CR: COVID-19 --Political Talk

[Biff Tannen 45500]

I am still just astounded how people don't see how horrible of a president he is.  Just objectively.  It's not just that any other president we've had would be doing a better job.  Any other candidate from 2016 would be.  Probably even any current congressperson (maybe not Gohmert or the like) would be better.  He is a functionally broken human being and these rubes just can't see it.

[triplehorn 2664]

50 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Do you think Biden would have implemented the travel restrictions on same timeline? I am not sure. I think he may have been more hesitant to pull that trigger. Note that I dont think trump Implemented the travel restrictions because he was taking the virus as seriously as he should have. All the evidence is to the contrary. But I do think that even a few days one way or the other could impact the numbers significantly.

We'd be faring better with anyone other than Trump.  Who else would have fired our entire national (global) Pandemic Response Team?  Who else would de-fund our program for routine maintenance of ventilators in the strategic stockpile ?  Who else would marginalize or remove the voices from the podium of the most competent physicians and scientists promoting public understanding in an attempt to reduce his own stage envy?  You couldn't invent a worse person for the position right now.

And yes, even a single day delayed in taking definitive steps on social distancing has massive effects visible only weeks later.  If we did at a national level what WA and CA did when they did it, we'd be in a massively improved situation as a nation.  And really, we're still not there

 

Quote

 

[jimmyjazz 45565]

10 hours ago, Anastasis said:

Red, gold, and green...

red, gold, and green-een...

Oh, great.  Welcome, earworm.

[gmr548 16518]

Even if we assume, for argument's sake, that all else would have been the same: Biden would have fired the pandemic response team (created under an administration he was a part of but okay lol); ignored and actively downplayed the virus; purposely suppressed testing; tell blatant, verifiable lies to the public during every press conference/speech; using the pandemic as an excuse for corporate handouts (we'd probably have an all GOP congress so this is probably true) etc... He would not be withholding aid until governors kiss the ring. He would not be looking to punish red states. That alone is some third world dictator shit that should get Trump 25th-ed. 

Biden or Clinton - the latter would actually be the presidential alternative right now - would both be miles better. Perfect? No. Even objectively good? Who knows, it's an unprecedented event in our lifetime. But they'd be much better. Anyone with two brain cells can see that. Your average HS student would be better. This isn't a serious discussion. 

[SameSame 1692]

7 hours ago, Burt said:

There's still people out there who think this is some New World Order conspiracy shit.  Like Karen:

Well, 19 days after making that post, Karen is no longer with us.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/khucq-help-the-sehlke-family?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=p_cp share-sheet&fbclid=IwAR0lvh6Vo2-gWwlwDP4PmGK1V_nZU00LhevEfVTmEe9jQJ6tL2jm-M255MY

 

There's a post on that gofundme link that says that dead Karen's husband and two sons are trying now to get tested, but there are no test available for them.

They live in a Republican run county in a Republican run state in a Republican run country, and I guarantee you without a doubt, that they and everyone who gave that post on facebook a thumbs up, will blame their failure to test on Democrats.

[WhatTheBuck 28716]

7 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

I am still just astounded how people don't see how horrible of a president he is.  Just objectively.  It's not just that any other president we've had would be doing a better job.  Any other candidate from 2016 would be.  Probably even any current congressperson (maybe not Gohmert or the like) would be better.  He is a functionally broken human being and these rubes just can't see it.

You ain't gonna learn what you don't want to know. 

[Anastasis 23397]

9 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

Again, what did the travel restrictions accomplish?  Did it keep it out?  Did it stop it from spreading?  Did it save a single life?

 

8 minutes ago, Red Five said:

It bought a little time. Which the president used to tell everyone to not worry and that it was like the flu and that cases were about to go to zero.

 

Here is an interesting article. Note that they are modeling chinese travel restrictions placed on Wuhan, not the US policy.  But the excercise is still useful. The conclusion is that travel restrictions do have a meaningful impact, but to have the greatest impact they must be tied to efforts to reduce the transmissability.

 

 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/03/05/science.aba9757

Abstract

Motivated by the rapid spread of COVID-19 in Mainland China, we use a global metapopulation disease transmission model to project the impact of travel limitations on the national and international spread of the epidemic. The model is calibrated based on internationally reported cases, and shows that at the start of the travel ban from Wuhan on 23 January 2020, most Chinese cities had already received many infected travelers. The travel quarantine of Wuhan delayed the overall epidemic progression by only 3 to 5 days in Mainland China, but has a more marked effect at the international scale, where case importations were reduced by nearly 80% until mid February. Modeling results also indicate that sustained 90% travel restrictions to and from Mainland China only modestly affect the epidemic trajectory unless combined with a 50% or higher reduction of transmission in the community.

