Yes, we need to move on, but never forget that Fox News has been a public health menace

 
Attorney Scott Pilutik wrestles with the news of the day, from a lawyerly perspective…

This video captures Fox News’ 180 degree turn, explained in a minute and a half of perfectly distilled cognitive dissonance.

I imagine not everyone wants to keep hearing how Trump bungled the response to focus on more immediate problems, but (a) gaslighting like this needs to be countered for the sake of history — we can’t forget the reality-denying mendacity; (b) the month-plus period of inactivity while these idiots were pumping him full of conspiratorial bullshit he wanted to hear instead of what he needed to hear will likely cost thousands of lives. Fox News is a public health menace.

 
Also, please stop spreading misinformation, you’re going to get people killed: No, a hair dryer won’t stop coronavirus

Also horseshit: No, 5G didn’t cause the coronavirus

And here’s next-level horseshit: SoftBank Owned Patent Troll, Using Monkey Selfie Law Firm, Sues To Block Covid-19 Testing, Using Theranos Patents

The title on that one says it all but if you can’t read it, some asshole is attempting to block COVID-19 testing as violating his patent and he’s using the Theranos (supreme-level horseshit) patents to get an injunction. It won’t work but it helps illustrate the brokenness of our patent system.

From the article: “Honestly, I’m used to all sorts of awfulness, but this one piles awfulness upon awfulness, and takes it to a level of pure evil. The lawyers filing this lawsuit on behalf of “Labrador” should remember what they’ve done — filing a bullshit patent trolling lawsuit, on behalf of a shell company for a notorious giant patent troll, using patents from a sham company, and using them to try to block the use of Covid-19 diagnostic tests in the middle of a pandemic. I wonder how they sleep at night.”

There’s already a lot to be written about patents in all this too, with more certainly to come: Trump ‘offers large sums’ for exclusive US access to coronavirus vaccine

The hospitals in New York City are already being stressed and the federal government isn’t being mobilized (New York Times: Trump slowly enlisting more agencies in ‘whole of government’ response to virus), partly because Trump spent weeks pretending this wasn’t real or was a plot against him, partly because he’s thoroughly ignorant of how the federal government works and has surrounded himself with the similarly unprepared and unfit.

The Army Corps of Engineers should be building hospitals right now but they, like all the other gov’t agencies that could be utilized during this valuable and vanishing opportunity to cushion the incoming blow, are on the sidelines awaiting orders.

It’s been clear since day one that Trump doesn’t view how the executive branch was partitioned as useful, he’d rather wing it based on his gut, dispensing power to whoever kowtows best. Even if he cared, he doesn’t appear to have the mental capacity to understand the roles of the different agencies. If the executive branch was a 100-piece puzzle, Trump doesn’t have the patience or bandwidth for anything beyond finding the four corner pieces.

What’s happening now was bound to happen to some degree regardless, but we’re doomed to be hit harder than we otherwise would because of the malevolence and incompetence of this administration. Trump started taking this seriously only on March 16, and the CDC’s myriad failures on the testing front go back months and continue today.

This Washington Post article is an attempt to autopsy the decisionmaking related to testing but there are still more questions than answers because (surprise) the administration is being less than forthcoming.