Trump VS COVID-19 Threat

[crazyfingers]

Paywalled link so I won't provide it:

The CDC recommendation for those at higher risk included not flying commercial. His Flatulence removed that. #NotMuzzled

Ya I read that. When CDC recommended people over 60 avoid large gatherings, church, etc, I interpreted that as flying commercial too. But apparently tRump intervened and had fly commercially explicitly deleted.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Aaron Rupar on Twitter: "Trump to Hannity on WHO saying coronavirus death rate is 3.4%: "I think the 3.4% number is really a false number. Now this is just my hunch, but based on a lot of conversations ... personally, I'd say the number is way under 1%."

Anyone remember Star Trek IV? Spock has to jimmy up a number for calculating time travel with a trunk full of whales and seawater? Spock explained that he'd have to guess and Kirk was more amazed that he admitted than that their lives were in the hands of a Vulcan using a 'hunch.' And McCoy explained:

Spock. He means that he feels safer about your guesses than most other people's facts.

Well, Mr. President, between you and a fictional character who won't even be pretend-born for two hundred and ten years, i'd much rather have facts. In fact, even with facts, I don't trust your facts. I don't trust the facts from people standing next to you, rolling their eyes at your spin of their facts. So blow your hunch out of your ass.

 

[lpetrich]

Coronavirus: Italy lockdown plan leaked, thousands tried to flee - Business Insider

Thousands of people rushed to flee Northern Italy after plans by the government for a 16-million-person quarantine were leaked to the media ahead of time.

Italy on Sunday shut down its Northern Lombardy region, which includes Milan, and 14 nearby provinces, a lockdown that is due to last until at least April 3.

The measure does not totally restrict movement within the areas, but it means places like schools, museums, and theaters are closed, events like weddings and funerals are suspended, and bars and restaurants must keep customers a minimum distance apart.

People can enter or leave the affected area only for emergencies, with the possibility of jail time for those who break the rules.

Rather drastic.

Trump administration clashes with airline officials over coronavirus - CNNPolitics

In a series of contentious conversations, agency officials and aviation executives have clashed over the administration's demand that airlines collect new kinds of data from passengers to help officials track potential virus carriers.

Airlines say they can't meet that demand right away -- a claim some administration officials say they don't believe, according to several sources who tell CNN the calls have deteriorated so badly that agency officials have issued threats, spat expletives and accused airline executives of lying. It is an "epic battle," said one source familiar with the talks.

Has some video of flight-attendant union leader Sara Nelson. I first encountered her a year ago when she was a guest at AOC's Green New Deal national town hall. She said that a part of climate change is likely increased air turbulence, something that would make it dangerous to fly and difficult for flight attendants to do their jobs.

She appeared on CNN saying that the Trump Admin wasn't doing a good job, and that she'd like hand sanitizers and the like for airplanes. She also wants paid sick leave and job protection so that nobody should have to choose from infecting others and risking their jobs.

 

[blastula]

“He’s Definitely Melting Down Over This”: Trump, Germaphobe in Chief, Struggles to Control the Covid-19 Story | Vanity Fair

Stories about Trump’s coronavirus fears have spread through the White House. Last week Trump told aides he’s afraid journalists will try to purposefully contract coronavirus to give it to him on Air Force One, a person close to the administration told me. The source also said Trump has asked the Secret Service to set up a screening program and bar anyone who has a cough from the White House grounds. “He’s definitely melting down over this,” the source said.

 

[lpetrich]

Travel chaos as Italy issues coronavirus quarantine

Panicked travelers rushed to flee northern Italy before more than a quarter of its population was placed under lockdown Sunday to combat coronavirus outbreak.

Chaos ensued as people tried to escape before the quarantine decree signed by Italian Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte went into effect in the Lombardy and Veneto regions, which are home to more than 16 million people.

People fighting over ‘rotten’ food on coronavirus-stricken Grand Princess cruise: passenger

“The food is rotten and terrible and we have to fight for it,” Bartlett told the network. “It is not good enough.”

