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Trump VS COVID-19 Threat

How the Pandemic Defeated America: Ed Yong on How COVID-19 Humiliated Planet’s Most Powerful Nation - YouTube - interviewed by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!
As the world passes a grim milestone of 20 million coronavirus cases, we look at how the pandemic humbled and humiliated the world’s most powerful country. Over a quarter of the confirmed infections and deaths have been in the United States, which has less than 5% of the world’s population. Ed Yong, a science writer at The Atlantic who has been covering the pandemic extensively since March, says existing gaps in the U.S. social safety net and the Trump administration’s “devastatingly inept response” made for a deadly combination.
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EY noted racial and ethnic disparities, like black children getting the disease at 5x the rate of white ones, and Hispanic ones 8x. He also notes that the Trump Admin was ready to go with a massive response, until it became evident who was suffering from it the most -- blacks and Hispanics and pro-Democratic states.
 
Opinion | Elizabeth Warren and Carroll Fife: The nation is facing a housing crisis. But private equity firms just see dollar signs. - The Washington Post
The nation is facing an accelerating housing crisis. Too many people had no stable housing before the pandemic hit, and covid-19 has made the problem even worse. Renters who were already facing an affordable housing shortage (with many spending more than half of their income on rent) now have no federal rental assistance or federal protection from eviction. Homeowners have less than a month left of foreclosure protection. And more than 30 million people receiving unemployment insurance just saw their benefits cut by $600 a week, raising the threat of a wave of defaults that could trigger a double-dip recession.

Families see a looming catastrophe. But private equity firms just see dollar signs.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that investors are “preparing for what they believe could be a once-in-a generation opportunity to buy distressed real-estate assets at bargain prices.” This profiteering is far from “once-in-a-generation” though: It’s straight out of private equity’s playbook during the 2008 financial crisis. We all know what happened then: Homeowners targeted by predatory mortgages lost their homes to foreclosure, and private equity swept in to buy those homes at depressed prices.
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I have a suspicion that that's why we are seeing so little progress toward relief for ordinary citizens.
 
How Covid-19 Signals the End of the American Era - Rolling Stone Starting off with the late-medieval Black Death,
The COVID pandemic will be remembered as such a moment in history, a seminal event whose significance will unfold only in the wake of the crisis. It will mark this era much as the 1914 assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the stock market crash of 1929, and the 1933 ascent of Adolf Hitler became fundamental benchmarks of the last century, all harbingers of greater and more consequential outcomes.

... But what surely does is the absolutely devastating impact that the pandemic has had on the reputation and international standing of the United States of America.

In a dark season of pestilence, COVID has reduced to tatters the illusion of American exceptionalism. At the height of the crisis, with more than 2,000 dying each day, Americans found themselves members of a failed state, ruled by a dysfunctional and incompetent government largely responsible for death rates that added a tragic coda to America’s claim to supremacy in the world.

For the first time, the international community felt compelled to send disaster relief to Washington.
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The article mentioned the rise and fall of several nations' international empires, and suggested that the US is likely to go that way.
 
lpetrich said:
Opinion | Elizabeth Warren and Carroll Fife: The nation is facing a housing crisis. But private equity firms just see dollar signs. - The Washington Post
The nation is facing an accelerating housing crisis. Too many people had no stable housing before the pandemic hit, and covid-19 has made the problem even worse. Renters who were already facing an affordable housing shortage (with many spending more than half of their income on rent) now have no federal rental assistance or federal protection from eviction. Homeowners have less than a month left of foreclosure protection. And more than 30 million people receiving unemployment insurance just saw their benefits cut by $600 a week, raising the threat of a wave of defaults that could trigger a double-dip recession.

Families see a looming catastrophe. But private equity firms just see dollar signs.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that investors are “preparing for what they believe could be a once-in-a generation opportunity to buy distressed real-estate assets at bargain prices.” This profiteering is far from “once-in-a-generation” though: It’s straight out of private equity’s playbook during the 2008 financial crisis. We all know what happened then: Homeowners targeted by predatory mortgages lost their homes to foreclosure, and private equity swept in to buy those homes at depressed prices.
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I have a suspicion that that's why we are seeing so little progress toward relief for ordinary citizens.
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How is this the once in a lifetime event, we literally had the foreclosure crisis in '07 - '10. That was when a lot of housing was bought up by private equity.
 
