Trump VS COVID-19 Threat

[crazyfingers]

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".

View attachment 27411

It's not just GA - far from it.

The guy is right.

In my work, C19 has increased and really changed part of my job. Part of what I and the group I'm in do is to forecast demand for office technology products. Demand is less about when some businesses are allowed to open but when customers decided to come. Restaurants might open but will the customers come? I bet not many for quite a while.

 

[lpetrich]

About Elixir's post: Dave deBronkart on Twitter: "@BEricBradley @B52Malmet People are flinging this thread around but despite it saying "this was posted by a GA business," nobody can find where it was supposedly "posted." Confirm or debunk - can you help? https://t.co/giBTq2A35q" / Twitter

Then
Yeah, well, that's what I think. on Twitter: "@ePatientDave @B52Malmet I'm still waiting to hear from my source on it, who's typically very thorough about vetting what he posts. In the meantime, Vice corroborates the important points here: https://t.co/g3PYWXrV4x" / Twitter

GOP Governors Will Push Workers off Unemployment by Reopening Early - VICE - "The Department of Labor confirmed to VICE that workers who refuse to return to work out of a general fear for their safety will lose their CARES Act unemployment benefits."

Republican governors in states like Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina have announced plans to begin reopening their states’ economies despite warnings by health officials that it’s too early to do so. The decisions mean that businesses may soon start calling people back into work before they feel safe, creating a coronavirus-specific dilemma: If people in those states are offered their jobs back, but refuse to take them out of fear for their safety, they will likely no longer qualify for unemployment benefits—even though they’re taking the same precautions as people one state over.

Kamala Harris on Twitter: "
You can't take online classes without internet.
You can't work from home without internet.
You can't apply for a job online if you don't have internet.
Congress must prioritize expanding broadband in poor and rural communities." / Twitter

 

[lpetrich]

Democrats’ Big Coronavirus Idea Is to Subsidize Health Insurers - VICE - "Instead of pushing for public health solutions, Democrats want to cover COBRA premiums."

noting
Coronavirus economy: Democrats’ plan to keep laid-off workers insured - Vox - "House Democrats will unveil a bill to dramatically expand COBRA subsidies for laid-off and furloughed workers."

COBRA allows laid-off workers to keep buying into their health insurance plans. But there’s a big catch: It can be prohibitively expensive because laid-off people are on the hook for their part of the insurance premium as well as their employer’s part (on average, $7,200 for an individual and more than $20,000 for a family).

“That can be easily $1,000 a month, and if you just lost your job, you don’t have $1,000 a month,” House Committee on Education and Labor Chairman Bobby Scott (D-VA), a main bill sponsor, told Vox in an interview Monday.

The new bill, called the Worker Health Coverage Protection Act, is Democrats’ proposal to fix a growing problem due to the economic fallout from coronavirus: people losing their employer-sponsored health insurance. An April 2 Economic Policy Institute report estimated as many as 3.5 million people could have lost the health insurance they got through their employer in the previous two weeks. The timing is not ideal. The middle of a deadly global pandemic is a particularly bad time to be uninsured; intensive care for coronavirus treatment can cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Universal coverage by subsidizing medical insurers? The House Democrats seem like they are reinventing the German model of multiple private insurance companies independent of employers and subsidized where necessary to achieve universal coverage.

Germany was the first nation to have universal medical-insurance coverage, and it was done with this model by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Some other nations use this "Bismarckcare" model. Obamacare is simply Bismarckcare overlaid onto employer-provided medical insurance. Obamacare is not even original with Obama - it was originally Heritagecare, Chaffeecare, and Romneycare.

Coronavirus stimulus: Mitch McConnell is gaslighting Democrats in the debate - Vox

Currently, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is setting the pace of stimulus and the terms of the debate. Democrats are being baited into negotiating “victories” that consist of measures every reasonable economist agrees is necessary. Efforts to secure even those basic measures are being denounced as hostage-taking, and Democrats in the House, forever attendant to their skittish purple-district “moderates,” have proven typically easy to scare. “We’re terrified that we’ll look like obstructionists,” one Democratic Senate aide told Politico reporter Michael Grunwald.

