The all-new "US Politics and coronavirus" thread

[Skeptic Ginger]

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.

The worst in the GOP just keeps emerging.

 

[zooterkin]

A reminder, this is the 'all-new "US Politics and coronavirus" thread', so please make sure your posts are on topic for that. General political posts belong elsewhere.

Thank you.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: zooterkin

 

[Darat]

On moderated status until it has had a clean out.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Darat

 

[Bob001]

I didn't know that the guidebook the Obama administration left for the Trumpers, who apparently didn't read it, was a public record. But it is.
https://brian.carnell.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/WH-Pandemic-Playbook.pdf
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/25/trump-coronavirus-national-security-council-149285

 

[Matthew Best]

What’s the Price of Living in America? Your Life.

America is still having a wave of death, which, thanks to “reopening,” is going to surge ever upwards. And Americans are just going to perish under its crushing weight.

This is what baffles the world about Americans, though. Their deathwish. They genuinely don’t seem to care if they die. They didn’t when it was a lack of healthcare, guns, or no retirement. They voted for all those things, over and over again. So why would they care if it was a virus killing them this time?

I know that sounds harsh. But it’s true. And the world is bewildered by a society of people who, by and large, seem totally indifferent to shocking levels of cruelty, brutality, and mass death, which Coronavirus proves all over again, in an even more explicit and gruesome way.

You’re already ten to a hundred times more likely to die of Coronavirus as an American. That number is going to go up.

 

[Blue Mountain]

What’s the Price of Living in America? Your Life.

America is still having a wave of death, which, thanks to “reopening,” is going to surge ever upwards. And Americans are just going to perish under its crushing weight.

This is what baffles the world about Americans, though. Their deathwish. They genuinely don’t seem to care if they die. They didn’t when it was a lack of healthcare, guns, or no retirement. They voted for all those things, over and over again. So why would they care if it was a virus killing them this time?

I know that sounds harsh. But it’s true. And the world is bewildered by a society of people who, by and large, seem totally indifferent to shocking levels of cruelty, brutality, and mass death, which Coronavirus proves all over again, in an even more explicit and gruesome way.

You’re already ten to a hundred times more likely to die of Coronavirus as an American. That number is going to go up.

I'm not impressed by the article. The writer appears to be a doomsday soothsayer.

He compares the experience of the USA with New Zealand, which at only 22 deaths is a mystery we're discussing here in another thread. He extrapolates that unusually low number to "America should have had less than ten thousand deaths." Here in Canada (which I'll admit had a slow but eventually effective response) we've seen 8,100 deaths and will probably see 10,000 this year.

Likewise he ignores France, Sweden, Italy, the UK and Belgium, all of which (currently) have higher death rates per million population. The US is currently at 355/million; Belgium is topping out the list of countries with more than ten million people at 833.

If he posted that screed here I think most others would strongly disagree with his rhetoric.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

He compares the experience of the USA with New Zealand, which at only 22 deaths is a mystery we're discussing here in another thread. He extrapolates that unusually low number to "America should have had less than ten thousand deaths."

That's about right. You see, if we had promptly closed our borders to everyone and locked down properly like New Zealand did, the virus wouldn't have spread to nursing homes etc. and killed so many old people.

Only problem is we were never going to do that, so the 'should have been' is a goal that was unattainable in practice. However we absolutely could have had a lot fewer deaths if we had responded better. If Hillary had become president instead of Trump I am sure we would have. So the deplorables have a lot to answer for.

Likewise he ignores France, Sweden, Italy, the UK and Belgium, all of which (currently) have higher death rates per million population. The US is currently at 355/million; Belgium is topping out the list of countries with more than ten million people at 833.

There are other countries in the World? Who knew? Yes, some other countries did a bad job too - that doesn't excuse us.

If he posted that screed here I think most others would strongly disagree with his rhetoric.