Emily Lake said:
Jimmy Higgins said:
So White House (not the CDC?) to release an Eightfold Path on the actions (or inactions... wait, is that more Taoist?) to wisely re-open schools...
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Buddhist, IIRC
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*sigh*

Action, through inaction... Taoist philosophy. Seriously, it was barely even worth a chuckle as it was. Now I have had to explain it which has made this turn into work.

RayJ, I want my neg rep back.

*trudges off to Rant thread*
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
Emily Lake said:
Jimmy Higgins said:
So White House (not the CDC?) to release an Eightfold Path on the actions (or inactions... wait, is that more Taoist?) to wisely re-open schools...
Click to expand...
Buddhist, IIRC
Click to expand...

*sigh*

Action, through inaction... Taoist philosophy. Seriously, it was barely even worth a chuckle as it was. Now I have had to explain it which has made this turn into work.

RayJ, I want my neg rep back.

*trudges off to Rant thread*
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If you joke needs that much explanation, you might've missed the mark...
 
Emily Lake said:
Jimmy Higgins said:
*sigh*

Action, through inaction... Taoist philosophy. Seriously, it was barely even worth a chuckle as it was. Now I have had to explain it which has made this turn into work.

RayJ, I want my neg rep back.

*trudges off to Rant thread*
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If you joke needs that much explanation, you might've missed the mark...
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You weren't exactly my target audience.
 
No joke.

Undercount.JPG

Official U.S. coronavirus death toll is ‘a substantial undercount’ of actual tally, Yale study finds

Gee, I guess this wasn't predicted, especially after the Trump Crime Family appropriated all the statistical reporting systems...

I'm sure our local "I'm not a trumpsucker"s will be happy to rally to the cause of providing reasons to question the certainty that "excess deaths" are COVID-related. And I'm equally certain that they will be unable to provide alternate explanations that stand up to the light of day. These are the same people who don't think Trump will cheat to stay in office, despite the obvious fact that he is already dismantling the American electoral mechanism, and using the pandemic as a tool in that effort at the cost of thousands of American lives.

The 781,000 total deaths in the United States in the three months through May 30 were about 122,300, or nearly 19% higher, than what would normally be expected, according to the researchers. Of the 122,300 excess deaths, 95,235 were attributed to Covid-19, they said. Most of the rest of the excess deaths, researchers said, were likely related to or directly caused by the coronavirus.

Covid-19 affects nearly every system in the body, including the circulatory system, leading to an uptick in heart attacks and strokes that physicians now believe were indirectly caused by the virus.

The number of excess deaths from any causes were 28% higher than the official tally of U.S. Covid-19 deaths during those months. The researchers noted the increase in excess deaths in many states trailed an increase in outpatient visits from people reporting an “influenza-like illness.”
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Jeff Stein on Twitter: "Please read this one. From somewhere in the United States of America. $18.91. https://t.co/C6yqfaNKnH" / Twitter
Things escalate quickly when you're broke!

I saved my last 2 unemployment checks with the added $600 to pay August rent. Last week got 190, I bought food for my family and dog and put gas in my car so I could drop off applications and resumes. Yesterday I got another $190 and a notice that my cell phone bill was overdue and I needed to pay it to avoid cutting off, so I did, otherwise none of those jobs can even reach me. I've got $18.91 cents in my bank account this morning. My cupboards are getting low, my dog will have eat whatever me and my kids eat and my gas light will be back on shortly. I'm a diabetic and I'm ow on metformin and out insulin, hopefully lack of food will help with those problems because it ain't gonna be medicine any time soon. My phone still hasn't rang from any of the jobs I've applied for. More serious than any of that My wife is still in bed, crippled with depression and if something doesn't break soon I worry that will be us that breaks.... I just want someone say something is going to happen. I never worried in my life about politics effecting me so personally, but here it is, at my front door.
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: ".@senatemajldr, @MarkMeadows, @tedcruz, @SenatorCollins, Trump, the whole @GOP -
Please read this and see how many millions of Americans are in this or similar positions. The pain is unspeakable.
Please have mercy for them. Let’s extend $600 UI & send a second round of checks." / Twitter
then
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "I am not one to plead - I organize.
But the GOP lack of urgency here is costing lives. Missed insulin, no formula, babies &families sleeping on car floors or in the elements.
We can solve this problem. Please table your demands for corporations aside for a moment & feed people." / Twitter
 
