COVID-19 pandemic in the United States

"There’s one thing that I can tell you about this... It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history... It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.... There will be, I’m sure, times that communities... have a transmission rate where they say, let’s close schools for two weeks, everybody stay home."

"Amid the coronavirus outbreak and financial crisis, older voters are backing Biden. He may be boring but at least he’s familiar and safe. Since 24 February, with the lethal coronavirus spreading around the world, middle-aged and older Americans – not only most vulnerable to the disease but also accounting for most retirement savings – have been fleeing stocks for the relative safety of US government bonds."

"The mortality a community suffers from exposure to the coronavirus is influenced by social and demographic characteristics including: health, inequality, poverty, food insecurity, race/Hispanic origin, and access to health care. The age structure of the population also has a substantial impact on the severity and mortality associated with the coronavirus. Although mortality rates associated with a given age vary among studies, age-specific mortality rates are consistently very low for younger age cohorts and much higher for the oldest cohorts."

"This is a very brilliant enemy. You know, it's a brilliant enemy. They develop drugs like the antibiotics, you see it. Antibiotics used to solve every problem. Now one of the biggest problems the world has is the germ has gotten so brilliant, that the antibiotic can't keep up with it. And they're constantly trying to come up with a new— People go to a hospital and they catch– They go for a heart operation, that's no problem, but they end up dying from, from... problems. You know the problems I'm talking about."

"It's one thing to watch CNN and hear about what is going on at the White House. It's another thing to hear about what's going on down the street."

"I think the president has made the right decisions for the right reasons. I think against the advice of many people, he closed the borders. And I think when the history of this is written, that’s going to have saved a lot of lives. I think that given the uncertainty that surrounded this and the possibility that it was so contagious that it would swamp our healthcare system, he supported the appropriate moves for a limited period of time"

"The second reason I focus on capitalism is that the responses to today's economic collapse by Trump, the GOP and most Democrats carefully avoid any criticism of capitalism. They all debate the virus, China, foreigners, other politicians, but never the system they all serve. When Trump and others press people to return to churches and jobs—despite risking their and others' lives—they place reviving a collapsed capitalism ahead of public health."

"This is not the time for trickle-down solutions. We know that when you lift from the bottom, everybody rises. There are concrete solutions to this immediate crisis and the longer term illnesses we have been battling for months, years and decades before. We will continue to organize and build power until you meet these demands. Many millions of us have been hurting for far too long. We will not be silent anymore."

"You know, my uncle was a great person. He was at MIT. He taught at MIT for, I think, like a record number of years. He was a great super genius. Dr. John Trump. I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said, "How do you know so much about this?" Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for President."

"It's going to disappear. One day it's like a miracle, it will disappear. And from our shores, we — you know, it could get worse before it gets better. It could maybe go away. We'll see what happens. Nobody really knows."

"On 28 January China said it would welcome international help as it struggled to contain coronavirus. No substantial help has come. Instead of solidarity and defying WHO, the US, Australia, Britain seek to isolate China, returning it to a state of siege and the dangers of the past"

"​In the light of the coronavirus pandemic, I focus criticism on capitalism and the vulnerabilities it has accumulated for several reasons. Viruses are part of nature. They have attacked human beings—sometimes dangerously—in both distant and recent history. In 1918, the Spanish Flu killed nearly 700,000 in the United States and millions elsewhere. Recent viruses include , and Ebola. What matters to is each society's preparedness: stockpiled tests, masks, ventilators, hospital beds, trained personnel, etc., to manage dangerous viruses. In the U.S., such objects are produced by private capitalist enterprises whose goal is profit. It was not profitable to produce and stockpile such products, that was not and still is not being done. Nor did the U.S. government produce or stockpile those medical products. Top U.S. government personnel privilege private capitalism; it is their primary objective to protect and strengthen. The result is that neither private capitalism nor the U.S. government performed the most basic duty of any economic system: to protect and maintain public health and safety. U.S. capitalism's response to the coronavirus pandemic continues to be what it has been since December 2019: too little, too late. It failed. It is the problem."

