The Trump Presidency: Part 20

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ChrisBFRPKY said:
We need coal to power all those electric cars don't we?

Chris B.
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If you happened to be sarcastic there, I'd like to suggest a simple trick that's worked well for me. Change the sarcastic text color to magenta.

If you weren't being sarcastic... the answer is a resounding no, we don't. Even from a pure cost standpoint, coal is dying because there are multiple alternatives that are generally cheaper. Natural gas has long been cheaper and less polluting, for example. Wind's been cheaper since 2013, apparently, and solar's pretty much on par with coal now, with further expected advances in solar that will make it cheaper than coal very soon. And that's before taking a hard look at the relative subsidies in play and how coal is benefiting much more from them than wind and solar are.

And all that's before touching on less direct concerns that are no less important in the larger picture, from infrastructure to climate to health effects.
 
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shemp said:
I think 200,000 will look good before this is over.
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I fear that Shemp may be right.
[boy, it’s weird typing that out]

This is way more infectious than many people understand. And even today I saw people crowding all over each other on a sidewalk waiting for a traffic light to change.

Add to that the bizarre right-wing meme that it is all a hoax. I was on a message board in which someone was talking about a 20,000 person death count and another poster responded with nothing more than “the sky is falling, the sky is falling.”
 
ChrisBFRPKY said:
Less than 200K compared to?

Chris B.
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Compared to the comparable numbers of deaths in other countries. The ratio of US population to Canadian population is current about 8.7:1. Currently, the ratio of deaths is 3889:101, or about 38 to 1, or more than 4 times higher that we'd expect based just on population.

If ratios like that keep up, Trump is going to look pretty bad, no matter what the final actual number is. He's not going to being compared just to the worst case scenario we can imagine, he's also going to be compared to all the other countries that are dealing with this problem. He's going to have to explain why his "perfect" response, his 10 out 10 plan, resulted in far more deaths, relatively speaking, as compared to every other country. Except maybe Italy.

I expect we'll be hearing him say "Italy" a lot over the next six months. It'll be all he has.
 
ChrisBFRPKY was being sarcastic about needing coal.

ETA: on second though, maybe not.
 
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I don’t think so. When you plug in your car, it gets electricity from whatever produced that electricity in your power grid. For many Americans, that is and will continue to be coal. It doesn’t make it right, it just makes it accurate.
 
Now the blue sheet they'll be showing at every press brief for the next month says "30 days to slow the spread". Two weeks ago (or... 15 days) it was "15 days to slow the spread." I have the feeling we will be seeing further extensions.
 
Norman Alexander said:
That's about 50% of the US death toll for all of WW2. Three and a half years' worth in as many months. And that's a conservative estimate. In other words, he would be prepared to have a rerun of the casualties of WW2 just to look good to his base.
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Speaking of numbers like that... we've already past 9/11 numbers, apparently. With the caveat that more dying than from 9/11 total always had a high chance of happening, that we've passed it this soon is a very bad sign.
 
Houston is thinking about letting some inmates out of jail (they are eligible for bail but can not afford it).
They don’t have tests available, so they are going to take temperatures and ask them if they’ve been displaying symptoms.

It going to be bad.
 
Ladewig said:
Add to that the bizarre right-wing meme that it is all a hoax. I was on a message board in which someone was talking about a 20,000 person death count and another poster responded with nothing more than “the sky is falling, the sky is falling.”
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Turkmenistan just went one step further and banned the words "corona virus". So not only have they no cases according to their Great Leaders, but the illness itself has been censored from public discourse.
 
Safe-Keeper said:
Turkmenistan just went one step further and banned the words "corona virus". So not only have they no cases according to their Great Leaders, but the illness itself has been censored from public discourse.
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The Great Leaders can then declare what a wonderful job they did in handling the crisis. See? No one sick, no deaths from Coronavirus!
 
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