CR: COVID-19 --Political Talk

[NAVY 6740]

The rare and wondrous quad post 

Edited July 31, 2020 by NAVY

[4th&Five 41525]

 

[WhatTheBuck 28777]

Dumbest. President. Ever. 

[Radical Larry 28585]

DO NOTHING!

[MissingInAction 25041]

90% of my family are this ridiculously stupid.

There is no possiblity of communication with them. Zero. They exist in an entirely different reality. A reality of comfort, malaise,  and ignorant bliss.

I envy them.

[pyrohornIII 4814]

51 minutes ago, MissingInAction said:

90% of my family are this ridiculously stupid.

There is no possiblity of communication with them. Zero. They exist in an entirely different reality. A reality of comfort, malaise,  and ignorant bliss.

I envy them.

And I know what you speak of, mine is the same and I'll raise you one bonafide flat earther.  But I don't envy them, not in the least.  

It's already a proven fact that those type will be the first to whine and cast aspersions the first time they themselves actually incur any inconvenience, much less actual hardship.  They sure af won't take any blame themselves for their actions/inactions and will push responsibility to god, since their decisions are his.

[WhatTheBuck 28777]

1 hour ago, MissingInAction said:

90% of my family are this ridiculously stupid.

There is no possiblity of communication with them. Zero. They exist in an entirely different reality. A reality of comfort, malaise,  and ignorant bliss.

I envy them.

10% of your family aren't idiots? Nice humblebrag. I envy you. 

[HenryJames 66043]

 

[Bevo14 8304]

14 hours ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Dumbest. President. Ever. 

in the world

[Aqua Buddha 14590]

1 hour ago, HenryJames said:

 

But why?  We’re being told there’s plenty of it. Ow and if only people would take it, this would magically go away.

[4th&Five 41525]

 

[Mo Horn 8832]

So school openings are going well. 

[Nivek 16923]

senator cornyn says that is unpossible

[Neonmoon 38129]

We all know how school openings are going to go. There is a reason why school openings in other countries are going well. They have a couple hundred new cases a day nation wide, not 50K. We will see this spread like wildfire (again) when schools open. 

[Bama Chick 28596]

I start this rant by acknowledging Facebook is evil and I should delete it but it’s the only platform that has anything active for university parents.

And after reading the absolute titty sucking whining from so called adults about the fact that their precious crotch spawn aren’t getting the “traditional college experience”, I’m very close to posting a scathing screed.

Yeah - everything about this absolutely sucks. But at least AU is letting kids come to campus (which I’m still not 100% comfortable with). Most freshman are going to be 60% online, 30% blended, and 10% in person. It’s the safest least shitty option. Nobody is happy about it.

These assholes are starting petitions, encouraging parents to bombard administrators emails and phones (including the home phone and address of the president), calling media, insulting professors for being “lazy and taking advantage”.......absolute Karen and Chad nonsense.

They want their kids in full normal classes, football games, and fraternity parties. In a perfect world, I absolute want that for my kid but OMG none of that means shit if they’re dead or permanently disabled or infect and kill someone they love.

Life sucks. Shit ain’t fair. Suck it the fuck up and quit setting shitty examples for your kids.

Sorry for the rant. And BTW the worst offenders are out of state parents who think they’re entitled to in-state tuition because of all this.

Bitch no. No one is forcing you to send your precious baby out of state. I’ve paid Alabama taxes for decades and one of the benefits of that is in-state tuition.

All I want to do is read the information about what our time slot is for move in and where to pick up her Tiger Card and I have to wade through 37 angry posts from Melinda and how she’s getting cheated. Ugh.

[BrickHorn 18219]

We are a nation full of petulant children of all ages. It’s amazing how spoiled rotten so many of these fucking snowflakes are.

[4th&Five 41525]

 

[Macanudo 12976]

The fight (or lack thereof) over reopening in Humble ISD is appalling.  Parents on the Kingwood side of the river are overwhelmingly in favor of opening up as much as possible. Parents were given the option on in school or online.  The school in my hood will be around 85% in class.  The next closest school ny distance will be over 90%.   In general it looks like Kingwood will be around 70-80% in class.  22 kids per room.  Almost no social Distancing and masks ARE NOT mandatory.  

