Corona Virus: It's a Marathon, Not a Sprint

[malchior]

Watch this and weep.

[Paingod]

This really feels like the absolute worst time for something like this. An administration built on demolishing scientific progress - charged with protecting American lives from something that can only be handled scientifically. An administration that mishandles everything it touches, in a situation that requires absolute refined precision.

This is not a good time. Not at all.

[malchior]

This really feels like the absolute worst time for something like this. An administration built on demolishing scientific progress - charged with protecting American lives from something that can only be handled scientifically. An administration that mishandles everything it touches, in a situation that requires absolute refined precision.

This is not a good time. Not at all.

And a populace of idiocrats that embrace all this stupidity.

[Smoove_B]

It isn't so much the timing as it is the scope and the number of external factors. The response shouldn't be a surprise - look at how the administration handled the storm aftermath in Puerto Rico. I'm actually more amazed something like this hasn't happened sooner, not in the final months of his first term, quite frankly. They were gambling that nothing would happen on their watch and are now scrambling to deal with the nightmare they created. That they would try to put blame on the media or the Democrats for this is also not surprising. Unfortunately there's no time for blame in a crisis; that's emergency response 101. The fact that they're spending any energy trying to fix blame in the middle of an unfolding global pandemic is (to me) even more frightening.

[YellowKing]

The only real disasters we've had to compare to this since Trump took office are hurricanes and wildfires, and we see how those turned out. Basically it's a bunch of Trump being ineffective at worst and dismissive and uncaring at best. Now imagine that on a national scale.

If the collateral damage wasn't so bad, it would be quite satisfying for Trump to be undone by his anti-science views and willful ignorance of reality.

[malchior]

They still have the benefit of saying that they stopped it when Trump closed the borders to Chinese travelers. When that firewall fails...they'll just move the goal posts. We just have to keep in mind that they aren't just incompetent. They are evil. We can't trust them. We shouldn't trust them and have to hope that a Federal response isn't critical.

[Paingod]

I'm actually more amazed something like this hasn't happened sooner, not in the final months of his first term, quite frankly.

Maybe the carona virus is mother nature's vote against him, you know, for the upcoming election.

[gilraen]

I'm actually more amazed something like this hasn't happened sooner, not in the final months of his first term, quite frankly.

Maybe the carona virus is mother nature's vote against him, you know, for the upcoming election.

+1

[LawBeefaroni]

I'm actually more amazed something like this hasn't happened sooner, not in the final months of his first term, quite frankly.

Maybe the carona virus is mother nature's vote against him, you know, for the upcoming election.

+1

I thought it was God's retribution on China for allowing gay pagan wedding ceremonies. Or something.

[Combustible Lemur]

I'm actually more amazed something like this hasn't happened sooner, not in the final months of his first term, quite frankly.

Maybe the carona virus is mother nature's vote against him, you know, for the upcoming election.

+1

I thought it was God's retribution on China for allowing gay pagan wedding ceremonies. Or something.

No, that's Mike Pence.

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[Isgrimnur]

I'm actually more amazed something like this hasn't happened sooner, not in the final months of his first term, quite frankly.

Maybe the carona virus is mother nature's vote against him, you know, for the upcoming election.

+1

I thought it was God's retribution on China for allowing gay pagan wedding ceremonies. Or something.

No, that's Mike Pence.

Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

It's God's retribution on China for Mike Pence?

[Blackhawk]

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more he talks about how this is a conspiracy and 'nothing', the more it will blow up in his face if it does become a pandemic.

[LawBeefaroni]

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more he talks about how this is a conspiracy and 'nothing', the more it will blow up in his face if it does become a pandemic.

In which case we'll all be too busy trying to survive to give a fuck. It's the risk-reward calculus of malevolent incompetence.

[Combustible Lemur]

I'm actually more amazed something like this hasn't happened sooner, not in the final months of his first term, quite frankly.

Maybe the carona virus is mother nature's vote against him, you know, for the upcoming election.

+1

I thought it was God's retribution on China for allowing gay pagan wedding ceremonies. Or something.

No, that's Mike Pence.

Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

It's God's retribution on China for Mike Pence?

God's retribution on China for gay pagan weddings..... Pence in the white house. Nvmd.

Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

[malchior]

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more he talks about how this is a conspiracy and 'nothing', the more it will blow up in his face if it does become a pandemic.

In which case we'll all be too busy trying to survive to give a fuck. It's the risk-reward calculus of malevolent incompetence.

I don't think anything matters anymore from a what he says or does POV. We know he will lie about it and the MAGATs will buy it. Everyone else will be split along the usual lines.

