The White House hopes Americans will suddenly just stop dying of coronavirus

Hello! Welcome to the next edition of Insider Today. Please sign up here.

As a reminder, this is an email publication that David Plotz and I are writing with the help of many of our excellent journalists. Our goal is to provide you with insight and analysis about the big stories of the day — "Insider in your inbox."

Thanks as always for reading. Please feel free to reply to this email and tell us what you like or don't like, and we'll evolve and improve as we go.

—Henry Blodget ([email protected]) and David Plotz ([email protected])

SUMMARY: White House forecaster thinks Americans will just stop dying. Trump bans pandemic task force members from talking to Congress. US is facing a new, more dangerous coronavirus mutation. How much will we pay for a vaccine? We need a national plan, not local plans. The 1918-19 flu caused a surge of right-wing extremism. The Big 3.

Key forecasts for coronavirus deaths are rising as states reopen. Meanwhile, a White House forecaster thinks people are just going to stop dying.

Coronavirus-related deaths in the United States are nearing 70,000.

Yesterday, as Insider's Sinead Baker reports, researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington nearly doubled their US death forecast to 134,000 by early August, with more deaths expected thereafter.

IHME increased the death forecast because the epidemic peak in the US is lasting longer than expected and new cases are declining more slowly than expected.

As Insider's Eliza Relman reported yesterday, another forecasting model, featured in a government "situation update," assumes a radical acceleration in daily new cases and deaths by the end of this month.

This latter forecast was apparently preliminary, and the White House and CDC have since disavowed it. But the researcher from Johns Hopkins who put it together told the Washington Post that "there are reopening scenarios where it could get out of control very quickly."

Meanwhile, the White House's own model is decidedly more optimistic.

The Post reports that economist and Trump advisor Kevin Hassett has developed a model that predicts coronavirus deaths will drop sharply this month and "essentially go to zero" by May 15. Here's his "cubic fit" model overlaid with the other models.

No one knows the future. Everyone is free to come up with their own forecasts. But some forecasts have more logic supporting them than others.

And the White House's, meanwhile, seems more like a dream. — HB

The White House has banned 'Coronavirus Task Force' experts from speaking to Congress

The Trump administration this week squashed two efforts to start a broader conversation about its coronavirus response.

The White House banned the members of its pandemic task force from testifying to Congress, effectively preventing the legislative branch from asking any questions of the executive branch about the most significant global catastrophe since World War II. The White House claims it wants to keep task force members from being distracted.

On the same day, the administration skipped a global vaccine summit designed to raise billions for research, rally public support, and start the conversation about how to collaborate globally on manufacturing and distribution.

What did the administration not skip? Self-promotion. They arranged for a friendly Fox News interview of the President inside the Lincoln Memorial, an unprecedented use of that sacred civic space.

This is a demoralizing trend: The Trump administration enthusiastically seeks any opportunity for self-promotion and aggrandizement of its COVID-19 response, any occasion when it can claim success.

But the coronavirus crisis is not a problem that is solved by mere claims, by the rhetorical energy the President specializes in. Solving it requires constant effort, improvement, revision, cooperation, clarity, and transparency. If the administration refuses to answer hard questions, listen to Congress, or even collaborate with allies, we'll continue to lag the world in stopping the pandemic. — DP

A study shows coronavirus may have mutated

An early draft of a study from researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory — which has not been published or peer-reviewed yet — suggests that the coronavirus mutated over the past few months. They concluded that the strain of the virus that has afflicted most people in the US is the newer version.

The researchers have not yet figured out whether one strain is significantly different or more harmful than another. If a virus mutates enough, that could have implications for treatments and vaccines, but researchers so far think the new coronavirus mutates at a very slow rate, which is promising.

In previous epidemics, such as the devastating "Great Influenza" of 1918-1919, a second strain of the virus — the one that wiped out most of the estimated 39 million people who died — was more deadly than the first.

The challenge for vaccines, meanwhile, is that, if a virus mutates, a vaccine that works for one strain might not work for another.

The researchers' draft study itself is here, but it is dense. — HB

How much will a COVID-19 vaccine cost? Way way way way less than it's worth.

