POLITICO NIGHTLY: Covid killed the conventions. Maybe that’s a good thing.

 

BY RYAN LIZZA AND RENUKA RAYASAM Presented by With help from Myah Ward HOLD THE BALLOONS — On Wednesday, the Biden campaign made official what had been apparent for a while: The candidate’s Milwaukee convention was dead. Joe Biden will accept the Democratic presidential nomination in a speech broadcast from Delaware. Credentialed reporters — myself included — were told to stay home. Delegates already had no plans to attend and are voting on party business via an electronic form. Since Biden’s entire campaign is coming down to the question of how President Donald Trump has handled the pandemic, it was surprising that he waited this long to pull the plug on the gathering, scheduled to start on Aug. 17. Democrats have been rigorous to the point of being almost performative in their commitment to safe practices. For example, reporters, who were to be tested for the virus daily, were told that unlike previous years they would not have been allowed to share credentials with colleagues because swapping neck lanyards could cause contagion. “I’ve wanted to set an example as to how we should respond individually to this crisis,” Biden said at a fundraiser after the announcement. POLITICO’s Holly Otterbein and I have been talking to Democratic officials, convention planners, and network producers about what the switch from real to virtual means. (Can you have a balloon drop in the basement? How do you have an applause line if there is no applause?) But one consistent question raised by the death of the conventions is whether they will or should ever return in their pre-2020 form. Conventions long ago stopped being deliberative bodies that chose the presidential and vice presidential nominees. Howard Dean, the former head of the DNC, told me today that a new rule change this year even gives Biden the sole authority to nominate his running mate. (Previously delegates would still have a vote, but that’s been pro forma for a long time, and now it has been dispensed with entirely.) Policy conflicts over platform language were once serious business, but they no longer matter as much. As far back as 1996 Bob Dole, the Republican presidential nominee, dismissed the relevance of the platform when he shrugged, “I haven’t read it.” This year, Republicans simply adopted the entire 2016 platform verbatim. The Democrats have had a more robust debate but they already worked out their platform before the convention starts. The conventions are still justified as vehicles for raising money, for highlighting the next generation of talent, and — most importantly — for speaking unmediated to the electorate over four nights of prime-time speeches. The virtual conventions this year will dispense with everything except the primetime programming — which is really the main event anyway, and can be done without putting thousands of people in a tightly packed convention center. They will provide the parties with an experiment about what really matters. And as with a lot of our adjustments during the pandemic — child care routines, work habits, vacation plans, social life — the two parties and the media may find that many features of these antiquated gatherings are no longer necessary. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition. Reach out rrayasam@politico.com or on Twitter at @renurayasam.   A message from PhRMA: America’s biopharmaceutical companies are sharing manufacturing capabilities with each other so that once a treatment or vaccine is ready, they can get it to millions of people fast. And there’s no slowing down. America’s biopharmaceutical companies will continue working day and night until they beat coronavirus. More.   FIRST IN NIGHTLY COMEBACK SLOWDOWN — The U.S. job market recovery appears to be starting to stall, threatening Trump’s narrative of a rapid American comeback and a quickly declining unemployment rate headed toward the November election, chief economic correspondent Ben White writes. The July jobs report due out on Friday morning is expected to show a gain of about 1.5 million, an impressive number in ordinary times but well below the 4.8 million created in June. A measure of private payrolls this week showed a gain of just 167,000 jobs in July, dramatically below the expected 1.2 million. New jobless claims declined a bit last week after two weeks of increases but remain above 1 million per week, blowing away the old record of 695,000 in 1982. And while Trump has promised a “big” jobs number on Friday, the unemployment rate is likely to stay above 10 percent, a daunting figure for any incumbent president and higher than the worst level of the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009. The Covid crisis that slammed the U.S. in March and shuttered much of the economy wiped out tens of millions of jobs, erasing gains from the last decade and digging a hole that may take years to escape. And the pace of hiring slowed in recent weeks with a rise in Covid cases in many states and deep uncertainty among employers about whether and when to bring back laid off or furloughed workers. “The economy has largely gone sideways since mid-June, as the re-intensification of the virus has forced about half the nation’s states to either backtrack or pause their business reopenings,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “It is critical that lawmakers agree to another substantial fiscal rescue package before Congress goes away on its August recess for the fragile economy to avoid backsliding into recession.” Some analysts even suspect that July could show little to no job gains. Others believe the real hit from the latest Covid flareups may not show up until the August employment numbers come out in early September. Either way, economic data suggest hiring is slowing down. Members of the public enjoy the lobby exhibits during the reopening of the Natural History Museum in London. | Getty Images