people getting a vaccine if and when it becomes available. “A drug company’s claim that it’s providing a vaccine at cost should be viewed with the same skepticism as that by a used car salesperson,” Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), a leading critic of the industry in Congress, told POLITICO in an email.
One major company, Pfizer — which is not among the U.S.-government financed firms — has said it does expect to make money on its vaccine.
| FROM THE HEALTH DESK |
‘MISINFORMATION, MYTHS AND UNCERTAINTY’ — A team of investigators from the CDC has filed a report on Arkansas, obtained by POLITICO, that faults “inconsistent messages from authorities, changing guidance and the reopening of the state” for the disproportionate toll of the pandemic on workers of color there, even as the report avoids directly criticizing the president and the administration for its coronavirus response, health care reporter Alice Miranda Ollstein writes.
The CDC investigators just returned from a few weeks on the ground in the state’s northwest corner — home to several major poultry plants — on a mission to learn why so many Latino and Marshallese residents there have gotten sick and died from the virus.
Their report alludes to a host of state and federal government failures to protect vulnerable communities of color, and makes several recommendations that the state epidemiologist said will be impossible to implement without more federal support — such as notifying people of positive test results in 24 hours, testing certain at-risk groups every week, hiring more bilingual contact tracers and hammering home messages about the dangers of gathering in groups and not wearing masks.
Among the new CDC findings:
People are confused and misinformed about the virus. The CDC team specifically faulted inconsistent messaging by authorities for fueling “misinformation, myths and uncertainty about all aspects of prevention, testing and treatment of COVID-19.”
The CDC remains a trusted source of public health advice. During focus groups conducted with Latino and Marshallese community members, the investigators found that guidelines on mask wearing, social distancing and hand washing are more likely to be followed when people are told they come from the CDC.
Among the sample messages the group recommends? “The only way we can stop this is if we all follow the CDC rules.”
Trump retweeted messages by the former “Love Connection” host Chuck Woolery today that accused the Centers for Disease Control of “lying” about the severity of the virus and what is needed to combat it.
People are working while sick, after being exposed, and while waiting for their test results because they say they can’t afford not to. The report recommends that the government pay people to stay home. Arkansas' state epidemiologist Jennifer Dillaha told Alice that the state does not have the resources to do this, but said she is looking into partnering with churches and NGOs to better support families in quarantine.
“Business owners/managers were concerned about customers not wearing masks but felt that they couldn’t enforce it,” CDC reported.
People of color are getting sick and dying more often. In the two hardest-hit counties in Arkansas, Benton and Washington, Latinos make up just 17 percent of the population but account for 45 percent of reported cases. Pacific Islanders are just 1.5 percent of the population but nearly 20 percent of cases and 38 percent of deaths.
MEDICAID’S COVID BUMP — Trump and Republicans have pushed to roll back Medicaid for years. But now, as more people seek government-run health assistance during the coronavirus pandemic, those plans have hit a brick wall. Health care reporter Rachel Roubein explains how the politics of Medicaid are shifting, in the latest POLITICO Dispatch.
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| ASK THE AUDIENCE |
Nightly ask you: Do you support more or fewer pandemic restrictions in your area? Which ones do you think are most important or least necessary? Let us know your thoughts in our form, and we’ll include select answers in Friday’s edition.
| NIGHTLY NUMBER |
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The jersey number of basketball player Russell Westbrook of the Houston Rockets. Westbrook announced on Twitter that he tested positive for Covid-19 before arriving in the NBA bubble in Orlando.
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| THE GLOBAL FIGHT |
LA DOLCE VIRUS — As Italy seeks a return to as-normal-as-possible after months of coronavirus lockdowns, a debate has broken out among the scientists studying the epidemic. The question: whether the virus that has killed more than 35,000 people in Italy, and more than half a million people around the world, has changed in a way that makes it less dangerous.
Giuseppe Remuzzi, the director of the Mario Negri Institute for pharmacological research, is one of 10 experts who wrote an op-ed in Milan-based newspaper il Giornale in which they declared that “unequivocal clinical evidence” showed a marked reduction of coronavirus cases with symptoms. They noted that cases that require hospitalization are now rarer than at the height of the crisis in the spring, and they raised questions about whether asymptomatic carriers can still transmit the virus.
