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53% to 34%
“By a 53% to 34% margin, more believe a quicker response from the federal government could have slowed the spread of coronavirus in the U.S. than say it is so contagious that nothing could have prevented it spreading the way it has. Some 30% of Republicans join 73% of Democrats in saying the government could have made a difference had it acted faster.” — Fox News poll
137,000
Washington Post: “Since mid-January, President Trump has spent a total of 12 hours speaking publicly about the novel coronavirus — amounting to more than 137,000 words… He has tweeted about the virus 138 times. And in the past week alone, the president has spoken for 287 minutes — more than 4½ hours — during daily coronavirus news conferences.”
3.3 million
“The 3.3 million new unemployment insurance claims that the Labor Department reported Thursday is likely a significant undercount, experts say, because laid-off workers have been calling into state unemployment agencies much faster than the agencies can process their requests,” Politico reports.
2/3
“The Trump administration cut staff by more than two-thirds at a key U.S. public health agency operating inside China, as part of a larger rollback of U.S.-funded health and science experts on the ground there leading up to the coronavirus outbreak,” Reuters reports. “Most of the reductions were made at the Beijing office of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and occurred over the past two years.”
80%
New York Times: “Some 80 percent of the senior positions in the White House below the cabinet level have turned over during President Trump’s administration, with about 500 people having departed since the inauguration. Mr. Trump is on his fourth chief of staff, his fourth national security adviser and his fifth secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. … Between Mr. Trump’s history of firing people and the choice by many career officials and political appointees to leave, he now finds himself with a government riddled with vacancies, acting department chiefs and, in some cases, leaders whose professional backgrounds do not easily match up to the task of managing a pandemic.”
$9.2 billion
“Top executives at U.S.-traded companies sold a total of roughly $9.2 billion in shares of their own companies between the start of February and the end of last week,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
57%
A new CBS News poll finds 57% of Americans say the nation’s efforts to combat the coronavirus are going badly right now, most call it a crisis and see a months-long process before it is contained. But this is curious: 53% say President Trump is doing a good job handling the outbreak, and 54% are optimistic about his administration’s ability to handle it from here, though 66% also feel the Trump administration was not prepared to deal with it when it started.
50% to 24%
A new Public Policy Polling survey in North Carolina finds that a majority think Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) should resign, 50% to 24%, and that his approval numbers have plummeted since revelations last week about his stock sales in the wake of the coronavirus.
350,000
“The coronavirus pandemic that’s spread to nearly every country in the world is picking up pace, the World Health Organization said Monday, as global cases eclipsed 350,000 and deaths soared past 15,000,” CNBC reports. Reuters reports the WHO was seeing a “very large acceleration” in coronavirus infections in the United States which had the potential of becoming the new epicenter.
$50 billion
“US airlines are seeking government assistance of more than $50 billion, including a mix of direct aid and loan guarantees, as the industry reels from the coronavirus outbreak,” CNBC reports.
