CR: COVID-19 --Political Talk

[Nivek 17330]

This shit hits me hard as a Navy vet.  
When you're out at sea, all you have is each other and I would have loved to have this guy as my CO. 
But, in Trump's world, doing the right thing is a fire-able offense.  Pathetic.

Our military has a long tradition of shitting on good people. When the helicopter crew turned their guns on American soldiers murdered 400 Vietnamese and gang raped some of the women, the 3 serviceman were shit on, shunned, and were called traitors. Only one man did time (
Not a vet.

[Irieguy 1059]

3 hours ago, Dbeasy said:

 


He broke chain of command. The biggest no no there is. You don’t air dirty laundry. It’s not your call.

I 100% agree in normal times. In these times it’s not so clear. If your bosses are nitwits cowtowing to Trump, it’s your duty to do whatever you feel best protects your troops. He made the right sacrifice and hopefully he is rewarded in civilian life. 

[Guest Lobo]

Goddamit Jared, you had one job.  Bitching goes up the chain of command, resources go down the chain of command.  You wouldn't know, because you have zero leadership skills.  Locals ask the states, states ask the feds.  Feds give to the states, states give to the locals.  This is not that complicated.  Just shut up for a second and listen to yourself, if the stockpile is for the feds, who is it actually for?  Agents Johnson?  

[jimmyjazz 46977]

It's such an odd take, regardless.  The federal government isn't some distinct but similar entity from the 50 state + territories.  It doesn't exist with a separate charter, allowing the states to collectively go one way while the federal government goes another.

[DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt 12301]

2 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

It's such an odd take, regardless.  The federal government isn't some distinct but similar entity from the 50 state + territories.  It doesn't exist with a separate charter, allowing the states to collectively go one way while the federal government goes another.

It literally makes zero sense. None.

and by all indications, he’s the fraud running the show right now. Good stuff.

[Guest Lobo]

Hundreds of thousands are gonna die because Kushner once asked Trump for a unique wedding gift..."Someday, Dad...I wanna walk into a room in the White House and ask 'Who is in charge here?', and when somebody stands up to say 'I Am', I get to say...Not Anymore!"  

[Judge Roybeanbag 11856]

29 minutes ago, Dnaguy said:

Who plays Fauci? I can’t see it right now....

Jeff Goldblum.

[Incredulity 11861]

3 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

It's such an odd take, regardless.  The federal government isn't some distinct but similar entity from the 50 state + territories.  It doesn't exist with a separate charter, allowing the states to collectively go one way while the federal government goes another.

actually it really does

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_preemption

[Guest Lobo]

2 minutes ago, Incredulity said:

actually it really does

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_preemption

Yeah, because Kushner understands the subtleties of express and implied preemption.  The guy is just a frat kid looking to commandeer some ventilators and sell them to buy roofies.  

[bernorange 8385]

46 minutes ago, GhostOfTomJoad said:

Never forget, Abbott sent the Texas Sate Guard to monitor Jade Helm. THAT'S the level of idiocy we're dealing with.

Common wisdom seems to be that a lack of adverse outcomes in the face of extreme preventative measures means the preventative measures were effective.

Spoiler

lololololol   /ducks

 

[Incredulity 11861]

1 minute ago, Lobo said:

Yeah, because Kushner understands the subtleties of express and implied preemption.  The guy is just a frat kid looking to commandeer some ventilators and sell them to buy roofies.  

I wasn't defending Kushner.  

 

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3861]

1 minute ago, bernorange said:

Common wisdom seems to be that a lack of adverse outcomes in the face of extreme preventative measures means the preventative measures were effective.

  Reveal hidden contents

lololololol   /ducks

 

 

 

[TXSG8R 3362]

Just spoke to my mom in Germany.  My cousin doctor in Bamberg finally got her test results, shes negative so shes going back to work.  Cant touch patients for another week though.  She said the Bamberg region has ~250ish cases, only 6 in ICU.  The German military is actually flying in Italian patients due to their ICU availability (German wide, not just Bamberg obviously), which is pretty ballsy IMO.  

I was thinking about it this morning, I'm really surprised that we haven't instituted some kind of system that limits how and when people can move based on simple stuff like addresses.  We do similar during droughts, these numbers water Mon and Wed, these numbers are Tue and Thur.  Why cant we implement that kind of stuff for going to stores?  You would limit the exposure between areas and keep clusters more contained.  Check DLs or water bills at the door.  

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3861]

1 minute ago, TXSG8R said:

Just spoke to my mom in Germany.  My cousin doctor in Bamberg finally got her test results, shes negative so shes going back to work.  Cant touch patients for another week though.  She said the Bamberg region has ~250ish cases, only 6 in ICU.  The German military is actually flying in Italian patients due to their ICU availability (German wide, not just Bamberg obviously), which is pretty ballsy IMO.  

