The all-new "US Politics and coronavirus" thread

[carlitos]

Because the manufacturers claimed they weren't addictive but they're actually highly addictive; Because doctors hand them out like candy; Because it's largely white people who are affected.

I don't think it's any unusual level of emotional or spiritual pain driving it.

First line - I totally agree.

Second line - I disagree, but it's off topic. Maybe I'll start a thread another time.

 

[newyorkguy]

And right on time, trump from the Rose Garden. Don't sweat it folks.

President Donald Trump said the U.S. will overcome the coronavirus crisis with or without an effective vaccine, saying that the disease will “go away at some point” either way. Link

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Maybe this goes in the CT forum.

F.D.A. Halts Coronavirus Testing Program Backed by Bill Gates

So the Seattle group has been supplying evidence to the FDA since March. They seemed surprised to find out how the specimens were collected (data was provided) then the FDA complained about the group informing the patients of the results. Apparently they didn't mind if the test was only for surveillance but they didn't want it used for patient testing.

OMG they might test people without symptoms. Keep in mind it is a directive from the CDC that only allows testing for people with symptoms or who had a known exposure. (Never mind the testing going on in Trumplandia castle.)

So there are these curious things in the NYT article:

Private companies have also rushed to promote at-home test kits, and the F.D.A. approved the first one available for purchase in April....

... The testing group said the F.D.A. had also asked for more information about the program’s effort to test people who did not have symptoms. ...

The FDA seems confused between in-home antibody tests and in-home antigen tests.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

This was the nightmare scenario from the moment he was elected - a genuine national emergency whilst the ignorant narcissist was in office. The people who voted for/enabled him were taking a huge risk, and it has come back to bite them.

Everyone thought it would be a nuke or a new war, or maybe a local disaster.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

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.

I agree. It is also not a good policy to claim you have achieved X and therefore don't need to do more - when you haven't.

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

Weasel words. A flattened curve initially increases geometrically, but becomes 'flat' when the increase becomes linear (which is required in order to prevent hospitals being overrun etc). A sustained geometric increase will eventually become to large to handle, even if it is smaller than the initial rise.

Arizona is an example of a curve that never flattened, as it has maintained an almost constant geometric rise for over a month now. Right now the numbers might not look too bad, but if the current trend continues they will have New York level infection in a few months.

Which is a shame, because for a while it looked like they were 'flattening' their curve. Many other states show a similar trend, which is worrying. Despite full lock-downs and New York 'flattening' their curve, we have surpassed Italy and are pulling away. Other countries with similar initial rises were able to contain the virus with shorter lock-down periods and are now opening up safely. We haven't. Our lock-downs have failed.

But why? Because to beat this threat required a united effort, with everybody rising to the challenge rather than complaining about being 'required to do more'. But too many Americans have have an entitled 'libertarian' attitude that abdicates them from responsibility towards others. And we are all paying the price. 2020 will go down in history as the year America finally succumbed to a fatal malaise - not the virus, but the attitudes of our own people. People like you.

 

[newyorkguy]

This virus may prove to be very difficult to control. Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb suggests 25,000 new cases a day and 1,000 daily fatalities may become "the new normal."

After a month during which the country has been in virtual lockdown, new coronavirus cases appear to have leveled off in some areas, but they haven’t plummeted the same way they have in countries like New Zealand. “While mitigation didn’t fail, I think it’s fair to say that it didn’t work as well as we expected,” former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a televised interview May 3rd. “We expected that we would start seeing more significant declines in new cases and deaths around the nation at this point, and we’re just not seeing that.”

“We may be facing the prospect that 20,000, 30,000 new cases a day diagnosed becomes a new normal and a thousand or more deaths becomes a new normal as well,” Gottlieb said. He also noted that the numbers of new cases are still rising in more than a dozen states, even as other states begin reopening. Link

 

[Shalamar]

I think it's more denialism than anything else.

As long as the number of deaths is small enough that people don't think they or their loved ones are going to be among the dead, they will try and dismiss the problem. If they say that they don't care even if they themselves become victims, it's usually false bravado. They haven't internalized the possibility that, really, seriously, they could die.

People are also taking the viewpoint that if we don't fix the economy now, people will lose jobs, homes, and thus die.

They're worried for themselves, but only in the way that it directly affects them. "I'm not sick, but I might lose my house if we don't open up now, and go out to eat!"

 

[acbytesla]

People are also taking the viewpoint that if we don't fix the economy now, people will lose jobs, homes, and thus die.

They're worried for themselves, but only in the way that it directly affects them. "I'm not sick, but I might lose my house if we don't open up now, and go out to eat!"

Yep.

What this event really shows is the failure of the capitalist system dealing with something like this. This may affect the super-wealthy but the people that really will pay are ordinary Americans. Maybe some actual leadership in the White House might make a difference. By that I mean a President who isn't an idiot and isn't spending every minute trying to divide the country and world.

 

[BobTheCoward]

I agree. It is also not a good policy to claim you have achieved X and therefore don't need to do more - when you haven't.

Wow. Good post. Really glad I didn't claim that.

 

[slyjoe]

This was the nightmare scenario from the moment he was elected - a genuine national emergency whilst the ignorant narcissist was in office. The people who voted for/enabled him were taking a huge risk, and it has come back to bite them.

Actually, it hasn't come back to bite them enough. Nobody in the administration has had to face consequences. The general public is affected the same as Trump supporters. Maybe, down the road, the supporters will be hit harder than the general public, but I sure don't see his supporters paying the price for their support.

