POLITICO NIGHTLY: It’s been six months. What now?

 

BY RENUKA RAYASAM With help from Myah Ward A SEPTEMBER TO REMEMBER — Six months after the United States’ first confirmed Covid death , the pandemic has hit an unhappy equilibrium. Daily Covid cases and deaths are down from a March and April peak, but nowhere near contained. The country is crawling its way out of spring’s economic collapse, but still losing about a million jobs a week. And no one’s quite sure what it means for the presidential election. September is likely to be remembered as the turning point for the country’s pandemic. By October we will know whether the worst of the pandemic is behind us or — whether it is yet to come. The virus has leveled off at a dangerous high. Throughout the month of August, the country saw about 1,000 deaths a day from Covid, about half the daily death rate in April. But only about a half-dozen states in the Northeast have contained the virus, with consistently low positive-test ratios of around 1 percent, according to Covid Exit Strategy. Though cases are down from July highs, the virus continues to spread in Sunbelt states. New hotspots are emerging in Iowa, Kansas, North Dakota and South Dakota. At the current infection rate, daily deaths will climb back to 2,000 a day by mid-November, according to the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. If Americans started universally wearing masks, the daily death rate would decline, according to the model. And if states ease up on Covid restrictions, deaths would climb to 3,000 a day by mid-November. With the absence of federal guidance, what comes next depends on how people behave, said Eric Toner, senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Many communities reopened too early in the spring and early summer, before transmission levels were lowered, he said. That set the stage for the current phase of the crisis, where the country has stabilized at a high level. “We have become used to this level of disease that is really pretty awful,” said Toner. “As we go into Labor Day and schools start to reopen in person, we will undoubtedly see new spikes in disease in many places,” he added. “If people are prudent and cautious and maintain distance, it will be a little blip. If people don’t — if they act like they did on Memorial Day — we could see large spikes in multiple locations.” The economy is still in a fragile spot. Some industries won’t recover for years. Many job losses in hospitality, retail and travel are expected to become permanent, as business trips plummet and people rely more heavily on online shopping. Still, the country has likely regained about 45 percent of the 22 million jobs lost during the pandemic. “We’re crawling our way out of a deep hole, and we run the risk of falling back in because of policy,” said Mark Zandi , chief economist of Moody's Analytics. “The bridge that Congress and the administration put in at the start at the pandemic isn’t long enough to get to the end of it.” The pandemic has exacerbated the gap between people who have college degrees and stock portfolios and comfortable jobs — people who bought second homes or cars when they were forced to work from home and had to cancel travel plans or otherwise reduce their leisure spending — and those who have precarious employment, are living paycheck to paycheck and lack basics like health insurance. Without more government aid, that disparity will further widen, Zandi said. Congressional pandemic relief is running out — unemployment assistance, small business loans and direct checks. Without another package, economic gains could be reversed. The incumbent wants to shake up the status quo. President Donald Trump entered 2020 with a strong case for reelection: the economy. The pandemic tipped the country into recession and has led to 185,000 confirmed deaths in the U.S., the most of any country in the world. With just nine weeks to go until Election Day, the virus has introduced far greater uncertainty into this race than in previous years. Short of a vaccine, Trump’s greatest asset, perversely, may be that he’s weathered so much bad news in four years. It’s hard to imagine him going lower in the polls. “What could be worse?” senior politics editor Charlie Mahtesian told me today. “Almost everything has happened.” So Trump’s strategy is to push the country to reject the new equilibrium, in favor of something like normal life. This month, many schools are reopening, some college football players are set to take the field and the NFL is getting ready for kickoff. “All of those are mileposts that Trump will seize on or point to to say the worst is over,” Charlie said. Yet if any of that goes badly — if cases and deaths surge in schools or among athletes — Trump and the country could quickly learn that, yes, things could be worse. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition. I’m not too ashamed to admit that I broke in a new Le Creuset (a present) this week and then watched a bunch of videos to figure out how to pronounce it. Reach out rrayasam@politico.com or on Twitter at @renurayasam.   