"Our country is far less at risk from the coronavirus than it is from the thousands of small and large authoritarians who have suddenly flexed their muscles across the country. President Trump would do well to end this ridiculous shutdown so that Americans can get on with their lives and get back to work. Americans should remember the tyrants who locked them down next time they go to the ballot box. Let’s demand an end to the shutdown so we can resurrect our economy, our lives, and our liberties!"

"It should not have taken a pandemic to raise these resources. In June 2019, we presented a Poor People’s Moral Budget to the House Budget Committee, showing that we can meet these needs for this entire country. If you had taken up this Moral Budget, we would have already moved towards infusing more than $1.2 trillion into the economy to invest in health care, good jobs, living wages, housing, water and sanitation services and more."

"What is most dangerous is that although this virus will eventually disappear, the assault on our civil liberties is not likely to be reversed. From this point on, whenever local officials, county officials, state governors, or federal bureaucrats decide there is sufficient reason to suspend the Constitution they will not hesitate to do so. Anyone who challenges the suspension of the Constitution “for our own good” will be labeled “unpatriotic” and perhaps even reported to the authorities. We have already seen hotlines springing up across the country for Americans to report other Americans who dare venture outside to enjoy the sun and build up their vitamin D protection against the coronavirus. The government is justified in cancelling the Constitution, we are told, because we are in an emergency situation caused by the Covid-19 virus. But do people forget that the Constitution itself was written and adopted while we were in an “emergency situation”? Did the framers of the Constitution fail to add an 11th Amendment to the Bill of Rights saying, “oh by the way, none of this counts if we get sick”? Of course not! Those who wrote our Constitution understood that these rights are not granted by the government, but rather by our Creator. Thus it was never a question as to when or under what conditions they could be suspended: the government had no authority to suspend them at all because it did not grant them in the first place."

"For many millions of Christians, Easter is a time to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Others may celebrate the arrival of spring and the promise of new life. Whatever one’s beliefs, after several weeks of mandatory “stay at home” orders and the complete shutdown of the US economy over the coronavirus, this self-destructive hysteria must end and we must reclaim the freedom and liberty that has provided us so much opportunity as Americans. To do that we should first understand that much of the hysteria is being generated by a mainstream media that has long prioritized sensationalism over investigating and reporting the truth. Government bureaucrats are also exaggerating the threat of this virus and appear to be enjoying the power and control that fearful people are willingly handing over to them. One “coronavirus” bureaucrat even told us that we can no longer go to the grocery store! So we should just starve? It is certainly possible to believe that this virus can be dangerous while at the same time pointing out that radical steps are being taken in our society – stay-at-home orders, introduction of de facto martial law, etc. – with very little knowledge of just how deadly is this disease."

"Before COVID-19, nearly 700 people died everyday because of poverty and inequality in this country. The frontlines of this pandemic will be the poor and dispossessed - those who do not have access to healthcare, housing, water, decent wages, stable work or - and those who are continuing to work in this crisis, meeting our health care and other needs."

"They would like to have the people come off. I'd rather have the people stay, but I'd go with them. I told them to make the final decision. I would rather — because I like the numbers being where they are. I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault."

"There are 2.9 hospital beds for every 1,000 people in the United States. That’s fewer than Turkmenistan (7.4 beds per 1,000), Mongolia (7.0), Argentina (5.0) and Libya (3.7). In fact, the US ranks 69th out of 182 countries analyzed by the World Health Organization. This lack of hospital beds is forcing doctors across the country to ration care under Covid-19, pushing up the number of preventable deaths."

"Speaker to Anthony Fauci: And would you also weigh in on this issue of hydroxychloroquine? What do you think about this and what is the medical evidence?"

"We cannot return to normal. Addressing the depth of the crises that have been revealed in this pandemic means enacting , expanding social welfare programs, ensuring access to water and sanitation, cash assistance to poor and low income families, good jobs, s and an annual income and protecting our democracy. It means ensuring that our abundant s are used for the general welfare, instead of war, walls, and the wealthy."