I was thinking about it this morning, I'm really surprised that we haven't instituted some kind of system that limits how and when people can move based on simple stuff like addresses.  We do similar during droughts, these numbers water Mon and Wed, these numbers are Tue and Thur.  Why cant we implement that kind of stuff for going to stores?  You would limit the exposure between areas and keep clusters more contained.  Check DLs or water bills at the door.  

some place was doing that for shopping using birth years

[Guest Lobo]

3 minutes ago, Incredulity said:

I wasn't defending Kushner.  

 

I know, but soon his supporters will be clinging to federal preemption which isn't actually applicable here, but we both know that.  And all the Trumpers who are also internet-ordained constitiutional scholars will be cheering his wild misinterpretation.  

[TexArcher 38816]

6 minutes ago, bernorange said:

Common wisdom seems to be that a lack of adverse outcomes in the face of extreme preventative measures means the preventative measures were effective.

  Hide contents

lololololol   /ducks

 

Well the alternative is to do nothing, or close to nothing, then for a lot of people to die, then to say, "gee, I guess we didn't do enough."

"Common wisdom" says that when you have multiple examples of a course of action in other countries mitigating disastrous outcomes to some degree, then you choose not to implement those same measures here, then the outcomes are significantly worse here, you've got blood on your hands.

Edited April 3, 2020 by TexArcher

[bernorange 8385]

@TexArcher  - It was a joke.  Spoiler out front should have clued you in.

[Snake Diggity 4698]

5 minutes ago, TXSG8R said:

Just spoke to my mom in Germany.  My cousin doctor in Bamberg finally got her test results, shes negative so shes going back to work.  Cant touch patients for another week though.  She said the Bamberg region has ~250ish cases, only 6 in ICU.  The German military is actually flying in Italian patients due to their ICU availability (German wide, not just Bamberg obviously), which is pretty ballsy IMO.  

I was thinking about it this morning, I'm really surprised that we haven't instituted some kind of system that limits how and when people can move based on simple stuff like addresses.  We do similar during droughts, these numbers water Mon and Wed, these numbers are Tue and Thur.  Why cant we implement that kind of stuff for going to stores?  You would limit the exposure between areas and keep clusters more contained.  Check DLs or water bills at the door.  

I think by and large people’s tolerance for restriction is (sadly) already maxed out.  Any further restrictions could tip the scales of social unrest, especially in a place like Texas.  And as time goes on the tolerance is only going to diminish.  I think if the current restrictions aren’t adequate to curb the spread, then herd/treatment/vaccine is the only hope.

[TXSG8R 3362]

4 minutes ago, SuingToGetAMessageBoard? said:

some place was doing that for shopping using birth years

Thats an even better idea, give the olds isolated shopping time so they arent getting outrushed to the TP and bread.  I know some other countries did that, but I didnt know anyone was doing that in the states.  

[DixonHur 11941]

54 minutes ago, TXSG8R said:

If the story is correct as written, he knew writing the letter was going to cost him his command.  Your only avenue around the chain of command is the Inspector General (IG) or someone from Congress, and even those arent wide open (IANAL, just remembering UCMJ stuff).  Breaking chain of command will get you smoked, even if you're right.  

But being a war criminal will get you a pardon, retirement with full benefits, a hero's welcome at Fox, and praise from the Commander in Chief.

[Bullneck 19454]

1 hour ago, Captainant said:

Come and talk then, snowflake. Leave your hugbox and think critically. 

Weeks ago you and CTJ and the rest of the merry band were shifting all over me for pointing out what the president was saying was counter to the medical experts advice and consensus. Why is what the president saying now serious as opposed to then?

Fuck you, I'll continue to say you should cite medical experts as authoritative over the president. They haven't had to change their story yet, and actually give a shit about health outcomes as opposed to the economy over everything else. 

I take it this is from the DT thread?  

Just remember, Sydney Carlton has a comic book character for an avatar.

[TXSG8R 3362]

1 minute ago, DixonHur said:

But being a war criminal will get you a pardon, retirement with full benefits, a hero's welcome at Fox, and praise from the Commander in Chief.

If only he would have attached a photo holding some muslim kid's head he would have been in the clear.  

[Captainant 28390]

1 minute ago, Snake Diggity said:

I think by and large people’s tolerance for restriction is (sadly) already maxed out.  Any further restrictions could tip the scales of social unrest, especially in a place like Texas.  And as time goes on the tolerance is only going to diminish.  I think if the current restrictions aren’t adequate to curb the spread, then herd/treatment/vaccine is the only hope.