[4th&Five 41461]

The travel restrictions (not a ban) is like a boxer winning the first round and then getting the shit kicked out of him for the rest of the fight while also bragging about the first round between every other round. 

[DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt 12301]

1 minute ago, SameSame said:

There's a post on that gofundme link that says that dead Karen's husband and two sons are trying now to get tested, but there are no test available for them.

They live in a Republican run county in a Republican run state in a Republican run country, and I guarantee you without a doubt, that they and everyone who gave that post on facebook a thumbs up, will blame their failure to test on Democrats.

And despite the truth smacking him so hard in the face it killed his wife, the Dad will just ignore it and continue living in an alternate reality. There’s just no hope for the chemo treatment.

[JFKFC 4878]

 

[HenryJames 65890]

 

[Guest Lobo]

We didn't listen those agencies about Russia, why would we listen to them about China?  /noracist.  I honestly forget week to week how many "educated" people from my school are blatantly ignorant and racist.  I really do.  

[HenryJames 65890]

 

[Anastasis 23397]

10 minutes ago, triplehorn said:

And yes, even a single day delayed in taking definitive steps on social distancing has massive effects visible only weeks later.  If we did at a national level what WA and CA did when they did it, we'd be in a massively improved situation as a nation.  And really, we're still not there

I agree that a national level policy woudl have the greatest impact, but even an approach that simply targeted the tristate area with early intervention and travel restrictions and we would be in a massively improved situation. 

[Message Board User 12389]

 

[Grade of D as in David 13253]

9 minutes ago, SameSame said:

There's a post on that gofundme link that says that dead Karen's husband and two sons are trying now to get tested, but there are no test available for them.

They live in a Republican run county in a Republican run state in a Republican run country, and I guarantee you without a doubt, that they and everyone who gave that post on facebook a thumbs up, will blame their failure to test on Democrats.

I hope they go to church tomorrow

[SameSame 1692]

2 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

 

Wait, you mean.....he's been lying??

Oh my

[WhatTheBuck 28716]

9 minutes ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

And despite the truth smacking him so hard in the face it killed his wife, the Dad will just ignore it and continue living in an alternate reality. 

And pull the lever for Trump in November. Go team!

[HenryJames 65890]

8 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

 

 

[Message Board User 12389]

 

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20345]

 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13416]

9 minutes ago, Message Board User said:

 

Eventually Trump will be called out that X number of people are dead because of his administration. He will counter that X are alive because of him doing something. 

[Bama Llama 1447]

Good news!  Your PPE just arrived from the national stockpile!

From AL.com -

"More than 5,000 medical masks that Montgomery County received from the national stockpile were rotted, the local emergency management director said Thursday."

[Message Board User 12389]

 

[Chooky 13302]

1 minute ago, Bama Llama said:

Good news!  Your PPE just arrived from the national stockpile!

From AL.com -

"More than 5,000 medical masks that Montgomery County received from the national stockpile were rotted, the local emergency management director said Thursday."

Kushner: that's THEIR stockpile. Not ours. 

[Bama Llama 1447]

P.S. - that was 5,000 of a total of 5,800

Ain't this a bitch

[cactusflinthead 27594]

Come on down! You're the next contestant in Gene Dunks on You!

[Dbeasy 14971]

Would Biden have really handled this much better than Trump? Joe barely knows what day it is half the time and I hate Trump with a passion.

An effective leader doesn’t have to be smart, just smart enough to figure out who is smart and listen to them.

[Guest Lobo]

4 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

Come on down! You're the next contestant in Gene Dunks on You!

Well his name sounds like Wuhan, and he's Chinese...so obviously many on this site will dismiss him.  I cannot fucking believe the tacit, and sometimes overt, racism in Texas sometimes.  

[Dbeasy 14971]

Germany has reported more than 91,000 coronavirus infections and over 1,200 deaths. But thanks to widespread testing and other measures, its percentage of fatal cases — 1.3 percent — has been remarkably low.