The fear, like most Democratic fears, is overblown. There is an enormous amount of bluffing going on among Republicans, who need stimulus measures just as much as Democrats. Sooner or later, if Democrats don’t want to get steamrolled, played, and blamed for the next six months, they are going to have to call some of those bluffs.

MMC once laughed when he described how he kept Obama from confirming some judges, like a Supreme Court Justice. That fits in with how he's mainly after power more than anything else.

 

[lpetrich]

Kamala Harris on Twitter: "Mitch McConnell is suggesting that the federal government should not help state and local governments on the frontlines of this crisis. So let’s do the math and deconstruct this. https://t.co/i7z4RiMLKM" / Twitter
As she says, local and state governments have done most of the leadership, and they don't deserve to be financially starved.

With response
Glenn on Twitter: "@SenKamalaHarris The guy who lead the team that KILLED OSAMA BIN LADEN (Admiral Mcraven) tells it like it is about @realDonaldTrump #Respect. And before Trumpettes lose their cool, remember this guy served under numerous Dem and Rep Presidents. https://t.co/eaOrNLWEeq" / Twitter

Kamala Harris on Twitter: "Excuse my language, but it's true. Tune in TONIGHT at 10:30pm ET. https://t.co/MMQFVAyHVe" / Twitter
noting
Full Frontal on Twitter: "We have @KamalaHarris on the show tonight to explain how this administration is doing everything “ass-backwards.” https://t.co/SCzwjHqAUI" / Twitter

 

[angelo]

Trump defends work habits, attacks media in series of tweets | TheHill
notes

Donald J. Trump on Twitter: "I work from early in the morning until late at night, haven’t left the White House in many months (except to launch Hospital Ship Comfort) in order to take care of Trade Deals, Military Rebuilding etc., and then I read a phony story in the failing @nytimes about my work...." / Twitter
then
Donald J. Trump on Twitter: "....schedule and eating habits, written by a third rate reporter who knows nothing about me. I will often be in the Oval Office late into the night & read & see that I am angrily eating a hamburger & Diet Coke in my bedroom. People with me are always stunned. Anything to demean!" / Twitter

Some who speaks gibberish, please translate, "I will often be in the Oval Office late into the night & read & see that I am angrily eating a hamburger & Diet Coke in my bedroom."

Let's use facts to analyze the media's treatment of Trump compared to Obama. Fair should be fair, right?

Obama continues a war in the Middle East, gets a Nobel Peace Prize for it.

Trump bans travel from China at a time when nobody took the virus seriously and there were 0 deaths in America. Media called him a racist bigot.

Me thinks...and this is just a very educated hunch...that if Obama banned travel from China WAY BEFORE all the experts recommended it, the media would be praising Obama for his "quick thinking and fast judgment of a global pandemic."

To the media, Trump can do no right and Obama can do no wrong. Very strange mentality who the media picks and chooses to hail as heroes.

What say you?

The New York Times itself has admitted that around 87% of the mainstream media is pro Dem, and they would support a ham sandwich before they would Trump.

 

[Patooka]

The New York Times itself has admitted that around 87% of the mainstream media is pro Dem, and they would support a ham sandwich before they would Trump.

It's a crock of shit that mainstream media is "pro dem", let alone New York Times asserting this.

Having said that, anyone with more than half a functioning brain would prefer a ham sandwich over Trump. And to preempt you depressingly predictable whataboutisms with regards to Biden; yes. Anyone with at least half a functional brain would prefer Biden over Trump as well. This isn't an endorsement of Biden as much as it is a resounding condemnation towards Trump. If you have any difficulty identifying the distinction between the two, don't be afraid to put your hand up for help.

 

[angelo]

The New York Times itself has admitted that around 87% of the mainstream media is pro Dem, and they would support a ham sandwich before they would Trump.

It's a crock of shit that mainstream media is "pro dem", let alone New York Times asserting this.

Having said that, anyone with more than half a functioning brain would prefer a ham sandwich over Trump. And to preempt you depressingly predictable whataboutisms with regards to Biden; yes. Anyone with at least half a functional brain would prefer Biden over Trump as well. This isn't an endorsement of Biden as much as it is a resounding condemnation towards Trump. If you have any difficulty identifying the distinction between the two, don't be afraid to put your hand up for help.