Then buckle up buckaroo, we're four months into even being aware that this virus exists. A vaccine isn't going to be ready inside of a year, we won't have results to show from trials before then.

Or we could make the same mistake we did a hundred years ago in the 1918 pandemic, and expend a ton of energy and capital producing ineffective vaccines and treatments for the virus resulting in the public taking fewer health precautions. Which ultimately concluded with a resurgence of the pandemic in the fall, after which an actual vaccine was perfected and herd immunity kicked in.

[Tuco 5093]

1 hour ago, Bullneck said:

To go to the newspaper with a story like this is almost as big a sin as asking for a foreign government to find dirt on your political opponent.  He obviously decided it was better for the health of his sailors if he took the fall (or "went down with the ship") to save as many people as he could.  For me, he's up there with Vindman in terms of unimpeachable integrity.  And a sign of the times of how they were treated.

I see this as similar to the debates on "enhanced interrogation" back 15 years ago.  Inevitably, the unrealistic hypothesis of "if the only way to prevent a suitcase nuke attack in NYC was to waterboard some guy, would you?"  Ignoring the obvious bullshit around the reliability of evidence under torture and the myth of available suitcase nukes, and just accepting the hypothetical at face value, my answer is "sure, but I would expect to face the consequences of it."  The hypothetical cannot dictate a system without consequences. 

The laws (or military rules) are not established to handle every hypothetical in a just, fair, and logical manner.  At some point, when you see a disconnect between what the rules say and what you know needs to be done, you do what needs to be done.  The personal consequences of your actions are outweighed by the societal consequences of your inaction.  "Good men must not obey the laws too well."   

[TexArcher 38816]

Why can't Andrew Cuomo just be the president until this is over?

[triplehorn 2664]

7 minutes ago, Snake Diggity said:

I think by and large people’s tolerance for restriction is (sadly) already maxed out.  Any further restrictions could tip the scales of social unrest, especially in a place like Texas.  And as time goes on the tolerance is only going to diminish.  I think if the current restrictions aren’t adequate to curb the spread, then herd/treatment/vaccine is the only hope.

When people repeatedly get conflicting information, sense appeasement through falsehood telling, witness lack of leadership and wisdom, chaos is a lot more likely.  When it's leveled and effectively communicated that the alternative is worse than the restrictions, people get it, and society itself becomes an enforcer.  When that fails, start showing more films of people drowning to death from lungs full of blood and fluids, speechless and alone.

 

[jw4381 3242]

1 hour ago, Gengs1 said:

This is amazing, just amazing, the republicans would vote for a retarded demon as long as it had an R next to the name

somebody kind of beat me to it

[Bullneck 19454]

32 minutes ago, TXSG8R said:

Just spoke to my mom in Germany.  My cousin doctor in Bamberg finally got her test results, shes negative so shes going back to work.  Cant touch patients for another week though.  She said the Bamberg region has ~250ish cases, only 6 in ICU.  The German military is actually flying in Italian patients due to their ICU availability (German wide, not just Bamberg obviously), which is pretty ballsy IMO.  

I was thinking about it this morning, I'm really surprised that we haven't instituted some kind of system that limits how and when people can move based on simple stuff like addresses.  We do similar during droughts, these numbers water Mon and Wed, these numbers are Tue and Thur.  Why cant we implement that kind of stuff for going to stores?  You would limit the exposure between areas and keep clusters more contained.  Check DLs or water bills at the door.  

Ha, makes too much sense. (They also used to take your passport at (some) European hotels when you checked in). 

 

What you described versus what we're living through is the difference between Merkle and Trump.  

Edited April 3, 2020 by Bullneck

[henrygandorf 29221]

40 minutes ago, Judge Roybeanbag said:

Jeff Goldblum.

[bolverk 30235]

Update on the astoundingly bad decision's borne out of stubborn hubris at Falwell's cult college in Virginia:

Liberty University Brings Back Its Students, and Coronavirus Fears, Too
The decision by the school’s president, Jerry Falwell Jr., to partly reopen his evangelical university enraged residents of Lynchburg, Va. Then students started getting sick.

Updated March 30, 2020: This story has been changed to reflect the first known positive coronavirus test of a Liberty University student.

LYNCHBURG, Va. — As Liberty University’s spring break was drawing to a close this month, Jerry Falwell Jr., its president, spoke with the physician who runs Liberty’s student health service about the rampaging coronavirus.

“We’ve lost the ability to corral this thing,” Dr. Thomas W. Eppes Jr. said he told Mr. Falwell. But he did not urge him to close the school. “I just am not going to be so presumptuous as to say, ‘This is what you should do and this is what you shouldn’t do,’” Dr. Eppes said in an interview.