First the virus was 'Chinese', then it was 'fake', will 'disappear all by itself', not as scary as the stock market going down, no big deal if 100,000 people die, and finally not worth giving up our 'freedoms' to deal to. Seems the virus has plenty of rhetoric on its side.

 

[Aridas]

This is what baffles the world about Americans, though. Their deathwish. They genuinely don’t seem to care if they die. They didn’t when it was a lack of healthcare, guns, or no retirement. They voted for all those things, over and over again. So why would they care if it was a virus killing them this time?

I know that sounds harsh. But it’s true

It's... actually not true. But seeing that would require more than a very, very superficial examination of American politics and especially the Republican Party as it very frequently does not do what the average Republican actually wants (but lies to the average Republican like crazy and does a much better job at exploiting biases).

 

[newyorkguy]

...However we absolutely could have had a lot fewer deaths if we had responded better. If Hillary had become president instead of Trump I am sure we would have...

I agree with the above because it seems to be true. It seems to me that comparing the death rate per million population among different countries mostly shows the severity of the infection in those places. Looking at new cases trending gives a better idea of the effectiveness of the response. Belgium and Italy may have higher death rates per million citizens but they have managed to flatten the curve while the US still struggles to do that. The charts below very clearly demonstrate the differences.

 

[zooterkin]

Derail sent to AAH.

Please keep to the topic; there are other threads for general political points.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: zooterkin

 

[newyorkguy]

Covid-19 infections seem to be entering a new and scary phase. Health officials are warning, this is not going away. Already some officials are preparing for what could be a big increase in cases in the Fall.

Below I'm quoting parts of an Associated Press report posted to NBC News.

States are rolling back lockdowns, but the coronavirus isn't done with the U.S. Cases are rising in nearly half the states, according to an Associated Press analysis, a worrying trend that could intensify as people return to work and venture out during the summer. In Arizona, hospitals have been told to prepare for the worst. Texas has more hospitalized COVID-19 patients than at any time before. And the governor of North Carolina said recent jumps caused him to rethink plans to reopen schools or businesses. NBC News link

I think we all remember the way North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper was called out and ridiculed recently by president trump after the Governor refused to 'guarantee' the state would be able to host the National GOP convention this summer.

Despite earlier predictions that Arizona was ready to begin reopening, the results are not good there.

Republican Gov. Doug Ducey ended Arizona’s stay-at-home order on May 15 and eased restrictions on businesses. Arizona residents who were cooped up for six weeks flooded Phoenix-area bar districts, ignoring social distancing guidelines. The state began seeing a surge of new cases and hospitalizations about 10 days later. “It seems pretty clear to me that what we’re seeing is directly related to the end of the stay-at-home order,” said Will Humble, executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association.

Texas was also one of the first states to reopen. Again, many of their residents are paying a price.

Few states are rebooting faster than Texas, where hospitalizations surged past 2,100 on Wednesday for the first time during the pandemic. That's a 42 percent increase in patients since Memorial Day weekend, when beachgoers swarmed Texas’ coastline and a water park near Houston opened to big crowds in defiance of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s orders. Texas’ percentage of tests coming back positive has also jumped to levels that are among the nation's highest. State officials point to hot spots at meatpacking plants and prisons in rural counties, where thousands of new cases have cropped up, but have not offered explanations for a rise in numbers elsewhere.

 

[Meadmaker]

Already some officials are preparing for what could be a big increase in cases in the Fall.

In the fall, or is it next week?

The numbers from Florida are pretty scary.

