Another COVID-19 Thread

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Darren
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Re: Another COVID-19 Thread

Post by Darren »

Big RR wrote:
Wed Mar 18, 2020 1:26 pm
I think you may well right @W, but then I also think you have to consider the source of the comment. And with Trump, thinking it was an intentionally racist comment is likely correct. Face it, he has enough speech writers who know the language well enough to realize the likely connotation, especially when it comes from an ass like Trump; this sort or racism is one of his selling points which panders to his most rabid supporters.
I agree he is an ass. At least he's not a politician who got that way after being elected essentially for life.

I'm happy

the hours of service were suspended for truck driver's delivering food and essential goods. Maybe the panicked toilet paper buying will slack off and stores getting back to normal will happen and quell the panic. BTW that's the first ever federal issued suspension.

The military released five million N95 masks and is making 1,000 ventilators available along with staff since the ventilators are not the same as civilian types.

Two hospital ships are being deployed. One is going to NYC and one is on the West coast. Those will accept trauma patients to free up beds in public hospitals.

And the VA hospitals have been directed to fulfill their responsibility as a backup to the public health system. That adds additional isolation capability.

GOOD JOB MR. PRESIDENT!

You may return to your normal media inspired hate.
Thank you RBG wherever you are!

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Econoline
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Re: Another COVID-19 Thread

Post by Econoline »

Just one more time for the people in the back: it is not "politicizing" the coronavirus crisis to assess how well the president and his administration are responding to it. This is our basic duty as citizens of a self-governing republic. The president ran for the job on the basis he would represent our interests in government—including and especially in times of crisis—and now it's our job to hold him to that. After all, it's our health and safety on the line. The idea that making accurate and valid critiques of an American administration indicates you hate America is legitimately deranged, and people who push this line of thinking are telling on themselves. Or, as Teddy Roosevelt put it:
To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
No matter what kind of gaslighting bullshit they're peddling today, the president and his propaganda network were downplaying the crisis a week ago, and this attitude was reflected in material terms in the federal government's response. We owe him nothing. He owes us everything. Act accordingly.
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Darren
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Re: Another COVID-19 Thread

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Just because he didn't ride in on a white horse? LOL.

I suggest you vent your spleen in November with the others sucking up the media BS.
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Joe Guy
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Re: Another COVID-19 Thread

Post by Joe Guy »

One of the biggest problem with this president is that, based on his history of lying, half the country doesn't believe that even he believes anything he says in public. When times are difficult we need a president who leads rather than point fingers at others and blame past administrations for the current problem.

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Econoline
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Re: Another COVID-19 Thread

Post by Econoline »

Darren — Nothing to do with a horse of any color; everything to do with the vast amount of official misinformation that spewed for weeks before any semblance of a competent response. (And if it's your contention that anything in the news media is automatically BS, then it looks to me like you've just admitted to sucking up some amount of BS yourself.)
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Darren
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Re: Another COVID-19 Thread

Post by Darren »

Econoline wrote:
Wed Mar 18, 2020 9:45 pm
Darren — Nothing to do with a horse of any color; everything to do with the vast amount of official misinformation that spewed for weeks before any semblance of a competent response. (And if it's your contention that anything in the news media is automatically BS, then it looks to me like you've just admitted to sucking up some amount of BS yourself.)
When do you think Trump should have taken action?
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Bicycle Bill
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Re: Another COVID-19 Thread

Post by Bicycle Bill »

Big RR wrote:
Wed Mar 18, 2020 1:26 pm
I think you may well right @W, but then I also think you have to consider the source of the comment. And with Trump, thinking it was an intentionally racist comment is likely correct.
I prefer to apply Hanlon's Razor — "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence or stupidity."
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Bicycle Bill
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Re: Another COVID-19 Thread

Post by Bicycle Bill »

ex-khobar Andy wrote:
Wed Mar 18, 2020 5:05 pm
Maybe reason to hope for a 'cure' per the Guardian.

Full piece here. Quote below. Looks like a small trial but it sounds significant. Of course there will be cures coming out of the woodwork from people hoping to make a bundle as the stock price zooms up.
Medical authorities in China have said a drug used in Japan to treat new strains of influenza appeared to be effective in coronavirus patients, Japanese media said on Wednesday.

Zhang Xinmin, an official at China’s science and technology ministry, said favipiravir, developed by a subsidiary of Fujifilm, had produced encouraging outcomes in clinical trials in Wuhan and Shenzhen involving 340 patients.

“It has a high degree of safety and is clearly effective in treatment,” Zhang told reporters on Tuesday.