"I want them to try it. It may work, and it may not work. But if it doesn’t work, it’s nothing lost by doing it. Nothing. Because we know long-term what I want. I want to save lives, and I don’t want it to be in a lab for the next year-and-a-half as people are dying all over the place. In France, they had a very good test. They’re continuing. But we don’t have time to go and say, gee, let’s take a couple of years and test it out, and let’s go and test with the test tubes and the laboratories. We don’t have time. I’d love to do that, but we have people dying today. As we speak, there are people dying. If it works, that’d be great. If it doesn’t work, we know for many years malaria, it’s incredible what it’s done for malaria. It’s incredible what it’s done for lupus, but it doesn’t kill people."

"The FDA feels good about it. They’ve, as you know, they’ve approved it. They gave it a rapid approved approval. And the reason because it’s been out there for a long time and they know the side effects and they also know the potential. So based on that, we have sent it throughout the country. We have it stockpiled about 29 million doses, 29 million doses. We have a lot of it. We hope it works. Driven by the goal of the brightest minds in science. We have the brightest minds in science, but we were driven by the goal of getting rid of this plague, getting rid of this scourge, getting rid of this virus. These brilliant minds are working on the most effective antiviral therapies and vaccines. We are working very, very hard. I have met many of the doctors that are doing it. These are doctors that are working so hard on vanquishing the virus."

"With its broad sweep, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced us into an unprecedented national emergency. This emergency, however, results from a deeper and much longer term crisis — that of poverty and inequality, and of a society that ignores the needs of 140 million people who are poor or a $400 emergency away from being poor."

"But as of right now and yesterday, anybody that needs a test — That's the important thing. And the tests are all perfect. Like, the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good."

"We know all the people. We know all the good people. It's a question I asked the doctors before. Some of the people we cut, they haven't been used for many, many years, and if we ever need them, we can get them very quickly. And rather than spending the money — I'm a businessperson, I don't like having thousands of people around when you don't need 'em, when we need 'em, we can get them back very quickly."

"What do you have to lose? What do you have to lose? And a lot of people are saying that when … and are taking it, if you’re a doctor, a nurse, a first responder, a medical person going into hospitals, they say taking it before the fact is good, but what do you have to lose? They say, take it, I’m not looking at it one way or the other, but we want to get out of this. If it does work, it would be a shame if we didn’t do it early. But we have some very good signs. So that’s hydroxy chloroquine and as azithromycin, and again, you have to go through your medical people get the approval. But I’ve seen things that I sort of like, so what do I know? I’m not a doctor, I’m not a doctor, but I have common sense."

"Now this is a new thing that just happened to as the invisible enemy we call it. And if you can, if you have a no signs of heart problems, the , which will kill certain things that you don’t want living within your body. It’s a powerful drug. If you don’t have a problem, a heart problem, we would say, let your doctor think about it, but as a combination, I think they’re going to be, I think there’s two things that should be looked at very strongly. Now, we have purchased and we have stockpiled 29 million pills of the hydroxy chloroquine, 29 million. A lot of drug stores have them by prescription and also, and they’re not expensive. Also, we’re sending them to various labs. Our military, we’re sending them to the hospitals, we’re sending them all over. I just think it’s something, you know the expression, I’ve used it for certain reasons."

"'Social distancing is a good place to start'? After plunging the global economy into a depression based on little more than a panic-induced guess, one hates to even ponder what the (alleged) experts might have in mind for us next."

"So we’ve done 1,670,000 tests. Think of that 1,670,000 tests. And we have a great system. Now we’re working with the states in almost all instances, but we have a great system. And the other thing that we bought a tremendous amount of is the hydroxy chloroquine. Hydroxy chloroquine, which I think is, you know, it’s a great malaria drug. It’s worked unbelievably. It’s a powerful drug on malaria and there are signs that it works on this, some very strong signs and in the meantime it’s been around a long time. It also works very powerfully on lupus, so there are some very strong powerful signs and we’ll have to see because again, it’s tested."

"Hydroxychloroquine has not been proved to work against Covid-19 in any significant clinical trials. A small trial by Chinese researchers made public last week found that it helped speed the recovery in moderately ill patients, but the study was not peer-reviewed and had significant limitations. Earlier reports from France and China have drawn criticism because they did not include control groups to compare treated patients with untreated ones, and researchers have called the reports anecdotal. Without controls, they said, it is impossible to determine whether the drugs worked. But Mr. Trump on Sunday dismissed the notion that doctors should wait for further study."