 

[newyorkguy]

It's both. Public health officials are concerned we may b seeing the beginnings of a second wave. And they're worried about another surge in the Fall. You mention Florida. This is from a CNN state-by-state roundup:

Florida reopened certain businesses through much of the state on May 4. Starting May 4, restaurants were allowed to offer outdoor seating with six-foot space between tables and indoor seating at 25% capacity. Retail can operate at 25% of indoor capacity, and bars, gyms and personal services such as hairdressers will remain closed. Churches remain on "voluntary social distancing," and movie theaters remain closed. The state's stay-at-home order ended on April 30. Gov. Ron DeSantis defended the decision made by local leaders to reopen the beaches as he awaits recommendations from the Re-Open Florida Task Force. Link to CNN state-by-state report

 

[Meadmaker]

Very interesting article in National Review about tests, and how the United States ramped up production as much as it did.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/coronavirus-media-wrong-about-trump-testing-strategy/


Lowry's (the author's) take on it is that the administration did a great job, and the media refused to tell the story. I can understand why he might say that. I don't think it's inherently false. However, I have a different take on it, personally. I think the person who didn't tell the story was a fellow named Donald J. Trump. He didn't tell the story, because it wasn't about him. All he did was say, "Look at me, I'm awesome."

And, did they do a great job? At the beginning, Hell no. The article even admits that. As time went on? The article describes them doing the right things, but, honestly, I would say most of them were rather obvious things. There were people who worked hard to make it happen, and they should be given credit. Of course, DJT doles out credit rather sparingly. You can't make anyone look too good, because they might outshine Trump.

Moreover, I still don't see evidence of a true plan, even in that article. They got the contracts out to make lots of tests, but was it enough? What would be enough? Did they meet a target? That sort of story is not Trump's style. He isn't going to stand up and say, "My experts tell me that we need 500,000* tests per day. Right now, we are on track to deliver 300,000 tests per day by the end of the month, and we have people working very hard to find ways to make up the shortfall."

That's an accurate message. It's an important message. Unfortunately, it's not the sort of message that Donald Trump felt it was in his interests to tell. It isn't "We did awesome!"

I think the media does deserve some of the blame. The factual part of Lowry's article is important information. Because he's writing for a conservative magazine, he puts a pro-Trump spin on it, but in addition, there are simple facts in the story. That information is useful and informative, and should have been presented in other sources. Both the media and Donald Trump are obsessed with Trump's polling numbers and the political consequences of actions or, more commonly, of statements.

*Or whatever that number is. It's really an estimate, and probably a range, because no one knows for certain what the real number is.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

The article's utter bull ****, Meadmaker.

... How we ramped up coronavirus testing.
The White House had the idea of opening hundreds of ambitious mobile testing sites at the outset of the coronavirus crisis. But there was a problem: Officials quickly realized that creating that many sites would use up an inordinate amount of the nation’s limited supply of testing swabs.

Oh puhleese! That's about as realistic as Trump asking Dr Birx to look into injecting disinfectants into a person because it kills the virus on a surface. Clearly a Trump fantasy.

It's crap. First off, swabs were only one thing that was in shortage. There weren't people to administer the tests. Second, This is June 14. We still aren't doing enough tests here in WA State. The CDC guideline limits testing to people with minimal symptoms and people with known exposures. So if I say I went to a BLM march, I feel well, but I'm into the incubation period, some health care providers might deem that an exposure, some might not.

Here's the current CDC Guideline for testing today, let alone back in March or April:Recommended testing for asymptomatic individuals without known or suspected SARS-CoV-2 exposure for early identification in special settings You can test people in nursing homes, prisons and so on. There aren't enough tests to allow testing a person who is concerned about exposure but doesn't have a specific known exposure.

Here's what's on the CDC summary page:

Most people will have mild illness and can recover at home without medical care and may not need to be tested.
CDC has guidance for who should be tested, but decisions about testing are made by state and local external icon health departments or healthcare providers.
If you have symptoms of COVID-19 and want to get tested, call your healthcare provider first.
You can also visit your state or local health department’s website to look for the latest local information on testing.
Although supplies of tests are increasing, it may still be difficult to find a place to get tested.

So states without the capacity to test might test even fewer people.


