The all-new "US Politics and coronavirus" thread

[Garrison]

As you can see on the chart below, new cases in Arizona dip and spike from day-to-day but are still trending upward. The risk is, as restrictions are reduced, seeing new cases and fatalities surge to catastrophic levels. But there are a sizable number of people out there who argue the whole thing is 'overblown,' and the way to stop the epidemic is to 'let it run its course.' That strategy is very risky but those kinds of people usually reject expert advice because they 'don't believe the experts.'

Wonder what Arizona will look like by June?

A Mad Max theme park?

 

[Andy_Ross]

Then again there are non-Covid deaths that the lockdown is preventing. Less traffic means fewer road deaths, fewer accidental deaths through recreation and on work sites and so on.

In the UK the Home Secretary was trumpeting the reduction in shop lifting and RTAs over the last couple of months as a vindication of her policies on law and order.

 

[zorro99]

14.7 percent unemployment. Winning /s/

 

[Cheetah]

In that case I guess the question is why is South Africa seeing a decrease in deaths while the rest of the world is seeing an increase?

Probably because the murder rate is so huge there that a slight percentage decrease in murder skews the stats drastically.

Yes, that's us!
Sorry for the off topic stuff, by comparison:

Last year April 1542 murders, this year 432.
Rapes 2904 >> 371
Assault GBH 11876 >> 1758

Total covid deaths >> 161 as of today.

 

[Trebuchet]

As you can see on the chart below, new cases in Arizona dip and spike from day-to-day but are still trending upward. The risk is, as restrictions are reduced, seeing new cases and fatalities surge to catastrophic levels. But there are a sizable number of people out there who argue the whole thing is 'overblown,' and the way to stop the epidemic is to 'let it run its course.' That strategy is very risky but those kinds of people usually reject expert advice because they 'don't believe the experts.'

Wonder what Arizona will look like by June?

See that dip at the very end? The governor will just extrapolate from that to prove that there'll be no cases in a couple of days.

 

[newyorkguy]

See that dip at the very end? The governor will just extrapolate from that to prove that there'll be no cases in a couple of days.

Or-

A Mad Max theme park?

 

[phiwum]

14.7 percent unemployment. Winning /s/

I don't know what the effect of an earlier response to COVID might have been. Unemployment might still have reached such levels.

I won't blame Trump for most of the economic effects of the crisis so far. I'll blame him if he presses for reopening too soon and things go very badly.

 

[Darat]

I don't know what the effect of an earlier response to COVID might have been. Unemployment might still have reached such levels.

I won't blame Trump for most of the economic effects of the crisis so far. I'll blame him if he presses for reopening too soon and things go very badly.

You mean he loses the next election? After all that is the metric Trump will be using.

 

[newyorkguy]

...I'll blame him if he presses for reopening too soon and things go very badly.

You should probably get ready to blame him. That's what trump's always done. To paraphrase Mike Bloomberg, if trump has a 'strong suit.' that's it: making things go badly. The football league, the air shuttle, the casinos; he turns everything in to a disaster.

Serious. This is why some people (like me) were scared to death when this whackjob got elected. That he would do to the entire USA what he once did to the USFL. In all the years trump hasn't seemed to learn anything about himself, the way things work. This is a nightmare scenario.

 

[Meadmaker]

I don't know what the effect of an earlier response to COVID might have been. Unemployment might still have reached such levels.

I won't blame Trump for most of the economic effects of the crisis so far. I'll blame him if he presses for reopening too soon and things go very badly.

I blamed Trump for his lack of response early, but when all is said and done I've wondered if it really mattered. Was containment an actual possibility? It doesn't seem like any other society managed it. Could the number of cases have been kept to a manageable level so we didn't need the lockdown?

I blame him now for the fact that there is still PPE shortfall, regardless of what he has heard.

 

[Regnad Kcin]

I blamed Trump for his lack of response early, but when all is said and done I've wondered if it really mattered. Was containment an actual possibility? It doesn't seem like any other society managed it. Could the number of cases have been kept to a manageable level so we didn't need the lockdown?