AROUND THE NATION BLIND SPOT — County health officials in California say they have no idea whether their Covid-19 cases are rising or falling due to an ongoing state data glitch, making it all but impossible to determine whether they’re making headway in controlling the pandemic, California health care reporter Victoria Colliver writes. Santa Clara County public health officer Sara Cody, the Silicon Valley official who coordinated the nation's first regional pandemic lockdown in March, likened the projected underreporting of case counts to the early days of the crisis, when lack of testing blinded the ability of health officers to gauge the spread of the novel virus. “Right now, we’re back to feeling blind,” Cody said at a press briefing Wednesday. “We don't know how the epidemic is trending. It’s not just inconvenient. This lack of data doesn't allow us to know where the epidemic is heading, how fast it is growing — or not.” The breakdown appears to have occurred between California laboratories processing coronavirus tests and the state data system, the California Reportable Disease Information Exchange, also known as CalREDIE. California Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly, the state's top health official, said this week that's where data is getting stuck, but he didn't explain why that happened or when it would be resolved. Cody indicated Wednesday the glitch may date as far back as the middle of July — right when the state began those closures in dozens of counties in an effort to turn the tide. California is at a pivotal point in its coronavirus journey, hoping that a mask mandate and closures of gyms, bars and indoor dining may have been enough to stop a summer surge from spiraling out of control. After controlling the virus in the spring, California saw a dramatic spike in cases after it reopened various sectors, moving past New York as the state with the most cases in America — more than half a million. The data problem was revealed just as California officials started feeling more confident about the state's coronavirus trajectory. On Monday, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom touted the fact that the seven-day daily average for positive test results had dropped 21 percent compared to one week earlier. DeWine tests positive — Republican Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio has tested positive for coronavirus, hours before Trump was set to touch down in the state and meet with him. DeWine said in a virtual news conference this evening that he felt "fine" aside from a headache and called the diagnosis a "big surprise," given the extensive measures he and his wife had taken to avoid catching the virus. Flee a storm, find a pandemic — Only two of 16 counties at risk for hurricanes have sent residents information about how to evacuate during the pandemic, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. The counties surveyed are those with fast growing Covid case counts and ones likely to be affected by a Category 5 hurricane. But most haven’t told residents where to go if a hurricane strikes and how to keep from contracting Covid in the evacuation process.   BECOME A CHINA WATCHER : Tensions between the U.S. and China continue to rise following the shuttering of China's consulate in Houston. Is it possible for the two countries to hit the "reset" button or is that just a pipe dream? Join the conversation and gain expert insight from informed and influential voices in government, business, law, tech and academia. China Watcher is as much of a platform as it is a newsletter. Subscribe today.     FROM THE HEALTH DESK SHOP LOCAL — Trump signed an executive order today that calls on federal agencies to purchase “essential drugs” and medical supplies made in the U.S., rather than from overseas companies who now provide the bulk of those materials. The order aims to guard against shortages of critical medicines and supplies due to breakdowns in the global supply chain — a concern that has been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. “We’re dangerously overdependent on foreign nations for essential medicines, for medical supplies like masks, gloves, goggles and the like,” said Peter Navarro, Trump's top trade adviser, on a call with reporters. The Trump administration isn't immediately specifying which drugs or supplies should be manufactured in the U.S., instead directing the FDA to make that determination. The order appears to allow for broad exemptions based on cost, availability and "public interest." Navarro argued countries like China and India, have an “unfair competitive advantage because of their lack of regulatory environment” and other countries like Ireland have tax incentives in place “designed to pull pharmaceutical manufacturing offshore and into their borders." Navarro didn't indicate that the administration would make new investments or advocate for new tax incentives to bring drug manufacturing onshore — the order, he said, "is not an appropriations bill" and is aimed at establishing government demand for U.S. products. STICKY SITUATION — Moncef Slaoui helped design vaccines for Big Pharma, one reason why Trump picked him to help lead "Operation Warp Speed." But Slaoui's deep drug industry ties have made him a target for watchdogs, too. In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, health care reporter Dan Diamond explores Slaoui's tricky position and how close we are (or aren't) to a vaccine. Listen to the latest POLITICO Dispatch podcast ASK THE AUDIENCE Nightly asks you: What concerns you the most about the November election? Let us know your thoughts, and we’ll include select answers in our Friday edition.       