Month: February 2020

“The coronavirus that we’re talking about is a respiratory virus. It’s spread in a similar way to the common cold or to influenza. It’s spread through coughs and sneezes,” she said. “So those everyday sensible measures that we tell people to do every year with the flu are important here — covering your cough, staying home when you’re sick and washing your hands.”

In case of an outbreak that spreads within US communities, what can you do to protect yourself and your family? Here are 10 questions answered about how to prepare.

1. What should I buy?

The
US Department of Homeland Security recommends on its website that, before a pandemic strikes, to store a two-week supply of water and food, as well as over-the-counter medications you tend to take.

“Have any nonprescription drugs and other health supplies on hand, including pain relievers, stomach remedies, cough and cold medicines, fluids with electrolytes, and vitamins,” according to the department.

“In general for emergency preparedness, we encourage all households to have an emergency response kit,” which could be used during any public health or severe weather emergency, said Jennifer Kertanis, president-elect of the
National Association of County and City Health Officials.

2. Are there places I should avoid?

The CDC has released travel warnings and alerts in relation to coronavirus disease.

As of Wednesday, the CDC recommends that travelers avoid all nonessential travel to
mainland China and
South Korea. Travel alerts for older people and people with chronic medical conditions to consider postponing nonessential travel have been issued for
Italy,
Iran and
Japan.

Regarding whether there are places to avoid in your community, such as the grocery store or library, health officials recommend to simply be mindful of
avoiding close contact with people who may be sick.

Also, if you are sick, keep your distance from others to protect them from getting sick too.

3. Should I keep my child home from school?

If your child is sick, it’s important to keep them home from school in order to protect other students from getting sick — but if your child is not sick, monitor local school closings.

Widespread transmission of the novel coronavirus could lead to schools, child care centers and other places for mass gatherings
experiencing more absenteeism and even shutting down if that precaution is needed, according to the CDC.

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Closing schools or canceling gatherings in response to public health concerns are common actions that school districts have had to make before throughout history.

For the coronavirus, however, “one of the questions that is scientifically out there that will govern or drive how school closures are calculated is to what extent children themselves carry or transmit this virus,” he said. “Scientifically we need to have a better understanding of to what extent children are carriers or transmitters of the virus — the point of that is, it’s premature right now based on the science to make uniform claims about what school closures may look like.”

Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told her family that while they are not at risk right now, they should plan for what to do if their lives were significantly impacted, she said during a press briefing on Tuesday. She also said she called the children’s school district about what would happen if schools need to close.

Messonnier said her agency wants people to understand their lives might be disrupted.

“We are asking the American public to work with us to prepare in the expectation that this could be bad,” she said, adding that while CDC officials hope the spread won’t be severe in the United States, they are planning as if it could be.

4. Should I work from home?

Yet “what community spread looks like in the United States will vary greatly community by community. It might vary by time, it might vary by place,” Shah said.

“Although we believe, according to the US CDC, that community spread is likely in the United States, the magnitude of that possibility as well as how it actually plays out, that will vary greatly between Washington state, Florida, Maine and any other state,” he said, adding because of that, “there will not be a one-size-fits-all approach here.”

5. What should I do about my medications?

Also, it could be helpful to get copies and maintain electronic versions of health records from doctors, hospitals, pharmacies and other sources and store them, for personal reference.

6. What if I have to go to the doctor?

Talk to your doctor’s office about telehealth options.

Your doctor likely offers the option to conduct an appointment over the phone or via video conferencing, and if not, your doctor could recommend a physician who does.

7. Do I need a facemask?

Rather, the CDC recommends to only wear a mask if a health care professional recommends it. A facemask should be used by people who have the novel coronavirus and are showing symptoms — that is in order to protect others from the risk of getting infected.

Overall, the use of facemasks remains crucial for health workers and people who are caring for someone infected with the virus in close settings, such as a health care facility or at home, according to the CDC.

8. If I don’t need a mask, how can I avoid getting sick?

The CDC also notes that there are several things to do to prevent the spread of any respiratory diseases:

The proper way to wash your hands is for at least 20 seconds, especially before eating, after going to the bathroom and after blowing your nose, coughing or sneezing.

“Exercise, eat a good diet, get a lot of sleep, wash your hands, do everything you can to stay healthy right now,” Shah, of Maine CDC, said.

