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The airline industry is trying to hold up the federal government for $29 billion in grants and another $29 billion in loans. They threaten that if they don’t get the grants they will lay off employees, and that if they don’t get the loans they will use their remaining cash on dividends and stock buybacks.

Medicynical note: In the Trumpian dysfunctional world you waste and overspend during good times……….so that you can claim poverty when the economy changes. In Trum world you bankrupt your company and then move on to another scam. In the airlines case, they seek a bailout after spending their last ten years profits trying to increase shareholders wealth…….and executives own paychecks which are based on the enhanced stock price.

And I’m willing to bet these airlines pay little or nothing in income taxes. So, if you will, they want the government to bail them out with tax money to which they didn’t contribute. And as a bonus because of Citizens United they can buy votes in our congress with unlimited campaign contributions.

Only in America.

It’s quite evident that the U.S. is woefully unprepared for the covid-19 epidemic. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why:

“People say Contagion is prescient. We just saw the science. The whole epidemiological community has been warning everybody for the past 10 or 15 years that it wasn’t a question of whether we were going to have a pandemic like this. It was simply when. It’s really hard to get people to listen. I mean, Trump pushed out the admiral on the National Security Council, who was the only person at that level who’s responsible for pandemic defense. With him went his entire downline of employees and staff and relationships. And then Trump removed the [early warning] funding for countries around the world.” (Emphasis medicynic)

Medicynical note: our lack of preparation is obvious. We are reacting not anticipating and are so far behind that the epidemic is unlikely to be easily stopped. We are on the same disastrous fatal path as Italy.

Our leadership, a motley crew of deniers and inexperienced administrators under the thrall of the denier – in – chief, seem unable to act, mobilize and anticipate. To do so would, of course, would contradict our ignorant president who had a hunch that it would just go away…….like a miracle. People who contradicted his uninformed beliefs simply disappeared from view.

Totally clueless.

“On Feb. 10, nearly three weeks after the first coronavirus case was diagnosed in the United States, Mr. Trump submitted a 2021 budget proposal that called for a $693.3 million reduction in funding for the C.D.C., or about 9 percent, although there was a modest increase for the division that combats global pandemics.”

Guess what Donald you can’t make cruise ships into intensive care units. This masquerades as news when a medical neophyte is in charge.

“Trump said cruise ships may be used to help with the coronavirus crisis. The president said he had spoken to the chairman of one cruise company about using the ships, an announcement that comes one day after Trump said two Navy hospital ships would be deployed to free up hospital beds.”

Medicynical note: How about one of those empty Trump hotels?

Saw these two stories in the New York Times. One presents reality, the other, several proponents of what can only be described as a fraudulent alternative perspective.

Tragically a New Jersey family has had three fatalities from Coronavirus. This is the first case of multiple deaths in one family in the US epidemic. Whether the strain of the virus to which they were exposed was exceptionally virulent or whether they were , for some reason, exceptionally sensitive to it is unknown. I weep for this family.

At almost the same time five epidemic deniers were also featured in an article. They include Falwell Junior, Pinsky, a third rate comedian (whose name I won’t mention), Hannity, a defrocked CBS news type and the forever contrarian Ron Paul. Each has a blind spot dictated by their need for notoriety. They are either stupid or incredibly politically driven to try make facts fit their political narrative. Hopefully they will arrive, sooner than later, disgraced on the scrap heap of history.

Medicynical note: What is there to say about the deniers. First I’d note that the least fact based president in history understands reality better than this motley crew.

Pinsky and Paul, one a so-called addiction specialist and the other a non practicing ophthalmologist, haven’t cared for hospitalized patients in a generation. in Paul’s case his misuse of his Senator label makes me sympathize with his neighbor. Neither understands disease processes and in the case of the coronavirus, that there is a pandemic going on.

Falwell, a doctor in name only, inherited the family business, a university. He is a religious type, also in name only, and is similar to others in the same religion based family businesses in that they are dedicated more towards being making money and being political sycophants than being saintly or even truthful..

Hannity and the former correspondent are hacks–trying for political gain even out of other folks misery. Why they remain prominent has more to do with pervasive ignorance and bigotry in our country than we are willing to admit.

Medical authorities in China have said a drug used in Japan to treat new strains of influenza appeared to be effective in coronavirus patients, Japanese media said on Wednesday.

Medicynical note: that would be nice. Still needs further evaluation, but an optimist report in a time of overall gloom.

Some are still in denial, continuing in a tradition of the Trump Republican Party.

It’s a sad fact that the Republican Party and it’s president destroyed the infrastructure in the NSC and CDC set up to anticipate and respond to epidemics. Trumps tariffs have destroyed our businesses access to foreign markets and his doubling of our government’s financial deficits during what was a “good”economy makes more difficult the further deficits required to tide us over a deep recession. It will be known as the Trump recession.

