Trump VS COVID-19 Threat

[Jimmy Higgins]

The safety of their working conditions should be held in the exact same regard as is their work's importance on our livelihoods. IE, what the heck good is them working and getting sick, if we need them to deliver us the stuff. Their health is a national interest at this point and must be protected first​!

The lack of proper health safety precautions for them is a national security threat.

I agree that their safety is important.

It is paramount because their services to us is at risk if it is not treated as an utmost priority.

Do you feel that them threatening the health and safety of a bunch of other people who aren't directly involved is an appropriate way to address this?

If they were protesting to get more money, this probably wouldn't be as good an argument. They are protesting their safety, which is a national interest.

Would you approve of firemen going on strike and refusing to put out fires in order to get better safety gear?

If they were being told to run into a burning house without any equipment, yes.

The time for people in service during a pandemic to complain about health issues is DURING THE PANDEMIC before they become sick and incapable of doing their job.

 

[Copernicus]

Interesting day by day interactive graph showing when and magnitude of C19 case growth in the US vs other major countries. Scroll down a bit and watch the chard animate.

Does anyone consider this a success?

Anyone know how to link just to the chart?

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/04/28/business/us-coronavirus-cases-surpass-1-million/

In the bottom right-hand corner of the chart, there was a link to Flourish Studio, which produced it. Here is the link to the graphic:

https://public.flourish.studio/visu...e=showcase&utm_campaign=visualisation/1694807

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Because the GOP is still trying to pretend it's a nothing.

And there's little reason to wear gloves with this. What we need are masks & distance.

Employees at stores have to wear masks and gloves. The talking point now is that if you touch a surface and then touch your face, you could get the virus. Or is that just drama for fluff?

It's utter stupidity--if you're wearing gloves, touch something and then touch your face the threat is exactly the same as if you weren't wearing the gloves. Gloves only have value if you discard them after being in the hot situation--and most people don't know how to remove them without becoming contaminated, either.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

So has Trump infected the NIH as well?

Preliminary results indicate that patients who received remdesivir had a 31% faster time to recovery than those who received placebo (p<0.001). Specifically, the median time to recovery was 11 days for patients treated with remdesivir compared with 15 days for those who received placebo. Results also suggested a survival benefit, with a mortality rate of 8.0% for the group receiving remdesivir versus 11.6% for the placebo group (p=0.059).

The actual study was quite a bit more reserved.

Findings

Between Feb 6, 2020, and March 12, 2020, 237 patients were enrolled and randomly assigned to a treatment group (158 to remdesivir and 79 to placebo); one patient in the placebo group who withdrew after randomisation was not included in the ITT population. Remdesivir use was not associated with a difference in time to clinical improvement (hazard ratio 1·23 [95% CI 0·87–1·75]). Although not statistically significant,patients receiving remdesivir had a numerically faster time to clinical improvementthan those receiving placebo among patients with symptom duration of 10 days or less (hazard ratio 1·52 [0·95–2·43]). Adverse events were reported in 102 (66%) of 155 remdesivir recipients versus 50 (64%) of 78 placebo recipients. Remdesivir was stopped early because of adverse events in 18 (12%) patients versus four (5%) patients who stopped placebo early.
Interpretation

In this study of adult patients admitted to hospital for severe COVID-19, remdesivir was not associated with statistically significant clinical benefits. However, the numerical reduction in time to clinical improvement in those treated earlier requires confirmation in larger studies.

WTF?!

Then we get the media...

An experimental drug has proved effective against the new coronavirus in a major study, shortening the time it takes for patients to recover by four days on average, U.S. government and company officials announced Wednesday.

So we go from:

Study: remdesivir was not associated with statistically significant clinical benefits

NIH: Preliminary results indicate that patients who received remdesivir had a 31% faster time to recovery than those who received placebo (p<0.001).