[LordMortis]

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more he talks about how this is a conspiracy and 'nothing', the more it will blow up in his face if it does become a pandemic.

In which case we'll all be too busy trying to survive to give a fuck. It's the risk-reward calculus of malevolent incompetence.

Yeah, Oh look I was wrong. Good thing my and my mafia can afford immunization. Sucks to be you, suffering from the wrath of God.

And it would be God's retribution on China for unfair business with United States, making the trade war easy to win for the elect.

[Pyperkub]

Singles want ad - Man with Corona virus seeking female with Lyme Disease!

[Daehawk]

[Smoove_B]

JFC

NYC DeBlasio has repeatedly requested permission from federal authorities to conduct all #COVID19 #SARnCoV2019 tests in NYCDOH labs, using kits locally developed. He claims nobody in federal govt has responded to >3 weeks of requests.

[LordMortis]

Singles want ad - Man with Corona virus seeking female with Lyme Disease!

I just got it. I assumed there was some sort of satire on climate change and the increase of such things.

Sometimes I'm dense. Who am I kidding, I'm always dense.

[Daehawk]

Fox News attacks CNN. I wish Fox would go out of business. Scumbags.

CNN's coronavirus coverage criticized: ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome strikes again’

As coronavirus concerns sweep the nation and make news across the globe, liberal CNN is being criticized for placing blame for its spread on President Trump and politicizing the alarming illness.

Other stories on CNN’s website included liberal Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon, criticizing Trump’s comments about the flu and an opinion piece claiming Vice President Pence is “exactly the wrong guy” to help combat the virus.

They like that word 'liberal' dont they?

[YellowKing]

There's no doubt that CNN posts a lot of anti-Trump "Opinion" and "Analysis" on its front page. But Fox News being outraged at partisan headlines is the height of hypocrisy.

[Kraken]

If y'all don't read Heather Cox Richardson every day, you ought to. I'm quoting the entirety of yesterday's post because I don't think we can link to Facebook pages. (She's a political historian and Boston College professor.)

February 27, 2020 (Thursday)

It appears we are in the chaos that churns in between more stable eras.

The coronavirus is grabbing the headlines, and it is a huge story in its own right, but it also lays bare the rot in the Republican Party that has put Trump in the White House. The coronavirus is a pandemic now, meaning it is a disease that has appeared on a number of continents, and it is killing people, although the numbers of infections and the death rate is so premature that I would not draw any conclusions yet. We know it’s not good, but just how not good it might turn out to be is still unclear.

But the coronavirus and the subsequent selling-off in the stock market of the last several days reveals what feels to me like an endpoint of a political era.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan won the White House by arguing that the activist government of the New Deal, the laws that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, and promoted infrastructure, were destroying American liberty. “Government is not the solution to our problem;” Reagan said in his inaugural address, “government is the problem.”

After 1981, America entered a period when we turned for solutions not to educated experts informing government policy, but rather to individuals who claimed to be outside that sphere of government expertise: men of the people. As we celebrated those “self-made” individualists—usually men-- Congress cut taxes and regulation to free them to run their businesses as they saw fit. After 1981, wealth began to move upward, and yet the Republican Party continued to howl about socialism and insist that we would not have true freedom until all regulations, all taxes, and most government programs were abolished. In their place we would have businessmen who had proven their worth by creating successful businesses. They would run our country in the best way for all of us.

That this system worked well for everyone was a fiction, of course. Republican leaders stayed in power not because a majority of voters agreed with their ideology, but because as their policies moved wealth upward and hurt most Americans, they blamed those economic hardships on people of color, women, and other minorities: “special interests” who were demanding government policies paid for by the taxes of hardworking white men. They also increasingly jiggered the political system to make sure they stayed in power. They disenfranchised Democratic voters and carved up districts so that in 2012, for example, Democrats won a majority of 1.4 million votes for candidates to the House of Representatives, and yet Republicans came away with a 33-seat majority.

The election of Donald Trump to the White House in 2016 was the high water mark of this political mindset. He was an outsider who posed as a successful businessman, disdainful of politics, who promised to gut government bureaucrats—the swamp-- and put into office only the best people, people known for their business acumen or their family connections to others with that skill. Expertise and loyalty to the American government was unimportant—even undesirable. What mattered was the ability to make money and be loyal to the president.

Following in his predecessors’ footsteps, Trump slashed regulations, opened up resources to businessmen, and passed a huge tax cut for the wealthy, a tax cut which was supposed to stimulate investment in the economy and promote economic growth. In the midst of growing administration scandals, Trump banked on the fact that a strong economy would keep him in office for a second term and insisted that those opposing his administration, regardless of party, were hostile Democrats who wanted big government “socialism.”

