Here’s the coronavirus death toll through October 4. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

Dr. Sean Conley displaying his "upbeat attitude" to the press on Sunday.Michael Reynolds/CNP via ZUMA

Chris Evans caught this little bit of misdirection yesterday:

Trump coughed here after the word “therapeutics” and it was edited out using the morph cut feature in @AdobePremiereCC

👀 pic.twitter.com/1IXvXaCa8l

— chris evans (@notcapnamerica) October 3, 2020

And it turns out that President Trump was put on oxygen a couple of times over the past couple of days but his doctors didn’t tell us. Why not?

Trump’s doctors, speaking on the steps of the military hospital where he was being treated for a third consecutive day, again refused to answer key questions about his condition, including the timing of the president’s second dip in oxygen, which they neglected to mention in multiple statements the day before, or whether lung scans showed any damage.

Pressed about the conflicting information he and the White House released the previous day, Navy Cmdr. Dr. Sean Conley acknowledged that he had tried to present a rosy description of of the president’s condition. “I was trying to reflect the upbeat attitude of the team, that the president, that his course of illness has had. Didn’t want to give any information that might steer the course of illness in another direction,” Conley said.

In a broad sense, I suppose none of this probably matters much. It seems likely that Trump is in fact doing OK and will recover soon. But in another sense it’s the very triviality of this stuff that’s telling. They lie and lie and lie about everything, whether they need to or not. And then they wonder why no one believes them.

As regular readers know, I take dexamethasone—aka the Evil Dex—twice a week as part of my treatment for multiple myeloma. The side effects are different for everyone, but they run the gamut from bad to hideous. In my case, the worst part is that it messes with my sleep pretty badly, but there are a few other bad side effects too. On the positive side, it keeps me alive, so there’s that.

Given my extensive experience with dex, I’ve gotten a lot of queries about why President Trump’s doctors would give him such a terrible drug unless he was in seriously poor health. The answer is simple: in general, the bad effects of dex only show up after you’ve taken it for a few days or weeks at least. If you take it only once or twice, it reduces inflammation like any good corticosteroid but most likely doesn’t have any seriously ill effects.

So that’s that. Giving Trump a dose or two of dex is a pretty easy decision: it’s helpful for people with temporary breathing problems and is generally well tolerated in short courses. It might mean that Trump’s condition is worse than we’ve been told, but more likely it doesn’t mean anything special. Who knows? Maybe Trump heard about it on Fox News and demanded some—although there’s never any telling for sure with this crowd since they lie about everything.

Here’s the coronavirus death toll through October 3. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

Donald Trump at a rally in Duluth on Wednesday night after testing positive for coronavirus. He held a press briefing before the flight but told no one about his positive diagnosis.TNS via ZUMA

Donald Trump has spent months trying to convince everyone that COVID-19 isn’t that big a deal, and that’s bad enough on its own. But the more we learn about the precise events of the past few days the more mind-boggling they become. The White House, as usual, is being cagey with definitive information, but here’s how it seems to have played out:

Tuesday evening: At the Trump-Biden debate, the Republican side of the aisle, as usual, insists on going maskless. During the debate, Trump mocks Biden for always wearing a mask.

Wednesday morning: Based on later reports from Saturday,¹ it appears that this is when Trump tested positive for coronavirus. He doesn’t bother informing the Biden campaign. Nor does he tell the American public.

Wednesday afternoon: Trump attends an indoor fundraiser in Minneapolis. No one there is informed that he has tested positive for coronavirus.

Wednesday night: Trump attends a rally in Duluth. No one there is informed that he has tested positive for coronavirus. On the flight home, Hope Hicks quarantines herself because she is exhibiting symptoms of COVID-19.

Thursday morning: Trump is informed that Hicks has tested positive for coronavirus.

Thursday afternoon: Trump attends an indoor fundraiser at his Bedminster golf club. No one there is informed that he has tested positive for coronavirus.

Thursday evening: A reporter discovers that Hope Hicks has contracted COVID-19.

A little after midnight Thursday: Trump finally tweets that he has tested positive. It’s unclear if the American public would ever have been told if no one had discovered that Hicks was infected.

Friday: No tweets all day. Trump releases a video that has all the energy of a hostage video. Doctors tell Trump that if he wants to walk to Marine One under his own power for the trip to Walter Reed medical center, he should go now.

Saturday morning: Trump’s physician says Trump was diagnosed “72 hours ago,” meaning Wednesday morning.¹ Another physician says Trump began Regeneron treatments “48 hours ago,” meaning Thursday morning. The White House later claims they misspoke. You may decide for yourself if you believe this, but given both Trump’s past record and the weaselly White House statements about the Thursday test “confirming” Trump’s diagnosis, I sure don’t. In the absence of documentary evidence to the contrary, I think they’re lying.

