The all-new "US Politics and coronavirus" thread

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Still, here, let me direct you to an article by a 14-year contributor to Fox News on how they work, though, if you want to understand a bit more about how they work.

It's an interesting article, but it's worth bearing in mind that you should take with a pinch of salt anything said by a man who is confessing to for 14 years lying to and manipulating people in order to make them feel righteous by confirming their views, even if - especially if - what he's saying is something the confirms your views.

Certainly, one thing that stood out to me is that he mentions that one of the techniques used is repetition - and that article just repeats itself over and over and over again.

 

[KDLarsen]

Food for thought amidst the blitz of trump sycophants demanding an immediate reopening:

(Image embedding permitted by xkcd)

 

[dann]

America is full of stupid, stupid people.

I think the glass is less than half full of stupid, stupid people. The bars in the photos may be full of stupid Americans, but you won't find the majority of Americans in those bars. They stay away from places like that. I hope that all hospital workers and people who work in nursing homes stay away from them, too.
It's a precarious situation for those who would like to protect themselves from the idiots when the president, local judges and Republicans are on the idiots' side.

 

[dann]

The real data is the number of Positive Tests, which have always been increasing.

The problem is that the number of postive tests tends to increase with an increase in the number of tests, i.e. if you don't test anybody, nobody tests positive. The more people you test, the more people test positive.
So far, the number of deaths from coronavirus was difficult to fake, but that may be about to change:
Trump is pressuring the CDC to change its death-toll methodology and produce a lower figure, report says (Business Insider, May 13, 2020).

So maybe the virus will magically disappear in June!

 

[Mojo]

World looks on in horror as Trump flails over pandemic despite claims US leads way

The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that the US is “leading the world” with its response to the pandemic, but it does not seem to be going in any direction the world wants to follow.

 

[BobTheCoward]

"Flatten the Curve" was a trendy hashtag and some officials latched onto it just hoping to get some momentum in the right direction.

"Hammer and Dance" is what was/is needed.

I would say it is more than some officials and that it roped in the CDC.

It sounds good when you say right direction. I have a few other phrases for it.

Bait and switch
Mission creep
Moving the goalposts
Deception
Lies

It is not a good strategy to repeatedly make a request for X, and then having achieved that, to say people are now required to do more. A

 

[JoeMorgue]

So maybe the virus will magically disappear in June!

The sad thing is outbreaks and pandemics are... fickle beasts.

It is very possible that some quirk of something could cause the outbreak to just peter out and while, obvious caveat, anything that ends the outbreak and reduces loss of life is a very, very good thing if it does happen it will also be open opportunity from Trump to come out of this with a winner narrative.

Like I don't want us to write ourselves into a corner where our choices are "Another outbreak kills more people in 3, 6, or 9 months" and "Trump comes out the winner."

 

[BobTheCoward]

Who's message?

BTW Arizona's curve is not flat, it is increasing geometrically. This is what happens when the virus isn't contained.

I think you are right that Arizona is not in a condition to relax restrictions and is not contained.

A flattened curve still has a part where it increases at a geometric rate.

 

[newyorkguy]

A couple weeks after Texas ("There's more important things than living") decided to relax its restrictions, the state is seeing the coronavirus surge. New cases not only continue to trend upward, yesterday Texas had its highest number of new cases in one day, plus the most deaths in one day. Below is a quote from a local news source, KSAT-TV in San Antonio:

Texas saw its deadliest COVID-19 day of the coronavirus pandemic so far, with state officials reporting 58 deaths during a time span between Wednesday and Thursday afternoon, according to state tabulations...The number of confirmed coronavirus cases reported to the state rose by at least 1,800 in one day to almost 44,000 on Thursday. However, the true number is likely higher because many people have not been tested, and studies suggest people can be infected and not feel sick. Link

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

If it's really a couple of weeks, then that's too early to see an uptick in deaths. People spend about 20 days on a ventilator, and there's a week or two prior to that of having the disease without it being bad enough to need a ventilator.

 

[Horatius]

The sad thing is outbreaks and pandemics are... fickle beasts.

It is very possible that some quirk of something could cause the outbreak to just peter out and while, obvious caveat, anything that ends the outbreak and reduces loss of life is a very, very good thing if it does happen it will also be open opportunity from Trump to come out of this with a winner narrative.

Like I don't want us to write ourselves into a corner where our choices are "Another outbreak kills more people in 3, 6, or 9 months" and "Trump comes out the winner."