So Mr. Falwell — a staunch ally of President Trump and an influential voice in the evangelical world — reopened the university last week, igniting a firestorm. As of Friday, Dr. Eppes said, nearly a dozen Liberty students were sick with symptoms that suggested Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. Three were referred to local hospital centers for testing. An additional eight were told to self-isolate.

As of 8 p.m. on March 29, of those three students tested, one was positive, one was negative and one student’s results are still pending, according to Dr. Eppes, who added that the student who tested positive for Covid-19 lives off campus.

“Liberty will be notifying the community as deemed appropriate and required by law,” Mr. Falwell said in an interview on Sunday when confronted with the numbers. He added that any student now returning to campus would be required to self-quarantine for 14 days.

“I can’t be sure what’s going on with individuals who are not being tested but who are advised to self-isolate,” said Kerry Gateley, the health director of the Central Virginia Health District, which covers Lynchburg. “I would assume that if clinicians were concerned enough about the possibility of Covid-19 disease to urge self-isolation that appropriate screening and testing would be arranged.”

After initial publication of this article, the university said it had asked four students who returned from the New York area and two of their roommates to self-quarantine, but none of them were referred for testing and none had symptoms. One student who returned from a county with a high number of cases was running a fever and had a cough. He was tested and elected to go home pending the results rather than self-isolate, the university said.

Of the 1,900 students who initially returned last week to campus, Mr. Falwell said more than 800 had left. But he said he had “no idea” how many students had returned to off-campus housing.

“If I were them, I’d be more nervous,” he added, because they live in more crowded conditions.

For critical weeks in January and February, the nation’s far right dismissed the seriousness of the pandemic. Mr. Falwell derided it as an “overreaction” driven by liberal desires to damage Mr. Trump.

Though the current crisis would appear epidemiological in nature, Dr. Eppes said he saw it as a reflection of “the political divide.”

Spoiler

 

“If Liberty sneezes, there are people who don’t like the fact that Liberty sneezed,” he said in an interview. “Mr. Falwell called me to listen to a view that wasn’t exactly his. Great leaders do that type of thing.”

The city of Lynchburg is furious.

“We had a firestorm of our own citizens who said, ‘What’s going on?’” said Treney Tweedy, the mayor.

Some Liberty officials accuse alarmed outsiders of playing politics. Ms. Tweedy has called Mr. Falwell “reckless.” And within the school, there are signs of panic.

“I’m not allowed to talk to you because I’m an employee here,” one student on campus wrote in an email. But, he pleaded, “we need help to go home.”

Under the Falwell family’s leadership, Liberty University has grown in five decades from a modest Baptist college to an evangelical powerhouse with cash investments and endowments of nearly $2 billion, nearly 46,000 undergraduates and a campus that sprawls across Lynchburg and neighboring counties in Virginia. Total enrollment, including online students, exceeds 100,000.

The institution is a welcome and generous presence in this Blue Ridge Mountain region, where the percentage of Lynchburg residents living in poverty is twice the state average. Liberty and its Thomas Road Baptist Church donate goods and services, its medical students conduct free health screenings, and its students participate in city beautification, maintenance and charity projects.

The university was founded by Mr. Falwell’s famous father as a bastion of social conservatism, one that was unabashedly combative as it trained what it called “Champions for Christ.” If anything, the younger Mr. Falwell has made it more so since his father’s death.

The mayor and city manager here, Bonnie Svrcek, felt relieved two weeks ago, when Mr. Falwell assured them that he fully intended to comply with Virginia’s public health directives and close the school to virtually all students, most of whom were scattering for spring break. Then he changed his mind.

“We think it’s irresponsible for so many universities to just say ‘closed, you can’t come back,’ push the problem off on other communities and sit there in their ivory towers,” Mr. Falwell said on Wednesday on a radio show hosted by Todd Starnes, a far-right conspiracy theorist.

“We’re conservative, we’re Christian, and therefore we’re being attacked,” he said.

Michael Gillette, a former mayor of Lynchburg and a bioethicist now working with its hospitals on rationing scarce ventilators, disagrees.

“To argue that criticism of Liberty is based on political bias is unfounded and unreasonable,” he said. “Liberty just did not take this threat as seriously as others have.”

Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia, Lynchburg city officials and a growing number of Liberty students, parents and employees have urged Mr. Falwell to reverse course, but such pleas have only prompted a stream of often conflicting statements.

“Our messages did change throughout the week as the governor’s orders changed,” Mr. Falwell said. “We had to adapt.”

