What's at the end of the tunnel? Maybe a new tunnel

Waiting for a new dawn

With the darkest weeks of the coronavirus pandemic upon us, President Donald Trump and his task force looked for signs of what Americans could look forward to after the peak, still weeks away.

“There’s tremendous light at the end of the tunnel,” Trump said at a White House briefing Monday. “Currently, 10 different therapeutic agents are in active trials and some are looking incredibly successful,” he said. The country would open “sooner than people think," Trump said.

But reopening and an easing of stay-at-home restrictions don't mean the nation soon will go back to the way it was before the pandemic, his medical experts cautioned. "If 'back to normal' means acting like there never was a coronavirus problem, I don't think that's going to happen until we do have a situation where you can completely protect the population," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top government infectious diseases expert. He was alluding the development of vaccines not expected to be ready until well into next year.

"When we get back to normal, we will go back gradually to the point where we can function as a society,” Fauci said. "But if you want to get back to pre-coronavirus, that might not ever happen in the sense that the threat is there."

Back to now: It's been so bad that it was regarded as a hopeful sign that the fatalities in New York State held steady on Monday for a second consecutive day at about 600. “While none of this is good news, the possible flattening of the curve is better than the increases we have seen,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said.

In the meantime, congressional leaders and Trump's White House are converging on the need for yet another assistance package to try to contain the economic devastation, The Washington Post reported. "We’re going to take good care of our people,” Trump said.

Trump has signaled support for some of the ideas that Democrats back, such as expanded help for small-business owners and new bailout checks for households. Republican leaders have called for more corporate aid and money to boost the beleaguered health care system.

Trump gets testy

Trump responded angrily when reporters at the Monday briefing asked about a federal government survey that found hospitals faced severe shortages of coronavirus test supplies.

"It is wrong," Trump said of the conclusions by the Health and Human Services inspector general's office, suggesting they were skewed by political bias against him. 

"Give me the name of the inspector general,” he said before suggesting without evidence, “Could politics be entered into that?”

Acting in the role of HHS inspector general is Principal Deputy Inspector General Christi A. Grimm, a career government manager who was elevated to her current position in January under the Trump administration. (Read the survey here.)

“We’ve done more testing and had more results than any country anywhere in the world,” Trump said. But doctors and health officials from around the nation told The New York Times that delays in getting results have persisted and that uneven access to tests has prolonged the rationing of them and hampered patient care.

Sailors' anger aweigh at Navy boss's rant

Trump can read a crowd. He evidently knows how the crew of the USS Theodore Roosevelt chanted their support for Capt. Brett Crozier after he was removed from command for a letter to Navy brass pleading for help to deal with a shipboard coronavirus outbreak.

Trump also evidently knows of the crew's angry reaction when the man who fired Crozier, acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly, dressed down the sailors in a profanity-laden speech piped over the aircraft carrier's PA system and told them their beloved captain was either "too naive or too stupid" to be in command. 

Like Crozier's letter, Modly's remarks leaked. An audio recording was posted by the military news site Task & Purpose. The bad-mouthing of Crozier prompted one sailor to exclaim: "What the [expletive]." Another was heard yelling: “He was trying to help us!”

At Monday's coronavirus briefing, Trump maintained that Crozier's letter was "a mistake," but maybe not so bad that it should cost the officer his career.

"I'm going to get involved and see exactly what's going on there, because I don't want to destroy somebody for having a bad day," the president said, adding he'd reviewed Crozier's record and found it was otherwise "exemplary." 

Modly also told The Washington Post he fired Crozier against the wishes of top uniformed officers because he was concerned about how Trump would react if the Navy didn't act swiftly. Modly complained to the sailors about "the level of hatred and pure evil that has been thrown my way" since he dismissed Crozier, who is now in quarantine after testing positive for COVID-19.

Janison: Trump's trust shortage

Last week, University of North Florida pollsters reported a staggering 58% of Sunshine State residents said they do not trust Trump to "provide reliable information about the coronavirus." Another 41% said they do.

This credibility problem goes way beyond political polarization, writes Newsday's Dan Janison. Trump appears unwilling or unable to just let his experts tell people the facts, as happened Sunday when the president wouldn't let Fauci answer a question about Trump's touts for the drug hydroxychloroquine.

Trump and his fans want him to be proved right about something, an antidote to his weeks wasted by his slowness in recognizing the depth of the virus threat. 

Other presidential pronouncements are detached from reality. Trump has said more than once in recent weeks that passengers are given "very strong tests" when getting on and off airplanes and trains. There is no evidence of this, and therefore no numbers. But according to fact-checkers, the number of falsehoods at presidential news conferences tends to drop the more Trump lets others do the talking.

Trump's 'warm' talk with Biden

After days of attempts to set up, Trump said he had a "really wonderful, warm" phone conversation with Joe Biden, his likely Democratic opponent, about the U.S. response to coronavirus.

"He had suggestions, it doesn't mean that I agree with those suggestions, but certainly he had suggestions. I also told him some of the things we're doing," Trump said. He described the call as lasting 15 minutes.

A statement from Biden's chief spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield said, "Vice President Biden and President Trump had a good call." She added that Biden "expressed his appreciation for the spirit of the American people in meeting the challenges facing the nation."

Earlier in the day, Trump and Biden swatted at each other on Twitter. The president mocked Biden as wanting "a 'virtual' Convention, one where he doesn’t have to show up. Gee, I wonder why?" Biden raised the "virtual" possibility after the convention dates were pushed back from July to August. The Democrat shot back: “Mr. President, I hope we can gather in Milwaukee, but that is going to depend on you stepping up and doing what needs to be done to handle this pandemic."

More news on coronavirus

Cuomo said Monday that the latest coronavirus stats "suggests a possible flattening of the curve" of infections in the state. But governor warned against complacency.

See a roundup of the latest pandemic news from Long Island and beyond by Newsday's reporting staff, written by Bart Jones.

For a full list of Newsday's coronavirus stories, click here.

What else is happening:

• Trump granted Cuomo's request to start treat COVID-19 patients aboard the Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort, which is docked on the Hudson River. Initially it was to take only non-COVID patients. The ship will treat cases from New Jersey, as well as New York. "Hopefully that will be very helpful to both states,” Trump said.
• Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro, an economist, rejects the idea that he lacked the standing to loudly doubt the medical opinion of Fauci on an unproven coronavirus drug treatment. That happened in a task force meeting Saturday. "My qualifications in terms of looking at the science is that I’m a social scientist," Navarro told CNN Tuesday. "I have a Ph.D. and I understand how to read statistical studies."
• Trump has found a silver lining amid the pandemic — the hit to New York Times and Washington Post ad revenue because of the economic tailspin. "I can’t say whether this is because they are Fake News sources of information, to a level that few can understand, or the Virus is just plain beating them up,” Trump tweeted. "Fake News is bad for America!" Advertising is down throughout the industry.
• Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers on Monday moved to postpone the state’s presidential primary, scheduled for Tuesday, until June because of the pandemic. But Republicans went to the state Supreme Court and got the Democratic governor's order blocked. Later, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to allow the state's deadline extension for absentee ballots.
• Trump said he has asked "leading companies" to offer help to doctors for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who took a turn for the worse in his battle with coronavirus and was moved to a hospital intensive care unit.
• Trump's popularity bump last month from his response to the crisis appears to have hit a plateau, according to a CNN analysis of recent polling.