9. What if someone in my household has the virus — or thinks they do?

The best way to first determine whether you have the virus is to get tested.

The religious group says it is cooperating with local authorities, and has shut down all church services and gatherings.

“We are sanitizing every church and annex buildings all across the nation, including Daegu branch. We will actively participate in disease prevention activity, following the government’s measure,” reads a statement frpm the group.

The religious group also lashed out at its critics.

“The media had been reporting that we are the main culprit in the spread of virus, referring to our ‘unusual service style’ — a reality where we had to hold service on the floor to maximize the number of occupants in our small space,” the statement adds.

But Kim, who still has friends within the group, and other former members have told CNN that attendees are not allowed to wear anything on their faces — even glasses — during prayer time.

“They were forced recently not to wear masks even though the whole corona (virus) outbreak was going on. They said, no, it’s disrespectful to God to have masks on,” Kim says.

Shincheonji has not returned CNN’s calls for comment.

A new support network

Kim says he joined in 2006 as a 19-year-old student who had just arrived in South Korea to study.

The South African didn’t have a support network and says he was quickly “recruited.”

At first, he says his friends did not reveal they were part of Shincheonji. But after 18 months, they introduced him to a Bible study group, and slowly brought him into their religious world.

“At that time, I was an expat,” he says. “These people became my community, my friends I could rely on, (people) I could go out for dinner, drinks (with).”

Kim’s native English-language skills helped him rise in the organization. By 2011, he says he was the international affairs director and personal interpreter of founder and leader Lee Man-hee. He says his mother-in-law was Lee’s partner.

After spending almost every day with the man revered as a god-like figure within Shincheonji, Kim became disillusioned with the group and in 2017 he left.

The Promised Pastor

Shincheonji Church of Jesus, the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony was established on March 14, 1984, by Lee and is centered around the personality of its founder.

Little is known about his past.

According to the group’s official homepage, Lee was born on September 15, 1931, in Cheongdo, in southern South Korea, and his birthplace gets regular visits from followers. Lee was “deeply religious” from an early age and prayed with his grandfather but had never been to a church.

The website heavily suggests that Lee is the “Promised Pastor” mentioned in the Bible. The passage it highlights suggests that the Promised Pastor is the second coming of Jesus Christ.

The group says it has about 245,000 members more than 31,000 of them from overseas.

An internal document from 2017, called the “International Missions Department status report,” provided to CNN by former members, said the group has eight branches in the US, with the LA chapter being the largest with more than 1,000 members, as well as dozens of chapters in China.

“The church of Shincheonji believes Lee Man-hee, their leader, is the second coming of Jesus Christ,” says Kim.

CNN has tried to reach Lee Man-hee for comment, but multiple calls to the group have not been returned.

Across Korea, some churches have notices on their doors saying Shincheonji members are not welcome, claiming they infiltrate mainstream churches to recruit new members, according to Tark Ji-il, a professor at Busan Presbyterian University.

International gatherings

In the middle of January, as coronavirus took hold in central China, thousands of Shincheonji members assembled for an annual gathering in Gwacheon, where the group is headquartered, near Seoul.

Then, between January 31 and February 2, an unknown number of members came together for the funeral of the founder’s brother. Local media reports that before his death on January 31, he was hospitalized at Cheongdo Daenam Hospital, near Daegu, the city at the heart of South Korea’s outbreak.

Numerous confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths have since been recorded from the same hospital.

Shincheonji wasn’t connected to the coronavirus outbreak until South Korea reported its 31st case on February 18. The patient, a 61-year-old South Korean woman, had no prior overseas travel history or contact with other confirmed cases.

A cluster of infections followed. By February 20, the national tally had increased from 31 to 156 and the first death was reported.

While tracing the movements of the 31st patient, the South Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spotted a link between the new patients: case number 31 had attended a Shincheonji service with hundreds others in Daegu, a city of 2.4 million people about 280 kilometers (174 miles) south of Seoul.

Once the link to the religious group was established, authorities decided to quarantine all attendees of the meeting the 31st case had attended.

Spokesperson Simon Kim said in a recorded statement: “This is a disease that originated in China and spread to South Korea. We are sincerely urging everyone recognize that the Shincheonji Church and its devotees are the biggest victims of Covid-19, and refrain from hate and groundless attack.”