Mr. Falwell initially said only international students or those with nowhere else to go would remain. Then he welcomed back a much larger group of about 1,900 students to campus housing last week, in addition to faculty members and staff. Others returned to off-campus rentals in Lynchburg.

Students who remained at home had to return last week to clean out their rooms, a requirement that was later relaxed. Faculty members were at first ordered back to campus, even though they would be teaching online. Then some were allowed to work from home.

Mr. Falwell also waffled on whether the school would issue refunds to students who did not return for the semester, before announcing on Friday that most would receive a $1,000 credit for next year’s bills.

Mr. Falwell and his administration have worked to tamp down dissent. After a Liberty undergraduate, Calum Best, wrote on his personal Facebook page that students should receive refunds, he said Liberty’s spokesman, Scott Lamb, called his cellphone to berate him. Asked about the call, Mr. Lamb said he was simply objecting to an error in the post, and Mr. Best was “spinning.”

After Marybeth Davis Baggett, a professor, wrote an open letter asking the university’s board of trustees to close the campus, Mr. Falwell mocked her on Twitter as “the ‘Baggett’ lady.”

Jeff Brittain, a Liberty parent, wrote on Twitter: “I’m as right wing as they get, bud. But as a parent of three of your students, I think this is crazy, irresponsible and seems like a money grab.” Mr. Falwell replied, calling him a “dummy.”

All of this has left even his critics scratching their heads.

“It’s honestly hard to figure out what his motives are,” Mr. Best, the student who wrote the Facebook post, said in an interview. “If he had purely political motives, he’s being way more conservative than even Trump is being right now. Trump is at least allowing doctors to say their piece. Jerry is not. It kind of shocks me at this point.”

On campus, the administration says it is adhering to Virginia’s public health mandates, but students are flouting them. While security guards appear to be enforcing state advisories requiring a six-foot distance from others and gatherings of no more than 10 people, students are still assembling in closer proximity to eat, play sports, study and use dormitory restrooms. Decals slapped on furniture that say “Closed for Social Distancing” have wound up on laptops and car bumpers. Study tables are farther apart, but shared computer terminals remain. While some students are trying to adhere to social distancing guidelines, they live in group houses, pile onto city buses and crowd the few businesses that remain open in Lynchburg.

It was not supposed to be that way. As the number of reported cases of the coronavirus in Virginia began rising, Ms. Tweedy said Mr. Falwell personally assured her that the school would not fully reopen. “We have some students who cannot go anywhere or they have nowhere to go,” she recalled his telling her. “The number on that day was 300 or so students, and even if it was a few more, we said, ‘OK, well, thank you.’”

But as spring break drew to a close in mid-March, all Liberty students were encouraged to return.

“We never discussed numbers, and I never told them the dorms would be closed,” Mr. Falwell said on Sunday. “We’re going to have to agree to disagree on what was said.”

Mr. Falwell runs Liberty his own way, and his word is law. Professors are not tenured and can be fired at will. The administration controls the student newspaper.

Mr. Falwell echoes Mr. Trump’s talking points on the coronavirus, which he often calls the “flu.”

“It’s just strange to me how many are overreacting” to the pandemic, Mr. Falwell said on “Fox & Friends” on March 10. “It makes you wonder if there is a political reason for that. Impeachment didn’t work and the Mueller report didn’t work and Article 25 didn’t work, and so maybe now this is their next attempt to get Trump.”

Lynchburg is particularly ill-prepared to become a hot spot. Hospitals in the region have a total of 1,174 beds, only 55 of them intensive care, according to a recent analysis by the Harvard Global Health Institute. Those must serve 217,000 adults, nearly 50,000 of whom are 65 or older. Tests for the coronavirus remain in short supply.

Mr. Falwell has played down the dangers of his decision in interviews with the news media, where he has even suggested that the coronavirus is a North Korean bioweapon. On Fox News, he blithely asserted that the cure rate for Covid-19 “is 99.7 percent for people under 50,” adding, “We have talked to medical professionals, numerous medical professionals, before we made this decision.”

An archived version of Liberty’s website said those medical professionals included the school’s own public health faculty and campus health providers, as well as “Dr. Jeffrey Hyman of Northwell Health, New York’s largest health care provider.”

When contacted by The New York Times, Northwell Health denied that Dr. Hyman provided any formal guidance to Liberty, adding that he is not an infectious disease specialist. In a statement, the hospital system said that Dr. Hyman was a personal friend of the Falwell family, who told them in private conversation “that reconvening classes would be a ‘bad idea.’”

 

 

[Biff Tannen 46061]

19 minutes ago, TexArcher said:

Why can't Andrew Cuomo just be the president until this is over?

Meh, I'm tired of him talking also.