“We are going stir crazy stuck in the cabin,” she added. “It is a bit depressing when we saw land and it was sunny and we couldn’t get out

from Coronavirus ship: Going 'stir crazy' on Grand Princess cruise - BBC News

 

[lpetrich]

Cruise ship with coronavirus cluster to dock in California - YouTube - the Grand Princess, in Oakland Harbor

Anyone needing medical attention will be taken to local hospitals, US citizens will be quarantined in military bases in CA, TX, and GA, and citizens of other countries will be sent home in special charter flights. The ship's crew will be quarantined on the ship itself.

WATCH LIVE: Grand Princess cruise ship to dock in Oakland amid coronavirus concerns - YouTube - I skipped back in it and watched as the ship traveled to the Port of Oakland. It went under the Golden Gate Bridge, by downtown San Francisco, and under the western part of the Bay Bridge, docking in that cargo-ship harbor.

White House advisers to give President Trump policy options for coronavirus response, including paid sick leave - The Washington Post

White House advisers on Monday plan to present President Trump with a list of policy changes they hope could stem the economic fallout of the coronavirus, including paid sick leave and emergency help for small businesses, according to a senior administration official.

The talks have accelerated as congressional leaders said they are considering their own legislative remedies to address the economic turmoil. Congressional Democrats are discussing how to propose paid sick leave as part of new legislation, and a key Senate Republican is looking at changes to tax policy that could seek to address the heightened fears.

 

[ZiprHead]

Two weeks makes such a difference.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Two weeks makes such a difference.

View attachment 26498

Great googly moogly, do ANY of his tweets age well?

 

[TV and credit cards]

People fighting over ‘rotten’ food on coronavirus-stricken Grand Princess cruise: passenger

“The food is rotten and terrible and we have to fight for it,” Bartlett told the network. “It is not good enough.”

“We are going stir crazy stuck in the cabin,” she added. “It is a bit depressing when we saw land and it was sunny and we couldn’t get out

from Coronavirus ship: Going 'stir crazy' on Grand Princess cruise - BBC News

It must be awful for the poor dears. I just can’t imagine. The horror of having to stay in a cruise ship cabin with substandard food and no balcony! I’ll bet they’re not even presented with menu options. They likely have to eat what is given to them. Surely they’re suffering from PTSD by now.

 

[Jarhyn]

Two weeks makes such a difference.

View attachment 26498

Great googly moogly, do ANY of his tweets age well?

Personally, if the exposure he got at CPAC kills him, I'm gonna laugh my ass off.

So... If it isn't about defeating Trump anymore, does that change people's calculus about which old democrat to vote for? If it isn't about electability (given a literal DOA ballot on the republican side), then what happens about all that electability and "blue no matter who" junk?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

People fighting over ‘rotten’ food on coronavirus-stricken Grand Princess cruise: passenger

“The food is rotten and terrible and we have to fight for it,” Bartlett told the network. “It is not good enough.”

“We are going stir crazy stuck in the cabin,” she added. “It is a bit depressing when we saw land and it was sunny and we couldn’t get out

from Coronavirus ship: Going 'stir crazy' on Grand Princess cruise - BBC News

It must be awful for the poor dears. I just can’t imagine. The horror of having to stay in a cruise ship cabin with substandard food and no balcony! I’ll bet they’re not even presented with menu options. They likely have to eat what is given to them. Surely they’re suffering from PTSD by now.

Unless you have an expensive room, aren’t many cabins smaller than prison cells? It certainly isn’t ideal and there must be concern regarding anxiety of being on a ship with the virus. And these ships aren’t manned for room service for 1,000 passengers. While hardly being Syrian refugees in overflowing camps in Jordan, I think it is a bit further than First World Problems as well.

 

[lpetrich]

It's still in Twitter: Donald J. Trump on Twitter: "The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!" / Twitter

pResident tRump is the Baghdad Bob of coronavirus.

 

[blastula]

Trump had contact with congressmen Collins and Gaetz before they self-quarantined over coronavirus concerns - cnbc

please, please, please.

 

[Copernicus]

It must be awful for the poor dears. I just can’t imagine. The horror of having to stay in a cruise ship cabin with substandard food and no balcony! I’ll bet they’re not even presented with menu options. They likely have to eat what is given to them. Surely they’re suffering from PTSD by now.