Distinction between the the two? This is from a center right source, but please be my guest and deny any of the claims made about Trump here with your usual vitriol! I won't hold my breath!

https://cms.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/trump-does-unthinkable-frontpagemagcom

 

[Patooka]

The New York Times itself has admitted that around 87% of the mainstream media is pro Dem, and they would support a ham sandwich before they would Trump.

It's a crock of shit that mainstream media is "pro dem", let alone New York Times asserting this.

Having said that, anyone with more than half a functioning brain would prefer a ham sandwich over Trump. And to preempt you depressingly predictable whataboutisms with regards to Biden; yes. Anyone with at least half a functional brain would prefer Biden over Trump as well. This isn't an endorsement of Biden as much as it is a resounding condemnation towards Trump. If you have any difficulty identifying the distinction between the two, don't be afraid to put your hand up for help.

Distinction between the the two? This is from a center right source, but please be my guest and deny any of the claims made about Trump here with your usual vitriol! I won't hold my breath!

https://cms.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/trump-does-unthinkable-frontpagemagcom

The distinction I was referring to is the difference between "endorsing Biden" and "resoundingly condemning Trump", but that just flew over your head didn't it? Also, if you're trying to peg hate sites as being merely "centre right", you are clearly not arguing in good faith. Not a surprise, but just letting you know.

Still waiting on proof that NYT said 87% of the media support Dems, by the way.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Distinction between the the two? This is from a center right source, but please be my guest and deny any of the claims made about Trump here with your usual vitriol! I won't hold my breath!

https://cms.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/trump-does-unthinkable-frontpagemagcom

So I read the piece. For those who haven't, it paints Trump as a kind-hearted individual and details eleven instances , going back to the 1980s, of Trump helping people out, sometimes with sizeable dollar amounts.
You know what? He has done some commendable things here.
Do you hear a "However..." coming up? Yes. There's a pretty big However. The first However is, are these instances accurately reported? Trump has a history of claiming credit for charity donations that actually come from his (defunct) Donald J. Trump Foundation -- and sometimes those donations are arranged by the Foundation from separate charitable entities. More about that later.
Second, the author of the piece ends with a gratuitous dig at Hillary Clinton and Pres. Obama, stating that they obviously don't do the kinds of things Trump does. She assumes that everyone trumpets their charity work, which isn't true. It's a mean-spirited remark, and it calls into question how she found documentation on the eleven Trump outreaches. It's at least fair to ask, in the case of a self-referential fellow like Trump, with a savior complex and an urgent need to be idolized, whether he hasn't made sure that this writer was provided his list of ElevenGreat Works Over Three Decades.
And there is so much more. Here is just a partial list of why a reasonable person can dispute the portrait of Donald Trump as a self-sacrificing humanist:
1- His statements in '16 that the U.S. must torture captives. Google it. He uses 'torture', not a Cheney euphemism. He wants us to torture.
2- His attitude toward Puerto Ricans coping with a devastating hurricane; his near-silence on the 60,000 Americans who have died from Covid 19 in the past three months; his transformation of the impoverished people seeking asylum at our southern border into an ominous Caravan, whose members might have to be knee-capped by border patrol. (Yes, he reportedly asked his inner circle if he couldn't order the patrol to shoot the asylum seekers in the legs.)
3 - To keep this short: please read the Wikipedia entry on the Donald J. Trump Foundation, his "charity". I read your piece. See if you can bear to read this one. Yes, it's the charity that paid $10,000 for a portrait of the man himself (Trump's own lawyer admitted this happened.) It's the foundation that was disbanded last year for violating the laws that govern this kind of foundation -- and Trump was ordered to pay a $2 million fine. If you read the piece, you'll find instances where Trump's foundation, in the guise of a charitable outreach, used foundation funds to settle Trump's legal disputes, and instances where it channeled funds into blatantly political purposes, especially in '16. You'll see how some of Trumps' recipients have previously rented out space at his hotels and golf courses to hold their events (ave. cost of such events, $300,000.) You'll see how Trump has frequently claimed to be donating to a person or cause, when the funds come from the Foundation (and sometimes from unrelated foundations.) There's a lot more in the entry, and if you read it, you'll understand why prosecutors in NY went after Trump and his kids. Why was none of this mentioned in the piece you linked to?