[jimmyjazz 46977]

46 minutes ago, Incredulity said:

actually it really does

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_preemption

Oh come on.  My point was pretty fucking obvious.  Let me be more clear:  he speaks of the federal government's stockpiles as being "ours" (and he's referencing an entity distinct from the states), in a clear attempt to differentiate between the needs of the two.  That's a flawed perspective.  The Federal government doesn't stockpile emergency equipment for any reason OTHER than supplying it to the states & territories, or perhaps certain allies, in the event of emergency.

Do I have to draw a picture?  Is there no inference any more?

[wildcat09 29558]

The amount of profiteering off of PPE that Trump and the GOP are enabling right now (and also probably personally involved in) is enormous and mob violence would be morally justified. Which is why the Dems will ignore it and refuse to investigate.

[Ghost of LL 15664]

So apparently Robert Jeffress think that churches shouldn't be taxed, but they're small businesses that should get taxpayer funding:

https://twitter.com/robertjeffress/status/1245828866549207042?s=20

[Biff Tannen 46061]

1 minute ago, Ghost of LL said:

So apparently Robert Jeffress think that churches shouldn't be taxed, but they're small businesses that should get taxpayer funding:

https://twitter.com/robertjeffress/status/1245828866549207042?s=20

Comments are good.

[WhatTheBuck 28904]

5 minutes ago, Ghost of LL said:

So apparently Robert Jeffress think that churches shouldn't be taxed, but they're small businesses that should get taxpayer funding:

https://twitter.com/robertjeffress/status/1245828866549207042?s=20

Grifters gonna grift. 

[Sbbruin 22082]

I was going to come here yesterday when I was watching this squid during the press conference.  What in the ever loving fuck is this douche doing being anywhere in the administration?  Trump should be removed from office if for no other reason than allowing this dolt to have any influence on policy.  Good piece from the NYT.  Fuck Jared Kushner.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/opinion/jared-kushner-coronavirus.html?smid=fb-share&fbclid=IwAR0b8Nbqhozb6q1YBAGUwSdoCMYDl2C0ZDmCMfXnSATtXtGex7GckxGD2iM

[Bullneck 19454]

 

 

[Ted Lange 16356]

 

 

[bernorange 8385]

The Inquistion, what a show
The Inquistion, here we go
We know you're wishing
That we'd go away
But the Inquistion's here and it's here to stay
The Inquistion, oh boy
The Inquistion, what a joy

/Adam Schiff

[Bullneck 19454]

 

 Good luck, honey.  

[Biff Tannen 46061]

5 minutes ago, Bullneck said:

 

 

lulz

 

 

[Bullneck 19454]

If he can't take credit for it, he isn't doing it.  Schiff is right.

 

[Mdhorn 6153]

26 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Update on the astoundingly bad decision's borne out of stubborn hubris at Falwell's cult college in Virginia:

Liberty University Brings Back Its Students, and Coronavirus Fears, Too
The decision by the school’s president, Jerry Falwell Jr., to partly reopen his evangelical university enraged residents of Lynchburg, Va. Then students started getting sick.

Updated March 30, 2020: This story has been changed to reflect the first known positive coronavirus test of a Liberty University student.

LYNCHBURG, Va. — As Liberty University’s spring break was drawing to a close this month, Jerry Falwell Jr., its president, spoke with the physician who runs Liberty’s student health service about the rampaging coronavirus.

“We’ve lost the ability to corral this thing,” Dr. Thomas W. Eppes Jr. said he told Mr. Falwell. But he did not urge him to close the school. “I just am not going to be so presumptuous as to say, ‘This is what you should do and this is what you shouldn’t do,’” Dr. Eppes said in an interview.

So Mr. Falwell — a staunch ally of President Trump and an influential voice in the evangelical world — reopened the university last week, igniting a firestorm. As of Friday, Dr. Eppes said, nearly a dozen Liberty students were sick with symptoms that suggested Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. Three were referred to local hospital centers for testing. An additional eight were told to self-isolate.

As of 8 p.m. on March 29, of those three students tested, one was positive, one was negative and one student’s results are still pending, according to Dr. Eppes, who added that the student who tested positive for Covid-19 lives off campus.

“Liberty will be notifying the community as deemed appropriate and required by law,” Mr. Falwell said in an interview on Sunday when confronted with the numbers. He added that any student now returning to campus would be required to self-quarantine for 14 days.

“I can’t be sure what’s going on with individuals who are not being tested but who are advised to self-isolate,” said Kerry Gateley, the health director of the Central Virginia Health District, which covers Lynchburg. “I would assume that if clinicians were concerned enough about the possibility of Covid-19 disease to urge self-isolation that appropriate screening and testing would be arranged.”