Media: An experimental drug has proved effective against the new coronavirus in a major study.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In other words. China isn't to blame at all for this pandemic. It's all His Flatulence's fault that this virus has spread around the planet. Perhaps His Flatulence actually came up with this virus himself then got one of his cronies to ship it to Wuhan so the world would blame China without suspecting that it was purely invented by His Flatulence himself. And the moon landings were all faked. I wonder if His Flatulence was also involved in that caper!

Nobody is to blame for it's existence. Leaders are responsible for how they handle it, and his handling of it is has been terrible.

Get ready with the crucifix and garlic as I'm about to post a link to Dracula and it's mouthpiece Front Page again here................................... https://cms.frontpagemag.com/fpm/20...coronavirus-pandemic-ahead-curve-joseph-klein

You claim Dracula and you present a guy in vampire makeup.

 

[lpetrich]

Donna Imam on Twitter: "Trump admin to the families of 60,000+ DEAD Americans: "This is a great *success* story. We've have achieved all the milestones that are needed. We're on the other side of the medical aspect of this [Corona virus pandemic]."
How can we be okay with this? https://t.co/6oRrGusKiV" / Twitter

Donna Imam on Twitter: "Trump tells the 56,000+ dead Americans and their families about this "tremendous comeback". Will they come back? https://t.co/Tfm6RNtpE3" / Twitter

Pramila Jayapal on Twitter: "“For regular people to survive, we would need government action along the lines of that proposed by Sen. @BernieSanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash.: guaranteeing no one goes hungry, direct emergency cash payments to everyone, Medicare covering all health costs.” https://t.co/HIADzkeNmC" / Twitter
then
The Intercept on Twitter: "The corporate right Is giving us two choices: Go back to work, or starve (link) by @Schwarz" / Twitter
noting
The corporate right is giving us two choices: Work, or starve

The GOP and its core constituents — conservative corporations — now face two dangers, one in the short term and one in the longer term. They’re currently using their standard playbook to smother both. Whether they succeed will determine our lives for decades.

The short-term danger is that Americans will resist the push from business to get us back on the job and making money for them. Their plan is simple: Starve us out. They know we can’t survive indefinitely without a continuing government bailout focused on regular people’s needs. So they’re going to stop that bailout from happening.

The longer-term danger they face is that we’ll make the government work for us in the short term — and then we will realize we could make it work for us all the time by removing the threat of starvation from their arsenal. This would totally change the balance of power in society. This is their deepest fear, one that’s consumed them since World War II, the first time in history that everyday people gained consciousness that it was possible for them to use the government to create a world that puts them first, not their bosses.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So has Trump infected the NIH as well?



The actual study was quite a bit more reserved.
WTF?!

Then we get the media...

An experimental drug has proved effective against the new coronavirus in a major study, shortening the time it takes for patients to recover by four days on average, U.S. government and company officials announced Wednesday.

So we go from:

Study: remdesivir was not associated with statistically significant clinical benefits

NIH: Preliminary results indicate that patients who received remdesivir had a 31% faster time to recovery than those who received placebo (p<0.001).

Media: An experimental drug has proved effective against the new coronavirus in a major study.

Yup, this is why I don't consider our government a useful source of information on this anymore.

 

[lpetrich]

Continuing with The corporate right is giving us two choices: Work, or starve:

This weepy concern for the unemployed will be bogus, but the suffering will be absolutely real, because the right will make sure it is.

The corporate right’s hoped-for dynamic recently was explained explicitly by Trevor Burrus of the Cato Institute, a conservative D.C. think tank: “The economic and human devastation is difficult to contemplate, and it’s only getting worse. … Many will hit a point where the trade-off will be between possibly getting COVID-19 and being able to feed their families. The disease doesn’t look so bad then.”

...
The problem, from the corporate right’s perspective, is not just that business would lose its cudgel for the moment if the U.S. government pays people to stay home. ...

This was famously explained in a 1943 essay by Michal Kalecki, a Polish economist, titled “Political Aspects of Full Employment.” At that moment, World War II was demonstrating for everyone with eyes to see that governments could end depressions and create economic booms via the straightforward method of spending money on basic human needs. There was no technical reason this couldn’t continue after the war, Kalecki wrote. But there was a huge political problem: An economy in which people could live without fear of unemployment would mean employers would no longer hold the whip hand.