On the south side of the river  (Humble proper and Atascocita)  Parents haven't lost their minds to such a large degree.  They are around 30-40% in favor of in person school. 

It's got clusterfuck written all over it and the superintendent has been pushing for as many kids in class as possible. 

We start school on the 11th.  Thankfully my kids are high school age and are starting remote.  I'm not fucking around with this.

Meanwhile, Colorado is not going face to face until October.  Virginia is waiting until November.    But fucktards here in Texas are hellbent on starting as close to 100% as possible.  

Going to be a rough ride.

[Prepuce of Doom 21066]

[Sawbonz 27547]

13 hours ago, Bama Chick said:

I start this rant by acknowledging Facebook is evil and I should delete it but it’s the only platform that has anything active for university parents.

And after reading the absolute titty sucking whining from so called adults about the fact that their precious crotch spawn aren’t getting the “traditional college experience”, I’m very close to posting a scathing screed.

Yeah - everything about this absolutely sucks. But at least AU is letting kids come to campus (which I’m still not 100% comfortable with). Most freshman are going to be 60% online, 30% blended, and 10% in person. It’s the safest least shitty option. Nobody is happy about it.

These assholes are starting petitions, encouraging parents to bombard administrators emails and phones (including the home phone and address of the president), calling media, insulting professors for being “lazy and taking advantage”.......absolute Karen and Chad nonsense.

They want their kids in full normal classes, football games, and fraternity parties. In a perfect world, I absolute want that for my kid but OMG none of that means shit if they’re dead or permanently disabled or infect and kill someone they love.

Life sucks. Shit ain’t fair. Suck it the fuck up and quit setting shitty examples for your kids.

Sorry for the rant. And BTW the worst offenders are out of state parents who think they’re entitled to in-state tuition because of all this.

Bitch no. No one is forcing you to send your precious baby out of state. I’ve paid Alabama taxes for decades and one of the benefits of that is in-state tuition.

All I want to do is read the information about what our time slot is for move in and where to pick up her Tiger Card and I have to wade through 37 angry posts from Melinda and how she’s getting cheated. Ugh.

The most shocking info in this post is out of state parents sending their kids to Alabama for higher education

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13583]

SIAP

Two separate studies suggest young children, while less likely to be symptomatic, may be more efficient at spreading the virus.

https://www.forbes.com/healthcare/

 

 

[Macanudo 12976]

4 minutes ago, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

SIAP

Two separate studies suggest young children, while less likely to be symptomatic, may be more efficient at spreading the virus.

https://www.forbes.com/healthcare/

 

 

Bu John Cornyn said no.

[BrickHorn 18219]

39 minutes ago, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

SIAP

Two separate studies suggest young children, while less likely to be symptomatic, may be more efficient at spreading the virus.

https://www.forbes.com/healthcare/

Disappointing, but unsurprising. The idea that kids don’t spread this disease was always just another hopeful canard.

[TexArcher 37774]

18 hours ago, 4th&Five said:

 

I never thought I'd see the day that a president would tell the American people why a doctor is wrong about a medical issue.

[Francisco 2.0 32389]

https://oversight.house.gov/news/press-releases/oversight-subcommittee-investigation-reveals-how-trump-administration-deprived

 

Quote

Today, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy, released a staff report based on new documents detailing the Trump Administration’s failures to supply ventilators during the coronavirus crisis and squandering of more than $500 million in taxpayer funds.

On April 15, 2020, the Subcommittee launched an investigation into Philips North America Corporation’s (Philips) contract with the federal government to determine why the country was without adequate numbers of ventilators during the initial critical months of the coronavirus pandemic.

The documents released in today’s staff report indicate that before and during the pandemic, inept contract management and incompetent negotiating by the Trump Administration denied the country the ventilators it needed.  The findings include:

 

Quote

In 2014, the Obama Administration entered into a contract with Philips that would have supplied the nation’s stockpile with 10,000 ventilators by June 2019.  Development was initially delayed, but the Obama Administration gave Philips an extension that would have required the company to provide all of the ventilators by November 2019—in time to be deployed for this pandemic.

Philips’ delays continued through 2017 and 2018, but the Trump Administration mismanaged Philips’ repeated failures to meet contractual requirements.  It gave Philips three additional extensions, the last of which allowed for final delivery of the ventilators to be delayed until June 2021.  Had the Trump Administration held Philips to the terms of the Obama-era contract, the country would have had 10,000 ventilators that it needed when the coronavirus crisis struck.

