Unsanitized: The COVID-19 Report for July 25, 2020

Republicans in Disarray this Time
Also, vaccine insider trading

 

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows (left), former slayer of large
bills as a member of the House Freedom Caucus, could be hindering the
Republican relief package. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via AP Images)

First Response

Depending on how your state designates its week, you may be getting your
final unemployment check with a $600 federal stipend in it. That's on
top of the federal eviction moratorium that ended last night
.
This comes as first-time unemployment claims went up last week for the
first time since March
, and as small
businesses run out of federal aid and begin to resort to layoffs
.

Those essential workers still on the job, who early in the crisis
benefited from bonuses and hazard pay, are starting to see those quietly
dropped
,
and this is as clear a sign as any that the economy has taken a turn for
the worse. With a reserve army of the unemployed, businesses can go back
to just calling their workers heroes instead of paying them that way. If
they don't like it, they can quit, because there are plenty of people
in increasingly desperate straits willing to take their place.

So we're in a real dangerous moment, and it's not the best time to
rely on the policymaking acumen of the Republican Party.

Senate Republicans still haven't released their bill, which they only
began crafting about a week ago, despite knowing that this fiscal cliff
was in place for months. The new plan is for a release on Monday.
We've heard bits and pieces about the tentative agreement between
Mitch McConnell and the White House, none of which is very good. But
this week of delay follows months of delay, as Nancy Pelosi and Chuck
Schumer finally jumped on yesterday
.

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When McConnell had a clear vision in March that aligned with his
caucus-protect big business at all costs-he was able to put out a
baseline bill and deliver it through Congress relatively quickly.
McConnell tried to create that dynamic again with corporate immunity for
coronavirus-related lawsuits. While there has been substantial lobbying
from the business sector, the urgency seems lacking, and there has been
substantial disagreement with the White House and among the Senate
caucus over other matters, like payroll tax cuts (now out), where to set
the unemployment increase (we still don't know), and the overall price
tag of the bill. The presence in negotiations of the new White House
chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who spent his time in Congress running the
Freedom Caucus and blowing up deals, isn't helping matters.

The dithering actually might strengthen the Democrats' hand
.
If their votes are needed for a final bill because of conservative
defections, they may be able to dictate terms.

Republicans just don't really have a policy arm. That's not why
their members get into politics; owning the libs is more of a north star
than actually doing something with the job. Most of the policy options
we've heard for this bill are more truncated extensions of the last
one, with many of those ideas brought in by Democrats. If it's not a
tax cut or deregulatory maneuver or corporate bailout it doesn't have
a place in the Republican agenda. And none of those things really makes
sense for this pandemic.

You're going to see a lot of hot takes about how racism or corruption
or some other factor brought Republicans low in the election. But in
crisis, policy really does matter. And policy, or the lack thereof, has
created the conditions for a wave.

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Odds and Sods

I was on Rising with Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti talking about the
inclusion of deficit reduction proposals in the next stimulus. Watch
here .

I was on Rising Up with Sonali Kolhatkar talking about Monopolized.
Watch here
.

If you missed my discussion with HuffPost's Zach Carter about my book
Monopolized and his book The Price of Peace, you can watch it here
,
courtesy the Prospect's YouTube channel
.

I'm running a contest for Monopolized. If you tweet to @ddayen
with a photo of your copy of the book, I
will send you a personalized and signed bookplate that you can put
inside. It's my way of doing a virtual book signing. Supplies are
limited, so tweet me your photo of Monopolized today!

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Because Of Course

Here's a story

about a little pharmaceutical concern called Vaxart, which identified
itself part of the government's "Operation Warp Speed" program for
developing a coronavirus vaccine in June. Vaxart has received no money
from the government through Operation Warp Speed; they were only part of
a preliminary study. But Vaxart sent out a big press release announcing
"Vaxart's Covid-19 Vaccine Selected for the U.S. Government's
Operation Warp Speed." The stock soared on the strength of this, and
insiders saw their shares increase by six-fold.

This is known sometimes as a "pump and dump" scheme. Insiders hype
the stock with dubious information, it rises, and then they sell their
shares. Ordinary investors caught up in the wash are stuck with a bad
bet. The Times finds eleven different companies exhibiting this type of
behavior.

I'm not going to weep too much for the unlucky investors who got
manipulated. The problem here is that the market expects pharmaceutical
companies to profit from a vaccine at all. These are, as is clear here,
a government-funded set of vaccine trials. Participation in it means
that research can be carried out, but the expectation is that the
companies that win the race to a vaccine will get to profit wildly in
the aftermath. Why? The government is paying the freight. The license
for the final vaccine should cost nothing to any patient. Market-moving
announcements shouldn't move markets on a publicly-funded public
health initiative. But we have this expectation that pharma will profit,
so stocks go wild and fortunes get created. Nobody should have to pay
twice to protect themselves from a deadly virus; we already paid for the
research.

Days Without a Bailout Oversight Chair

120
.
We've had more days without a bailout oversight chair than there are
days until the presidential election.

We Can't Do This Without You

Today I Learned

* Oh yeah, there's a student loan cliff too
, in
September. (CNBC)

* Choosing who lives and dies

in south Texas, where hospitals are overwhelmed. (Fort Worth Star
Telegram)

* And there's a hurricane coming Texas' way
. (New
York Times)

* A third of non-hospitalized coronavirus patients experience long-term
illness
,
according to a CDC study. (NBC News)

* The coming hotel bailout
.
(HuffPost)

* Baseball's back, but stadium workers are getting completely
shortchanged
.
(The Nation)

* Sinclair Broadcasting is going to show part of the discredited
conspiracy film

"Plandemic." (CNN)

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