"Peter Alexander: How are non-symptomatic professional athletes getting tests while others are waiting in line and can't get them?Donald Trump: No, I wouldn’t say so, but perhaps that’s been the story of life. That does happen on occasion and I’ve noticed where some people have been tested fairly quickly."

"We have contained this. I won't say airtight but pretty close to airtight."

"Even as Mr. Trump has promoted the drug, which is also often prescribed for patients with lupus, it has created rifts within his own coronavirus task force. And while many hospitals have chosen to use hydroxychloroquine in a desperate attempt to treat dying patients who have few other options, others have noted that it carries serious risks. In particular, the drug can cause a that can lead to ."

"Standing alongside two top public health officials who have declined to endorse his call for widely administering the drug, Mr. Trump suggested that he was speaking on gut instinct and acknowledged that he had no expertise on the subject. Saying that the drug is "being tested now," Mr. Trump said that “there are some very strong, powerful signs” of its potential, although health experts say that the data is extremely limited and that more study of the drug’s effectiveness against the coronavirus is needed. [...] Mr. Trump, who once predicted that the virus might “miraculously” disappear by April because of warm weather, and who has rejected on issues like climate change, was undaunted by skeptical questioning. “What do you have to lose?” Mr. Trump asked, for the second day in a row, saying that terminally ill patients should be willing to try any treatment that has shown some promise."

"I want all Americans to understand: we are at war with an invisible enemy, but that enemy is no match for the spirit and resolve of the American people... ...It cannot overcome the dedication of our doctors, nurses, and scientists — and it cannot beat the LOVE, PATRIOTISM, and DETERMINATION of our citizens. Strong and United, WE WILL PREVAIL!"

"President Trump doubled down Sunday on his push for the use of an anti-malarial drug against the coronavirus, issuing that goes well beyond scant evidence of the drug’s effectiveness as well as the advice of doctors and experts. Mr. Trump’s recommendation of hydroxychloroquine, for the second day in a row at a White House briefing, was a striking example of his brazen willingness to distort and outright defy expert opinion and when it does not suit his agenda."

"Construction is accelerating on the southern border wall, which bisects the Tohono O’odham reservation in Arizona and Mexico. The Trump administration has increased patrols at the border, despite the tribe’s concern that the patrols’ presence is spreading coronavirus on the reservation. And in Bristol Bay, Alaska, a salmon fishing season that brings in thousands of temporary workers is set to open in June because the federal government has also deemed commercial fishing “essential critical infrastructure.” Many local Native villages depend on the fishery for income, but have nonetheless pleaded with state regulators to cancel the season. The regional hospital has just four beds for possible COVID-19 patients."

"Many health issues that can increase COVID-19 mortality rates occur at high levels among Native Americans. These underlying and preexisting conditions – things like hypertension, diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease – are linked to diet and stem from disruption and replacement of Indigenous food systems. Meanwhile, housing shortages on reservations and homelessness in urban Native communities make social distancing to reduce COVID-19 transmission impossible. These factors have clear health impacts. On the Navajo reservation, for instance, through May 27, 2020, 4,944 people out of a population of 173,000 had tested positive for COVID-19, and 159 had died. This infection rate per capita exceeds those in hot spots such as New York and New Jersey. Importantly, however, it may also reflect a much more proactive approach to testing on reservations than in many other jurisdictions."

"The symptoms were more annoying than alarming: A dry cough, achiness and then sniffles developed a few days after Andrew Young, the American ambassador to Burkina Faso, met with government officials and aid organizations to discuss how to protect the West African nation from the coronavirus. A week later, Mr. Young was sealed in an isolation chamber and loaded into an evacuation flight out of the capital, Ouagadougou, as the first United States ambassador to learn he had the virus. He is unlikely to be the last. Already, 154 State Department employees worldwide have tested positive for the virus and more than 3,500 are symptomatic and in self-isolation, the vast majority of them serving in posts overseas. The pursuit of diplomacy is mostly idealistic, if usually faceless and often thankless. But outside conflict zones, it is rarely deadly. Even the most placid assignments come with security guards and other protective measures. The coronavirus has changed that. Diplomats, whose very jobs are to interact with foreigners and to represent 20 million Americans who are abroad at any given time, have been highly vulnerable to the pandemic as it swept around the world and into countries that have been slow to acknowledge its threat, many whose medical facilities are less than adequate to start."

