(Bloomberg) — President Donald Trump plans to declare a national emergency on Friday over the coronavirus outbreak, invoking the Stafford Act to open the door to more federal aid for states and municipalities, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The president said he will hold a news conference at 3 p.m. in Washington. Trump spoke Friday with Emmanuel Macron, the French president tweeted, about the pandemic, and agreed to organize a video conference with world leaders on Monday to coordinate research efforts on a vaccine and treatments and work on how to respond to the economic fallout.
Trump is under increasing pressure to act as governors and mayors nationwide step up actions to mitigate the spread, closing schools and canceling public events. Declaring a national emergency would allow the government to marshal additional resources to combat the virus, and also marks a symbolic turning point for the president, who has repeatedly compared the coronavirus to the seasonal flu and insisted that his administration had the outbreak under control.
U.S. stocks struggled to hold onto gains on Friday. The S&P 500 rose less than 1% in mid-day trading after climbing 6% at the open, following stocks’ worst day since 1987. Treasury yields increased as the Federal Reserve said it was buying $37 billion of bonds across maturities
Senate Democrats have urged Trump to invoke the Stafford Act and other disaster declaration requests they say would free up more than $42 billion in funding for states available in the Disaster Relief Fund.
An emergency declaration would allow a state to request a 75% federal cost-share for expenses that include emergency workers, medical tests, medical supplies, vaccinations, security for medical facilities, and more, according to a letter Democrats sent the president earlier this week.
Only a few emergency declarations for public health threats have been made since the 1960s, and only two have targeted disease outbreaks, when President Bill Clinton in 2000 declared emergencies in New York and New Jersey in response to the West Nile Virus.
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-declare-national-emergency-speed-151931686.html
Passing it along…
A novel totivirus-like virus isolated from bat guano
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22421961
SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronavirus pose threat for human emergence
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4797993/
-flek
The hoax is expanding. Is any of it real? The dead in Italy? The overflowing hospitals? The flu also can kill. I heard Trump’s talk today. On the way for us, Medical Tyranny!! With a corporate partnership. He brought up CEO’s or spokespeople from Walgreens, Target, Google, etc., all vowing to keep us safe and supply everything we need, right along with drive-by testing where you can stay in your car while they swab your mouth. Results in a few hours. All for us. Ain’t it grand?!!
And Trump… He couldn’t even read the script properly, stumbling over his words, seemed he lost his arrogant edge, the edge that claims he knows everything and has it all under control. Says multiple $Billions are being allotted to fight the virus. This, while so many of us are struggling, while Social Security hangs by thread, while the homeless camps swell, while they rob us blind.
Fake emergency yielding real catastrophe. Our nation is the pearl and they are going after it with a vengeance. What a fight we have ahead.
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