Patients who were given the medicine in Shenzhen turned negative for the virus after a median of four days after becoming positive, compared with a median of 11 days for those who were not treated with the drug, public broadcaster NHK said.
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Econoline
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Re: Another COVID-19 Thread

Post by Econoline »

Bicycle Bill wrote:
Thu Mar 19, 2020 3:24 am
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:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :ok
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Scooter
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Re: Another COVID-19 Thread

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Econoline
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Re: Another COVID-19 Thread

Post by Econoline »

Darren wrote:
Wed Mar 18, 2020 10:55 pm
When do you think Trump should have taken action?
  • When he said the virus was “one person coming in from China, and we have it under control“ he should have shut his mouth;
  • when he said “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China” he should have shut his mouth;
  • when he said the virus had been “contained” he should have shut his mouth;
  • when he said testing is available to anybody who wants it he should have shut his mouth;
  • when he said people should go to work if they’re sick he should have shut his mouth;
  • when he said “by April, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away” he should have shut his mouth;
  • when he blamed an Obama administration regulation for slowing the production of test kits he should have shut his mouth;
  • when he said that “the Democrat policy of open borders” had brought the virus into the country he should have shut his mouth;
  • when he said a vaccine would be available “very quickly” and “very rapidly” and praised his administration’s actions as “the most aggressive taken by any country” he should have shut his mouth;
  • when he said on multiple occasions that the virus was less serious than the flu he should have shut his mouth.
  • etc.
What all these actions have in common is the one thing the POSOTUS seems to be incapable of: simply KEEPING HIS FUCKING MOUTH SHUT AND NOT SPREADING BULLSHIT..
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Joe Guy
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Re: Another COVID-19 Thread

Post by Joe Guy »

Could you be a little more specific?.... :D :ok

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Bicycle Bill
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Re: Another COVID-19 Thread

Post by Bicycle Bill »

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Gob
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Re: Another COVID-19 Thread

Post by Gob »

Kids are all tweeting how wonderful Boris is!!

Schools across the UK are to close indefinitely, with A-level and GCSE exams cancelled, as the government made another sudden escalation in its efforts to curb the increasing spread of coronavirus.

The prime minister, Boris Johnson, said he had been been forced to close classrooms for up to 8 million pupils in England – the first countrywide school shutdown in modern British history – as the virus spread faster than anticipated, forcing teachers and pupils to self-isolate.

The decision came hours after Scotland and Wales announced their own blanket school closures, and thousands of schools in England decided unilaterally to close or turn away pupils amid staff shortages and parents’ concerns.

Schools will remain open, however, for the supervision of hundreds of thousands of children of NHS staff and other frontline workers, as well as for vulnerable children, Johnson said. He also announced a national voucher scheme to ensure that pupils eligible for free school meals get a meal each day, and said that this summer’s exams would be replaced by teacher assessment.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”

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Sue U
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Re: Another COVID-19 Thread

Post by Sue U »

Joe Guy wrote:
Thu Mar 19, 2020 5:45 am
Could you be a little more specific?.... :D :ok
Also maybe he shouldn't have eliminated the NSC health security office?
'Gross misjudgment': Experts say Trump's decision to disband pandemic team hindered coronavirus response
Deirdre Shesgreen
USA TODAY


WASHINGTON—In May 2018, President Donald Trump’s biodefense preparedness adviser warned that a flu pandemic was the country’s No. 1 health security threat, and the U.S. was not prepared.

“We know that it cannot be stopped at the border,” Luciana Borio, director of medical and biodefense preparedness at the National Security Council, said at a symposium that day.

Borio left the Trump administration in 2019. Other high-level global health experts headed for the exits even earlier, after the White House dismantled the National Security Council’s global health security office.

The demise of that elite team is now under scrutiny as the Trump administration struggles to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump bristled when asked about his decision to disband the office at a news conference in the Rose Garden on Friday.

“I just think it's a nasty question,” the president responded. “And when you say ‘me,' I didn't do it. ... I don't know anything about it.”

John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, has defended the decision in recent days.

Trump chose Bolton to lead the National Security Council in April 2018. A month later, Bolton nixed the pandemic preparedness office as part of an effort to streamline the agency.

“Claims that streamlining NSC structures impaired our nation's bio defense are false,” Bolton tweeted Saturday. “Global health remained a top NSC priority, and its expert team was critical to effectively handling the 2018-19 Africa Ebola crisis. The angry Left just can't stop attacking, even in a crisis.”

But global health experts say Bolton's decision left the Trump administration flat-footed in confronting the virus that has caused nearly 6,400 cases of COVID-19 and killed 108 in the U.S. as of Tuesday evening.

"Bolton’s chosen approach to NSC 'streamlining' involved decapitating and diluting the White House’s focus on pandemic threats," Jeremy Konyndyk, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development, wrote in a rebuttal. "He eliminated the senior director position entirely, closed the biodefense directorate, and spread the remaining staff across other parts of the NSC."

Closing the pandemic office "clearly reflected the White House’s misplaced priorities and has proven to be a gross misjudgment," Konyndyk wrote.
President Donald Trump and national security adviser John Bolton on April 9, 2018.
Pandemic office created after Ebola epidemic

Whether the office was disbanded or streamlined, there's no question a number of top-notch global health experts left the administration in the wake of Bolton's decision. At the top of that list: Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer, who had been Trump's senior director for global health security and biodefense at the National Security Council. Before that, Ziemer led a global anti-malaria initiative in the George W. Bush administration.