After initial publication of this article, the university said it had asked four students who returned from the New York area and two of their roommates to self-quarantine, but none of them were referred for testing and none had symptoms. One student who returned from a county with a high number of cases was running a fever and had a cough. He was tested and elected to go home pending the results rather than self-isolate, the university said.

Of the 1,900 students who initially returned last week to campus, Mr. Falwell said more than 800 had left. But he said he had “no idea” how many students had returned to off-campus housing.

“If I were them, I’d be more nervous,” he added, because they live in more crowded conditions.

For critical weeks in January and February, the nation’s far right dismissed the seriousness of the pandemic. Mr. Falwell derided it as an “overreaction” driven by liberal desires to damage Mr. Trump.

Though the current crisis would appear epidemiological in nature, Dr. Eppes said he saw it as a reflection of “the political divide.”

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“If Liberty sneezes, there are people who don’t like the fact that Liberty sneezed,” he said in an interview. “Mr. Falwell called me to listen to a view that wasn’t exactly his. Great leaders do that type of thing.”

The city of Lynchburg is furious.

“We had a firestorm of our own citizens who said, ‘What’s going on?’” said Treney Tweedy, the mayor.

Some Liberty officials accuse alarmed outsiders of playing politics. Ms. Tweedy has called Mr. Falwell “reckless.” And within the school, there are signs of panic.

“I’m not allowed to talk to you because I’m an employee here,” one student on campus wrote in an email. But, he pleaded, “we need help to go home.”

Under the Falwell family’s leadership, Liberty University has grown in five decades from a modest Baptist college to an evangelical powerhouse with cash investments and endowments of nearly $2 billion, nearly 46,000 undergraduates and a campus that sprawls across Lynchburg and neighboring counties in Virginia. Total enrollment, including online students, exceeds 100,000.

The institution is a welcome and generous presence in this Blue Ridge Mountain region, where the percentage of Lynchburg residents living in poverty is twice the state average. Liberty and its Thomas Road Baptist Church donate goods and services, its medical students conduct free health screenings, and its students participate in city beautification, maintenance and charity projects.

The university was founded by Mr. Falwell’s famous father as a bastion of social conservatism, one that was unabashedly combative as it trained what it called “Champions for Christ.” If anything, the younger Mr. Falwell has made it more so since his father’s death.

The mayor and city manager here, Bonnie Svrcek, felt relieved two weeks ago, when Mr. Falwell assured them that he fully intended to comply with Virginia’s public health directives and close the school to virtually all students, most of whom were scattering for spring break. Then he changed his mind.

“We think it’s irresponsible for so many universities to just say ‘closed, you can’t come back,’ push the problem off on other communities and sit there in their ivory towers,” Mr. Falwell said on Wednesday on a radio show hosted by Todd Starnes, a far-right conspiracy theorist.

“We’re conservative, we’re Christian, and therefore we’re being attacked,” he said.

Michael Gillette, a former mayor of Lynchburg and a bioethicist now working with its hospitals on rationing scarce ventilators, disagrees.

“To argue that criticism of Liberty is based on political bias is unfounded and unreasonable,” he said. “Liberty just did not take this threat as seriously as others have.”

Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia, Lynchburg city officials and a growing number of Liberty students, parents and employees have urged Mr. Falwell to reverse course, but such pleas have only prompted a stream of often conflicting statements.

“Our messages did change throughout the week as the governor’s orders changed,” Mr. Falwell said. “We had to adapt.”

Mr. Falwell initially said only international students or those with nowhere else to go would remain. Then he welcomed back a much larger group of about 1,900 students to campus housing last week, in addition to faculty members and staff. Others returned to off-campus rentals in Lynchburg.

Students who remained at home had to return last week to clean out their rooms, a requirement that was later relaxed. Faculty members were at first ordered back to campus, even though they would be teaching online. Then some were allowed to work from home.

Mr. Falwell also waffled on whether the school would issue refunds to students who did not return for the semester, before announcing on Friday that most would receive a $1,000 credit for next year’s bills.

Mr. Falwell and his administration have worked to tamp down dissent. After a Liberty undergraduate, Calum Best, wrote on his personal Facebook page that students should receive refunds, he said Liberty’s spokesman, Scott Lamb, called his cellphone to berate him. Asked about the call, Mr. Lamb said he was simply objecting to an error in the post, and Mr. Best was “spinning.”

After Marybeth Davis Baggett, a professor, wrote an open letter asking the university’s board of trustees to close the campus, Mr. Falwell mocked her on Twitter as “the ‘Baggett’ lady.”

Jeff Brittain, a Liberty parent, wrote on Twitter: “I’m as right wing as they get, bud. But as a parent of three of your students, I think this is crazy, irresponsible and seems like a money grab.” Mr. Falwell replied, calling him a “dummy.”