The plan should be pointing out that, no mater what happens in the next six months, Trump's response to date has already demonstrated that he is unfit for the job. We need people to be asking themselves not just what they think of his response to the current crisis, but what they think his response to the next crisis will be. Has anything he's done given us any reason to suppose he's learned his lessons about lying, deflecting, denying reality, refusing to hear unwelcome opinions or hated facts, attacking those who are trying to do their jobs in an honest manner, and politicizing a crisis that calls for a non-partisan solution?

No? Then there's no reason to think he'll be any better at the job the next time something blows up in his face.

That's the message we need to get out, even if he gets lucky and the pandemic goes away all by itself.

 

[Horatius]

If it's really a couple of weeks, then that's too early to see an uptick in deaths. People spend about 20 days on a ventilator, and there's a week or two prior to that of having the disease without it being bad enough to need a ventilator.

In the chart above your post, there's a big spike in cases around Apr 9th. That's probably where the spike in deaths is coming from. It might be of some use to see if that Apr. 9th spike is associated with anything.

 

[JoeMorgue]

The plan should be pointing out that, no mater what happens in the next six months, Trump's response to date has already demonstrated that he is unfit for the job. We need people to be asking themselves not just what they think of his response to the current crisis, but what they think his response to the next crisis will be. Has anything he's done given us any reason to suppose he's learned his lessons about lying, deflecting, denying reality, refusing to hear unwelcome opinions or hated facts, attacking those who are trying to do their jobs in an honest manner, and politicizing a crisis that calls for a non-partisan solution?

No? Then there's no reason to think he'll be any better at the job the next time something blows up in his face.

That's the message we need to get out, even if he gets lucky and the pandemic goes away all by itself.

I don't disagree but we go back to my core problem with dealing Trump and Trump supporters

"Trump isn't fit to coach a Little League team in an exhibition game" was proven .00003 seconds into his Presidency.

We didn't need COVID-19 to tell us that Trump couldn't handle a grease fire in the kitchen, much less a national catastrophe.

So the fact that we know it now doesn't make a difference. The people who know it already know it, the people who already rationalized him away will just rationalize this away. Sure they'll be some changed minds in the margins, but not many.

And again my over-riding rule of everytime Trump doesn't make things better he wins because he wasn't elected to make things better.

 

[newyorkguy]

In addition to the state loosening restrictions, many local cities and counties in Texas have already permitted people and businesses to flout them.

The [Lubbock] fire marshal’s office dispatched an inspector who confirmed that the [Nissan] dealership was not enforcing social distancing guidelines or sanitizing cars between test drives. But the inspector issued no citation, instead passing along the information to “city hall for directive.” As Texas now reopens at Abbott’s direction, under a much looser set of restrictions, a ProPublica-Texas Tribune analysis of complaint data in a dozen cities shows these disparate approaches to enforcement — particularly among businesses — were incredibly common across the state. Link

Now governor Abbott is urging local officials to NOT enforce what restrictions are still in place.

His first major emergency order provided for fines of up to $1,000 and jail time of up to 180 days or both. Then, he changed his mind. In recent weeks, Abbott and the state’s other Republican leaders have blasted local officials in Dallas and Houston for what they called overzealous enforcement of COVID-19 regulations, first zeroing in on Democratically led Harris County’s decision to fine residents for not wearing face masks, a penalty Abbott banned in his April 27 reopening order. As Texas experiments with reopening and public health officials warn that doing so could unwind any progress the state has made on COVID-19, many local officials say they are now taking a step back from policing virus regulations — including officials who had eagerly wielded the enforcement authority Abbott initially gave them. Link

It seems reasonable to bar business owners that defy restrictions from being arrested and jailed -- many argue that fines are enough -- but the problem is, Abbott is ignoring places that don't enforce the few restrictions still in place.

Last week, the Texas District and County Attorneys Association issued guidance to prosecutors in response to Abbott’s changing directives. “If the governor is going to keep changing the tune he plays as he leads the state out of this pandemic, there is little incentive to put your own necks on the line to enforce an order that could be invalidated the next day.” Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said: “It’s just not enforceable. The second the political winds changed, he (Abbott) not only changed the rules, he left the local government and the local judges holding the bag. You just can’t trust that he’ll stand by the orders he makes in the future.”

 

[dann]

The sad thing is outbreaks and pandemics are... fickle beasts.