President Barack Obama created the pandemic preparedness office at the National Security Council in 2016, after his administration was criticized for its initial response to the Ebola epidemic in 2014 and 2015.

Republican lawmakers blasted Obama for refusing to impose travel bans and quarantines. When two American nurses contracted Ebola in 2014 while caring for an infected patient, some GOP lawmakers called on Obama to designate a czar or oversee the response.

“I’d like to know who’s in charge,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said at the time. Obama eventually tapped Ron Klain, who had served as chief of staff to two Democratic vice presidents, to lead the Ebola response.

As the outbreak in West Africa subsided in 2015 and he prepared to leave, Klain pressed Obama to set up a permanent directorate within the National Security Council to coordinate pandemic preparedness and response across the federal government.

Obama took Klain's advice and created the unit to prepare for future disease outbreaks and prevent them from mushrooming into pandemics.

"That was a very essential step," said J. Stephen Morrison, director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Affairs, a Washington think tank. After Ebola, Obama and his advisers realized "this was just dangerous and chaotic and let’s not do that again."

"We live in an era of recurrent crises of this kind that come with greater velocity, greater impact and costs," Morrison said. The White House, he said, needs a point person who can coordinate multiple agencies and "see things early, act very quickly and bring about accountability and coordination of the U.S. response."

'Sluggishness and confusion' in Trump's response to coronavirus

That foresight and coordination has been missing in the Trump administration's response, Morrison said. "You can attribute some of the sluggishness and confusion that we have seen bedevil this effort since the very beginning ... to the absence of effective structures within the White House."

Beth Cameron, who led the office under Obama, said the Trump administration's decision to nix the directorate cost the United States "valuable time" in responding to COVID-19, although the full impact is still unclear.

In a Washington Post op-ed, Cameron wrote that the office was created out of a "recognition that epidemics know no borders and that a serious, fast response is crucial. Our job was to be the smoke alarm — keeping watch to get ahead of emergencies, sounding a warning at the earliest sign of fire — all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm blaze."

She said her team constantly monitored myriad global health threats, from the H7N9 influenza in China to an outbreak of yellow fever in Angola.

Bolton and his allies shot back after Cameron's op-ed was published, saying she and other critics were misleading the public by saying the office had been disbanded. Tim Morrison, one of Bolton's deputies at the National Security Council, said it was bloated and the decision to consolidate the global health unit with two others eliminated "overlap" within the National Security Council.

"If anything, the combined directorate was stronger because related expertise could be commingled," Tim Morrison wrote in his own Washington Post op-ed Monday.

He said the current staff "is fully up to the job" of responding to COVID-19, and he trumpeted Trump's work on biodefense and vaccines.

In an interview, Morrison said Bolton would regularly send him early-morning emails about possible emerging health concerns.

He said the problem with the COVID-19 outbreak has nothing to do with the structure of the National Security Council and everything to do with China’s attempts to hide the outbreak at first.

“The fault lies with China sitting on this thing for five weeks,” Morrison said. “We could have nipped this thing in the bud if the Chinese had come clean earlier.”

Trump has acknowledged that he cut global health experts from his staff and tried to slash funding for the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other agencies charged with spotting and responding to such epidemics.

"Some of the people we cut, they haven’t been used for many, many years," Trump said during a Feb. 26 briefing on the coronavirus response.

"I’m a business person — I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them," he said. "When we need them, we can get them back very quickly."
Source: McPaper
GAH!

ex-khobar Andy
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Re: Another COVID-19 Thread

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

It kind of illustrates one of my first reasons for wanting to see the back of Trump ASAP. Yes we knew the man was an asshole; but there's a lot of that about and it's not necessarily a total disqualifier for a President. Exhibit A: W. J. Clinton who was unquestionably a turd to his wife. Yes I had major political differences but that's to be expected and no different - at least not qualitatively different - to predecessors such as Reagan, and Bushes 1 and 2. My biggest fear about him was his sheer fucking incompetence - the best book I read about him was Michael Lewis's The Fifth Risk.

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Re: Another COVID-19 Thread

Post by Sue U »

ex-khobar Andy wrote:
Thu Mar 19, 2020 8:47 pm
My biggest fear about him was his sheer fucking incompetence
Not sure it would be any less scary if he actually were competent in implementing the idiotic things he says.
GAH!

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Econoline
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Re: Another COVID-19 Thread

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Joe Guy wrote:
Thu Mar 19, 2020 5:45 am
Could you be a little more specific?.... :D :ok
Yeah, I guess that "etc." was pretty vague... :mrgreen:
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Econoline
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Re: Another COVID-19 Thread

Post by Econoline »

Sheltering In Place:

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Crackpot
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Re: Another COVID-19 Thread

Post by Crackpot »

Do you know the worst things about working from home? You don’t have people to bitch about work to.
Okay... There's all kinds of things wrong with what you just said.

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