By contrast, the rate is about 10 percent in Spain, France and Britain, 4 percent in China and 2.5 percent in the United States. Even South Korea, a model of flattening the curve, has a rate of 1.7 percent.

So why is Germany’s number so low? One reason, experts say, is that it has been administering around 350,000 coronavirus tests a week, far more than any other European country. That means it finds more infected people with few or no symptoms, which “lowers the death rate on paper,” said Hans-Georg Kräusslich, the head of virology at University Hospital in Heidelberg.

“Maybe our biggest strength in Germany,” said Professor Kräusslich, “is the rational decision-making at the highest level of government combined with the trust the government enjoys in the population.”

Wait, basically what this really says is that the German leadership isn’t really doing anything special to lower deaths, only that higher testing mathematically lowers the death percentage. By that logic, our leaders can look brilliant by doing way more testing and identifying people that have it and wouldn’t be dying anyway.

[Junior Miller 1502]

The global play during any outbreak of a new disease is in the very early stages all international travel should be banned. Give a window for people who are citizens of a country to return to that country but they are immediately placed under forced quarantine. The world's best in the field immediately go to work on figuring the new disease out and once it's contained open things back up. 

Of course this will never happen. We'll keep punching ourselves in the dicks. This is the 3rd coronavirus to pop up out of nowhere in the last 17 years so you know there's more coming very soon. 

[Junior Miller 1502]

5 minutes ago, Dbeasy said:

 

Wait, basically what this really says is that the German leadership isn’t really doing anything special to lower deaths, only that higher testing mathematically lowers the death percentage. By that logic, our leaders can look brilliant by doing way more testing and identifying people that have it and wouldn’t be dying anyway.

 

Well also they have much better coordination on access to treatment and early treatment seems to be a factor in success. 

America is the worst non third world shithole NK style place for something like this to run rampant. We're in a gun fight carrying a broken Nerf gun. 

[cactusflinthead 27594]

3 minutes ago, Dbeasy said:

 

An effective leader doesn’t have to be smart, just smart enough to figure out who is smart and listen to them.

 

I was talking about this with a co-worker. If I told the plumber, electrician, doctor, lawyer, or any other professional how much more I knew than them about their job they'd dump me. 

That's Dunning-Krueger in the WH. Biden knows that he needs help from experts. Trump absolutely refuses to listen to anyone. He won't read. He dismisses facts that don't agree with his opinions. He's about as ill-suited for this job as a man can be. 

And Hillbitch was slighted for being 'over-prepared'.

Fuck Chuck Todd 

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

34 minutes ago, SameSame said:

There's a post on that gofundme link that says that dead Karen's husband and two sons are trying now to get tested, but there are no test available for them.

They live in a Republican run county in a Republican run state in a Republican run country, and I guarantee you without a doubt, that they and everyone who gave that post on facebook a thumbs up, will blame their failure to test on Democrats.

I dug around a bit on the social media of the "Likes" and one of her friends is a homeschooling far right nurse who appears to be convinced that the US should never have closed anything down and the Hobby Lobby is being persecuted because they are Christian owned and not because a)They are not an essential business and b) They don't have sick leave for employees and told their employees to come to work because of a 'vision' the owner's wife had.

[DDD Dad 14257]

So Japan now is saying if they don’t shut down they could become “the next NYC” (remember when Italy was the standard?)

[RomaVicta 29802]

15 hours ago, Hank Scorpio said:

Somehow Mayor Pete got ahold of the Biden Twitter account. 

That or he fell asleep with his phone mic on causing his account to quote every fucking commercial or politician on TV. 

I'm getting tired of being soothed and pandered at every turn. Okay, I'll go back to shaking my gnarly fist at the TV and passing cars.

[Loco 3752]

Fantastic read...  if you like slow motion horror 

The U.S. was beset by denial and dysfunction as the coronavirus raged

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2020/04/04/coronavirus-government-dysfunction/?arc404=true

[Jack Straw 2953]

1 hour ago, Nivek said:

I was told we were never going to bow and apologize again, and restore prestige to America.  I was told it would trickle down money and everyone would be rich.  I was told health care would be about $19 and cover more.  I was told that we would reduce the cases from 15 to zero.  I was told we had the best health care in the world.  I was told that socialists are evil and that those shitty countries envy our wealth of supplies and materials.    I was told that a businessman would whip the Government into shape and make it better.   