If Trump really was diagnosed on Wednesday morning, his conduct since then has been reckless beyond belief. And even if the diagnosis happened Thursday night, it was reckless of him to continue attending fundraisers after learning that Hope Hicks was positive. Trump and Hicks spend a lot of unmasked time together, and her positive diagnosis, along with COVID-19 symptoms, was plainly a serious danger signal.

Trump’s eight months of COVID denial has cost more lives than his personal behavior over the past few days, but there’s something here that goes beyond denial and partisan politics. He simply doesn’t care if he gets other people sick. He doesn’t care if other people die. It’s sociopathic beyond anything we’ve seen before.

But it’s not just Trump. Was no one in the White House willing to stand up to Trump and insist that he cancel events and issue a press release? No one? Not one single person? What in the everlasting fuck is wrong with these people?

President Trump leaves the White House for Walter Reed medical center on Friday.Sarah Silbiger/CNP via ZUMA

As of this writing, here’s the list of people who have contracted COVID-19 in the outbreak among DC politicians:

1. Donald Trump
2. Melania Trump
3. Hope Hicks
4. Sen. Thom Tillis
5. Sen. Ron Johnson
6. Sen. Mike Lee
7. Chris Christie
8. White House staffer
9. Another White House staffer
10. One reporter
11. Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president
12. Ronna McDaniel, chair of the RNC
13. Fr. John Jenkins, president of Notre Dame
14. Bill Stepien, Trump campaign manager

It’s inevitable that eventually some Democrat will report testing positive for the coronavirus, but it’s striking that so far it’s 12 Republicans out of 14 cases (plus two unknowns who attended the announcement ceremony for Amy Coney Barrett). Doesn’t this have to be a wakeup call for Republicans? As a matter of pure self-preservation, don’t they have to cut the crap and start urging everyone to wear masks and maintain social distancing? We’ll find out, I guess.

Here’s the coronavirus death toll through October 2. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

The province of Ontario reported nearly a hundred deaths on Friday, far more than usual, causing Canada’s trendline to spike upward slightly. Ontario is reinstituting some lockdown procedures and may put more in place in the near future.

COVID-19 deaths in Europe have started to climb, but for context it’s worth looking at the EU vs. the United States:

The United States has twice the death rate as the EU (and three times the case rate), and that gap is getting bigger every day. But who knows. Maybe the fact that President Trump has contracted COVID-19 will finally motivate everyone to knock off the political bullshit and take masks and social distancing seriously. If it does, it would be one good thing to come out of all this.

Have you missed Hilbert? I’ll bet you have. It’s been weeks since he’s been the star of Friday catblogging, and he’s determined not to let another week go by. When he saw the camera yesterday he immediately marched toward it, practically demanding that I take a picture of him wearing his best Winston Churchill look. This is a cat who knows exactly what he wants.

At the announcement of Amy Coney Barrett's nomination to the Supreme Court, practically everyone was maskless.Gripas Yuri/POOL via ZUMA

I know this is obvious, but the lesson of Donald Trump’s infection is not that it’s a result of him refusing to wear a mask. It’s a result of him insisting that everyone around him not wear a mask.

This is the problem the nation faces with Trump’s politicization of masks: your personal safety doesn’t depend very much on wearing a mask. What matters is whether everyone else is wearing a mask—“herd mentality,” you might call it. In Trump country, where lots of people spurn the whole idea of masks, you’re going to be unsafe regardless of what precautions you take. In the case of Trump gatherings, where everyone gleefully goes unmasked in order to own the libs and provide the optics Trump wants, you’re unsafe even if you buck the trend and wear a mask yourself. Ditto for the floor of the Senate. Or the House.

At Trump events, it’s considered de rigueur to go maskless. Don’t want to upset Donald, after all. So naturally everyone was maskless at Trump’s announcement event for Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court. The result so far? Sen. Mike Lee is now positive for coronavirus. Notre Dame president Fr. John Jenkins is positive for coronavirus. RNC chair Ronna McDaniel wasn’t there, but she’s around the president and his staff all the time. Now they all have COVID-19 and more are sure to follow.

The unemployment rate can go down for two reasons: Either more people have jobs or else more people have dropped out of the labor force and are no longer counted as unemployed. “Dropped out” means they’ve given up and are no longer looking for work.

September was a bad month for women, who dropped out of the labor force at twice the rate of men. It was even worse for Black workers, who dropped out at four times the rate of white workers. However, monthly data is noisy, so it’s usually better to look at longer-term figures. Here’s the dropout rate over the past year:

Black workers have dropped out of the labor force at nearly twice the rate of white workers. Now here’s actual employment:

Again, Black workers have lost their jobs at about twice the rate of white workers. Among white workers, women have lost their jobs at a rate that’s a third higher than men. Here’s the unemployment rate for September:

Taken together, men and women have done about the same during the pandemic recession. As usual, though, Black workers have done far worse than white workers, dropping out of the labor force and losing their jobs at about twice the rate of white workers. This is the same dynamic we see in nearly all recessions, and apparently the pandemic recession is no different.