I blame him now for the fact that there is still PPE shortfall, regardless of what he has heard.

"The cupboards were bare!" - Old Mother Trumpard

 

[Trebuchet]

Awesome video of Mike Pence pretending to deliver PPE to a health care facility and forgetting he's wearing a microphone.
"Can I just carry the empty ones, just for the camera?"
How did that go about false witness, Mike?

 

[zorro99]

I don't know what the effect of an earlier response to COVID might have been. Unemployment might still have reached such levels.

I won't blame Trump for most of the economic effects of the crisis so far. I'll blame him if he presses for reopening too soon and things go very badly.

South Korea, Germany and other countries didn’t have this level of economic upheaval. Their governing officials got in front of it through testing, tracing and treating. Trump’s lackadaisical response back in January and February contributed to this.

 

[Armitage72]

Awesome video of Mike Pence pretending to deliver PPE to a health care facility and forgetting he's wearing a microphone.
"Can I just carry the empty ones, just for the camera?"
How did that go about false witness, Mike?

In this case, while he talked about doing it, he didn't actually do it. The full video shows the van doors being closed immediately after the comment and he doesn't carry any empty boxes.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Trump has lamented the idea of testing more people, because doing so reveals more infections and "by doing all this testing we make ourselves look bad"

Also he has said we don't need testing and contact tracing.

Unless it's the White House.

First Trump’s valet, now Pence’s staffer.

Trump said a “press person” named Katie was the Pence aide who tested positive. It wasn’t immediately clear whether he meant Katie Miller, who is Pence’s press secretary. Earlier this year, Miller married senior Trump White House adviser Stephen Miller.

Katie Miller did not respond to multiple requests for comment from CNBC.

Don't anyone tell Laura Ingraham and Giuliani about the contact tracing:

Reporters traveling with Pence said several staffers disembarked from Air Force Two just before takeoff.

Those staffers left the plane because they had been in contact with the staffer who tested positive, NBC News reported. In response to the positive test, the White House medical office has embarked on a program of contact tracing for the individual, an official told NBC. Some of these staffers have already been retested.

CNN: Rudy Giuliani may have said the dumbest thing yet uttered about the coronavirus

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was on Laura Ingraham's show on Fox News Thursday night when the subject turned to the coronavirus -- and attempts in New York to develop a contact tracing system to be able to monitor future outbreaks.

That's when this exchange happened:
Ingraham: Michael Bloomberg is gonna handle the tracing, army of tracers in NY we learned today from [New York Gov. Andrew] Cuomo.
Giuliani: That's totally ridiculous.
Ingraham: The army of tracers.
Giuliani: Then we should trace everybody for cancer.
Ingraham: Yeah, army of tracers.
Giuliani: We should trace everybody for cancer, and heart disease. And obesity. I mean, a lot of things kill you more than Covid-19. So, we should be traced for all those things. I mean life possesses a certain degree of risk.
Ah ha ha ha ha ... wait, what????

That 'stupid' was probably posted already.

 

[Emily's Cat]

The models that Arizona is relying on say that fatalities will rise, but since governor Ducey is re-opening the state, so has shut the modelling team down

As you can see on the chart below, new cases in Arizona dip and spike from day-to-day but are still trending upward. The risk is, as restrictions are reduced, seeing new cases and fatalities surge to catastrophic levels. But there are a sizable number of people out there who argue the whole thing is 'overblown,' and the way to stop the epidemic is to 'let it run its course.' That strategy is very risky but those kinds of people usually reject expert advice because they 'don't believe the experts.'

Wonder what Arizona will look like by June?

Just a reminder that not all articles are objective.

Ducey didn't decide to "ignore science" as the article claims. ADHS has been comparing multiple models since this started, including one developed by ASU. Ducey and ADHS have decided that the model developed by FEMA and CDC is more accurate. You can certainly argue with whether or not their decision is sound, especially since the FEMA model hasn't been kept pretty confidential. But to frame it as if Ducey decided to just ignore modeling altogether is misrepresentation.