COVID-2020 BAY STATE BLUNDER — Rep. Joe Kennedy III and Sen. Ed Markey are racing against the clock ahead of their Sept. 1 Democratic primary showdown for Senate. The pandemic derailed their campaign plans this spring, and both men have returned to the socially distant campaign trail in recent weeks as Bay State voters receive their mail-in ballots, Massachusetts playbook author Stephanie Murray writes for Nightly. Kennedy's campaign held a press conference in Boston this afternoon where a group of veterans explained why they were supporting Kennedy over Markey. The unintended backdrop: a Covid-19 testing site. As Kennedy's supporters spoke at a podium, a steady stream of patients had their noses swabbed by doctors in personal protective equipment, like gowns and face shields. Coronavirus cases are creeping upward in Massachusetts. The state saw its highest single-day case increase since early June on Tuesday. The ticket’s glass ceiling — In 1984, a woman first appeared on a presidential ticket, and though many thought it would become a regular occurrence, Geraldine Ferraro has only been joined by Sarah Palin in 2008 in the VP spot. In the latest edition of Backstory, deputy magazine editor Elizabeth Ralph takes us through why women haven’t broken through more in national elections and what has changed in 2020. NIGHTLY NUMBER 62 percent The proportion of respondents who said that, compared to other wealthy countries, the U.S. coronavirus response has been less effective, according to a new survey by Pew Research Center. THE GLOBAL FIGHT ITALY’S LOCKDOWN SHOWDOWN — The Italian government overruled recommendations from its scientific advisers for a softer lockdown, according to newly published documents. In early March, with the coronavirus rampant in parts of Italy, the scientists advised that the country be divided into two, with stricter rules for the harder-hit North. But just 48 hours later, the government announced a nationwide shutdown, with far more draconian restrictions than those mandated by their own advisers, Hannah Roberts writes. The rules, which effectively confined all non-key workers to their homes, were much stricter than those later implemented in other European countries such as Germany and the U.K. Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, reporting to parliament in late March, claimed that decisions on what measures to take “had always been based on the accurate evaluations of the technical-scientific committee.” Conte has faced criticism from opposition parties for ruling with an iron fist during the pandemic and cutting down on civil liberties while being unaccountable to parliament. The parliament has extended his emergency power to rule by decree until the end of October.   POLITICO'S "FUTURE PULSE" - THE COLLISION OF HEALTH CARE AND TECHNOLOGY : As the United States remains stuck in a screening crisis, a worldwide competition has been launched to find the top Covid-19 rapid testing solutions. The contest aims to find a system with a painless sample and quick turnaround for results. When will a breakthrough come? From Congress and the White House, to state legislatures and Silicon Valley, Future Pulse spotlights the politics, policies and technologies driving long-term change on the most personal issue for voters: Their health. SUBSCRIBE NOW.     PARTING WORDS STURGIS HOLDS ITS BREATH — The first warning signs came in May, said Daniel Ainslie, city manager of Sturgis, S.D. Tourists started swarming neighboring Black Hills National Forest, signaling to Ainslie that even if city officials canceled their annual biker rally because of the pandemic, motorcycle enthusiasts would come anyway. “Every time there was a lockdown in a state, we saw those license plates two days later,” said Ainslie. Now the rally is poised to become the country’s largest public gathering since the start of the pandemic. In a regular year, city residents were already divided about their town of 7,000 being overtaken by rally goers for ten days each year. This year, according to city surveys, more 60 percent of Sturgis residents opposed holding the festival, which normally draws hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. (In 2015, 750,000 people came to the festival for its 75th anniversary.) But Ainslie said that as summer wore on, the city started getting more and more messages from people who were sick of Covid restrictions, sick of being cooped up at home, sick of pandemic stress — they were coming whether or not there was an official event. “They love being here,” said Ainslie. It’s their chance to see concerts, go on long rides, get their bikes upgraded or see the latest motorcycles. “It’s their annual retreat from reality.” So the city prepared. Officials canceled hundreds of thousands of dollars of advertising to try to keep the event as limited as possible. They are making masks available to all visitors — state law keeps them from mandating masks — and hoping rally attendees wear them. They installed hand washing and sanitizing stations across the town and are sanitizing sidewalks at night. They purchased protective equipment for local retailers. They are requiring vendors screen their employees for Covid symptoms. They plan to mass test residents after the event to contain any potential outbreaks. They are expanding a city service that drops off groceries to residents who don’t want to leave their homes. Still Ainslie is nervous. He’s not sure how many people will actually come. He’s expecting at least some drop off in numbers from international travelers who make up about 5 to 10 percent of the festival’s attendees. Some people may also forgo the trip if they’ve lost their jobs or seen their salary cut. But he said that the pandemic may actually bring more visitors to the “freedom-loving” town. “We are worried about the number of people coming here,” he said. “A lot of them are coming from areas with significant restrictions and this is their chance to display their personal freedom. There is an increased likelihood they won’t be wearing masks.”   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.   Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam   FOLLOW US

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