“Well sure, all of those were lies, obviously, and now Americans are dying left and right, but have you seen how much the libs are getting owned by all of the massive failure and corruption we’re responsible for?   So, yeah, can’t wait to vote for him again.”
-Every Republican 

[RomaVicta 29802]

15 hours ago, Anastasis said:

Wishing death on people seems like a bad karmic move at this point, but I know that some of you guys are really in to it.  Hope that works out well for you. 

 

15 hours ago, Anastasis said:

Olds, kushner, people opposed politically. It's a slope I guess. 

Sure beats sanctimony.

[cactusflinthead 27594]

 That might be the worst of it. That at the root rot of his narcissistic soul he doesn't care about anything or anyone except himself. All the fucked up responses to everything comes from it. This is the worst case scenario. When he should have been preparing for this he was worried about his own ass.

[Chooky 13302]

Imagine how insidious it'd be if Trump was hoarding medical supplies only to fully stock swing states. 

Narrator ... .

[RomaVicta 29802]

14 hours ago, RPM said:

CBS News White House Correspondent Weijia Jiang

 

Somewhere Ed Murrow and Walter Cronkite are smiling and nodding. Brilliant job. Frankly, it was also like Rather and Nixon. CBS used to be so distinctly better than other TV/Radio newsorgs.

[cactusflinthead 27594]

Notice that nobody has asked if she could do a better job.

Is it that self-evident?

 

[jimmyjazz 45565]

26 minutes ago, Junior Miller said:

The global play during any outbreak of a new disease is in the very early stages all international travel should be banned. Give a window for people who are citizens of a country to return to that country but they are immediately placed under forced quarantine.

. . . and the government (well, a capable government) would need to oversee that return process by ensuring airlines honor future tickets and helping with timing, so airports don't get overrun and people aren't having to pay $20K for a one-way flight between Heathrow and JFK.

[RomaVicta 29802]

14 hours ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

If you mean the young lady who asked the NASTY question, it was Weijja Jiang, a reporter for CBS News. Jim Acosta was the bloke who got shut down for asking about a variety of things including asking the whereabouts of Dr. Fauci.

Here is her update:

I have a real problem with the text changes. It is very grim when a regime does this regardless of party. The government exists to serve the people and this reflects a government that thinks not only otherwise but that the government is never wrong. Nothing new for the past three years, but this trend is going to take some serious correcting. I fear it will continue regardless of which party is in charge if this habit becomes institutionalized. It takes a Walter Shaub airtight code of ethics to keep people from looking the other way.

It's straight Ministry of Truth shit. Malreported. Double plus ungood.

Sing it Annie

 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13416]

47 minutes ago, Bama Llama said:

Good news!  Your PPE just arrived from the national stockpile!

From AL.com -

"More than 5,000 medical masks that Montgomery County received from the national stockpile were rotted, the local emergency management director said Thursday."

The Dept of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs are sending out blankets next.  Keep you warm at night.

[cactusflinthead 27594]

43 minutes ago, Lobo said:

Well his name sounds like Wuhan, and he's Chinese...so obviously many on this site will dismiss him.  I cannot fucking believe the tacit, and sometimes overt, racism in Texas sometimes.  

I kinda flubbed the tagline 

Gene Wu Dunks on You!

works so much better

[Anastasis 23397]

38 minutes ago, Junior Miller said:

The global play during any outbreak of a new disease is in the very early stages all international travel should be banned. Give a window for people who are citizens of a country to return to that country but they are immediately placed under forced quarantine. The world's best in the field immediately go to work on figuring the new disease out and once it's contained open things back up. 

Of course this will never happen. We'll keep punching ourselves in the dicks. This is the 3rd coronavirus to pop up out of nowhere in the last 17 years so you know there's more coming very soon. 

Moving forward we have to be willing to restrict travel much earlier. 

All it really takes is an airborne form of something like ebola, maybe with a little kicker of COVID like pre-symptomatic tranmissability, and we're done for as a species. 

[Chooky 13302]

How do medical masks rot? Did they get wet or left in a place not climate controlled? Is 'Yakety Sax' our new anthem? 

[Captainant 27471]

Just now, Anastasis said:

Moving forward we have to be willing to restrict travel much earlier. 

All it really takes is an airborne form of something like ebola, maybe with a little kicker of COVID like pre-symptomatic tranmissability, and we're done for as a species. 

But what about the economy tho?

(Just getting ya mentally ready to answer that question next time it comes around)