...
Kalecki’s key insight was that big business cares more about power than money. “It is true that profits would be higher under a regime of full employment than they are on average under laissez-faire,” he said, “but ‘discipline in the factories’ and ‘political stability’ are more appreciated than profits by business leaders. Their class instinct tells them that lasting full employment is unsound from their point of view.”

That makes it very clear what the right wing's strategy is -- they want to starve us out. They seem completely happy with making the US much worse than any other nation in the disease. The disease can't both be a non-issue and a Chinese plot to make everybody else in the world hopelessly sick.

 

[Sajara]

I've got an idea...take everyone who is protesting that they need to get back to work...and send them to the meat processing plants.

I'm wondering how quickly their cognitive dissonance would break?

 

[blastula]

Jimmy, I think you're looking at a different study. That one they're talking about had over 1K subjects.

 

[lpetrich]

The Left Must Organize the Coming American Fury - "The Democratic Party Must Harness the Legitimate Rage of Americans. Otherwise, the Right Will Use It With Horrifying Results."

... The anger of Americans, once they figure out what’s being done to them right now, is going to be volcanic. The fallout from 9/11 and the great recession of 2007-2010 will be imperceptible in comparison.

Not long from now, almost everyone will have a family member or friend who died of Covid-19, many of them suffocating in isolation wards with insufficient treatment, perhaps deprived of a ventilator that would have saved their lives. Huge swaths of the country are plummeting into desperate penury, even as they witness large corporations unlock the U.S. Treasury and help themselves to everything inside.

John Steinbeck in his 1939 novel "Grapes of Wrath" describes orange groves being burned to increase the income of orange growers by lowering their supply - even as people were starving.

Now it’s cheap ventilators that were never built because a company called Covidien worried they would compete with their more expensive models. It’s N95 masks that were not available because President Donald Trump delayed invoking the Defense Production Act in order to protect corporate power. It’s tens of thousands of hospital beds being eliminated in New York and New Jersey because the surplus capacity cost money; some of those hospitals were turned into luxury condos.

There are several ways that this anger can go. The article lists two of them:

• Labor-union activism and FDR's New Deal
• Fascism, like in Germany, Italy, and Japan, with lots of innocent people suffering.

At least in Germany and Italy, the Fascists started out with lots of anticapitalist rhetoric, but when they came to power, they sold out to big businesses.

There is a third route: Communism -- Marxism-Leninism. That, it must be said, was a disaster, even by its own terms. That's why the surviving Communist regimes are capitalist roaders in varying degree, though it's with the leaders making it very clear to the capitalists who's boss. Russia under Putin has also gone that way. Consider what happened to Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

It’s tough to be optimistic that today’s liberals can replicate Roosevelt’s success. The corporate-managerial-legal class that operates the Democratic Party fears anger and sees it as illegitimate as the basis for action. Having beaten back the threat of the Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren presidential candidacies, both fueled by strong populist emotion, they dream of a technocratic politics purified of messy, fickle human feelings.

But the American right specializes in the politics of anger.

 

[lpetrich]

The article continues with two possibilities:

Blue 2021 - the Democratic candidate decides to embrace anger against the elite crooks of the nation.

“We’re all in this together,” the Democrat declared. “And what that means is that the people who’re out for themselves are going to pay the price. When I’m president, we’re going to put all the president’s daily briefs online so everybody can see exactly how Trump screwed us. Politicians who made money off inside information on the coronavirus and profiteers who hoarded medical supplies are going to spend the rest of their lives in jail.”

Mobilized anger at the healthcare industry terrified Congress into passing Medicare for All.

Mobilized anger at the country’s poisoning by Fox News led to a congressional investigation of whether the network had knowingly misled Americans about the dangers of Covid-19. The documentation uncovered became the basis for lawsuits that bankrupted and neutered Fox.