COVID-19 vaccine trials are starting at an encouraging clip. Insider's Andrew Dunn reports on a new Pfizer one today.

But the high stakes and enormous costs of accelerating research have raised fears that a COVID-19 vaccine will be too expensive, and that whatever company makes it will score windfall profits.

Since there's not yet a vaccine, it's too early to answer the pricing and profit questions. But surveys I've seen, including this Insider story, suggest a possible cost of around $10 per dose when manufacturing gets scaled up. Here are a few key things to remember about that vaccine, when it does arrive:

Conservative estimates suggest COVID-19 will slash $3 trillion from global economic output in 2020. That's $375 per person this year alone. It will inflict trillions and trillions more damage in years to come.

If a vaccine ended up costing $100 per dose (and it definitely won't be that pricey), and we spent $780 billion to vaccinate everyone on earth, it would still be the bargain of the century. — DP

We need national leadership and a national plan

Many states in the United States are beginning to reopen. Their eagerness is understandable: The pandemic and lockdowns are having a devastating impact on our economy, jobs, and lives, and we're desperate to get back to normal. And with warmer weather outside, and declining cases in some areas, patience is nearing its end.

The problem is that this initial phase of our national coronavirus-attack plan — mitigation — did not go as well as planned.

Nationwide, new cases and deaths per day have flattened (good), but they have not yet meaningfully declined (bad). Excluding the "Tri-state area" of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, in fact, US cases per day are continuing to rise.

Two caveats to this: First, economist Ian Shepardson points out that most of the increase outside of the tri-state area is coming from only seven states. A trailing average of cases in 40 of 50 US states, he says, are now declining.

Second, the steady (and important) increase in US testing capacity may account for some of this increase in confirmed cases. But it probably doesn't account for all of it.

Most importantly, we still don't have a plan for the next phase or a leader to bring us together and lead us through it.

State and local governments do have a critical role to play. Each county, state, and region is facing a different situation, and each needs to approach their situation differently.

But US states and cities are not separate countries. US citizens — at least in normal times — travel freely from one state and city to another. Even if each state and city were capable of eliminating the virus on its own, traveling Americans would continually bring the virus with them.

If we want to get back to normal, therefore, we need a national approach, not just a state and local approach. The federal government can't just be a "backup," as the Trump administration has recently been saying.

The federal government needs to lead. And the federal government needs a plan.

What do we need in this federal plan?

Mostly, funding. Funding for the states. Funding for testing. Funding for contact-tracing. Funding for isolation and quarantine facilities.

But also leadership.

We need our federal government to use its resources and expertise to develop, communicate, coordinate, and execute a national and then global plan. We need regular updates from relevant experts on how the plan is going and how we're changing it as the circumstances change.

That's what our federal government is there for, after all. That's what we built it and pay it to do.

And yet, even as the country opens back up, it is clear that our federal government has no real plan. Instead, our federal government appears to be leaving the problem to someone else. —HB

Will COVID-19 lead to a rise in political extremism?

German cities with higher mortality from the 1918-19 flu voted more heavily for the Nazis in 1932 and 1933, a New York Federal Reserve researcher concludes in a new paper.

Even after controlling for other factors including income, religion, and ethnic makeup, flu deaths corresponded to a rise in right-wing extremism 14 years later. (Though not to a rise in left-wing extremism. Voting for the communist party was unaffected.)

Will COVID-19 cause a similar extremist surge in hard-hit countries? — DP

The Big 3*

Royal baby Archie Harrison turns 1.

The son of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex celebrates his birthday Wednesday, and Insider has incredibly cute photos of his first year.

Michael Jordan made $1.3 billion from Nike, but wanted to sign with Adidas.

He loved Adidas, but when he went pro his mom forced him to listen to Nike's pitch. They offered him cash and his own shoe, the Air Jordan.

Amazon VP who quit and called the company "chickens---" is now being courted by competitors.

Top engineer Tim Bray says Google, Comcast, and Huawei have approached him since he resigned in protest of how Amazon has treated warehouse whistleblowers.

*The most popular stories on Insider this morning.

Thank you for reading! Please let us know what you think. If we think other readers will enjoy your note, we'll publish it! [email protected] and [email protected]