Now, a virus from China is exposing the hollowness of a generation of relying on businessmen to manage our government. The administration’s response to the coronavirus has been shockingly bad. In 2018, it got rid of the government leadership for handling a pandemic, so we have no one in charge who is trained to handle such a crisis. Then, when the virus broke out, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention insisted on developing its own test, rather than using the guidelines established by the World Health Organization. Their test didn’t work, making health officials unable to test people in danger before they got sick. Then, over the advice of the CDC, administration officials decided to evacuate 14 infected patients who had been stranded on a cruise ship in Japan along with healthy travelers. We learned today from a whistleblower that, once landed in the U.S., workers came and went from the facility that housed the patients with no precautions. Now, we have our first case of the coronavirus that appears to have appeared here on its own, and it happened in the same place where these workers came and went (although it is too early to say if there is definitely a connection).

Trump has excused his dismissal of all the experts by saying that they were easy to rehire when necessary, but it has not turned out to be that easy. Today, he appointed a third person to be in charge of the response in addition to the two others he has already named, and, angry at the CDC official who warned Americans that the virus would arrive here sooner or later, he arranged for all statements about the disease to be cleared through Vice President Mike Pence’s office. He also revealed his key interest in protecting the stock markets today when he named two new members to the coronavirus task force: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Director of the National Economic Council Larry Kudlow, who has insisted on television that the virus is “contained.”

In a moment that perfectly encapsulated the problem of handling a public health crisis of this magnitude when you are equipped only to promote business, today Secretary of Health and Human Services Alexander Azar, a former drug company executive and pharmaceutical lobbyist, told Congress that when scientists manage to make a vaccine for the coronavirus (12 to 18 months out, by all accounts), not everyone will be able to afford it. “We would want to ensure that we work to make it affordable, but we can’t control that price, because we need the private sector to invest. Price controls won’t get us there.”

This is the modern Republican Party laid bare. Profits before lives, because only businessmen, not government policy, can manage the country.

This moment makes it really clear what happens when the Republicans’ ideology comes up against reality. While GOP leaders over the years, and Trump of late, have managed to silence opponents by calling them socialists or making sure they cannot vote, the virus is not going to stop simply by changing the narrative or the body politic. Investors know this, and the dropping stock market shows their realization that you cannot shut down entire countries and keep supply chains and consumer goods moving. The stock market has fallen 11.13% in the past four days, erasing a third of the gains it has made since Trump was elected. We are facing an economic downturn, one that will strain an economy that was excellent indeed for those at the very top, but not good for those who now will be vital to keep consumption levels up… but those very people will be hard pressed to come up with extra income in an economic downturn. It is a problem that the markets are acknowledging with their biggest drops since the 2008 crisis.

This is a crisis that demands expertise and coordinated government health programs, but we no longer have those things. Instead, Trump and his surrogates on the Fox News Channel are falling back on the old arguments that have worked so well for GOP leaders in the past: Democrats are hyping the coronavirus and spooking the markets to hurt the president.

Trump, and Americans in general, are about to discover that there comes a point when image can no longer override reality. We are in the churn of that chaos now. But on the other side of it, we have the potential to rebuild a government that operates in reality, and that works for all of us.

[Smoove_B]

Case in point:

Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) on Friday said the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was told to "stand down" and not appear on five Sunday morning talk shows to discuss the coronavirus.

Garamendi told MSNBC's Hallie Jackson that Anthony Fauci was scheduled to do all five major Sunday talk shows, but says Fauci canceled the appearances after Vice President Pence took over the administration's response to the disease.

This is not normal. I have no point of comparison for this, but it's pants-on-head insane.

In response:

Director of the National Economic Council Larry Kudlow told reporters Friday, "No one's being stifled. No one's being told what to say," with Kudlow adding it was more about coordinating the message.

Then coordinate and have him appear on the various shows this weekend. It's really not that hard. They don't want him to speak because they're afraid he'll give honest, science-based answers that contradict the propaganda they're floating.

[Pyperkub]

Case in point:

Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) on Friday said the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was told to "stand down" and not appear on five Sunday morning talk shows to discuss the coronavirus.

Garamendi told MSNBC's Hallie Jackson that Anthony Fauci was scheduled to do all five major Sunday talk shows, but says Fauci canceled the appearances after Vice President Pence took over the administration's response to the disease.

This is not normal. I have no point of comparison for this, but it's pants-on-head insane.