 

Quote

On January 21, 2020, when the first coronavirus case was reported in the United States, Philips approached the Trump Administration about accelerating the delivery of ventilators under its existing contract.  The Trump Administration ignored this opportunity, and for six weeks, it did not respond to Philips’ offer.

Finally, in March 2020, the Trump Administration responded, but rather than demand that Philips meet the deadlines required by its existing contract, or move them up to address the pressing need, the Trump Administration agreed on March 11, 2020, to another extension, removing all delivery deadlines until September 2022.  Philips secured the extension by suggesting it would actually help move up delivery.

 

Quote

The Trump Administration failed to question Philips and granted the modification, which made the Obama-era contract useless for aiding the country during this pandemic.  The Administration never asked Philips to produce more ventilators under the existing contract.

The Trump Administration, represented by Peter Navarro and other senior officials in the White House, negotiated a new contract with Philips.  The Administration agreed to pay Philips almost five times the price than under the previous contract.  The ventilators purchased under the new contract (called Trilogy EV300s) were functionally identical to those required under the previous contract (called Trilogy Evo Universals), but the Trump negotiators appeared gullible and conceded to Philips on all significant matters, including price.  The documents show that the Administration accepted Philips’ first offer without even trying to negotiate a lower price. 

 

Quote

As a result, the federal government overpaid for ventilators—no American purchaser paid more than the U.S. government.  Between December 2019 and May 2020, Philips took orders for 5,339 other Trilogy EV300 ventilators from 92 different purchasers in the United States.  While the Trump Administration paid $15,000 per ventilator, some small purchasers, buying as few as one unit, were able to negotiate prices as low as $9,327 per unit.

The waste of taxpayer funds caused by the Trump Administration’s incompetent procurement efforts for ventilators could be as much as $500 million or more.

 

[HenryJames 66043]

 

[hookem2010 2624]

90% of my family are this ridiculously stupid.
There is no possiblity of communication with them. Zero. They exist in an entirely different reality. A reality of comfort, malaise,  and ignorant bliss.
I envy them.

This is where I'm at with my parents. I just rarely talk to them at this point because any conversation has to be incredibly superficial in order to avoid an argument. And ignoring everything that is going on in the world at this point makes for a pretty pointless interaction.

Sent from my SM-G970U using Tapatalk

[Acropora 856]

On 7/28/2020 at 3:16 PM, MC Fresh Breath said:

https://www.cardiovascularbusiness.com/topics/cardiovascular-imaging/78-covid-19-patients-heart-damage-recovery

 

I cannot pretend to understand the terms such as "myocardial native T1"  in that summary.  Perhaps one of our medial field folks can translate some of that for us.  

 

Basically, all these imaging findings are things we see with heart attacks and other reversible and irreversible sequelae of cardiac damage.  We are very focused on mortality (people dying) but largely ignoring morbidity (serious illness).  That makes sense since the horror of what is occurring is hard to fathom but I think we'll see a lot of chronic illness and disease in covid survivors (no hard data, just my own conjecture based on observations taking care of these patients).  

I see lung inflammation similiar to what I'd see in autoimmune and inflammatory processes in the lungs of "asymptomatic" young patients.  My guess is they have a functional reserve which isn't exceeded and therefore feel "fine".  It's akin to smoking.  You don't really have problems with COPD and emphysema due to destruction of your lung until you've had a few years of exposure (generally, not including more acute episodes).   We've had reports of young patients (under 20) with arrythmias (funny heartbeats) after full recovery.  We've had neuropsychiatric issues with corresponding abnormal brain MRIs in young patients.  In fact, one of the big issues is strokes in patients who are in their 20s.  

I worry about our children and long term effects of infection as well as even those patients who have recovered to date.  We are making big, long term decisions with a minimal amount of data, a lot of wishful forecasting, and a fucking incompetent and disingenous leader who even now, can't find a tiny bit of decency and try to do the right thing and at least get out of the way of the people who should be leading our response.  

[Bama Chick 28596]

The most shocking info in this post is out of state parents sending their kids to Alabama for higher education

More out of state students at Alabama than in state now - the percentages flipped about 5-6 years ago. The Nick Saban effect. Tuscaloosa is lousy with kids from California, New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, and Texas.

