It’s time to reopen schools, Donald Trump said Tuesday afternoon. “Everybody wants it”, the president added. “The moms want it. The dads want it”.
Maybe. But nobody wants COVID-19, and Trump’s ideological counterpart in Brazil has it.
Jair Bolsonaro tested positive after experiencing symptoms and, true to form, he expressed little in the way of concern. “I’m very well”, he told reporters outside the presidential palace in BrasÃlia Tuesday. He cited his hydroxychloroquine regime and compared the virus to rain. “It’s going to get to you”.
Apropos, the Trump administration delivered a letter to the United Nations formally withdrawing the US from the World Health Organization. The White House cited WHO’s mishandling of the virus, presumably without so much as a hint of irony or self-reflection.
The US and Brazil have the two worst outbreaks on the planet. Neither country’s epidemics appear to be getting better.
“My concern is that he will use this to say, ‘See, I’m fine, if you catch this you will survive'”, one thirtysomething in Rio de Janeiro told The New York Times of Bolsonaro’s diagnosis. “Everything that happens to him has real repercussions in how people behave here. This is really serious”.
The White House wished Bolsonaro a “speedy recovery”.
It was a risk-off session stateside. Call it a hangover from Monday, but not a particularly nauseous one. Just a dull headache. Cyclicals weighed and equities closed near the lows, snapping a five-session win streak.
Marc Short, Mike Pence’s chief of staff, told Bloomberg the White House wants Congress to pass additional virus relief within a month. The size of the package should be $1 trillion or less, he said. House Democrats are angling for more than $3 trillion. That leaves a “small” gap.
Trump on Tuesday said Americans will get another stimulus check. Who knows if he intends to keep that promise, but now that he’s made it, some families will count on it. “Thoughts and prayers”.
Florida’s positivity rate rose above 16% to a record high, the state reported. It’s the same old story with equities and the virus. As long as deaths and hospitalizations don’t spiral out of control, risk assets can live with more cases, especially if regional lockdowns aren’t seen derailing the recovery.
But that’s such a generic line at this point, isn’t it? Every tick higher or lower can’t be explained by a shift in market participants’ thinking around caseloads, ICU capacity, and positivity rates. Stocks moved because they moved.
Gold hit the highest since 2011. The dollar rose as well. In today’s world, that’s consistent. They’re both safe havens, after all.
Big-cap tech may not be a “bubble” in the dot-com sense, but the outperformance to the S&P continues apace. There’s no historical precedent.
At the same White House event Tuesday, Trump said he “thinks you are going to have a lot of big things happening long before the end of the year on both vaccines and therapeutics”. It didn’t seem to occur to the president that it’s already July.
He also said he intends to pressure state officials on schools.
“We’re very much going to put pressure on governors and everybody else”, Trump declared, looking somewhat out of sorts. “It’s a horrible disease, but young people do very well”.
During his remarks to journalists Tuesday, Bolsonaro insisted the bigger threat to Brazil is the economic downturn. When it comes to the virus, “life goes on”, he said.
It’s only “rain”.
If POTUS had included a mandate for universal mask policy the numbers might warrant school openings by Sept, not August. Why dictate opening schools but make Governors state the case for masking. With this man it is always about payola so expect something in the next bill as a strong arm.
Parochial School budgets.
opening the schools doesn’t guarantee that parents will send their kids.
I do not expect all private colleges to survive this pandemic.
Many college students will not want to fork over tuition for what is turning out to be- live in a dorm with no food service and take all classes through your computer, on line.
At best, they can get their own apartment– but will still be stuck with online classes. Why pay $50,000-$70,000/ year for that????
The Emporer has no clothes. It is looking like those sky high tuitions may not be sustainable.
Did Trump say whether schools will be teaching health and science anymore?