 

[lpetrich]

The Stories Dan Crenshaw Tells Himself - The Bulwark

“The problem with today’s society is that it is swelling with the wrong role models,” he writes. “Abandoning traditional heroes for new and exciting villains who represent self-indulgence, loud-mouthed commentary, angry fist-shaking activism, or insulting spitfire politics.”

This is, he says, infecting our entire society, which “has grown out of control often at the expense of logic, decency, and virtue.” We now “mock virtue without considering how its abandonment accelerates our moral decay” and “don a mantle of fragility, of anger, of childishness, and are utterly shameless in doing so.”

“A culture characterized by self-pity, indulgence, outrage, and resentment is a culture that falls apart,” he argues.

On Earth 2, this may have been the launching pad for a courageous and ambitious primary campaign that stands up for virtue in the face of our fragile, angry, childish, shameless, self-indulgent, loud-mouthed, insulting, self-pitying, and resentful president.

Here on Earth 1, the book is called Fortitude and its author is Rep. Dan Crenshaw, one of the most visible defenders of Donald Trump.

In short, this Trump defender projects Trump's personality flaws onto the broader society.

Dan Crenshaw's Trump coronavirus defense has misrepresentations, false choices - The Washington Post - has a blow-by-blow criticism of DC's rewrites of history.

 

[lpetrich]

There Are No Private Solutions to a Public Health Crisis - VICE

One thing you can you do about coronavirus? Vote for the candidate who is most likely to make universal health care a reality.

...
A health insurance system run by private insurers isn’t built to incentivize public good over profit. The mishmash way our insurance system is currently set up—with employer-sponsored health insurance, marketplace plans, Medicare, and Medicaid—means that nearly half of working-age adults are under- or uninsured. This, in turn, means that millions of people won’t go to the doctor soon enough (or at all) because of cost, which, to put it mildly, is an issue when it comes to containing an epidemic. Only a public health care system—one that offers universal access to all people regardless of class or race—can address a large-scale health crisis like coronavirus.

The US has a mishmash of public and private systems, each with limited coverage. So it's not surprising that a lot of people fall through its cracks.

This Is a Historic Crisis. Where Is Democratic Leadership? - VICE

Donald Trump’s response to the global pandemic will cost an untold amount of lives. His denial of the virus’s seriousness, failure to stockpile and manufacture the necessary protective gear, dismissal of the pandemic team, and spread of misinformation and pseudoscience means, quite literally, that hundreds of thousands of people could die who otherwise may not have. The rot goes all the way down: The Republican Party is using this crisis to jam through the largest corporate bailout in history, while doing almost nothing in comparison for the millions of Americans who are now without jobs or had little income to begin with. None of this is unexpected. Yet as Republicans militantly push through their policy priorities—one might say they are “politicizing” the pandemic—Democratic leadership has been largely absent. In what is not simply a political opportunity, but a historic moment of unprecedented need, the party that supposedly represents the working people is barely putting up a fight.

Joe Biden, the presumed Democratic nominee, is nowhere to be found. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are operating as if it’s business as usual, ceding whatever power they have to Republicans. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren quickly folded and voted for the stimulus bill, perhaps in part because of the bruising primary process. And, while Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez railed against the bill, she’s only a single freshman representative. The working class is still vastly underrepresented in the House and the small but newly emboldened progressive wing has not yet come together as a consistent, effective bloc to put pressure on leadership.

 

[lpetrich]

Former Health Insurance Exec Wendell Potter: 'They Know How to Bamboozle People' - VICE

"This pandemic, if anything, is waking people up to just how unreliable, and insecure, the current healthcare system is."

Shortly after Nataline Sarkisyan died at age 17 in 2007, Wendell Potter quit his job at Cigna. The health insurance giant had initially denied Sarkisyan a liver transplant. Days later, the potentially life-saving procedure was approved, but Sarkisyan died within hours of the approval. At the time, Potter was Cigna's vice president of corporation communications, and his job was to defend the company's actions to the media. He simply couldn't do it anymore. "I guess you'd say the straw that broke the camel's back," Potter said. "After being a part of handling the PR from that particular case, I just couldn't keep doing my job as I had. I couldn't do it in good conscience."