Stopping the spread

In South Korea, officials have ordered all of the group’s facilities to close. Shincheonji says it has close to 1,100 buildings and is disinfecting them to try to stem the spread of the virus.

On February 24, South Korea’s Gyeonggi provincial governor, Lee Jae-myung, said in a radio interview with Korean station TBS, that the Shincheonji group had not initially cooperated with officials as promised. The group has 239 locations in Gyeonggi province, but only 100 of the addresses listed proved to be correct.

On February 26, Chairman Lee Man-hee posted a statement on the official Shincheonji website saying that the group has been “actively cooperating with the South Korean government to prevent the virus from spreading further” and they decided to hand over the list of the whole congregation and check on with everyone including the trainees on the condition that the government safeguard the private information.

On the same day, Gyeonggi Provincial government said 210 Shincheonji members had agreed to call 33,000 fellow members to ask about symptoms, as Shincheonji members often don’t answer calls from nonmembers.

Daegu police deployed 600 officers to find hundreds of members, knocking on doors, tracking phones and scouring security camera footage to find them, and asking them to self-isolate.

It comes as more than half a million people this week reportedly signed an online petition filed to the president’s office calling for Shincheonji to be dissolved. Any petition with over 200,000 signatures is guaranteed an official government response, putting the group under a spotlight it has tried for so many years to avoid.

His upbeat, election-year tone contrasted sharply with predictions from his government experts, who are warning of possible severe disruption to American life if the outbreak swells into a pandemic.

“We’ve done a great job in keeping it down to a minimum,” the President said, crediting his early curbs on travel from China.

“Had I not made a decision very early on not to take people from a certain area, we wouldn’t be talking this way. … I took a lot of heat; some people called me racist.”

His comments, taken literally, ought to have quelled any sense of panic. But the President’s incessant political gamesmanship will make it difficult for many viewers to shed suspicion he was minimizing the situation for personal gain.

Presidents lead in fearful times

Trump’s main aim Wednesday seemed to be to minimize the threat. He went out of his way to compare the novel coronavirus to the seasonal flu — and marveled that so many Americans succumb to that ailment each year.

Presidents get judged on their handling of national crises. And Trump’s appearance left many questions unanswered. Among them is whether he will be guided by science or politics in fighting the virus. Another is whether he has the capacity to rally the nation behind him if things take a turn for the worse. It’s not a given that Trump has the self-discipline to manage the emergency and avoid counterproductive political grandstanding.

The President can be sure of staunch support from his base whatever happens, so any sense that a botched response could do for his presidency what the disastrous Hurricane Katrina relief effort did for George W. Bush may not materialize.

The imprecision of Trump’s language Wednesday did not exactly inspire confidence, when he was asked if Americans should brace for a severe coronavirus outbreak.

“I don’t think it is inevitable. I think we are doing a really good job. There is a chance it could get worse. There is a chance if could get fairly, substantially worse. Nothing is inevitable,” the President said in a vague summary of scenarios.

He also preferred to focus on the cases of small numbers of Americans repatriated from Japan and China who developed the virus and are in quarantine, rather than the specter of a possible large-scale US epidemic that his officials fear.

“We’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. We could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time,” Trump said.

Yet health experts have said it is all but certain the coronavirus will end up being transmitted within the US given its rapid spread around Asia and Europe and across the world.

An awkward spot for health bureaucrats

Government health experts onstage with Trump had to tread a difficult line — between honoring their professional assessments and avoiding angering the President, who dislikes being contradicted.

“Our aggressive containment strategy here in the United States has been working and is responsible for the low levels of cases that we have so far. However, we do expect more cases, and this is a good time to prepare,” said Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, delivered the sobering news that even with an unusually accelerated process of development and testing, it could be a year to a year-and-a-half before a vaccine becomes available. His assessment contrasts with Trump’s hints that inoculations are just around the corner.

As is often the case in Trump’s presidency, nonpartisan career officials were forced to stand by his side as he unleashed flaming attacks on political opponents — in this case House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had suggested to CNN earlier that he did not know what he was talking about on the coronavirus.

