It took seven or eight weeks for journalists in the United States to get some kind of handle on the pandemic, but they have finally risen to the challenge. American journalists have more or less figured things out and synthesized the available information. They're not just flailing at the crisis/confusion of the day, but asking the right questions in a targeted way while grasping the speed and consequences of COVID-19 as it permeates the United States.
Here are a couple of grounded insightful pieces that became available in the last 48 hours.
The first, at medium.com, is "The Psychopath in Chief" by Tony Schwarz, President Trump's ghostwriter for The Art of the Deal. Schwarz spent hundreds of hours with Donald Trump while writing the book over an 18-month period. He brings a deep experience to bear on the subject of the president's behavior.
The other article is Politico's "Bad state data hides coronavirus threat as Trump pushes reopenings." Darius Tahir and Adam Cancryn sort and collate the numerous data tweaks, spins, and manipulations being employed to boost the case for reopening. A third of states, they advise, aren't reporting hospital admissions data. Although I anticipated data editing and suppression, as I said below in the quote from May 8th's "Every Which Way but Truth," even I am surprised by the immediate and ubiquitous attempts to obscure what's actually happening.
Check out both pieces of solid writing.
"It's a cynical, barbaric strategy. Open the red states, where the GOP has great information control, and then spin and depress numbers and hope for the best. The way they lose is if things get really, obviously bad. Then the GOP will rotate a daily spotlight on whichever states are not taking a virus beating. If things go as anticipated, the GOP will eventually become an extension of the Montana chamber of commerce." Bob Dietz (May 8, 2020)