BEIJING IS WATCHING, ARE YOU? China has long been a nation of involved and cynical election-watchers, at least when it comes to American presidential campaigns. As the United States races toward election day, how do Chinese citizens believe each candidate would impact relations between the two nations? Join the conversation and gain expert insight from informed and influential voices in government, business, law, and tech. China Watcher is as much of a platform as it is a newsletter. Subscribe today.     FIRST IN NIGHTLY THE BIG TEST — Just eight weeks from Election Day, the White House has stopped trying to contain the coronavirus — shifting instead to shielding the nation’s most vulnerable groups and restoring a sense of normalcy, health care reporters David Lim and Adam Cancryn write. The change is part of a concerted effort by the White House to increase public approval of Trump’s pandemic response — and bolster his reelection chances — by sharply reducing Covid-19 case counts, and the number of deaths and hospitalizations attributed to the virus, according to five people familiar with the strategy. “It has to do with the president wanting to shift the attention away from testing,” said a Republican close to the administration who has advised elements of the response. “The challenge is that they didn’t want to find more cases. They didn’t want the numbers to keep going up.” The White House pivot amounts to a tacit admission that the administration’s months-long containment effort has failed. While countries like South Korea, Singapore and New Zealand have fought to keep their number of infections near zero, the U.S. is still recording more than 40,000 new cases per day. More than 6 million Americans have gotten sick with Covid-19 and more than 185,000 have died. Publicly, top administration officials argue that the move away from widespread testing and tracing of the virus to focus on the elderly, including nursing home residents, and students heading back to school will ensure that tests reach the people who need them most. That is a crucial consideration as flu season approaches, raising the risk that the country could find itself battling two serious respiratory outbreaks at once. But the timing of the switch has puzzled public health experts. Coronavirus cases are finally declining after a summer in which hot spots emerged across the country; a move away from widespread testing could allow embers to escape detection and set off new outbreaks. And the introduction late last month of a $5, 15-minute Abbott test that doesn’t need to be sent to a lab could dramatically boost the country’s testing capacity. The U.S. has purchased 150 million of the tests from Abbott, which says it will produce 50 million a month by October. But the administration wants the tests to be used in schools and assisted living facilities, rather than making them available for use by the general public. FROM THE HEALTH DESK FOOD AND DRAMA ADMINISTRATION — What’s going on at the FDA? Watch health care reporter Sarah Owermohle try to break down the turmoil inside the agency in three minutes. Ready or not, here the vax comes — Federal health officials are urging states to get ready for coronavirus vaccine distribution by Nov. 1, according to a letter obtained by POLITICO. CDC Director Robert Redfield’s message to governors is the latest indication that the Trump administration is preparing to deliver on the president's promise for a coronavirus vaccine this year, Sarah writes. But it’s unclear if any vaccine could be ready by Nov. 1, just two days before Election Day.The CDC and HHS “are rapidly making preparations to implement large-scale distribution of the Covid-19 vaccines in the fall of 2020,” Redfield wrote. Redfield said his agency has contracted with McKesson Corp. to distribute coronavirus vaccines to state and local health departments and other facilities, and he “urgently” asked states to assemble a “fully operational” plan for providing vaccines to the public. He promised that any preparations “will not compromise the safety or integrity of the products being distributed.” ‘That’s certainly not my approach’ — Anthony Fauci argued today that the U.S. should not pursue herd immunity in its fight against the coronavirus — even as a top White House adviser has reportedly advocated the strategy and Trump himself invoked it this week. “That’s not a fundamental strategy that we’re using,” Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, told MSNBC. AROUND THE NATION LIVE FROM KENOSHA — In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, national correspondent Natasha Korecki gives an on-the-ground look at the Wisconsin city reeling from a police shooting and unrest in its streets. Listen to the latest POLITICO Dispatch podcast 404 IN 305 —Cyberattackers disrupted some 350,000 Miami-Dade students as they