AU is still 60/40 in state/out of state I think.

[HenryJames 66043]

 

[NameAlreadyInUse 5112]

8 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

 

Holy shit that’s real. What happened to reasonable leaders?

[Beau Vine 54212]

11 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

 

That dude writes for the Onion, right?

[RomaVicta 29905]

19 hours ago, Neonmoon said:

We all know how school openings are going to go. There is a reason why school openings in other countries are going well. They have a couple hundred new cases a day nation wide, not 50K. We will see this spread like wildfire (again) when schools open. 

Isn't this exactly the line of reasoning that led the GOP and Trump to order businesses to open too soon?

Well, we closed everything down and cases are doing better, so let's open everything up because the problem is solved.

Now, after schools being closed down, our leaders use the same reasoning. Or at least the same ostensible reasoning. This is sinister rather than stupid.

I wonder if a refrigerator truck parked outside of a Children's Hospital will move any cult members.

[RomaVicta 29905]

3 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

https://oversight.house.gov/news/press-releases/oversight-subcommittee-investigation-reveals-how-trump-administration-deprived

 

 

 

 

 

 

Graft plain and simple. How difficult could it be to uncover?

[ultimaton 2974]

23 hours ago, 4th&Five said:

 

If only Herman Cain hadn't been tested, he'd be alive today.

[PsychMike 1550]

47 minutes ago, ultimaton said:

If only Herman Cain hadn't been tested, he'd be alive today.

Also, I think Louis Gohmert's mask had a role in Herman Cain's death.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13583]

“This push to open schools is guaranteed to fail,” says Peter Hotez, a pediatrician and molecular virologist, and the dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. I’ve been corresponding with Hotez, and with several epidemiologists, over the course of the pandemic, and have noticed a starkness in their views in recent weeks. “The social-distancing expectations and mask requirements for the lower grades are unrealistic,” Hotez told me. “In communities with high transmission, it’s inevitable that COVID-19 will enter the schools. Within two weeks of opening schools in communities with high virus transmission, teachers will become ill. All it will take is for a single teacher to become hospitalized with COVID and everything will shut down.”

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/push-reopen-schools-fail/614869/

 

“The problem is the White House and the task force could never organize themselves to lead a federal response and bring virus transmission down to containment levels,” said Hotez, who has argued for the necessity of a federal containment plan that, if executed effectively, might allow the nation to reopen comprehensively as soon as October. “Instead they took a lazy and careless route, claiming schools are important, as we all know, and the teachers and principals need to figure it out. What they did was deliberately set up the teachers, staff, and parents to fail. It’s one of the most careless, incompetent, and heartless actions I’ve ever seen promoted by the executive branch of the federal government.”

[gmr548 16576]

 

[gmr548 16576]

The most shocking info in this post is out of state parents sending their kids to Alabama for higher education

Well off families from lilly white suburbs of Dallas, Atlanta, etc. that still want their kids to attend a big flagship institution even though they didn't get into Texas or Georgia or wherever. Being good at football has a noticeable effect here.

SIAP
Two separate studies suggest young children, while less likely to be symptomatic, may be more efficient at spreading the virus.
https://www.forbes.com/healthcare/
 
 

[ChiTownDoc 21152]

9 hours ago, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

“This push to open schools is guaranteed to fail,” says Peter Hotez, a pediatrician and molecular virologist, and the dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. I’ve been corresponding with Hotez, and with several epidemiologists, over the course of the pandemic, and have noticed a starkness in their views in recent weeks. “The social-distancing expectations and mask requirements for the lower grades are unrealistic,” Hotez told me. “In communities with high transmission, it’s inevitable that COVID-19 will enter the schools. Within two weeks of opening schools in communities with high virus transmission, teachers will become ill. All it will take is for a single teacher to become hospitalized with COVID and everything will shut down.”

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/push-reopen-schools-fail/614869/

 

“The problem is the White House and the task force could never organize themselves to lead a federal response and bring virus transmission down to containment levels,” said Hotez, who has argued for the necessity of a federal containment plan that, if executed effectively, might allow the nation to reopen comprehensively as soon as October. “Instead they took a lazy and careless route, claiming schools are important, as we all know, and the teachers and principals need to figure it out. What they did was deliberately set up the teachers, staff, and parents to fail. It’s one of the most careless, incompetent, and heartless actions I’ve ever seen promoted by the executive branch of the federal government.”