“I think Speaker Pelosi is incompetent. … She is trying to create a panic and there’s no reason to panic because we have done so good,” Trump said, with Schuchat — wearing a neutral expression — beside him in the camera shot.

China reported another 433 cases and 29 deaths today — bringing the national total to 78,497 cases and 2,744 deaths.

Here’s the breakdown:

Cases:

Deaths

Of the 29 new deaths reported in China, 26 were in Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak. And of the 433 new cases, 409 were in Hubei.

China’s National Health Commission said a total of 32,495 patients have recovered and been discharged from hospital.

Deaths outside mainland China:

Concerns range from public health threats to economic damage, from the breakdown and availability of virus test kits and the production of needed surgical masks to the health of global manufacturing supply chains. That lack of preparedness, along with concerns that Trump himself has not been on message at a time when the public is relying on correct information, has led to palpable frustration on Capitol Hill.

For weeks, lawmakers have warned the administration, publicly and privately, that a more robust response from the White House is needed to address the fallout, aides say. The perception, particularly among Democrats, is that any requests for information are viewed by administration officials as political attacks and rejected out of hand.

Tensions exacerbated

The level of distrust between the White House and Democrats has been years in the making, with Democrats repeatedly citing proposed budget cuts to the agencies leading the response to the effort — none of which were enacted — as well as personnel shifts that were viewed as explicit efforts to limit the streamlined processes that have proved effective to addressing a potential pandemic.

“Decisions were made on politics and optics, rather than the informed opinion of our doctors and scientists,” Schumer said.

But the distrust has been exacerbated by stark differences in the sobering information coming directly from public health experts at agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention versus the tone struck by the President.

While Trump tweets that his administration is doing “a GREAT job” in response to the coronavirus and top White House economic officials give rosy assessments about containment, lawmakers have sat through closed-door briefings and hearings with top health officials that include ominous warnings about its likely inevitable spread inside the US.

Even close allies have warned, if gently, that the administration needs to be forthcoming about how it shares information with lawmakers.

“Responding to this particular effort not only takes a rapid response, but if we’re going to be your partners in this it takes a lot of sharing of information,” Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, a member of GOP leadership, told HHS Secretary Alex Azar at a hearing this week. “Broad authority also includes broad responsibility to be forthcoming with information.”

Blunt, who will play a leading role in shaping how much money Congress provides the administration to fight the coronavirus, told CNN after the hearing that his comments were more a reflection of the constant tension between administrations and Congress over sharing information, noting it’s “always a challenge” regardless of who is in office.

Coronavirus czar

The White House has argued that its response has been aggressive and fulsome, with travel restrictions and quarantine procedures put into place, a task force helmed by Azar and, at least to this point, more than a week without a new case of the virus cropping up in the US.

After the market tumbled early this week, Trump questioned whether Azar was up to the challenge of handling the crisis.

The President and other administration officials have also directed their anger at Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the CDC official who has been a public face of the coronavirus response, for what officials claim is overly fatalistic messaging.

“We are asking the American public to work with us to prepare, in the expectation that this could be bad,” she said at a news briefing this week. “It’s not so much of a question of if this will happen anymore but rather more of a question of exactly when this will happen.”

‘You’ll pay for it later’

Lawmakers in both parties told CNN of what they perceive to be a wide information gap.

It’s in part, they acknowledge, a result of the fast-moving nature of the crisis — while federal agencies have been responsive to member and staff requests, there are “just a lot of things they can’t answer given how this thing is moving,” a senior GOP aide told CNN.

State governments have asked for and, to this point, haven’t received any details as to how they will be reimbursed for the expenses they are incurring as part of this federal response.

The administration’s emergency funding request itself has been panned by Democrats as inadequate, and by Republicans who have warned it may be undershooting the real needs.

“If you lowball something like this, you’ll pay for it later,” Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the powerful chairman of the Appropriations Committee, warned Azar on Tuesday. “I hope the administration will look at this as something they cannot afford to let get out of hand, period.”

Shelby told reporters he was still working on a final topline number for the emergency funding, but “it will certainly be higher” than the Trump administration requested.

Even the documents that make up the request have been scoffed at, with a three-page letter and one-page line-item sheet making up the bulk of the request, a far cry from the nearly 30-page submission produced by the Obama administration as it attempted to secure funds to respond to the Ebola outbreak in 2014.