attempted to log into online classes, school officials said, and the U.S. Secret Service and FBI have been brought in to investigate. The attacks, which began Monday morning, followed a crippling software glitch that disrupted the first day of the fall semester, Andrew Atterbury reports. “There was a malicious, well-orchestrated, complex attempt at derailing — destroying — the connection, which is essential for our students and teachers,” Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said Tuesday. The Miami-Dade schools were hit with a distributed denial of service attack, flooding the district’s website with traffic that disrupted connectivity, Carvalho said. Students and teachers were locked out of their learning platforms and the district‘s website. The attacks began around 8 a.m. Monday, the first day of classes, and continued throughout Tuesday, Carvalho said. The cyberattacks were still underway as of this morning, but 200,000 students were able to log into classes. No personal information has been compromised, Carvalho said. ASK THE AUDIENCE Nightly asks you: Send us pictures of your Covid-19 work or study space. Send your photo to nightly@politico.com. We'll include select photos in our Friday edition. THE GLOBAL FIGHT CORRUPTION CRISIS — Riot police and protesters clashed today in a significant escalation of street demonstrations against Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov that have been running for almost two months. Thousands of people packed the center of Sofia in what is being dubbed a “grand national uprising” to demand the resignation of both Borissov and the country's chief prosecutor, Ivan Geshev. The protesters, incensed by the country's rampant graft, argue the two men have allowed powerful oligarchs to take control of core institutions such as the judiciary and abuse them for personal gain. On several occasions, police reportedly used pepper spray, while the demonstrators threw eggs, tomatoes, water bottles and garbage at police officers. Dozens of people, including police and journalists, were taken to the hospital, and several protesters were detained. Demonstrators have gathered in Sofia every evening since early July to protest state capture by oligarchs and a decline in the rule of law. PUNCHLINES GOODBYE, RICH UNCLE PENNYBAGS — Matt Wuerker and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich dig into how income inequality has worsened during the coronavirus pandemic and what to expect in the 2020 election. In the latest edition of Punchlines, Reich also helps Matt with a new oligarch icon to replace the Monopoly Man. NIGHTLY NUMBER 16 percent The deficit-to-GDP ratio in 2020, according to a CBO projection today, the largest percentage of gross domestic product since 1945. The U.S. government budget deficit will triple this year to $3.3 trillion, the CBO said. An explosion in federal spending during the pandemic was designed to bolster the economy and shield millions of American workers from financial ruin. The bleak figures also reflect a massive drop-off in economic growth this year. (h/t financial services reporter Kellie Mejdrich) PARTING WORDS SUNSET ON CAMELOT — For most of the 60-year history of the Kennedy dynasty, it’s been easier to imagine its last act as coming in a burst of triumph, a spasm of violence or a dream-shall-never-die promise of enduring hope. On Tuesday, however, what might be the final note of this political symphony was written not in glory or tragedy, but in numbers, the sad prose of politics, editor-at-large Peter Canellos writes: Sen. Ed Markey 55.6 percent, U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III 44.4 percent. In a Democratic primary. In Massachusetts. Arguably, the Kennedys practiced a form of charismatic politics that bridges the gap between today’s anti-establishment populism and government as usual: The Kennedys were populist believers in government. And Joe Kennedy’s talents seem too useful to slumber forever in a law firm or on the board of his father’s energy nonprofit. In two years, Massachusetts’ popular attorney general, Maura Healey, is expected to give up her job to run for governor. It would be a perfect venue for a skilled lawyer and politician to prove himself to be his own man. But for now, the Kennedy dynasty is dead. Joe’s Senate loss places a 2020 marker on its gravestone.   A GAME CHANGER? The FDA gave Abbott Labs emergency approval for its rapid antigen test, which can detect Covid-19 in 15 minutes. Is this new test a game changer? Or does it give Americans a false sense of security? The health care system that emerges from this pandemic will be fundamentally different, and emerging technologies will continue to drive change. Future Pulse spotlights the politics, policies and technologies driving long-term change on voters' most personal issue: their health. SUBSCRIBE NOW.     Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam   FOLLOW US

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