'The surge is coming': Trump warns of 'very painful two weeks'

President Trump warned the worst of the coronavirus pandemic is yet to come. At a White House briefing on Tuesday, the president, flanked by members of his coronavirus task force, shared grim estimates for the coronavirus “plague” that is sweeping across the nation and leaving thousands dead in its wake. Although the federal government has been giving out medical equipment to states in need, some of that stockpile is being withheld for when the number of coronavirus cases is expected to jump. “We’re giving massive amounts of medical equipment and supplies to the 50 states. We also are holding back quite a bit,” Trump said. “We have almost 10,000 ventilators that we have ready to go. We have to hold them back because the surge is coming, and it’s coming pretty strong, and we want to be able to immediately move it into place without going and taking it.”

Striking a solemn tone, Trump urged people to brace themselves, particularly for the next couple weeks. “I want every American to be prepared for the hard days that lie ahead. We’re going to go through a very tough two weeks,” the president said, adding later that there will soon be "real light at the end of the tunnel.” “But this is going to be a very painful, a very, very painful two weeks,” he said.

Deborah Birx, the response coordinator for the White House coronavirus task force, presented a number of graphics and explained that current projections show that, if full mitigation efforts are implemented, 100,000 to 240,000 U.S. citizens are projected to die during the pandemic. Without mitigation efforts, that estimate balloons to 1 million to 2 million dead. She displayed a graph that compared the curves of cumulative COVID-19 cases in various states. The data for cumulative cases per 100,000 people showed spikes in New York and New Jersey, whereas Washington and California, states where the virus first appeared in the United States, have seen somewhat flattening curves. The U.S. tallied more deaths from the coronavirus pandemic than in China on Tuesday, although China’s reported figures have been disputed. There have been about 184,000 cases of the coronavirus and at least 3,721 deaths in the U.S. since the pandemic began, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker.

Over the weekend, Trump said he was extending social distancing guidelines nationwide until at least April 30. That was after Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, first suggested that millions could get infected in the U.S. and which could result in 100,000 to 200,000 deaths. During the Tuesday briefing, Fauci urged people not to get discouraged by the daunting numbers. "We gotta brace ourselves: In the next several days to a week or so, we're going to continue to see things go up. We cannot be discouraged by that because the mitigation is actually working and will work," he said.

Trump thanked doctors for their courage while managing the horrors that the illness has brought in the hardest-hit areas, including New York City. “As we send planeloads of masks and gloves and supplies to the communities battling the plague — and that's what it is, it's a plague — we also send our prayers,” Trump said. “We pray for the doctors and the nurses, for the paramedics and the truck drivers and the police officers and the sanitation workers and, above all, the people fighting for their lives in New York and all across our land.”

Trump praised the bravery of the doctors fighting the “war” against an “invisible enemy.” “They can't believe what they are seeing, and I watched the doctors and the nurses walking into that hospital this morning. It's like military people going into battle, going into war,” the president said.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/the-surge-is-coming-trump-warns-of-very-painful-two-weeks

EXCLUSIVE: As Coronavirus Crippled Small Businesses, Some Lenders Pounced

From national banks deferring mortgage payments to CEOs giving up their pay in solidarity for furloughed workers, there have been many examples of American industries stepping up to the plate as federal, state and local governments have adopted wartime-like responses to combat the coronavirus crisis. But one industry, which offers an obscure form of financing to small businesses called Merchant Cash Advances (MCA), has seemingly taken a different approach. “There’s lots of talk about helping small businesses. But in the last few days, lawyers running lawsuit mills are suing small businesses to extract cash,” Federal Trade Commission member Rohit Chopra tweeted on March 19 about the MCA industry. “The lawyers work for lenders that offer pricey payday-style loans using sketchy contract terms to restaurants and businesses.”

MCAs are a form of financing typically leveraged by small businesses that don’t have access to traditional loan options. MCAs are not loans, rather, they’re the sale of a portion of a business’s future income at a discount. Typical MCA agreements require businesses to make payments every business day of a set dollar amount until the agreement is settled. MCA agreements often include “confessions of judgment,” clauses that force businesses to plead liable if the MCA provider alleges that the agreement has been breached, which can occur if the business misses just one or two of their daily payments. The agreements typically grant providers the immediate right to the outstanding balance from the business in the event of a breach. “This is robosigning on steroids,” Chopra said of confessions of judgment clauses.

Shane Heskin, a trial attorney who testified before Congress in 2019 about small businesses who have been sued by MCA companies, told the DCNF that he has seen an increase in litigation actions brought forth by MCA companies since the coronavirus crisis hit the United States. “I haven’t seen a decrease at all, instead I’ve seen an increase in filings and even more aggressive behavior than prior to this,” Heskin said.

One prolific filer was Itria Ventures, an MCA provider that filed lawsuits against 15 businesses in New York during the week of March 16. In one of its recent lawsuits, Itria accused its client of failing to make its daily payments beginning “on or about March 18.” Itria filed its lawsuit against that client on March 19 in a New York court for $282,000. The complaint was signed by Jonathan Gitlin, the general counsel of Biz2Credit, a small business lender of which Itria is a subsidiary. As Itria filed actions against small businesses in New York courts in March, Biz2Credit presented itself in multiple press releases as a partner to small businesses trying to navigate the coronavirus crisis. “Biz2Credit stands with business owners during difficult times to get them the funding their businesses need to grow and thrive again,” the company wrote in its recently-launched resource hub for small businesses seeking help from the Small Business administration and other government initiatives. Itria filed motions to discontinue many of its recently-filed lawsuits in New York hours after the Daily Caller News Foundation began contacting some of the businesses it sued.

https://dailycaller.com/2020/03/30/itria-ventures-merchant-cash-lawsuits/

World Health Organization Spends Twice As Much On Travel As On Medical Supplies

The World Health Organization (WHO) spends twice as much on travel as it does on medical supplies, according to its most recent financial report. Eight percent of the WHO’s budget in 2018 went to travel expenses, while just 4% went to medical supplies and materials, the report shows. “Of total travel expenditure, only 45% was for staff travel, the rest was incurred for non-staff travel, mainly for meeting participants nominated by Member States,” the report states. WHO’s travel expenditures have faced scrutiny in the past.

The Associated Press reported in 2017 that WHO “routinely has spent about $200 million a year on travel expenses, more than what it doles out to fight some of the biggest problems in public health, including AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined.” The organization has only barely cut its travel spending since then. Travel expenses dropped by just one percent between 2017 and 2018, according to WHO’s report.

WHO didn’t return an email seeking comment on whether the organization should have spent more on medical supplies, in light of the shortage that many countries are experiencing as a result of the coronavirus crisis. WHO, the health arm of the United Nations, has come under fire over its cozy relationship with China. The organization’s leadership has echoed the Chinese government’s talking points on the virus, providing ammunition for the communist regime in its propaganda war.

Republican Florida Sen. Rick Scott on Tuesday called for a congressional investigation into whether the WHO helped China’s communist government cover up the virus in its early stages. The senator also called for congressional hearings on whether the United States should continue funding the WHO. The United States contributes nearly 15% of WHO’s annual budget, far more than any other WHO member. “They need to be held accountable for their role in promoting misinformation and helping Communist China cover up a global pandemic,” Scott said Tuesday.

https://dailycaller.com/2020/03/31/world-health-organization-budget-travel-spending-us-funding/