“The concentration of viral RNA on the swab is so small that it does not infect anything,” Remuzzi told POLITICO. He urged the development of tests that could determine whether an infected person is contagious. Only those who are positive should be isolated, he said, adding that preventive measures like social distancing, using face masks and washing hands were enough to contain the virus. “There is nothing else to do,” he said.
| PALACE INTRIGUE |
RTs DO NOT EQUAL ENDORSEMENTS — The White House denied today that it had perpetrated a smear campaign against Anthony Fauci, breaking news reporter Quint Forgey writes. As his standing in public polling sags amid record numbers of daily Covid-19 infections in the United States, Trump has continued to express public dissatisfaction with Fauci for his dire assessments of the outbreak, including on social media. But at an afternoon news briefing, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany insisted the president and the country’s top infectious disease expert “have always had a good working relationship,” even after it seemingly plummeted to a new nadir over the weekend.
NEW THIS WEEK – POLITICO’S “FUTURE PULSE” NEWSLETTER : 2020 has wrought a global pandemic that has accelerated long-simmering trends in health care technology. One thing is certain: The health care system that emerges from this crisis will be fundamentally different than the one that entered. From Congress and the White House, to state capitols and Silicon Valley, Future Pulse spotlights the politics, policies and technologies driving long-term changes on the most personal issue for Americans: Our health. SUBSCRIBE TODAY.
| PARTING WORDS |
WHAT DIDN’T MAKE MILWAUKEE FAMOUS — National correspondent Natasha Korecki emails us:
If Covid-19 had never struck the United States, today would have unofficially kicked off the fall campaign in the race for the White House.
At the start of 2020, today was scheduled to be the first day of the Democratic National Convention. Without the pandemic, we’d be in the throes of covering the pomp and circumstance in the days leading to Joe Biden’s formal nomination.
Some 50,0000 people would be pouring into Milwaukee, and they’d be taking in the city’s restaurants and brewpubs, art museum, and gorgeous lake view.
Instead, as I found when my son and I drove to our home in Illinois from central Wisconsin this weekend, Milwaukee feels right now like someone who was stood up by a date.
We stopped off here to grab an early dinner on Friday and easily pulled up to a parking spot on a street downtown, and that's when it struck me.
We should not have been able to get street parking. This was supposed to be convention week.
As we headed to the riverwalk, where the sun glistened off the river and we took selfies by “The Fonz,” a statue honoring Henry Winkler and “Happy Days,” which was set in Milwaukee, I realized how alone we were in this downtown, save a few boaters on the river.
The city looked amazing. But none of the politicos and journalists who were invited to share in its splendor were here to see it.
No TV journalists had rolled into town, setting up live shots to pontificate about the import for Democrats to take back the White House. And what better place to feature the conversation than the state that Hillary Clinton so famously skipped — and lost — in 2016?
Biden’s vice presidential selection remains an unknown, but in an alternate No-Covid World, she was just announced, and journalists would be jockeying to interview her.
Delegates from various states would be lodging complaints to reporters about how they were farmed out to stay in hotels near Chicago’s O’Hare Airport because the Milwaukee hotels were at capacity. We’d all be working late nights and starved, the restaurants too packed to take us in.
But on this day, I headed to the city’s historic Third Ward and walked right up to an open air spot, chose a table appropriately socially distanced from the next and sat beside a sign that asked guests to wear masks.
There will be some semblance of a convention here in August, five weeks from tonight. But delegates were asked not to come. There will be no shuttling of guests from Chicago. There will be no showcasing of the Fiserv Forum. The roll call of the states will take place somehow, but there will be less pageantry with a maximum of 1,000 inside the Wisconsin convention center.
And the truth of it is this could change still. With Covid’s resurgence across the country, there’s no telling what sort of new precautions will be put into place when Biden formally accepts the nomination here next month.
Until then, you can probably count on finding street parking in downtown Milwaukee.
A message from PhRMA:
America’s biopharmaceutical companies are sharing their knowledge and resources more than ever before to speed up the development of new medicines to fight COVID-19. They’re working with doctors and hospitals on over 1,100 clinical trials.
And there’s no slowing down. America’s biopharmaceutical companies will continue working day and night until they beat coronavirus. Because science is how we get back to normal.
See how biopharmaceutical companies are working together to get people what they need during this pandemic.
And there’s no slowing down. America’s biopharmaceutical companies will continue working day and night until they beat coronavirus. Because science is how we get back to normal.
See how biopharmaceutical companies are working together to get people what they need during this pandemic.
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Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam
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