Trump has found a new miracle cure

[TWEET]<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Longer clip of Anderson Cooper's interview with My Pillow's Mike Lindell. It's important that we stop people who are trying to profit off of the pandemic based on their close connections with Trump-what he is peddling is ineffective and could be dangerous. <a href="https://t.co/uo6jdzF5li">pic.twitter.com/uo6jdzF5li</a></p>— Amee Vanderpool (@girlsreallyrule) <a href="https://twitter.com/girlsreallyrule/status/1295786193259552772?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 18, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>[/TWEET]

Trump eyes new unproven coronavirus "cure"

To the alarm of some government health officials, President Trump has expressed enthusiasm for the Food and Drug Administration to permit an extract from the oleander plant to be marketed as a dietary supplement or, alternatively, approved as a drug to cure COVID-19, despite lack of proof that it works.

Driving the news: The experimental botanical extract, oleandrin, was promoted to Trump during an Oval Office meeting in July. It's embraced by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and MyPillow founder and CEO Mike Lindell, a big Trump backer, who recently took a financial stake in the company that develops the product.

Lindell told Axios that in the meeting, Trump "basically said: …'The FDA should be approving it.'"
The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
Why it matters: A senior administration official familiar with the internal conversations told Axios, "The involvement of the Secretary of HUD and MyPillow.com in pushing a dubious product at the highest levels should give Americans no comfort at night about their health and safety during a raging pandemic."

The big picture: It's part of a pattern in which entrepreneurs, often without rigorous vetting, push unproven products to Trump — knowing their sales pitches might catch his eye. Trump will then urge FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn to "look at" or speed up approval.

In March, Trump personally lobbied Hahn to authorize hydroxychloroquine's emergency use to treat COVID-19.
The FDA obliged. But in June, after a large trial, the agency revoked that authorization and warned of the "risk of heart rhythm problems" in COVID-19 patients treated with the drug.
Behind the scenes: Senior administration officials familiar with the internal conversations around oleandrin have raised concerns about the way this botanical extract — pushed by Andrew Whitney of Phoenix Biotechnology — is being promoted at the highest levels of the Trump administration.

There is no public data showing oleandrin has ever been tested in animals or humans for its efficacy against COVID-19, but the extract has shown some evidence of inhibiting the virus in a non-peer reviewed laboratory study.
In an interview on Saturday, Whitney told Axios that oleandrin has been tested on humans for its efficacy against COVID-19 but said the study has not been published yet. He also said the lab study is in the process of being peer reviewed.
HUD Secretary Carson has enthusiastically promoted oleandrin to Trump administration officials and to the president himself.

MyPillow CEO Lindell, who is a major advertiser on Fox News and a personal friend of Carson and Trump, helped Whitney get an Oval Office meeting with the president in July to discuss oleandrin as a potential COVID-19 cure. (The Washington Post first reported this meeting.)
Lindell said that he, Carson, at least one lawyer and, briefly, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, joined Trump and Whitney for the meeting. Notably absent was Hahn, the head of the agency that studies and approves medical treatments.
Asked why the HUD secretary was promoting an unproven botanical extract to cure COVID-19, a Carson spokesperson emailed the following statement to Axios: "Secretary Carson is a member of the Coronavirus Task Force, he has been directly involved with the Administration's response to this disease from the very beginning."
"The Task Force is looking at a plethora of therapeutics to fight COVID-19," the statement also said. "To suggest that Secretary Carson, who is a world-renowned expert in the medical field, shouldn't be involved is not only absurd but unhelpful in our collective fight to eradicate the pandemic."
A senior official familiar with Carson's involvement noted that while Carson is a world-renowned expert in pediatric neurosurgery, he is not a world-renowned expert on antiviral drugs or infectious diseases.
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TWU on Twitter: "Despite @transportworker InFlight Crew members working tirelessly on the frontlines of the #COVID19 crisis, @jetblue is betraying the workforce by dragging its feet in contract talks. Enough betrayal. Contract now!" / Twitter
then
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "Congress gave the airline industry billions in bailouts under the guise of preserving good, dignified jobs in this pandemic crisis.
This money isn’t for CEO pay, stock prices, or to pad profits. It’s for workers.
I hope @JetBlue makes good on this contract that workers deserve." / Twitter