Red 2021 - Trump wins again

... Trump and the GOP’s mighty Wurlitzer settled on a suite of hazy stories, all of which the party’s base fervently believed even though they were mutually contradictory.

Such as, there had been mass deaths but they were the fault of Hunter Biden’s friends in China. Simultaneously, they argued that barely anyone had died and the numbers had been wildly exaggerated by the media to hurt Trump. The suffocation of the country’s small businesses could be blamed on Nancy Pelosi’s bailout of big business and Wall Street. Big business and Wall Street had valiantly kept us alive despite the Democratic hate for free enterprise. At the bottom of the right’s food chain, there were constant whispers that brown people from New York had streamed out of their warrens to purposefully infect the heartland.

What the stories had in common was that they featured someone to blame, someone who could be the target of valid but misplaced rage.

While the Democratic candidate was unwilling to point the finger at anyone. The Democratic base was demoralized and Trump had a modest victory, a victory that he called "the greatest landslide in history". The Republican base was even more rage-filled than ever.

Trump was now free of all restraints, and he commenced an enormous bombing campaign against Iran. Protests were outlawed for public safety. Large numbers of Americans continued to die from the coronavirus, although no one was sure exactly how many because the government no longer released statistics on it. Fox began quietly, and then more and more loudly, claiming that opponents of the war were importing “biological bombers” from Iran to spread the disease. The stage was set for the classic collapse into authoritarianism, with the official outside enemies purportedly collaborating with the enemies on the inside.

 

[lpetrich]

Small Business Rescue Money Flows to Major Trump Donors

The loans, which are converted to grants if payroll is maintained and other, sometimes unclear, conditions are met, have been out of reach for tens of thousands of small business owners, many of whom have faced delays and denials. But PPP loans have been swiftly approved for a number of corporations whose executives have donated heavily to Trump’s campaign, Securities and Exchange Commission records show.

AOC was right about that, it seems.

A New York Doctor Fighting Coronavirus — and Student Debt

n recent weeks, health care workers have been heralded as heroes in the national response to the coronavirus pandemic. Wartime analogies flow freely: U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called the Covid-19 pandemic the most challenging global crisis since World War II. In a recent press briefing, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo made calls to “support our troops,” referring to health care workers as “the soldiers in this fight.”

In many ways, the comparison is apt. Doctors, nurses, and support staff find themselves enlisted in a war against a virus that has infected thousands and killed hundreds of their colleagues globally. Public expressions of support for health professionals are meaningful. But they are also insufficient to drown out the deafening silence from Capitol Hill in response to mounting cries for relief measures — chief among them educational debt forgiveness.

What will it take? Massive medical labor shortages?

Congress Concierge Health Clinic Quietly Gets Funding Boost

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., became one of the first lawmakers to announce he had Covid-19, after testing positive for the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

He received his diagnosis promptly from congressional doctors employed by the Office of the Attending Physician, and recovered by early April. Coronavirus testing was made available early and often for members of Congress, who enjoy concierge medical services courtesy of a world-class government health clinic.

Diaz-Balart, like many other voices on Capitol Hill, has denounced increased public spending on health services as a dangerous “government takeover of healthcare.” But like every lawmaker, he enjoys gold-plated medical care from OAP, which provides on-call services at taxpayer expense — and recently got a boost in funding.

So he loves gov't healthcare for himself and his colleagues, but not for anyone else.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Jimmy, I think you're looking at a different study. That one they're talking about had over 1K subjects.

*bleep me* I think you are right... two studies released on this on the same day? I'm apparently quoting the China study which was a randomized and double blind study, but smaller. I feel dumb.

The NIAID appears to confirm that shorter hospitalization, however, the benefit of mortality isn't quite that big.

 

[lpetrich]

White House risks backlash with coronavirus optimism | TheHill - talk about recklessness.

Top administration officials in recent days have started laying out specific timetables for when they believe the pandemic will be in the rearview mirror. The sunny declarations come as the White House pushes to revive the economy that has been central to President Trump’s reelection bid.

