The all-new "US Politics and coronavirus" thread

[The Great Zaganza]

Trump Campaign Says You Can't Sue If You Get COVID-19 At His Rally

Those registering for President Donald Trump’s massive rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, next week will notice a message on his campaign website when they sign up: You may contract COVID-19 at the rally, but it’s not Trump’s fault.​

The notice apparently reads.

By clicking register below, you are acknowledging that an inherent risk of exposure to COVID-19 exists in any public place where people are present. By attending the Rally, you and any guests voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19 and agree not to hold Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.; BOK Center; ASM Global; or any of their affiliates, directors, officers, employees, agents, contractors, or volunteers liable for any illness or injury.​

If you get COVID at a Trump Rally, it means you didn't support Trump enough.
You Traitor.

 

[Safe-Keeper]

If you get COVID at a Trump Rally, it means you didn't support Trump enough.
You Traitor.

Also, if someone does gets Covid, the Führer will get "lava-mad".

 

[newyorkguy]

Not just apparently. If you want to register: Donald J. Trump events, Tulsa MAGA Rally, June 19

They're probably well-advised to warn people of the risk of becoming infected at a large rally in Tulsa Oklahoma. Back on May 21st the local ABC TV news station, KTUL, reported,

Coronavirus infection data, such as hospitalizations, continues to trend in the right direction for Tulsa, but the head of the Tulsa Health Department issued this stark warning Thursday: “This battle is not won. This war is not over," Executive Director Bruce Dart said. "We still have to remain vigilant. We still have to do our part to break the chain of transmission for this virus.”

Most businesses are now open. Tulsa – and the state as a whole – appear to be on track to launch into the final phase of the governor’s reopening plan come June 1. Link

As health officials have warned, relaxing restrictions too soon carries a risk of new waves of infection. Looking at the charts below -- from the Tulsa Health Department -- shows a spike in new cases. In fact, I think the city is right now at it's highest level of new cases.

 

[newyorkguy]

Even local Fox affiliates seem a bit uncomfortable with the rally in Tulsa on June 19th. This is an article on Fox station KOKH in Oklahoma City.

President Donald Trump is planning to hold his first rally of the coronavirus era in Tulsa next week, but there is a catch. To attend the rally you have to register for a ticket and acknowledge that you 'voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19'. It goes on to say that by getting this ticket you can't hold President Trump liable for any illness. Link

Another article on the Oklahoma City Fox site under the headline: Downplaying virus risk, Trump gets back to business as usual

At the White House, aides now routinely flout internal rules requiring face masks. The president's campaign is again scheduling mass arena rallies. And he is back to spending summer weekends at his New Jersey golf club. Three months after President Donald Trump bowed to the realities of a pandemic that put big chunks of life on pause and killed more Americans than several major wars, Trump is back to business as usual — even as coronavirus cases are on the upswing in many parts of the country.

Amid renewed fears of a virus resurgence, financial markets — frequently highlighted by Trump as a sign of economic recovery — suffered their worst drop since March on Thursday. At the White House, though, officials played down the severity of the virus surge and sought to blame it on factors beyond Trump's forceful push to reopen the economy, which he's counting on to help him win reelection. Link

 

[newyorkguy]

I've seen a lot of emphasis here on test results as a way to measure the virus' spread and the effectiveness of prevention methods. Most health officials caution that as testing ramped up the percentage of positive numbers were sure to fall. Below are quotes from a Lohud (Lower Hudson Valley) news service article. I'm providing a link but the article is undoubtedly paywalled.

In the pandemic’s early days, New York and other states restricted testing to suspected positives due in part to limited testing kit access. It stemmed from flaws in initial Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, testing kits supplied to states. At the time, New York was shipping out a couple dozen coronavirus testing samples each day to the CDC and waiting up to a week for results. Then, New York gained federal approval on Feb. 29 for its own state-designed coronavirus tests. A few weeks later, it was conducting about 7,000 tests per day, shortly after the first drive-thru testing site opened on March 13 in the city of New Rochelle, one of the first COVID-19 clusters in the nation. By contrast, New York is now testing about 50,000 people per day at 800 sites statewide, the highest in the U.S.