 

[acbytesla]

Actually, it hasn't come back to bite them enough. Nobody in the administration has had to face consequences. The general public is affected the same as Trump supporters. Maybe, down the road, the supporters will be hit harder than the general public, but I sure don't see his supporters paying the price for their support.

I keep hoping Trump gets COVID and has to be put on a ventilator.

 

[Suddenly]

I think it's more denialism than anything else.

As long as the number of deaths is small enough that people don't think they or their loved ones are going to be among the dead, they will try and dismiss the problem. If they say that they don't care even if they themselves become victims, it's usually false bravado. They haven't internalized the possibility that, really, seriously, they could die.

There is also that the focus on immediate death sanitizes it somehow. Like it is a binary thing. Not dying means full recovery. Sort of like being shot in a 50s TV western.

It is too early to be certain as to the degree, but it is clear this thing will cause people long term damage. Sure, maybe the fatality rate is 1%, but if another 20% suffer serious damage that limits their ability to work, that is perversely going to be a bigger problem. It is easy to ignore the dead. The walking wounded not so much.

Focusing on death isn't going to change the minds of the macho no mask crowd. That they might wind up incapacitated would scare them more.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I keep hoping Trump gets COVID and has to be put on a ventilator.

Me too.



The Lancet has called for the US to elect someone besides Trump, something I've never seen them do. It's well worth reading the whole thing.

Lancet Editorial, scathing editorial on the Trump administration: Reviving the US CDC

...
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the flagship agency for the nation's public health, has seen its role minimised and become an ineffective and nominal adviser in the response to contain the spread of the virus. The strained relationship between the CDC and the federal government was further laid bare when, according to The Washington Post, Deborah Birx, the head of the US COVID-19 Task Force and a former director of the CDC's Global HIV/AIDS Division, cast doubt on the CDC's COVID-19 mortality and case data by reportedly saying: “There is nothing from the CDC that I can trust”. This is an unhelpful statement, but also a shocking indictment of an agency that was once regarded as the gold standard for global disease detection and control.
In the decades following its founding in 1946, the CDC became a national pillar of public health and globally respected. It trained cadres of applied epidemiologists to be deployed in the USA and abroad. CDC scientists have helped to discover new viruses and develop accurate tests for them. CDC support was instrumental in helping WHO to eradicate smallpox. However, funding to the CDC for a long time has been subject to conservative politics that have increasingly eroded the agency's ability to mount effective, evidence-based public health responses.In the 1980s, the Reagan administration resisted providing the sufficient budget that the CDC needed to fight the HIV/AIDS crisis. The George W Bush administration put restrictions on global and domestic HIV prevention and reproductive health programming.

The Trump administration further chipped away at the CDC's capacity to combat infectious diseases.... More recently, the Trump administration has questioned guidelines that the CDC has provided. These actions have undermined the CDC's leadership and its work during the COVID-19 pandemic....

... The Administration is obsessed with magic bullets—vaccines, new medicines, or a hope that the virus will simply disappear. ...

It ends with this:

The Trump administration's further erosion of the CDC will harm global cooperation in science and public health, as it is trying to do by defunding WHO. ... Americans must put a president in the White House come January, 2021, who will understand that public health should not be guided by partisan politics.

 

[acbytesla]

The more I think about it, this is Trump's only chance at reelection and I can see it working. A sizable chunk of people are looking at their homes and livelihoods being threatened as a result of the shutdowns and few are actually experiencing severe illnesses and death.

 

[Stacyhs]

I keep hoping Trump gets COVID and has to be put on a ventilator.

The Undead don't breathe.

 

[Stacyhs]

The more I think about it, this is Trump's only chance at reelection and I can see it working. A sizable chunk of people are looking at their homes and livelihoods being threatened as a result of the shutdowns and few are actually experiencing severe illnesses and death.

Yep. Your dead mama don't count as long as my mama is OK.

 

[newyorkguy]

trump: "We have more cases than anyone else in the world. Why? We're testing. When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn't do any testing we would have very few cases."

My ex-Boss: "You can't make this stuff up!"

https://twitter.com/i/status/1261017121078861826

 

[Stacyhs]

My ex-Boss: "You can't make this stuff up!"

https://twitter.com/i/status/1261017121078861826

My favorite:

Matthew Miller
@matthewamiller
·
May 14
Not sure Trump is thinking through the implications of normalizing extensive investigations into former presidents.

 

[fromdownunder]

This virus may prove to be very difficult to control. Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb suggests 25,000 new cases a day and 1,000 daily fatalities may become "the new normal."

When you look at some of the data*, this is a pretty reasonable assumption.


Taking two weeks (2 - 8 April, 8 - 14 May) the first being around the peak of transmission, and the second the most recent 7 days, here are the results (rounded):


2 - 8 April



USA: 221,000 new cases (31,000 per day)

New York: 69,000
New Jersey: 25,000

Other: 127,000


8 - 14 May


USA: 161,000 (23,000 per day)

New York: 18,000

New Jersey: 10,000

Other: 133,000



So outside NY and NJ where they have actively "flattened the curve" the rest of the country has seen a small increase in cases, and now responsible for 83% of new cases, when in April it was 62%.


*extrapolated from worldometers.



Norm

 

[acbytesla]

Yep. Your dead mama don't count as long as my mama is OK.

There's a lot of people that cannot stand being unemployed for a year or two.

When they began to shut everything down it definitely occurred to me that not only the disease might kill me, the cure could too.

Trump is betting on people thinking this way. He and the GOP are done trying to bail out those made unemployed and now are going to pin the economic downturn on Democratic leaders that shut their states down.