“It’s a joke,” one House Democratic lawmaker told CNN of the details included in the request.

That view has been echoed by Schumer, who has taken to hammering the administration daily for what he calls an inadequate response.

“The Trump administration has shown towering and dangerous incompetence when it comes to the coronavirus,” said Schumer and he pressed his Democratic colleagues to apply pressure of their own to the administration.

Schumer walked through a six-page PowerPoint presentation in a closed-door meeting with Senate Democrats that starts with the slide: “The Trump administration has NO plan to stop the spread of the Coronavirus Pandemic.”

Trump has fired back at Schumer at every turn, from a news conference in India to Twitter, all while presenting publicly that the administration has things well in hand.

The back and forth was, to some degree, a window into one thing that will always complicate matters for Democrats: President Trump.

“I don’t think the President knows what he’s talking about,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Wednesday. “Once again.”

Four Democratic presidential candidates will answer questions from the audience in back-to-back CNN town halls in South Carolina.

The hourlong individual town halls come just days before voters head to the polls in South Carolina and on Super Tuesday.

Here’s what tonight looks like:

How to watch: The town halls will air on CNN, CNN en Español, CNN International and CNN Airport Network and will stream on CNN.com, CNN OTT apps for AppleTV, Roku, Amazon Fire, Samsung SmartTV and Android TV, and CNN Mobile apps for iOS and Android, CNN’s SiriusXM Channels and the Westwood One Radio Network.

Milwaukee police said they are investigating a “critical incident” in the area near the 4000 block of W. State Street and are asking the public to stay away from the area.

The ATF tweeted that their Milwaukee field office is responding to the scene of an “active shooter” at the Molson Coors complex.

FBI Milwaukee is supporting police in the “very active scene,” spokesman Leonard Peace said. Mayor Tom Barrett is on the scene.

The CEO of Molson Coors is heading back to Milwaukee from a company conference that was taking place in Texas, according to a source familiar with the company.

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Delta is temporarily reducing the number of weekly flights it operates between the U.S. and Seoul-Incheon (ICN), South Korea, due to global health concerns related to coronavirus, the airline said Wednesday in a news release. 

From Feb. 29 through April 30, the carrier will suspend service between Minneapolis/St. Paul and ICN, with the last flight departing MSP for ICN on Feb. 28 and departing ICN for MSP on Feb. 29.

Delta will also reduce to five times weekly its services between ICN and Atlanta, Detroit and Seattle through April 30. The airline’s new service from Incheon to Manila, previously scheduled to begin March 29, will now start on May 1. Full schedule details are available on the Delta website.

For customers whose itineraries are affected by the schedule changes, Delta teams are working to help them adjust their travel plans, using partners where appropriate.

Delta continues to offer a change fee waiver for customers who wish to adjust their travel plans for flights between the U.S. and South Korea, China and Italy.

Coronavirus’s spread through the Middle East could add another layer of woes to a region already plagued by problems. 

In the Levant, the virus could take root in one of the refugee camps that speckle the landscape. The camps are densely populated and already suffer from poor living conditions, scant medical attention and decaying infrastructure.  

Economic crises in countries like Lebanon, where the health sector has already warned that it is on the brink of collapse, or Syria, could mean that millions are defenseless in the face of pathogen.  

In Iran, the outbreak is the worst in the region, and it has intensified the country’s isolation. Viewed as a regional breeding ground for the virus, Iran is being sealed off from its neighbors, further crippling an economy already buckling under US sanctions. 

The country’s rift from the rest of the region is becoming more pronounced. Land borders with neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan have been closed. Numerous flights to Iranian cities have been suspended. 

The country’s officials are seething. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani warned the virus could be used as a “weapon” in “propaganda” by “Iran’s enemies.” The Iranian leader has refused to quarantine cities in a bid, he said, not to further stifle the economy. 

Symbolically, the country’s deputy health minister, Iran Harirchi, tested positive for coronavirus on Tuesday — just 24 hours after a press briefing where he tried to downplay the threat of the virus.

Rich Arab Gulf countries – such as the UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait — that have confirmed cases of novel coronavirus may have the wherewithal to stem the tide of the sickness. But most countries in the region are running on fumes. 