Let's see...

• Abraham Lincoln didn't call the South's secession the Democrats' new hoax.
• FDR didn't call Japan's attack of Pearl Harbor the Republicans' new hoax.
• Winston Churchill didn't call Germany's bombarding Britain the Labourites' new hoax.
• Joseph Stalin didn't call Germany's invading his nation the Trotskyists' new hoax.

Trump’s blind faith won’t solve America’s coronavirus testing problem - Vox - "Trump’s comments about testing are troublingly similar to his efforts to wish away the coronavirus in February."
Seems like he learned nothing from the gross falsification of his claims over the last few months.

“We are the best in the world in testing. We’ve tested much more than anybody else, times two. Or every country combined — we’ve tested more than every country combined,” Trump said, falsely, as the US has not even come close close to doing more testing than all other countries combined.

Abe Lincoln didn't sound like that. FDR didn't sound like that. Winston Churchill didn't sound like that. Joseph Stalin didn't sound like that. "A final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live." "A date which will live in infamy." "Blood, toil tears, and sweat." "Grave danger hangs over our country."

 

[Elixir]

What will it take? Massive medical labor shortages?

You crazy? They don't give a flying f*ck about medical anything, as long as they are taken care of.
Laborers in any capacity are interchangeable and expendable. If enough strawberry pickers or meat packers get sick and die, they'll happily reassign your doctor and all of that doctor's nurses and PAs to pick their strawberries and pack their meat.

 

[blastula]

Jimmy, I think you're looking at a different study. That one they're talking about had over 1K subjects.

*bleep me* I think you are right... two studies released on this on the same day? I'm apparently quoting the China study which was a randomized and double blind study, but smaller. I feel dumb.

The NIAID appears to confirm that shorter hospitalization, however, the benefit of mortality isn't quite that big.

Yeah, it'll help, but it still seems like overhype, from listening to Fauci today.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Winston Churchill didn't sound like that.

We shall fight in, you know, France, where the French are. We'll fight the French. We fight, fight well, on the seas. We have a sea navy. And oceans, we have zn Ocean Navy, too. And the Space Force. No one fights with more confidence and with fight. We have fight. Our fine army, our, both of our navies, and in the air, planes. The plane force. we shall defend our wall, whatever the cost to the, the uh. We're looking at costs. Maybe some corner we can... We shall fight on the beaches, like George Washington, at the airfields, we shall fight on the landing. Landings. Tge stairs. We'll take the whole stairs, flights and landings. We shall never surrender! It'll be a landslide! From the hallways of Chipolte to the shores of Triple Z!

 

[lpetrich]

Justin Wolfers on Twitter: "This is stunning: Nearly half of the Q1 decline in GDP can be attributed to healthcare, which is presumably delaying of elective procedures.
It's a strange reality that in the midst of a pandemic, we have a healthcare-led recession. https://t.co/G3IezQkEzX" / Twitter

Trump downplays need for testing in another whiplash contradiction - CNNPolitics

Last week, President Donald Trump instructed states to "maximize the use of all available testing platforms and venues" as they begin to plan their reemergence from coronavirus lockdown.

On Wednesday, he downplayed the edict and mused that maybe blanket testing wasn't necessary as states move to reopen.

"You'll see some astonishing numbers -- I don't know that all of that's even necessary," Trump said of nationwide testing efforts during an event at the White House. "You have some governors that love the tests, you have others that like doing it a different way, an old-fashioned way, with some testing."

The comments -- contradicting his own administration's previous guidance and rebutting the expertise of health officials -- were the latest in a string of confusing steps that appear to pit Trump against his own advice as he pivots to a post-pandemic American revival.

Imagine Trump describing Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor: "We did a tremendous job in that attack. We shot down 29 of their airplanes. It's one of the biggest victories in history."

 

[Elixir]

We are watching a slow motion multi-trillion dollar ripoff in broad daylight. Here's why they're stirring up the rabble to "demonstrate" in the name of "freedom".



It's not just GA - far from it.