Back to your link:

“We had 1.2 million swabs in the country for the month for everything,” recalls Admiral Brett Giroir, the HHS official who became the administration’s testing czar in mid-March and soon will be returning to his regular duties.

That number wasn’t going to come close to meeting the need, and it wasn’t clear how the gap would be made up. ... There were really only two sources of these rare kinds of swabs.” One was based in Italy, the other a small company in Maine called Puritan.

They weren't "rare". There were a number of cultures we used those swabs for. I had a couple dozen on the shelf I had used for pertussis cultures. I donated them.

“Now,” he continues, “we couldn’t get anything out of Italy because it was locked down. Literally, in those first couple days the Air Force sent a C-17 to Italy to physically go get the swabs and bring them back to the U.S.”

The swab crunch in March was just one of the obstacles to clearing the way for what needed to be an unprecedented ramp-up in testing to address the COVID crisis....

The story of how the country went from nothing to more than half-a-million COVID tests on some days is a tale of inspired private–public cooperation. After bad initial stumbles when the Centers for Disease Control fouled up the initial test (at a time when it had a monopoly on testing) and when a Food and Drug Administration regulatory bottleneck stymied the development of testing in the private sector, the administration found its footing.

CDC only had a monopoly on testing because the FDA wasn't allowing anyone else to test. There were millions of tests abroad if the FDA allowed import but they didn't do that either. But I digress.

That excerpt from the paper is a typical Trump tap dance removed from the facts on the ground.

WA State says this on their website:

Who can get tested?
Anyone who's concerned about their health can call their doctor and talk to them about getting a test.

Sounds good but then those providers are following the CDC guidelines and they wouldn't test you just because you are afraid you've been exposed.


WA State's dashboard shows monthly testing today to be ~44000 tests. Sounds like a big number just like The HHS lackey using numbers in the millions. Ooooo, big number, Trump is a big man, solving the country's problems in a big way.

More than half the state is not meeting the state's guideline for number of tests administered.

It’s obviously not an apples-to-apples comparison, but the hard-hit states like New York (151,000 per million), New Jersey (124,000 per million), and Massachusetts (111,000 per million) have higher rates of per capita testing than the major countries — including Spain (96,000), the United Kingdom (100,000), and Portugal (96,000) — with the highest levels of testing per capita.

The positivity rate of tests, a key indicator of whether enough people are being tested, has been dropping nationally since mid April and is now below 5 percent. The World Health Organization has set a rough benchmark of 5 percent. (If you’re above it, you aren’t testing enough.)

Stephen MacMillan, the CEO of the diagnostic manufacturer Hologic, says of the roughly 10 million tests that were conducted in May, “there had never in the history of diagnostics been a test to develop faster or used in this volume.”

This is nothing but Trump bragging points. "We tested more people than blah blah blah".

Where is the discussion of how the country is actually doing? Death rate's still climbing. States that are opening up too early because of Trump's wishful thinking the problem is over, time to get the economy up and rolling before Nov. Florida's hiding cases.

It's not going to go away with wishful thinking. Hospitals in states that are ignoring the problem are soon to be overwhelmed the way they were overwhelmed in NY and here in WA.

The article goes on to proclaim fake news is reporting only the failures. Yeah well, I'm here on the front lines (as an advisor), thank goodness I only have to go into health care facilities and not stay in them for an 8 or 12 hour day.

The HHS lackey paints a rosy picture of how wonderful Trump is.


I could find more rebuttals to Trump's rosy world but I have to go to bed. The proof's in the pudding. Rates of infection are only just starting to rise.




Edited to add another personal example on the testing. I went in a long term care facility last week. They finally have enough PPE. The director told me Trump's FEMA actually confiscated some of their supplies on route. But now the orders are getting through.

My neighbor still can't get N95 masks for her elderly parents, one with lung cancer. I couldn't get any from my suppliers either and I looked on Amazon. There was one distributor selling masks for $12/each (outrageous markup) and who knows how long it would take to get the masks. There's no guarantee because it isn't shipped by Amazon.