Between trying to keep the virus at bay, and stemming the economic toll brought on by panic about its spread, they are between a rock and a hard place. They see that even the advanced countries of Europe have failed to outrace the virus. So they live on a prayer that the coronavirus tidal wave veers in another direction. 

He began by agreeing with Bernie Sanders that the economy is not working for the majority of Americans and finished the same answer with a criticism of President Donald Trump. It’s a smart debating technique to find areas of agreement with your popular opponent while reminding the audience of a common enemy.

B+

Bernie Sanders

Sanders got talked over a lot in this debate, and it was to be expected. His front-runner status made those interruptions almost inevitable. However, he handled himself well, never appearing to get too angry or frustrated. And that’s a tough thing to do.

I liked Sanders’ nuance in the debate. He admitted that while casting thousands of votes, he’s made some bad ones, including on gun policy, but made clear that his position has now changed. His defense of the educational system in Cuba was also smartly nuanced. Sanders argued that everything in Cuba isn’t automatically bad, just like everything in United States history (such as overthrowing other governments) isn’t automatically perfect. For the most part, the criticisms leveled against Sanders weren’t unified enough to stick.

B

Elizabeth Warren

Warren began the debate hot, with an opening that acknowledged Sanders’ strength in the primary because of the popularity of progressive ideals. It was a clever way to gain traction with the audience, knowing she would soon turn to discussing her own progressive ideals. She maintained her steam throughout the night with sharp arguments — like that Bloomberg is a risky choice.

On the downside, Warren stopped her own momentum by bringing up the elimination of the filibuster in the Senate. It’s been a real buzzkill for her, and she’d be better off focusing her answers, well, anywhere else. There’s just not enough time in these responses to lay the groundwork for the argument she’s trying to make. After that, Warren didn’t have much of an impact in the back half of the debate.

B-

Pete Buttigieg

This was a tough grade to figure out. There were times during this debate when I very much liked Buttigieg. He was terrific on the topic of education, mentioning his experience being married to an educator. Mostly, the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor had his sights set on Sanders. Buttigieg argued persuasively that Sanders at the top of the ticket would hurt all other Democrats running for office. His other effective criticism was that Sanders’ “revolution” doesn’t bode well if the man won’t even support a simple rule change to support a Senate filibuster, repurposing the talking point that had been ineffective for Warren for his own advantage.

But there were also times during this debate when Buttigieg did poorly. He interrupted everyone way too often, especially Sanders. At one point, Buttigieg seemed determined to not even let Sanders speak. Because of this, Buttigieg came across at times as pushy, which interfered with his message.

B-

Amy Klobuchar

Klobuchar’s best moments were before the first commercial break. Her specific criticisms of the cost of Sanders’ “Medicare for All” plan were the sharpest of the bunch. Some of her strongest points were in support of rural America, where she talked about wages, housing, and education. And Klobuchar was excellent while opining that she, not Sanders, will follow through and get things done.

On the downside, after the first hour, she failed to find a rhythm with her answers and meandered away from any central focus. Many of her jokes fell flat (Klobuchar and Bloomberg should give seminars on how not to tell a joke). Finally, Klobuchar occasionally got interrupted by the moderators before she could finish her point, which was particularly noticeable on the final softball question.

C

Michael Bloomberg

Bloomberg started badly by arguing without evidence that Sanders was getting help from Russia to win the primary. You can’t make bold claims like that in a debate without backing them up right then and there. Eventually Bloomberg settled in and gained momentum, becoming a stronger debater as the event rolled into the second hour. He successfully defended his record as mayor of New York on issues ranging from education, jobs, housing, and even reminding us that many black officials endorsed him.

Some new attacks of Bloomberg found their mark. For instance, Warren mentioned his funding of right-wing candidates with some success. But Bloomberg didn’t roll over in this debate, answering the criticism sufficiently with counterexamples. On the downside, his forced humor was off-putting, and he stumbled over some of his answers, never finishing his thought on several occasions.

C-

Joe Biden

Before the first commercial break, I thought that Biden was doing well and would get a top grade. Then, for the last hour, his repertoire consisted of yelling, pointing, and complaining about his speaking time. At one point, Biden said to the moderators, “Why am I stopping? No one else stops.” Anger and complaining. That was the last hour, and it’s not the most effective debating strategy.