The President barebacked a pornstar which is how he learned more than this guy about viruses.  More than one way to skin a cat...

-MAGA regards

[Bookman 4639]

15 hours ago, Acropora said:

Basically, all these imaging findings are things we see with heart attacks and other reversible and irreversible sequelae of cardiac damage.  We are very focused on mortality (people dying) but largely ignoring morbidity (serious illness).  That makes sense since the horror of what is occurring is hard to fathom but I think we'll see a lot of chronic illness and disease in covid survivors (no hard data, just my own conjecture based on observations taking care of these patients).  

I see lung inflammation similiar to what I'd see in autoimmune and inflammatory processes in the lungs of "asymptomatic" young patients.  My guess is they have a functional reserve which isn't exceeded and therefore feel "fine".  It's akin to smoking.  You don't really have problems with COPD and emphysema due to destruction of your lung until you've had a few years of exposure (generally, not including more acute episodes).   We've had reports of young patients (under 20) with arrythmias (funny heartbeats) after full recovery.  We've had neuropsychiatric issues with corresponding abnormal brain MRIs in young patients.  In fact, one of the big issues is strokes in patients who are in their 20s.  

I worry about our children and long term effects of infection as well as even those patients who have recovered to date.  We are making big, long term decisions with a minimal amount of data, a lot of wishful forecasting, and a fucking incompetent and disingenous leader who even now, can't find a tiny bit of decency and try to do the right thing and at least get out of the way of the people who should be leading our response.  

Wow you really like to use parentheses.

[4th&Five 41525]

 

[RomaVicta 29905]

8 hours ago, ChiTownDoc said:

The President barebacked a pornstar which is how he learned more than this guy about viruses.  More than one way to skin a cat...

-MAGA regards

Was she really a porn star? A porn actress, to be sure, but a star? Would a genuine star actually debase herself by sleeping with a loser like Donald Trump? It'd be like Jennifer Lawrence swooning over the Sham-Wow guy.

I just don't see it.

[Red Five 40853]

Yeah, cases aren't up because of a virus spreading like wildfire across the country. Cases are up because we're testing for it. He's so fucking stupid it hurts. 

[Chuckie Finster 22694]

One hell of an article:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/09/coronavirus-american-failure/614191/

Despite ample warning, the U.S. squandered every possible opportunity to control the coronavirus. And despite its considerable advantages—immense resources, biomedical might, scientific expertise—it floundered. While countries as different as South Korea, Thailand, Iceland, Slovakia, and Australia acted decisively to bend the curve of infections downward, the U.S. achieved merely a plateau in the spring, which changed to an appalling upward slope in the summer. “The U.S. fundamentally failed in ways that were worse than I ever could have imagined,” Julia Marcus, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, told me.

Since the pandemic began, I have spoken with more than 100 experts in a variety of fields. I’ve learned that almost everything that went wrong with America’s response to the pandemic was predictable and preventable. A sluggish response by a government denuded of expertise allowed the coronavirus to gain a foothold. Chronic underfunding of public health neutered the nation’s ability to prevent the pathogen’s spread. A bloated, inefficient health-care system left hospitals ill-prepared for the ensuing wave of sickness. Racist policies that have endured since the days of colonization and slavery left Indigenous and Black Americans especially vulnerable to COVID‑19. The decades-long process of shredding the nation’s social safety net forced millions of essential workers in low-paying jobs to risk their life for their livelihood. The same social-media platforms that sowed partisanship and misinformation during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Africa and the 2016 U.S. election became vectors for conspiracy theories during the 2020 pandemic.

[David Dennison 18854]

 

[purplepride95 6890]

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13583]

51 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

One hell of an article:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/09/coronavirus-american-failure/614191/

Despite ample warning, the U.S. squandered every possible opportunity to control the coronavirus. And despite its considerable advantages—immense resources, biomedical might, scientific expertise—it floundered. While countries as different as South Korea, Thailand, Iceland, Slovakia, and Australia acted decisively to bend the curve of infections downward, the U.S. achieved merely a plateau in the spring, which changed to an appalling upward slope in the summer. “The U.S. fundamentally failed in ways that were worse than I ever could have imagined,” Julia Marcus, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, told me.