That said... yes, the total number of cases has been increasing. If you're looking at the state as a whole, that's apparent. What's a bit more interesting is if you look at the county level experience. Case rates in Maricopa County (where Phoenix is, along with over 60% of the population of the state) have slowed.

One thing to note is that at the beginning of may, ADHS started including positive results from antibody tests in their counts, which captured people who had no symptoms and no active viral loads, and those people are being counted in their reporting week. That is a little misleading, since there's no way to tell when they actually had the illness.

An additional complication is that there's been a fair bit of spread among the various Native American Nations in AZ. The Navajo Nation has been particularly hard hit, and is contributing to the stats for the state.

Finally, I keep seeing this being reported as if AZ is just "oh, we're done, go back to normal life!". That's not the case. The stay-at-home order is still largely in place until May 15. Ducey has begun allowing some non-essential retail businesses to resume limited operations, provided they comply with CDC guidelines for safety, and enact social distancing. Barber shops and nail salons and similar have to have cleaning procedures in place, staff and customers must wear face coverings, and all interactions have to be by appointment (no walk ins), and there's a limit to the number of people who can be there at once. Dine-in restaurants are allowed to reopen with limited capacity and increased distance between tables, and additional cleaning protocols.

Any non-essential business that can work from home is still required to work from home. A large chunk of stuff is still shut down. Personally, I think a gradual re-opening is a good idea... But you're entitled to your own opinions.

Just please make an effort to ensure that those opinions are based on actual information and not on spin and narrative framing.

 

[phiwum]

You should probably get ready to blame him. That's what trump's always done. To paraphrase Mike Bloomberg, if trump has a 'strong suit.' that's it: making things go badly. The football league, the air shuttle, the casinos; he turns everything in to a disaster.

Serious. This is why some people (like me) were scared to death when this whackjob got elected. That he would do to the entire USA what he once did to the USFL. In all the years trump hasn't seemed to learn anything about himself, the way things work. This is a nightmare scenario.

I agree with your pessimism, but there's always some chance that things go well in the reopening. It's not what actual experts expect and I think we should be listening to those folks rather than shelving their guidelines, but I hope that the experts are pleasantly surprised.

I don't, of course, expect it and I wouldn't give Trump any credit if his wishful thinking happened to work out. Even idiots can make decisions on no basis at all that happen to work out against all odds.

 

[phiwum]

I blamed Trump for his lack of response early, but when all is said and done I've wondered if it really mattered. Was containment an actual possibility? It doesn't seem like any other society managed it. Could the number of cases have been kept to a manageable level so we didn't need the lockdown?

I blame him now for the fact that there is still PPE shortfall, regardless of what he has heard.

I don't know what the effect of earlier measures would have been. Counterfactual reasoning is hard.

But the people who know this stuff were calling for it earlier than happened I think.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Oou oou, it was Katie Miller. Stephen Miller has been exposed! He's a racist jerk.

Pence Spokeswoman Katie Miller Tests Positive For Coronavirus

And of course the stable genius weighed in, the one the doctors said to him, how did he know so much:

President Trump told reporters Friday that Miller hasn't come into contact with him but has "spent some time" with the vice president.

"She is a wonderful young woman, Katie," he said. "She tested very good for a long period of time. And then all of a sudden today she tested positive."

"So, she tested positive out of the blue," he continued. "This is why the whole concept of tests aren't necessarily, right, the tests are perfect but something can happen between a test where it's good and then something happens and then all of a sudden, she was tested very recently and tested negative."

Tested "good". More genius 3rd grade vocabulary.

See the tests are no good, that's why Trump and Pence are now getting tested daily.

Next story to leak (prediction at this time): Trump is now ordering everyone near the White House to be tested daily. And maybe everyone around them and everyone around them....all the way down.

 

[dann]

Could the number of cases have been kept to a manageable level so we didn't need the lockdown?

Why don't you take a look around? There are several small countries that have kept the number of cases to a manageable level - like Iceland, New Zealand or Norway. And bigger ones like South Korea. And the biggest of them all, China.
They all went through a lockdown, but one of them got no warning at all. The others did.
Testing all incoming travellers (foreigners as well as nationals) at a very early stage would have made a considerable difference.