“I would be a little bit skeptical on absolute numbers and what those testing numbers mean,” said Dr. Luis Ostrosky, professor of medicine and epidemiology at UT Health in Houston. “There is not much science to say, ‘You need so many tests per day to be safer,’” he added. Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said last week that better testing involves more than increasing the number of tests. "I don’t want to get into the number of tests because I don’t think that’s the real issue," Redfield told a Congressional committee Thursday. "It’s how testing is used and what’s the consequence." Link

This is pretty much what I presumed all along. In the early stages "New York and other states restricted testing to suspected positives." As more testing became possible the states offered tests to anyone who wanted it and that was almost certain to produce a big drop in the positive rate. You could and did have a situation where the number of new cases in an area were rising while the positive infection rate for those tested was dropping. It was argued, including here, that the decline in the percentage of positive tests was a better indicator than the number of new cases. It was argued that the number of actual new cases could be misleading while the percentage of positive tests was a better indicator. That never made sense to me. As testing ramped up the characteristics of those being tested changed dramatically from people with symptoms to anyone who wanted a test.

 

[Trebuchet]

Top ten states for new cases yesterday, per Worldometer:
California
Texas
Florida
Arizona
North Carolina
Georgia
Alabama
Illinois
Maryland
New York

The upper portion of that list is pretty red, barring California which has a huge population.

 

[newyorkguy]

I would point out that New York State still being in the top ten reflects how bad the epidemic was in this state. New York is trending way down. Link to Google/Wiki tracker Maryland may be next highest (some surveys show New York ahead of Maryland) but Maryland's overall trend is not nearly as good. The other side of that is, while just under 1% of Maryland's population has been infected, New York's infection rate is almost double, at 2%.

 

[Armitage72]

Don't worry, everyone. A top White House economic advisor insists that there is no second wave. Who knows more about the spread of disease than an economist?

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow on Friday declared that a “second wave” of the coronavirus was not descending upon the country, even as cases of Covid-19 are spiking in more than a dozen states.

“There is no emergency. There is no second wave. I don’t know where that got started on Wall Street,” Kudlow told “Fox & Friends.”

Although Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, acknowledged he is “not the health expert," he said he had spoken with the administration’s top public health officials “at some length” Thursday evening. “They are saying there is no second spike. Let me repeat that. There is no second spike,” he said.

“What you do have is certain spots are seeing a little bit of a jump up. Some small metropolitan areas are seeing it. The CDC and the health people are all over it. They’ve sent some task forces out to deal with it,” Kudlow added, partly attributing increases in Covid-19 cases to more widespread testing availability.

Move along. Nothing to see here.

 

[Meadmaker]

According to the site I use, Michigan had 5000 new cases yesterday. I assume that what actually happened was that there was a different way of counting introduced, or old cases were reclassified based on updated criteria. What I wish I knew was whether the reclassified cases were from early in the epidemic, or recently. I hope it was early on, because we had been doing quite well with very low numbers. I hope those numbers were accurate, and this change was to reflect old cases.

 

[Blue Mountain]

What do you call a leader who kills 22,000 of his own citizens?

A great leader? A gift from God?

Or a mass murderer?

The population of the United States is 8.6 times that of Canada. Based on population alone, all other things being equal, one can expect the number of deaths from COVID-19 to be 8.6 times that of Canada.

One thing that is decidedly not equal is the extreme outlying numbers in New York State, currently at 1,580 deaths per million population. There's nothing comparable to it in Canada; the worst hit province is Quebec, and their death rate is less than a half that of New York's at 598/million. Therefore, in the following table I attempt to even out the numbers by subtracting out New York State's population and deaths, then applying the resulting deaths/million to the entire US population.

US population |

330.764​

| million
Less: population of New York State |

19.456​

| million
Adjusted population |

311.308​

| million
Total US deaths to 11 June |

116,034​

| worldometer.com (351/million)
Less: deaths in New York State |

30,741​

| worldometer.com (1580/million)
Adjusted death count |

85,293​

| (=116,034 - 30,741)
Adjusted deaths/adjusted million population |

274​

| (=85,293 ÷ 311.308)
Adjusted total deaths |

90,624​

| (=274.0 × 330.764)
Deaths in Canada to 11 June |

7,994​

| canada.ca/coronavirus (212/million)
Expected US deaths based on Canada:US ratio |

68,748​

| (=7,994 × 8.6 [Canada:US population ratio])
Excess US fatalities compared to Canada |

21,875​

| (=90,624 - 68,748)

Based on this analysis, there are almost 22,000 excess deaths compared to Canada after evening out the numbers from New York State. In my opinion, most of these are due to the inept response of the Trump administration. Some of it is due to the tendency of Americans to distrust their government.

