Coronavirus US live: Trump tweets about 'light at end of tunnel' while experts warn of worst week yet

The acting Navy secretary lambasted Captain Brett Crozier, whose concerns about coronavirus were made public last week, in a speech to Crozier’s former crew.

According to a trasncript obtained by CNN, acting Navy secetary Thomas Modly said Crozier was either “too naive or too stupid” if he didn’t think the letter warning about a coronavirus outbreak would be made public.

Crozier, who was removed from his post as commander of the USS Theodore Roosevelt last week, wrote in the letter that sailors on the ship must be allowed to quarantine to prevent further spread of coronavirus among crew members.

“We are not at war,” Crozier wrote in the letter, which was sent to more than 20 people. “Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset: our Sailors.”

Modly told the crew of the ship this morning, “If he didn’t think, in my opinion, that this information wasn’t going to get out to the public, in this day and information age that we live in, then he was either A, too naïve or too stupid to be a commanding officer of a ship like this.” He added, “The alternative is that he did this on purpose.”

The small business loan program created by the stimulus package has processed $38 billion in loans since launching Friday, Larry Kudlow told CNBC this morning.

But that $38 billion represents a fraction of the $350 billion that the program is meant to disperse to small business owners.

The president’s top economic adviser acknowledged the program has not had a smooth rollout, as banks reported a deluge in applciations and business owners compalined about barriers to applying.

“The glitches will get worked,” Kudlow said. “It’s a monumental undertaking.”

New York will start temporarily burying bodies in parks as the city grapples with overrun morgues because of the coroanvirus crisis, city councilman Mark Levine said.

Levine also noted that the city is likely undercounting its coronavirus death toll because as many people are dying at home without receiving a test.

A Washington Post investigation showed the Trump administration missed key opportunities to prepare for the coronavirus crisis.

The Post reports:

The failure has echoes of the period leading up to 9/11: Warnings were sounded, including at the highest levels of government, but the president was deaf to them until the enemy had already struck.

The Trump administration received its first formal notification of the outbreak of the coronavirus in China on Jan. 3. Within days, U.S. spy agencies were signaling the seriousness of the threat to Trump by including a warning about the coronavirus — the first of many — in the President’s Daily Brief.

And yet, it took 70 days from that initial notification for Trump to treat the coronavirus not as a distant threat or harmless flu strain well under control, but as a lethal force that had outflanked America’s defenses and was poised to kill tens of thousands of citizens. That more-than-two-month stretch now stands as critical time that was squandered.

Washington Post editor Marty Baron told CNN yesterday, “I think the most important finding is that the government didn’t act like this was a war from the very beginning. … [The investigation] found that the government had failed all along the way. It did not pay attention to the seriousness of this pandemic but it was warned multiple times about it. It reacted very slowly, and was not acting as if it was wartime.”

Baron said that Trump specifically bore responsibility for the mishandled response. “Everything stems from the person at the top,” Baron said. “From the very beginning, he was being dismissive of this — of the dangers here.”

As America braces for the worst week of the coronavirus crisis yet, experts say there is one bit of good news.

A projection on the pandemic shows the estmated number of overall deaths in the US has declined since last week.

Reuters reports:

The University of Washington model, one of several cited by U.S. and some state officials, now projects U.S. deaths at 81,766 by Aug. 4, down about 12,000 from a projection over the weekend.

The model, which is frequently updated with new data, projects the peak need for hospital beds on April 15 and for daily deaths at 3,130 on April 16.

Trump defended the decision to allow cruise ships carrying passengers who have coronavirus to dock in Florida.

“For humanitarian reasons, the passengers from the two CoronaVirus stricken cruise ships have been given medical treatment and, when appropriate, allowed to disembark, under strict supervision,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Very carefully done. People we’re dying & no other countries would allow them to dock!”

The Coral Princess docked in Miami Saturday, a day after the Zandaam and its sister ship Rotterdam were allowed to unload passengers in Fort Lauderdale.

The question of whether to allow the ships to dock in Florida sparekd controversy, with Floriday governor Ron DeSantis saying he didn’t want sick passengers “dumped” in his state.

The Coral Princess was refused permission to dock in Fort Lauderdale Friday, and one of the ship’s two coronavirus deaths allegedly came as the coast guard refused to allow the ship to dock.