Unless you have an expensive room, aren’t many cabins smaller than prison cells? It certainly isn’t ideal and there must be concern regarding anxiety of being on a ship with the virus. And these ships aren’t manned for room service for 1,000 passengers. While hardly being Syrian refugees in overflowing camps in Jordan, I think it is a bit further than First World Problems as well.

As a veteran cruiser, I can tell you what my feelings would be. The size of the cabins is usually very small, but they are much more comfortable than prison cells, which can be overcrowded and far less comfortable. What would bother me are a number of needs--depletion of clean laundry, fresh linens and towels, depleting supplies of necessary sundries and medicines (especially prescription medicines), special dietary needs (e.g. diabetic passengers), news about what is happening in the world and their immediate future, etc. I have never taken a Princess ship and don't know what their TV is like, but usually it is very limited in terms of news coverage and entertainment, since people don't normally go on a cruise to watch TV. It is possible that Fox News is the only American TV news channel available on some cruise lines. And then there are homes to get back to, bills to pay, missed work, and so on. While being quarantined on a cruise ship is far less discomforting than being in prison, it is understandable that people would find it extremely stressful.

Now, add to that the fact that staff on the ship have to service the needs of quarantined passengers, and the crew is more easily infected than passengers, since they all live in much closer quarters with each other. Every day, your cabin has to be supplied with food and other services. Garbage, dirty laundry/towels/bedding, and other needs must be supplied by people not well trained to deal with contagious illnesses. If they visit a cabin where someone suffers from the virus, they can carry it to other passengers confined to cabins--like bees pollinating flowers. I would not like to be quarantined on a cruise ship because some politicians fear the political consequences of letting me off the ship and into a proper quarantine facility, where I might stand a chance of avoiding infection or getting proper care, if I do become infected. Nobody but a politician would think that things will work out better if people are quarantined on a cruise ship. All that does is create a larger population of infected passengers when they are inevitably let off the ship.

 

[lpetrich]

Trump says doctors keep asking how he knows so much about the coronavirus
noting

Dan Diamond on Twitter: "At CDC, Trump is flanked by AZAR and REDFIELD — two officials facing most scrutiny over coronavirus response.
TRUMP: Doctor, do you want to make a little statement?
REDFIELD: First I want to thank you, for your decisive leadership…that's the most important thing I want to say. https://t.co/DH6oWiqAfN" / Twitter

Dan Diamond on Twitter: "Answering question about coronavirus response, Trump detours into discussing Fox News town hall ratings. https://t.co/Ly6Q3Jcj6x" / Twitter

Dan Diamond on Twitter: "AZAR tries to explain that more tests are coming, but Trump waves him off to jump in.
TRUMP: “Anybody that needs a test gets a test…. the tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.” https://t.co/A3hgYOJLUt" / Twitter

Dan Diamond on Twitter: "Trump muses that he could’ve become a research scientist instead of president.
TRUMP: I like this stuff. I really get it… every one of these doctors said, ‘how do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. https://t.co/9ppWsjwN2v" / Twitter

Dan Diamond on Twitter: "Telling moment earlier, when asked about coronavirus test availability.
AZAR: You won’t believe me, why don’t you talk to Dr Redfield.
REDFIELD: We’ve now shipped out… enough to test 75,000 people at the public health labs now.
TRUMP: Anybody who wants a test can get a test. https://t.co/3t4HovKiFI" / Twitter

Dan Diamond on Twitter: "Trump’s claim that “anybody who wants a test can get a test” is false.
My colleague @davidalim, who broke the initial story of CDC test problems, reports tonight that Trump admin is running well behind its target for tests that can be run. https://t.co/FOQA9dGFoe" / Twitter

Trump administration still struggling to ramp up coronavirus testing - POLITICO - Mar 6 - "At least 23 states have now confirmed cases of the coronavirus."

Nearly a week after the first U.S. coronavirus death was announced, the Trump administration scrambled Friday to meet its target for increasing the number of people able to be tested. But it still could take weeks for the actual tests to take place.

HHS Secretary Alex Azar told reporters that the government had shipped out materials for 700,000 coronavirus tests — well short of the 1.5 million that Vice President Mike Pence had said would be available to hospitals this week, in remarks on Wednesday. Late Friday, Assistant Secretary for Health Brett Giroir told POLITICO that more tests passed quality checks, bringing the total ready to 1.5 million.