In response:

Director of the National Economic Council Larry Kudlow told reporters Friday, "No one's being stifled. No one's being told what to say," with Kudlow adding it was more about coordinating the message.

Then coordinate and have him appear on the various shows this weekend. It's really not that hard. They don't want him to speak because they're afraid he'll give honest, science-based answers that contradict the propaganda they're floating.

It's normal in a totalitarian state.

[Daehawk]

News interviewed a lady at the airport. She was worried and wearing a mask she said to help protect her.

It was one of those cheap blue dust masks. Sorry lady you are the weakest link..goodbye. Seriously even surgical masks are being used and are no help. They only help if the person wearing the mask is the sick one. Keeps muscus and spit and fluids from being sprayed in the air during coughs and sneezes. If you are wearing anything less than a N95 mask and you are not sick you are not helping yourself. Dust particles and blood are MANY timers larger than the virus that will simply pass through most masks.

[Smoove_B]

Finally, from my people at the APHA:

"As U.S. communities prepare for COVID-19, a coordinated national response with leadership from top levels of government is critical. Attempts to silence public health officials — or manipulate public information — will only make it harder to get ahead and stay ahead of this virus.

“There’s a science to effective outbreak response, and this must include full and open participation from our most trustworthy messengers — scientists, public health professionals and medical officials. During an outbreak, it’s our duty to instill public confidence, lessen unnecessary panic and fear, and give people the timely and accurate information they need to protect themselves and their loved ones. This is not a time for politics.

“In the face of a disease we are still learning about, it would be highly reckless to allow political interference in the delivery of science-based health information to the public. Such a move would only sow confusion and distrust, making it more difficult for the public health professionals working to control the virus.

“The world is on the verge of a global pandemic, and public trust in government health leaders will be key to mitigating its harm. We must reject any attempt to prioritize politics over the public’s health.”

Again, the idea that they'd have to make this statement is insane, but I'm glad they did.

[malchior]

JFC

NYC DeBlasio has repeatedly requested permission from federal authorities to conduct all #COVID19 #SARnCoV2019 tests in NYCDOH labs, using kits locally developed. He claims nobody in federal govt has responded to >3 weeks of requests.

I'd say just do it at that point. Fuck these bozos.

[Smoove_B]

Are you fucking kidding me?

Here’s Trump at his rally tonight in South Carolina dismissing worries about the coronavirus as the “new hoax”

[malchior]

Another case just appeared in Oregon. It's here and this evil POS is going to get a lot of people killed.

[malchior]

The Gothamist

It appears the administration truth-i-ness measures have kicked in. 'Distinct shift in tone' is definitely one way to explain it. She is literally now dropping the 'Trump contained it' story line.

Employing a distinct shift in tone from a prior press briefing on Tuesday, a director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention praised President Donald Trump's containment strategy and avoided using any language that would trigger concern over what some health experts are calling a global pandemic.

“We need to remember that the case count is really low and that is a reflection of the aggressive containment measures of the U.S. government," said Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, during a telephone press briefing on COVID-19, the World Health Organization's official name for the current coronavirus disease.

The briefing capped off a whirlwind week for the federal health agency and Messonnier, who found herself the target of right-wing attacks after she delivered the most sobering warning to date about the coronavirus epidemic.

[malchior]

Washington state just announced two positive cases including a minor. Hours after Trump called this a hoax.

[El Guapo]

Washington state just announced two positive cases including a minor. Hours after Trump called this a hoax.

Trump should demonstrate how much of a hoax this is by visiting the patients.

[Daehawk]

Hope he gets it and leaves my planet.

He is looking more and more like Walter.

[Holman]

"We're working on cures and we're getting some very good results."

Even he doesn't believe this. You can tell as he says it.

Also, what is up with his eye-bags? Stock market keeping him up at night?

[Blackhawk]

Don't judge. Elements of Medical are essential for keeping the four humors in balance.

[em2nought]

Looks like all the democrat prayers have been answered, and you might not have to eat with those old racist relatives at Thanksgiving ever again. Might get everything redistributed from the older generation before communism is even installed into power. Bernie is kinda old though so...

Damned Chinese biological weapons lab.

[malchior]

WTF. "Just" 6 of his fellow passengers died so far!

[Blackhawk]

Well, they can't play the 'nobody has died in the US' card anymore.

First US death in Washington state.

[Daehawk]

Everyone blaming Trump. I hate the bastard too but he couldn't do any bad shit if it wasn't for the entire GOP supporting him and half the US population nodding in agreement with him and threatening good and truthful people. People bow to the Sith Emperor of the United States because they are afraid of his supporters.