The virus near where I live:

Lane County coronavirus updates Tuesday: 7 new cases
The total number of known COVID-19 cases in Lane County rose to 637 Tuesday, seven more than Monday.

Lane County Public Health spokesman Jason Davis at a Tuesday morning briefing said the number of new cases per day has recently slowed, down from between eight and 10 every day to nearer four or five new cases per day over the past week and a half.

There were nine more people in the county considered infectious Tuesday than the day before. The total number of known infectious cases Tuesday was 31.

Davis said 49,140 COVID-19 tests have been performed on Lane County residents
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Oregon unveils one-time $500 emergency relief payment | KOIN.com - 70,000 people, "Attest that they are experiencing severe financial hardship directly or indirectly due to the Governor’s Stay Home, Save Lives executive orders." and "Have earned $4000/month or less pre-tax prior to their income loss due to COVID-19." and "Not have received all unemployment payments they are owed."
 
New Zealand PM's PERFECT Response To Trump Attacks - YouTube

New Zealand recently went into a partial lockdown as a result of having a few COVID-19 cases recently, and Trump said about doing so that it was a gigantic failure.

Alert system overview | Unite against COVID-19 has the history of NZ's partial lockdowns.
New Zealand Coronavirus: 1,654 Cases and 22 Deaths - Worldometer

Hosts Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur then jumped up and down on Trump about the numbers, noting that NZ's are much smaller than the US's even after scaling for different population sizes. The maximum recent number per day is 13, on August 14 and 16. Scaling by population from 4.886 M (NZ, 2018) to 328.2 M (US, 2019) gives nearly 900 new cases, much less than the US's current number of 50,000. The US has around 4% of the world's total population, but 25% of the world's COVID-19 cases. The nation had 22 COVID-19 deaths, and until recently, went 102 days without recording a new case. The US has 5.5 M confirmed cases, likely an underestimate.

They also quoted NZ PM Jacinda Ardern's remarks. She is unfazed by Trump's comments - she noted that NZ has much fewer cases than the US. AK then stated that there has never been any time in her life that she has been more embarrassed to be an American.
 
Vanity Fair has an interesting article on Federal efforts to provide tests for Covid-19. Jared Kushner, among his many other duties, was made Czar of Covid Testing and quickly set up a task force with top experts including Kushner's very own college roommate. However his father-in-law ended up not cooperating with Czar Jared's plans.

This excerpt caught my eye:
... Worried about the stock market and his reelection prospects, Trump also feared that more testing would only lead to higher case counts and more bad publicity....

Against that background, the prospect of launching a large-scale national plan was losing favor, said one public health expert in frequent contact with the White House’s official coronavirus task force.

Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.

That logic may have swayed Kushner. “It was very clear that Jared was ultimately the decision maker as to what [plan] was going to come out,” the expert said.
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lpetrich said:
Andrew Yang?????????????????? on Twitter: "Every day that passes without a stimulus bill is an epic failure with disastrous human consequences. It’s disgusting that we are growing numb to this level of apathy and dysfunction. We deserve better." / Twitter
He is an advocate of Universal Basic Income.

Then
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "Yup" / Twitter
then
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "The House passed a second stimulus & UI extensions months ago.
Republicans have abandoned the process bc they got their big corporate bailout wish in CARES. Wall St was/is their main priority, so now they have no incentive to come back to the table to help people. It’s shameful." / Twitter
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The CARES act was for companies with less than 500 employees. There were some cheaters. But the vast amount of the aide went to small business's to retain their workers. Surprising that AOC didn't know this as she was in congress when it passed.
 
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