It is very possible that some quirk of something could cause the outbreak to just peter out and while, obvious caveat, anything that ends the outbreak and reduces loss of life is a very, very good thing if it does happen it will also be open opportunity from Trump to come out of this with a winner narrative.

Like I don't want us to write ourselves into a corner where our choices are "Another outbreak kills more people in 3, 6, or 9 months" and "Trump comes out the winner."

Did you read the post? Or just the sentence you quoted?

 

[JoeMorgue]

Did you read the post? Or just the sentence you quoted?

I was just using it as a jumping off point, it was not intended as a counter/rebuttal.

 

[newyorkguy]

A couple weeks after Texas ("There's more important things than living") decided to relax its restrictions, the state is seeing the coronavirus surge. New cases not only continue to trend upward, yesterday Texas had its highest number of new cases in one day, plus the most deaths in one day. Below is a quote from a local news source, KSAT-TV in San Antonio:

If it's really a couple of weeks, then that's too early to see an uptick in deaths...

Obviously if the state had its highest one-day death total yesterday it's not 'too early' to see an uptick in deaths. I'm guessing you mean, too early to say some of the deaths are due to the relaxation of restrictions?

I agree, it's probably still a bit too early to evaluate the effect of relaxing its restrictions, but that wasn't the point I was making. The point is, for me and a lot of others (including many people IN Texas), at a time when cases (and deaths) dip and spike from day-to-day, that's not a good time to be loosening restrictions. From reading some local news sites, Texas governor Abbott is playing politics with this all the way. I think he's betting he can satisfy his conservative pro-business constituency by relaxing restrictions ahead of other states because the epidemic won't blow up. The thinking seems to be, let it drag on at a level the governor and his allies are willing to 'live' with. At the same time Abbott has made it known he doesn't especially want enforcement of the restrictions that are in place.

Public health officials thinks it's a risky strategy, they've said so many times. Not to single out Governor Abbott, though, because it seems to be a common strategy among Republican leaders. As Texas lt. gov. Dan Patrick told Tucker Carlson, twice, "There's more important things than living."

Can you imagine a politician saying something like that on a network TV show? And during an epidemic. There's more important things than living. What's even scarier is, he must think his base will agree.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

World looks on in horror as Trump flails over pandemic despite claims US leads way

I should also put this in the Trump is mentally ill thread:

As the death toll rises, Trump’s claims to global leadership have became more far-fetched. He told Republicans last week that he had had a round of phone calls with Angela Merkel, Shinzo Abe and other unnamed world leaders and insisted “so many of them, almost all of them, I would say all of them” believe the US is leading the way.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

If it's really a couple of weeks, then that's too early to see an uptick in deaths. People spend about 20 days on a ventilator, and there's a week or two prior to that of having the disease without it being bad enough to need a ventilator.

From this source:

In an ongoing outbreak the final outcomes – death or recovery – for all cases is not yet known. The time from symptom onset to death ranges from 2 to 8 weeks for COVID-19.6 This means that some people who are currently infected with COVID-19 will die at a later date. This needs to be kept in mind when comparing the current number of deaths with the current number of cases.

Do we know when people started ignoring the shut down? Was it earlier than the official change?

I see newyorkguy is on this.

 

[newyorkguy]

Shoppers in Stillwater Oklahoma became enraged earlier this month after an order had been issued requiring shoppers to wear face masks. Stillwater is a small city of about 45,000 people in north-central Oklahoma. It is the home of Oklahoma State University. The order had been implemented by the city on May 1st and many shoppers not only objected, they became menacing to store employees. .

"In the short time beginning on May 1, 2020, that face coverings have been required for entry into stores/restaurants, store employees have been threatened with physical violence and showered with verbal abuse," Stillwater City Manager Norman McNickle said in a statement. "In addition, there has been one threat of violence using a firearm. This has occurred in three short hours and in the face of clear medical evidence that face coverings helps contain the spread of Covid-19." Due to the threats of violence the city has decided to amend their emergency order but still want people to wear face masks whenever possible, the statement said.

"Many of those with objections cite the mistaken belief the requirement is unconstitutional, and under their theory, one cannot be forced to wear a mask. No law or court supports this view," said City Manager Norman McNickle in a statement. "It is further distressing that these people, while exercising their believed rights, put others at risk. It is unfortunate and distressing that those who refuse and threaten violence are so self-absorbed as to not follow what is a simple show of respect and kindness to others," he said. Still, the city is changing the rule, as officials "cannot, in clear conscience, put our local business community in harm's way, nor can the police be everywhere," McNickle said. Link