Back to testing. The LTC facility remains COVID 19 free. But I was there to see a patient a nurse had had a needle stick exposure to. The patient had pneumonia and they wanted her to be taken to the ED. Long story short, the family didn't want her to go, she probably had aspiration pneumonia, all that was fine.

But it led me to ask about staff testing because someone could bring it in at any time. Everyone, patients and staff were tested once. I asked if they were going to be tested at regular intervals. Nope, testing not available for that.

And I have a dental clinic opening back up. They wanted to test the staff. I could not find a place available they could be tested.

All of that was this month. The HHS lackey is the one painting the fake news story.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

I think the media does deserve some of the blame.

The media includes Fox News etc., so you are partly right. But it isn't a monolithic entity, and since it consists almost entirely of private for-profit businesses I can't see how they are 'to blame' for giving us the news we ask for.

As you admitted, the information is out there - you just have to read it. Those of us who are actually interested in facts have plenty of places to find them. I have several sites bookmarked that I visit every day to get the facts. This is the 21st century. We have the Internet and Google, so we don't have to rely on commercial 'News' to inform us.

NPR: Tracking The Pandemic: Are Coronavirus Cases Rising Or Falling In Your State?

 

[Delphic Oracle]

I was one degree/close contact with a person who declared symptoms (turned out to either not be or a mild case). I luckily found out about a pop-up drive thru test in my area with no requirements. The "testing is free" claim only means your insurance can't bill you for it, they have to pay the full cost. I have no insurance or primary care provider (as said above, makes no difference anyways). The health department does no direct testing. A private clinic would charge and hold $300 (I would end up paying if negative).

The pop up sites are running on grants to states. It's a multilayered hell of subcontracting in the finest gig economy style. I've detailed several issues with my experience, but I know the coordinating company fired the lab that took weeks to finally declare my results "indeterminate."

Also, possibly relevant about the swabs issue, the website showed the video for the deep nasopharanx scrape, but the test they were administering was a much more shallow scrape with a shorter instrument.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I was one degree/close contact with a person who declared symptoms (turned out to either not be or a mild case). I luckily found out about a pop-up drive thru test in my area with no requirements. The "testing is free" claim only means your insurance can't bill you for it, they have to pay the full cost. I have no insurance or primary care provider (as said above, makes no difference anyways). The health department does no direct testing. A private clinic would charge and hold $300 (I would end up paying if negative).

The pop up sites are running on grants to states. It's a multilayered hell of subcontracting in the finest gig economy style. I've detailed several issues with my experience, but I know the coordinating company fired the lab that took weeks to finally declare my results "indeterminate."

Also, possibly relevant about the swabs issue, the website showed the video for the deep nasopharanx scrape, but the test they were administering was a much more shallow scrape with a shorter instrument.

Which state are you in you didn't need a provider to order the test first including registration?

 

[Delphic Oracle]

Which state are you in you didn't need a provider to order the test first including registration?

I'm in Missouri.

eTrueNorth may be the provider.

The testing portal is at doineedacovid19test.com

I see 42 states and D.C. listed.

This program is part of the public-private partnership announced on March 13, 2020.*eTrueNorth*is working with HHS, state and local officials, and pharmacy and lab partners to open testing sites in areas of need.
Testing locations are drive-thru and by appointment only. There is no out-of-pocket cost for the test. Testing follows*CDC Guidelines*to determine eligibility. Currently eligible:

Healthcare workers and first responders.

Other individuals with symptoms.

Other individuals without symptoms, in accordance with state and local plans and for public health monitoring.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

Also, possibly relevant about the swabs issue, the website showed the video for the deep nasopharanx scrape, but the test they were administering was a much more shallow scrape with a shorter instrument.

Then it wasn't a good test anyway. Covid has a long incubation period, so they need to reach way back and sample next week's sneeze to be sure.