Since the pandemic began, I have spoken with more than 100 experts in a variety of fields. I’ve learned that almost everything that went wrong with America’s response to the pandemic was predictable and preventable. A sluggish response by a government denuded of expertise allowed the coronavirus to gain a foothold. Chronic underfunding of public health neutered the nation’s ability to prevent the pathogen’s spread. A bloated, inefficient health-care system left hospitals ill-prepared for the ensuing wave of sickness. Racist policies that have endured since the days of colonization and slavery left Indigenous and Black Americans especially vulnerable to COVID‑19. The decades-long process of shredding the nation’s social safety net forced millions of essential workers in low-paying jobs to risk their life for their livelihood. The same social-media platforms that sowed partisanship and misinformation during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Africa and the 2016 U.S. election became vectors for conspiracy theories during the 2020 pandemic.

The problem here is that when you point out that people who have spent their entire adult lives studying a subject and acquiring expertise in a given field to the Fuck Your Feelings Folk, their feelings get really hurt because that's just pointy- headed elitists in their ivory towers thinking they're soooooo much better than them, and hurting the feelings of people with a raging inferiority complex indoctrinated into embracing pride as a virtue as opposed to one of the 7 Deadly Sins, is one of the worse things in the world to possibly happen.

[WhatTheBuck 28777]

2 hours ago, Chuckie Finster said:

One hell of an article:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/09/coronavirus-american-failure/614191/

Despite ample warning, the U.S. squandered every possible opportunity to control the coronavirus. And despite its considerable advantages—immense resources, biomedical might, scientific expertise—it floundered. While countries as different as South Korea, Thailand, Iceland, Slovakia, and Australia acted decisively to bend the curve of infections downward, the U.S. achieved merely a plateau in the spring, which changed to an appalling upward slope in the summer. “The U.S. fundamentally failed in ways that were worse than I ever could have imagined,” Julia Marcus, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, told me.

Since the pandemic began, I have spoken with more than 100 experts in a variety of fields. I’ve learned that almost everything that went wrong with America’s response to the pandemic was predictable and preventable. A sluggish response by a government denuded of expertise allowed the coronavirus to gain a foothold. Chronic underfunding of public health neutered the nation’s ability to prevent the pathogen’s spread. A bloated, inefficient health-care system left hospitals ill-prepared for the ensuing wave of sickness. Racist policies that have endured since the days of colonization and slavery left Indigenous and Black Americans especially vulnerable to COVID‑19. The decades-long process of shredding the nation’s social safety net forced millions of essential workers in low-paying jobs to risk their life for their livelihood. The same social-media platforms that sowed partisanship and misinformation during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Africa and the 2016 U.S. election became vectors for conspiracy theories during the 2020 pandemic.

The United States has correctly castigated China for its duplicity and the WHO for its laxity—but the U.S. has also failed the international community. Under President Donald Trump, the U.S. has withdrawn from several international partnerships and antagonized its allies. It has a seat on the WHO’s executive board, but left that position empty for more than two years, only filling it this May, when the pandemic was in full swing. Since 2017, Trump has pulled more than 30 staffers out of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s office in China, who could have warned about the spreading coronavirus. Last July, he defunded an American epidemiologist embedded within China’s CDC. America First was America oblivious.

Even after warnings reached the U.S., they fell on the wrong ears. Since before his election, Trump has cavalierly dismissed expertise and evidence. He filled his administration with inexperienced newcomers, while depicting career civil servants as part of a “deep state.” In 2018, he dismantled an office that had been assembled specifically to prepare for nascent pandemics. American intelligence agencies warned about the coronavirus threat in January, but Trump habitually disregards intelligence briefings. The secretary of health and human services, Alex Azar, offered similar counsel, and was twice ignored.

[ChiTownDoc 21152]

3 hours ago, RomaVicta said:

Was she really a porn star? A porn actress, to be sure, but a star? Would a genuine star actually debase herself by sleeping with a loser like Donald Trump? It'd be like Jennifer Lawrence swooning over the Sham-Wow guy.

I just don't see it.

I guess that’s a good point.  I mean ‘star’ to me is just a word after porn.  I watch plenty but couldn’t tell you who the hell is who.  To each his own I suppose...