All of this has left even his critics scratching their heads.

“It’s honestly hard to figure out what his motives are,” Mr. Best, the student who wrote the Facebook post, said in an interview. “If he had purely political motives, he’s being way more conservative than even Trump is being right now. Trump is at least allowing doctors to say their piece. Jerry is not. It kind of shocks me at this point.”

On campus, the administration says it is adhering to Virginia’s public health mandates, but students are flouting them. While security guards appear to be enforcing state advisories requiring a six-foot distance from others and gatherings of no more than 10 people, students are still assembling in closer proximity to eat, play sports, study and use dormitory restrooms. Decals slapped on furniture that say “Closed for Social Distancing” have wound up on laptops and car bumpers. Study tables are farther apart, but shared computer terminals remain. While some students are trying to adhere to social distancing guidelines, they live in group houses, pile onto city buses and crowd the few businesses that remain open in Lynchburg.

It was not supposed to be that way. As the number of reported cases of the coronavirus in Virginia began rising, Ms. Tweedy said Mr. Falwell personally assured her that the school would not fully reopen. “We have some students who cannot go anywhere or they have nowhere to go,” she recalled his telling her. “The number on that day was 300 or so students, and even if it was a few more, we said, ‘OK, well, thank you.’”

But as spring break drew to a close in mid-March, all Liberty students were encouraged to return.

“We never discussed numbers, and I never told them the dorms would be closed,” Mr. Falwell said on Sunday. “We’re going to have to agree to disagree on what was said.”

Mr. Falwell runs Liberty his own way, and his word is law. Professors are not tenured and can be fired at will. The administration controls the student newspaper.

Mr. Falwell echoes Mr. Trump’s talking points on the coronavirus, which he often calls the “flu.”

“It’s just strange to me how many are overreacting” to the pandemic, Mr. Falwell said on “Fox & Friends” on March 10. “It makes you wonder if there is a political reason for that. Impeachment didn’t work and the Mueller report didn’t work and Article 25 didn’t work, and so maybe now this is their next attempt to get Trump.”

Lynchburg is particularly ill-prepared to become a hot spot. Hospitals in the region have a total of 1,174 beds, only 55 of them intensive care, according to a recent analysis by the Harvard Global Health Institute. Those must serve 217,000 adults, nearly 50,000 of whom are 65 or older. Tests for the coronavirus remain in short supply.

Mr. Falwell has played down the dangers of his decision in interviews with the news media, where he has even suggested that the coronavirus is a North Korean bioweapon. On Fox News, he blithely asserted that the cure rate for Covid-19 “is 99.7 percent for people under 50,” adding, “We have talked to medical professionals, numerous medical professionals, before we made this decision.”

An archived version of Liberty’s website said those medical professionals included the school’s own public health faculty and campus health providers, as well as “Dr. Jeffrey Hyman of Northwell Health, New York’s largest health care provider.”

When contacted by The New York Times, Northwell Health denied that Dr. Hyman provided any formal guidance to Liberty, adding that he is not an infectious disease specialist. In a statement, the hospital system said that Dr. Hyman was a personal friend of the Falwell family, who told them in private conversation “that reconvening classes would be a ‘bad idea.’”

 

 

Sending your kids to a school that doesn't care about their safety to own the Libtards.  Touche mf'ers.  

[BrickHorn 18426]

11 minutes ago, Ted Lange said:

 

 

The past was alterable. The past had never been altered. The Strategic National Stockpile is not for the states. The Strategic National Stockpile had always not been for the states.

Edited April 3, 2020 by BrickHorn

[WhatTheBuck 28904]

6 minutes ago, Bullneck said:

If he can't take credit for it, he isn't doing it.  Schiff is right.

 

Trump told me that if I want a test I can get a test. I still can't get a test. 

[Mdhorn 6153]

11 minutes ago, bernorange said:

The Inquistion, what a show
The Inquistion, here we go
We know you're wishing
That we'd go away
But the Inquistion's here and it's here to stay
The Inquistion, oh boy
The Inquistion, what a joy

/Adam Schiff

But Benghazi and Hillary's emails.  Aren't they now investigating the legality of the wire taps on illegal activity in Trumps crime organization?  

Edited April 3, 2020 by Mdhorn

[Degenerate Gardner 4132]

10 minutes ago, Bullneck said:

 

 

At least they're consistent. The GOP is equally the Party of Personal Accountability, Compassionate Conservatism, and Democracy Promotion.

[David Dennison 19441]

25 minutes ago, Bullneck said:

 

 

Hmmmm.

 

[JFKFC 4968]