Medicynical note: Without a bit of irony Trump has proposed further cuts to the CDC and NIH budgets just this year. And with a great deal of irony and incompetence (for which he will be evermore known) Trump denied there was a serious epidemic until just a day or two ago further slowing the response. His administrations ineptitude has created a medical and economic disaster. Vote.

After a slow start people are taking social isolation seriously.

For those of you intent on denying the seriousness of this outbreak there were 4600 or so cases. With deaths at 85 this AM almost double that of two days ago, the death rate is around 1.8% which is, as Dr. Fauci has noted is 10 times or more that of our yearly flu. From the Hopkins site there have been about 185,000 confirmed cases world wide and 7300 deaths or a death rate of 3.9%.

At this point the epidemic in the US is in an early stage. The numbers, however, are alarming.

Medicynical note: The best advice at this point is to isolate yourself from others, particularly those in your family who are in the high risk groups (i.e. immune compromised and/or elderly over age 60) and stop listening to the minimizing evil doers of FOX news et.al.

They are politically motivated have been wrong since the epidemic started. Their propaganda contributed to the denial in which our President dwelled for almost two months and our nation’s criminally slow response to the epidemic.

From INC. here are the top 30 corporations that paid no income tax last year. How many are asking for subsidies from real tax payers during the Coronavirus downturn?

“”The report finds that in 2018, 60 of America’s biggest corporations zeroed out their federal income taxes on $79 billion in U.S. pretax income,” the group’s press release said. “Instead of paying $16.4 billion in taxes at the 21 percent statutory corporate tax rate, these companies enjoyed a net corporate tax rebate of $4.3 billion.”

Here’s the list of the top 30 U.S. companies that ITEP says managed to pay zero income taxes, ranked in order of how much money the companies made to begin with (in parenthesis):

• Amazon.com ($10.84 billion)
• Delta Air Lines ($5.07 billion)
• Chevron ($4.55 billion)
• General Motors ($4.32 billion)
• EOG Resources ($4.07 billion)
• Occidental Petroleum ($3.38 billion)
• Duke Energy ($3.03 billion)
• Dominion Resources ($3.02 billion)
• Honeywell International ($2.83 billion)
• Deere ($2.15 billion)
• American Electric Power ($1.94 billion)
• Kinder Morgan ($1.78 billion)
• Public Service Enterprise Group ($1.77 billion)
• Principal Financial ($1.64 billion)
• FirstEnergy ($1.50 billion)
• Prudential Financial ($1.44 billion)
• Xcel Energy ($1.43 billion)
• PulteGroup ($1.34 billion)
• Molson Coors ($1.33 billion)
• Devon Energy ($1.30 billion)
• Pioneer Natural Resources ($1.25 billion)
• DTE Energy ($1.22 billion)
• Wisconsin Energy ($1.14 billion)
• PPL ($1.11 billion)
• Halliburton ($1.08 billion)
• Ameren ($1.04 billion)
• Netflix ($856 million billion)
• Salesforce.com ($800 million)
• CMS Energy ($774 billion)
• Rockwell Collins ($719 billion)

You can find the rest of the list here.

Medicynical note: Thanks to our Supreme Court these entities are provided the rights of citizens and are able to provide unlimited campaign donations. As such, shouldn’t they they should also have the same right to pay taxes, at the same rate as other citizens? And, given the current law, is it fair to use real tax payers funds to bail them out?

My modest proposal is to selectively tax the still profitable non-tax paying corporations and use these funds in the bailout. After all they are citizens and we all must be united in sharing the pleasure and yes, the pain.

Trump has a feel for people. His “success” with Kim has been now documented. And now with the Coronavirus epidemic tanking our economy, Trumps other bosom buddy–Mohammed bin Salmon– piles on.

“Donald Trump made one of the biggest mistakes of his presidency in the spring of 2017, when he offered an unconditional embrace to the then-emerging 31-year-old ruler of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, and adopted his agenda of aggressively confronting Iran. Three years later, as Trump grapples with the greatest crisis he has faced, that choice is costing him dearly.”

“Trump’s slow and stumbling response to the novel coronavirus pandemic helped accelerate last week’s stock market dive and mounting public uncertainty. But the trouble in the markets was also turbocharged by the latest reckless moves by the Saudi crown prince. Against the advice of his own ministers, Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, moved to flood markets with cheap Saudi oil, causing the global price to plunge and endangering the U.S. oil industry.”

Medicynical note: Like Trump the notion of working together is not in the Saudi repertoire……..or that of our demented self-absorbed president either.