Dan Diamond on Twitter: "Also: for those just discovering Robert Redfield, here’s our piece about his background and the missteps at CDC — written 10 days ago, before the first unexplained coronavirus cases in US were reported. [url]https://t.co/cIHe5zzReY https://t.co/IC167d9KiQ" / Twitter[/url]

Dan Diamond on Twitter: "NEW: Looking at CDC director ROBERT REDFIELD, whose agency’s decisions have been increasingly second-guessed as U.S. coronavirus outbreak odds have grown. https://t.co/k0TzjSxqjD" / Twitter

Trump’s CDC chief faces increasingly harsh scrutiny - POLITICO - Feb 26 - "Early missteps on coronavirus, lack of a consistent message make the nation's disease-fighting agency a focus of criticism."

Robert Redfield was a well-known AIDS researcher and favorite of Christian conservatives when President Donald Trump picked him to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2018, where he has helped implement sweeping plans to fight HIV and opioids in the United States while pushing to tackle Ebola abroad. But confronted by the increasingly global coronavirus outbreak, CDC and Redfield’s actions are now under intense scrutiny — both inside and outside the administration.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Trump had contact with congressmen Collins and Gaetz before they self-quarantined over coronavirus concerns - cnbc

please, please, please.

Of course, if he died from it, his sheep followers would think it was a plot to assassinate the President because Covid-19 is a lie.

 

[lpetrich]

Opinion | You Can’t Gaslight a Virus - The New York Times - "President Trump’s usual political tricks won’t work now."

Few Americans Express Positive Views of Trump’s Conduct in Office | Pew Research Center

Most Republicans think that he is intelligent, honest, moral, and fighting for what they believe in, while most Democrats think otherwise. But they agree on a few things about him, like that he is self-centered.

Trump sees this budding pandemic through the lens of how it will affect him and his re-election prospects. The fact that the people infected and those fearful of becoming so are real people who desperately need the steady hand of a steady leader is lost on him.

Instead of being the president that the country needs in a time of crisis, he has chosen to employ his worn political strategy: lying. Rather than addressing the issue straightforwardly, he has told lie after lie, and in some cases contradicted the scientists trying to manage this issue.

More Democrats than Republicans have tried to be prepared. "Trump could be making his most ardent supporters a petri dish of disease."

The fact that he wants to spin media coverage of the virus as politically motivated, the fact that he keeps lowballing the number of people infected, and the fact that he has said that the virus may miraculously disappear, all show that Trump is as much a public health threat as the virus itself.

 

[hurtinbuckaroo]

Flight Attendant Union Chief Slams Trump 'Chaos' Over Coronavirus | HuffPost
noting
The Last Word on Twitter: ".@FlyingWithSara tells @Lawrence that President Donald Trump is not taking the Coronavirus outbreak seriously and that he is putting "my members at risk, my members' jobs at risk and the economy at risk." [url]https://t.co/gMVb1g3obw https://t.co/fYJk0bv3wE" / Twitter[/url]
noting
Flight attendant leader "disheartened" with Trump Admin. coronavirus response

From the main article, she criticized the Trump Admin for putting “both my members and the traveling public in harm’s way.”

What horrible leadership.

Josh Marshall on Twitter: "Trump: CDC "doctors say how do you know so much about this? Maybe I have a natural ability." https://t.co/NUSJJL8SQJ" / Twitter

That self-congratulation is obscene. People's lives are at risk.

"Nobody knew people died from the flu. I didn't know."
- Your Ignorant President

Influenza killed his grandfather in 1918. People studying this guy 200 years from now will still be saying “WTF?”.

 

[Elixir]

"Nobody knew people died from the flu. I didn't know."
- Your Ignorant President

Influenza killed his grandfather in 1918. People studying this guy 200 years from now will still be saying “WTF?”.

People 200 years from now are already saying "WTF?". That's how bad it is.

 

[Half-Life]

If Bernie was President, he already said he wouldn't shut down the border to stop the virus because that's racist. The left is getting out of control. Stopping the spread of a virus is now considered racist. Fox News was just discussing this.

They asked, "What would the Democrats plan be that would be so much better than Trump?" One of them responded, "I think they would let the scientists handle it," and they responded, "And that's what Trump and Pence are doing!"