Good that he was willing to do that. Given how much he was likely paid, he likely had enough money to live off of for a long time, so he was not economically vulnerable.

After leaving Cigna, Potter testified before multiple Congressional committees to explain how insurance companies operate and how their lobbying efforts work. After 25 years working in the private insurance industry, Potter not only refers to himself as a "reformed insurance propagandist" but is now an advocate for Medicare for All.

Then an interview with him. In it, he notes Democrats gradually moving toward Medicare for All.

But what I also began to understand around the same time was that employers, businesses around the country, are really struggling to continue offering benefits to their workers. Our employer-based system of health insurance is crumbling, it has been now for a couple of decades. It's been gradual, and not many people have been paying attention to it.

For example, when Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg were still running for president, they and Joe Biden were talking on the debate stage about the 150 million people who have coverage through the workplace, that they want to keep those private plans. But what they didn't tell you is that 20 years ago, 160 million people got their coverage through their employers, and during that time, the population increased by 50 million. More and more employers are throwing in the towel—they just can't continue to offer benefits to their workers.

...
Is it fair to say that the for-profit model of health insurance is to deny as much care as possible?

It is very fair to say that. That's how they are able to generate as much profit as they do. Insurance companies put up so many barriers for people to get the care that they need, and that's one of them. It's a process called prior authorization.

He then discusses how the medical-insurance companies expect to do well from this disaster. In part from canceling a lot of elective-surgery procedures, in part from a lot of previously-sick people dying, and in part from raising rates.

Those are the stakeholders who are most important, as opposed to the people that they're purportedly trying to keep healthy?

Absolutely. In those 10 years [at Cigna], I honestly cannot recall a conversation among the top leaders—and by that I mean the CEO and CFO, and others on the executive management team—I can't recall, with the exception of maybe the Chief Medical Officer of Cigna Health Care, talking about the needs of customers and patients. It is more about the needs and expectations of shareholders. That is what drives the behavior of these companies.

He then stated that he has been careful to check with his lawyer about staying within his Non-Disclosure Agreement. As long as he tells the truth and avoids revealing anything proprietary to his former employer, he's OK.

 

[lpetrich]

We're talking about our current system. I want to take a minute to think about what the U.S. response to coronavirus might look like if there were a Medicare for All, single-payer type healthcare system in place.

We only have to look at the experience of some of the countries around the world that have done a much better job, including Taiwan, for example, which is right next to China [where the outbreak began].

It has a single-payer system modeled on Medicare, and it has successfully spent much less per capita than US healthcare.

A big reason for that is we waste so much money on overhead and administrative stuff. About 30 percent of every dollar we spend on healthcare goes to operating this multiple-payer system that we have, and all the associated overhead and profit making. That's not done now in Taiwan and most other developed countries.

The defenders of this system may whine about all the jobs that it creates. But these bureaucracy defenders are usually the same people who disparage government as nothing but bureaucracy and therefore a terrible thing. So it's insurance companies are good because of all their bureaucracy, and govenrment agencies are bad because of all their bureaucracy.

Then on US hospital closures and shortages of medical supplies.

Where we are right now is that we have far fewer beds per capita in this country than China does—far fewer—and far fewer than South Korea does, fewer than most of the developed countries in the world.

...
People like to point to Italy as an example of a country that has universal health insurance but isn't doing so well in the current pandemic. Have you seen this criticism?

I wouldn't suggest that just having a single payer system in place would have solved all of their problems, not by any means—you also have to have adequate investments, again, in the public health infrastructure.

...
That goes back to the question about Italy: At least in Italy, the patients there don't have to worry that they could go bankrupt. While beds and equipment are not political in Italy, and it seems the scarcity here is worse than anywhere else in the developed world.

He then notes that the UK's National Health Service owns most of the hospitals and employs most of the doctors -- the NHS is a sort of national HMO. The US Veterans Administration is a similar sort of national HMO, but on a smaller scale.

Then the odd paradox of people wanting Medicare for All while voting for candidates that oppose it: Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, etc. Not only many Democrats but also many Independents like M4A.

 

[Worldtraveller]

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.

There's a lot going on there, and you really have to dig into the details to tickle out the actual data.