"The world is at war with a hidden enemy. WE WILL WIN!"

"Well, I think the 3.4% is really a false number. Now, and this is just my hunch, and — but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this. Because a lot people will have this and it's very mild. They'll get better very rapidly. They don't even see a doctor. They don't even call a doctor. You never hear about those people. So you can't put them down in the category of the overall population in terms of this corona flu and/or virus. So you just can't do that. So, if, you know, we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work. Some of them go to work, but they get better."

"In a very real sense they've . The number of cases in Oklahoma has declined precipitously."

"You know, before we had a single coronavirus case in this country, this president shut down all travel from China. It bought us invaluable time to stand up our national response."

"By the way, it’s a disease, without question [that] has more names than any disease in history. I can name “kung flu.” I can name 19 different versions of names. Many call it a virus, which it is. Many call it a flu. What difference? I think we have 19 or 20 different versions of the name."

"Ironically, while the virus is hidden and invisible, it acts to make dramatically visible numerous crises and problems in nations such as the US. Better than any Marxist theory of crisis, the virus showed that the world capitalist system is extremely fragile and built on a house of cards that can be toppled by an ill-wind. More so than depressions, world wars, or terrorist attacks, COVID-19 brought the world to a standstill. It exposed the mighty US Empire as a second-rate moribund power and a failed state in its inconceivably feeble response to the pandemic and the plight of its citizens. It revealed Emperor Trump to be without clothes — not only grossly incompetent as a leader, but a truly dangerous sociopath indifferent to the suffering he causes. Trump not only presides over the greatest health crisis in a century, he is a health hazard, a danger to public safety."

"Moreover, the virus shed a blinding light on the already clear racial and class inequalities in the US, for the poor and people of color have the least resources, the worst access to healthy food and health care, and are the most vulnerable. In May-June 2020, erupted all over a nation dealing with the dual pandemics of COVID-19 and and . As well, COVID-19 laid bare the nihilistic logic of capitalism, when anxious elites insisted that the elderly, the vulnerable, and “essential workers” will have to be sacrificed for the greater good of the economy and revivification of the sacred "American Way of Life." Just as surely, the virus put on display the supremacy of politics over science, ideology over facts, and personal ambition (of Trump) over public health. The respect for and preeminence of science has never been lower in the US. Just as Trump has censored climate change science for the last few years, he and compliant Republican-governed states like Florida censured medical sciences disclosing the distressing factual realities of the COVID-19 outbreak. Truth, facts, and objective reality are troubled notions in the topsy-turvy society Trump has shaped. The virus made disturbingly clear the power of lies and ideology in a media-dominated hyperreal society, as even with the colossal failure of leadership, Trump retains the ardent support of his base, which comprises nearly half of the country."

"COVID is the perfect virus for neoliberal, atomized societies and especially for the sharply polarized US. Since the fall of the in 1989, and the utopian dreams of open societies in the aftermath, nations around the world have built more, not less, walls, and currently there are over 70 sizable border walls worldwide. In the midst of the , when international cooperation is critical, alliances are unraveling, and nations are building walls between one another. Donald “America First” Trump has pulled out of the and withdrew from the . Divisions form not only between nations, but within nations themselves. This is dramatically evident in the US, where Trump abdicated federal oversight and leadership of the COVID-19 crisis, states were forced to compete with one another for medical supplies and many erected border checkpoints to keep out citizens from neighboring states. The culture wars dividing conservatives and liberals for decades have intensified to draw battle lines now between those who wear MAGA hats and those who don protective masks. As well, COVID-19 has frayed important lines of family and community connections among individuals, forced people into isolated and sanitized zones of solipsism that breed depression and mental illness."

"Cases up only because of our big number testing. Mortality rate way down!!!"

"And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done."