Courtesy of Pam Martens
Governor Gavin Newsom of California
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down by 960 points this morning and then began to stage a strong rally. That rally unraveled on news that came out of the press conference held by California Governor Gavin Newsom.
The Governor, a Democrat, seemed to go out of his way to stress that his administration has been working closely with the Trump administration in addressing the coronavirus outbreak. He refused to criticize Trump when questioned by reporters.
What did become quite clear, however, as reporters drilled down to the situation on the ground in California, is that the state has taken in 800 repatriated Americans from countries with coronavirus outbreaks, has received thousands more passengers on domestic flights from suspect countries, while it currently has just 200 tests kits from the CDC to test for the virus. Newsom told reporters that “It’s simply inadequate to do justice to the kind of testing that is required to address this issue head on.”
In exchanges with reporters, the Governor indicated that California is not alone in terms of a gross inadequacy of test kits. He said other states have the same problem.
Even more alarming, the Governor made it clear that the protocol established by the CDC for when states could test a patient for the virus was so limited that it restricted his state and other states from testing a large number of patients.
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