Remdesivir improves (statistically significant) the recovery time and chances if treated early, before symptoms reach critical.

It does not improve recovery odds or times if it is admistered later, and can have confounding effects.

Fuck the media.

So it's kinda like Tamiflu. Tamiflu winds up being highly underutilized, because by the time your average person realizes they have the actual flu, and not just a cold or the sniffles, there's no point in administering it.

Or, without double checking, you might have just looked at the wrong study.

 

[Worldtraveller]

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.

Quite possibly the most apt metaphor for angelo (and the (f)right wing) ever!

 

[lpetrich]

Then the question of "choice".

If you get your coverage through the workplace, I don't know of a single company where the employee gets to choose whichever insurance company he or she wants to use. The employer makes that choice and the employer, working with the insurance carrier, determines what kind of benefit plans are available to the workforce. In that way, our choice of health insurance carriers has been cut and cut and cut to the point that there's almost no choice there.

I suspect that the defenders of employer-provided medical insurance will say that they are glad that their employers make that choice for them.

The other is that people have very little choice on doctors and hospitals. Almost every insurance company now has a provider network that is getting skinnier and skinnier. The companies are kicking doctors out of their networks and that has led to surprise medical bills. Our choice of doctors, and hospitals, and rehab facilities, and you name it, they are increasingly limited.

These defenders may also say that they are glad that their insurance companies choose their doctors for them. During the debate over Clintoncare, its detractors claimed that

Then how many people are underinsured because their insurance plans have high deductibles - high amounts that one has to pay out of pocket before one's insurance starts paying.

Do you still talk to former colleagues in the insurance industry? What do they think of you and your thoughts on the state of things?

I do. Most of them have left the industry, voluntarily. But over the years, I've gotten many, many of them—some while they were still working for the insurance companies that I worked for—thanking me for what I did, congratulating me, or at least giving me a thumbs up for what I've been doing because they know that what I've been saying is true.

Great.

 

[lpetrich]

Here is what I suspect is going on in these big corporate giveaways. They are an effort to boost the stock market by enabling massive stock buybacks. Notice how little concern for the deficit that Trump and his fellow Republicans have been showing there. But notice how they become obsessed with the deficit when it comes for anything benefiting anyone else.

Dental Hygienists Are Terrified of Returning to Work - VICE

Every day, dental workers spend hours in close proximity to peoples’ mouths, polishing and cleaning teeth with tools that spray saliva everywhere—a main reason why the CDC is currently recommending that dental offices postpone all non-emergency procedures, such as cleanings. According to the Department of Labor, dental workers are among the people most at risk of contracting COVID-19 at work, ranking even above some other health care workers. A separate analysis listed dental hygienists in particular as one of the highest-risk jobs, more than dentists themselves.

‘This Is Our Chernobyl’: New York City’s Doctors and Nurses Are Terrified - VICE - "Health care professionals fear they're being put at risk and set up for failure during one of the most critical fights in the city’s history."

That's typical Trump - wanting all the credit and none of the blame.

Workers See Coronavirus Mismanagement. Unions Are Helping Them Speak Out - VICE - "Amidst government failure, nurses, airline attendants, and teachers are turning to their unions for support." - March 19

Two weeks ago, back when Donald Trump was still telling Fox News that he had a hunch the coronavirus death rate would be a “fraction of 1 percent,” a nurse in Northern California stepped forward to sound an alarm.

The nurse had recently been placed on quarantine after exhibiting symptoms related to the coronavirus, including a fever. But the CDC had delayed testing for reasons that confounded them. “They said they would not test me because if I were wearing the recommended protective equipment, then I wouldn’t have the coronavirus,” the nurse said in a statement via their union. “What kind of science-based answer is that?” The federal government’s mismanagement of the tests was putting everyone—nurses, patients, and the public—in danger.

In many respects, the only reason the nurse got their message criticizing the highest public health department in the country out was because they belonged to National Nurses United, the largest union of registered nurses in the country.

“I have the backing of my union,” the nurse said in a statement. “Nurses aren’t going to stand by and let this testing delay continue.”

Seems like we may see a big resurgence in organized labor. There is a big strike planned for May 1, though it remains to be seen how organized the strikers remain.

