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The all-new "US Politics and coronavirus" thread

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Giordano said:
Just to provide some prospective to what 100,000 people dead repress visually: approx. 100, 000 people at Michigan Stadium in better days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_Stadium#/media/File:Michigan_Stadium_2011.jpg

Think of that many dead, often dying very painfully, and the additional impact on the many more people who loved them. These are not just impersonal numbers that can be casually traded off to benefit political posturing. These were real people.
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:mad:
 
phiwum said:
I'm sure it's very likely that the total number of cases are undercounted and so it's plausible that the death rate (not count) is lower than reported.
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So?

One issue, of course, is the conflation of count and rate and the fact that a depressingly large segment of the population doesn't understand the distinction without effort.
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Oh, OK.

I was bored with the NPR offerings yesterday and tuned into AM for a few minutes. Rush Limbaugh was mocking the notion that the virus had mutated to be more communicable as just another made up scare story. No evidence given, of course, aside from the self-evident truth that scientists are liars and mutation makes one think of giant man-eating houseflies (not making that up, he talked about how scary the word is because we all tend to think of monstrous flies).

He's startlingly popular. I guess that ignorance of statistics is the least of our concerns.
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Yep.
 
newyorkguy said:
Kayleigh McEnany wasn't joking. She was defending the trump administration's record on testing for Covid-19. This is from a Fox News site so it's an official White House communication:



Asked about states reopening with out meeting the WH guideline to have tested at least 2% of the population, she answered:
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What she seems to miss is you don't test everyone; you use statistics to arrive at a cross-section of test subjects. Hourly tests are not feasible, but weekly tests should be. They're snapshots, I don't think anyone's denying that, but with enough snapshots you begin to see the movie.

A couple of links in the science thread suggest one avenue of research: At least two prisons or prison units have tested virtually their entire population, with results showing that almost everyone was infected and that almost all of them were asymptomatic - so far. That's not a cross-section of the U.S., obviously, but there's bound to be something we can learn from. It points to asymptomatic spread and provides a longitudinal study of eventual symptom development.

Could these prisoners have contracted a "mild" form of the disease? Do their antibodies inoculate them from developing more-serious illness? Given how many people the U.S. incarcerates, there's a big population that could tell us something. It also models other systems that to some extent are closed loops - cruise ships and nursing homes. As long as prisoners consent, why not keep chipping away at prison testing? I'm not suggesting scenarios where some members of the population get placebos, or where potentially unsafe vaccines are being tested.

McEnany deliberately (I suppose) threw out an extreme scenario to dis the idea of widespread testing. It's true that such a program would yield only a snapshot, so get a lot of them over time. Not every American (necessarily), but a representative cross section. You need to do it more than once, and you do need to dedicate a large number of tests to monitoring both active cases and antibody development. But if there's no shortage of tests, why not do that?
 
Fox News' Pete Hegseth calls for people to go out and get infected by coronavirus:
"Now that we are learning more, herd immunity is our friend. Healthy people getting out there, they are going to have to have some courage."
 
Chuck Schumer Tweets

@SenSchumer
You know how the White House knows that it’s safe to hold a press conference?
They test the reporters
What do they do before Pres. Trump meets business leaders?
They take temperatures & administer coronavirus tests
Why isn't there a plan to do the same thing for the country?
 
Flynn, yeah I did it
DOJ, we cant prove it though
Prosecutors, well actually...
DOJ, WE CAN’T
 
Here in Michigan, Governor Whitmer just extended our stay-at-home order, but with one huge new exception. Manufacturing activities may resume, with some pretty major safety precautions in place. Distancing, masks, face shields, mandatory virus education, no visitors, and everyone gets temperature checked every day.


That will be huge for the economy of Michigan and, to a somewhat smaller extent, the country. Will it be a good idea? I suppose we'll see when it happens. They can start work as early as Monday. When it comes to car manufacturing, I wonder, though, if an automobile assembly plant can really restart. Unless every one of your parts suppliers is also producing, you can't build a car. There are somewhere around 3,000 parts to be supplied for a typical car.

Still, this will help a lot, assuming people don't start getting sick and they have to be shut down again.
 
More detail on Rick Bright's complaint, and a good look at the fetid underbelly of cronyism in the Trump regime.

Trump admin’s botched pandemic response detailed in whistleblower complaint

A new whistleblower complaint by a former US health official details how the Trump administration's COVID-19 response was hampered by cronyism and denial about the virus's severity. The 89-page complaint filed by Rick Bright, an immunology expert who led the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) until he says he was forced out of his position, provides an inside look at the Trump administration's approach to public health before and during the pandemic.
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Craig4 said:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/07/politics/trump-valet-tests-positive-covid-19/index.html

Sorry about the valet but this could be such a great thing for the nation. The disgusting offense against nature that is Trump's carcass is riddled with COVID 19 risk factors. I don't want to get my hopes up here but I so wish he gets it.
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Given how little Trump gives a **** about other people getting the virus, 'must get the economy going', that is pitiful, absolutely pitiful.

Please let this be the the Masque of the Red Death arriving in the black room. Even if he only gets as sick as Boris and doesn't die. They can give him the meds he's been touting, the ones that don't do anything.


One thing not addressed in the article is what about all the other people this valet might have exposed besides Trump and Pence? We know Trump doesn't care about anyone but himself. Maybe that will come back to bite him when it turns out this valet exposed other staff that are already spreading the virus around the White House.
 
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Resume said:
It's also likely that deaths are under-reported.



We also know that Florida's county coroners have been ordered to not release their death counts before the "official" state tolls have been published. Who knows what that moron DeSantis is up to with this.
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Eventually, we'll have a pretty good idea of the death count. I don't know if we'll ever have a good idea of the number of infections.

Actually, the eventual death count is always going to be a bit difficult to compile. If we figure it as roughly the number of "excessive" deaths, we'll be including people who didn't ever have COVID but died because of the stress COVID put on the system. That's an interesting number, but it doesn't help tell you the death rate from COVID itself.
 
Trump was exposed to Bolsonaro's guys who ended up testing positive. Have they checked to see if he has these antibodies?
 
phiwum said:
Eventually, we'll have a pretty good idea of the death count. I don't know if we'll ever have a good idea of the number of infections.

Actually, the eventual death count is always going to be a bit difficult to compile. If we figure it as roughly the number of "excessive" deaths, we'll be including people who didn't ever have COVID but died because of the stress COVID put on the system. That's an interesting number, but it doesn't help tell you the death rate from COVID itself.
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In countries where the system collapsed no. In countries where the system didn't collapse, excess death is just fine.
 
Dr.Sid said:
In countries where the system collapsed no. In countries where the system didn't collapse, excess death is just fine.
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I imagine that a lockdown will lead to some increase of deaths not related to COVID. Whether it's utterly negligible, I couldn't guess. Maybe it would be.

But you have to figure that some folks have put off going for medical visits that they needed. I don't know how significant that would be.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Given how little Trump gives a **** about other people getting the virus, 'must get the economy going', that is pitiful, absolutely pitiful.

Please let this be the the Masque of the Red Death arriving in the black room. Even if he only gets as sick as Boris and doesn't die. They can give him the meds he's been touting, the ones that don't do anything.


One thing not addressed in the article is what about all the other people this valet might have exposed besides Trump and Pence? We know Trump doesn't care about anyone but himself. Maybe that will come back to bite him when it turns out this valet exposed other staff that are already spreading the virus around the White House.
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He probably was around the other valets and the stewards (cooks) who make the president's meals. I do really hope the Americans are all okay and fully recover. Trump and his Trumptrash, well, we don't need their kind.
 
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