 

[Trebuchet]

Don't worry, everyone. A top White House economic advisor insists that there is no second wave. Who knows more about the spread of disease than an economist?





Move along. Nothing to see here.

Racism doesn't exist either, according to him.

 

[newyorkguy]

According to the site I use, Michigan had 5000 new cases yesterday...

I don't know what website you're using but I think you need to reread whatever it was you saw. This is from a local paper in Michigan.

Last week, Michigan began releasing new data that included probable, not just confirmed, cases and deaths...This change added more than 5,000 cases and more than 200 deaths that happened over two months to one weekend of the state’s reporting on the COVID-19 outbreak. Holland (Mich.) Sentinel link

The addition of 'probable cases' rather than just confirmed cases, effects the total or overall number of cases and deaths. These were not new cases on the date they were reported.

 

[Meadmaker]

I don't know what website you're using but I think you need to reread whatever it was you saw. This is from a local paper in Michigan.


The addition of 'probable cases' rather than just confirmed cases, effects the total or overall number of cases and deaths. These were not new cases on the date they were reported.

Thanks. I assumed it was something along those lines.

 

[Armitage72]

A Republican state lawmaker in Ohio asked if "the colored population" is more susceptible to COVID-19 because they don't wash their hands as well as other groups.

Ohio state Sen. Steve Huffman, an emergency room physician, asked the question during a state Senate Health Committee hearing why African Americans are being disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, the Dayton Daily News reported.

“My point is I understand African Americans have a higher incidence of chronic conditions and it makes them more susceptible to death from COVID," Huffman said. "But why doesn’t it make them more susceptible to just get COVID?”

“Could it just be that African Americans or the colored population do not wash their hands as well as other groups or wear a mask or do not socially distance themselves? That could be the explanation of the higher incidence?”

 

[newyorkguy]

Thanks. I assumed it was something along those lines.

From the news articles I read, apparently these were cases where the person a) had symptoms and b) had been in contact with someone who had been confirmed as being infected with Covid-19. I presume the suspected cases were people with mild symptoms that did not require hospitalization and were either not tested at the time or the test was inconclusive. Now Michigan has decided to add those cases in to the totals. I have no problem with that. I think it's a good idea.

 

[Minoosh]

A Republican state lawmaker in Ohio asked if "the colored population" is more susceptible to COVID-19 because they don't wash their hands as well as other groups.

His statement contradicts itself, anyway:

“My point is I understand African Americans have a higher incidence of chronic conditions and it makes them more susceptible to death from COVID," Huffman said. "But why doesn’t it make them more susceptible to just get COVID?”

“Could it just be that African Americans or the colored population do not wash their hands as well as other groups or wear a mask or do not socially distance themselves? That could be the explanation of the higher incidence?”

First, who the hell says "colored" these days?

Second, I *think* he was trying to say that black people are more susceptible to getting Covid - otherwise there's no reason to presume that they're not washing their hands thoroughly.

And, he's been fired from his ER job. As a freakin' doctor, no less. You gotta wonder how he got so far in life.

 

[Blue Mountain]

His statement contradicts itself, anyway:

First, who the hell says "colored" these days?

From what I read, the word "colored" in is used only in the heading. It's clickbait as far as I'm concerned. The politician used "African Americans."

 

[pgwenthold]

From what I read, the word "colored" in is used only in the heading. It's clickbait as far as I'm concerned. The politician used "African Americans."

Read the article again

 

[Babbylonian]

And, he's been fired from his ER job. As a freakin' doctor, no less. You gotta wonder how he got so far in life.

White privilege served with MD privilege topping.

 

[Blue Mountain]

Read the article again

I did. You're right.

... Could it just be that African Americans or the colored population do not wash their hands as well as other groups or wear a mask or do not socially distance themselves? That could be the explanation of the higher incidence? ...