 

[Emily Lake]

There Are No Private Solutions to a Public Health Crisis - VICE

One thing you can you do about coronavirus? Vote for the candidate who is most likely to make universal health care a reality.

...
A health insurance system run by private insurers isn’t built to incentivize public good over profit. The mishmash way our insurance system is currently set up—with employer-sponsored health insurance, marketplace plans, Medicare, and Medicaid—means that nearly half of working-age adults are under- or uninsured. This, in turn, means that millions of people won’t go to the doctor soon enough (or at all) because of cost, which, to put it mildly, is an issue when it comes to containing an epidemic. Only a public health care system—one that offers universal access to all people regardless of class or race—can address a large-scale health crisis like coronavirus.

The US has a mishmash of public and private systems, each with limited coverage. So it's not surprising that a lot of people fall through its cracks.

This Is a Historic Crisis. Where Is Democratic Leadership? - VICE

Donald Trump’s response to the global pandemic will cost an untold amount of lives. His denial of the virus’s seriousness, failure to stockpile and manufacture the necessary protective gear, dismissal of the pandemic team, and spread of misinformation and pseudoscience means, quite literally, that hundreds of thousands of people could die who otherwise may not have. The rot goes all the way down: The Republican Party is using this crisis to jam through the largest corporate bailout in history, while doing almost nothing in comparison for the millions of Americans who are now without jobs or had little income to begin with. None of this is unexpected. Yet as Republicans militantly push through their policy priorities—one might say they are “politicizing” the pandemic—Democratic leadership has been largely absent. In what is not simply a political opportunity, but a historic moment of unprecedented need, the party that supposedly represents the working people is barely putting up a fight.

Joe Biden, the presumed Democratic nominee, is nowhere to be found. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are operating as if it’s business as usual, ceding whatever power they have to Republicans. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren quickly folded and voted for the stimulus bill, perhaps in part because of the bruising primary process. And, while Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez railed against the bill, she’s only a single freshman representative. The working class is still vastly underrepresented in the House and the small but newly emboldened progressive wing has not yet come together as a consistent, effective bloc to put pressure on leadership.

You know, I agree with this somewhat: "A health insurance system run by private insurers isn’t built to incentivize public good over profit." But I get really incredibly frustrated that this sentiment is presented on its own, and is often paired with a naive belief that health care systems don't do the same thing. Doctors and hospitals and pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers all incentivize profit over public good too, and are a very, very large part of the problem with US health care. I just get irritated that it gets overlooked and brushed under the rug so often.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I was checking out the NY Times and their charts on each state.

18 states have increasing daily new cases trends (Arizona, California, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, New Mexico, North Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming). Another 15 have plateau'd, some near the peak of the charts. Only four states, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Vermont actually show a near dissipation of daily cases.

Seems insane that this is when some states want to open up.

 

[Emily Lake]

I was checking out the NY Times and their charts on each state.

18 states have increasing daily new cases trends (Arizona, California, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, New Mexico, North Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming). Another 15 have plateau'd, some near the peak of the charts. Only four states, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Vermont actually show a near dissipation of daily cases.

Seems insane that this is when some states want to open up.

There's more to it than that. It's not really a "open everything woo-hoo" or "stay closed and don't leave your house or else".

For Arizona, for example... The cases have been close to level for a few weeks, with some daily variations, and a recent spike when new VA info got added... but the testing also increased. Hospitalizations have been decreasing on average over the past few weeks. Arizona hasn't hit capacity for beds, and already has plans in place for bed overflow to non-hospital settings if needed. They haven't even hit a point of needing to move some non-COVID cases out of hospitals into alternative care settings like long-term nursing. And we've been pretty steady at about 20% ventilator capacity. All in all, Arizona is positioned to handle a larger case load than we've experienced so far.

And the loosening of the lockdown is just that - a loosening. It's planned to be a staged process, moving through several phases. The current recommendation from the governor is that people who are able to work from home should continue to do so indefinitely, and that we'll be phasing in businesses that can't be operated remotely, with limitation son the number of customers allowed to be on site at one time, and additional requirements for safety.

All in all, it seems like a reasonable approach to balancing the health impact and the economic impact.

I can't speak for other states, but I'm hoping that most of them are also taking reasonable approaches.