Cont: The all-new "US Politics and coronavirus" thread pt. 2

[Trebuchet]

10% of my first cousins are dead from coronavirus. She died on Easter Sunday while her Republican governed state was fighting to open the churches for super-spreader events.

FU, Republicans.

 

[carlitos]

Ah, sorry about that, then. I was working from an incomplete and unsourced quote. Trump is clearly wrong there. Even with my very charitable donations of estimates from back in March and April, that couldn't possibly be higher than 85%, and that's if we are also charitable about what "totally harmless" means.



In view of this added information, I retract my previous possible interpretation.



Well, that leaves the ass-pull, then.

If only someone had posted trump’s complete quote, then added a math problem with 100% of coronavirus cases equals 99% totally harmless and 1% harmed, maybe you could have envisioned it earlier.

 

[acbytesla]

Wow.

This is the kind of thing that if any other president did it, people would see it as a move to improve data collection. But then again, if any other president had been in office, something vaguely like this would have been first out of the gate and functioning by April. In other words, any other president would have said "We need to make sure our data is top notch and accurate," and he would have asked the CDC to supervise development of top notch reporting capability.

As it is, it's Trump, and four months into the crisis, right as the numbers are making him look very bad, suddenly he takes interest. Why would anyone trust him?

Well, of course, there are True Believers, and always will be, but I would hope those are no more than 1/3 of the voters.

I hope.

The administration can't order this. And I doubt the hospitals will comply.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

How do you want to bet that the daily number of new cases in the US will magically and dramatically decrease within a few days?

It doesn't matter. Trump can't hide overflowing hospitals.

If I were to bet, I'd bet we see Trump melting down more and more in the coming weeks, maybe months.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

10% of my first cousins are dead from coronavirus. She died on Easter Sunday while her Republican governed state was fighting to open the churches for super-spreader events.

FU, Republicans.

 

[thaiboxerken]

Trump says it's Obama's fault for screwing up the testing....

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

The administration can't order this. And I doubt the hospitals will comply.

It also suggests Trump and his flunkies don't understand how the reporting system works.

If you are a physician or nurse practitioner who makes the diagnosis of COVID 19, or you are a lab, you would be complying with the CDC National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS)

About 3,000 public health departments gather and use data on these diseases to protect their local communities. Through NNDSS, CDC receives and uses these data to keep people healthy and defend America from health threats.

NNDSS is a multifaceted program that includes the surveillance system for collection, analysis, and sharing of health data. It also includes policies, laws, electronic messaging standards, people, partners, information systems, processes, and resources at the local, state, territorial, and national levels.

Also certain facilities like nursing homes and schools have to report specific outbreaks. One example is if your school experiences > 10% absenteeism.

Trump ordering a change in this reporting system would (like a lot of stupid great ideas Trump has) cause nothing but confusion.

I'm required by law to report all notifiable conditions. It has nothing to do with the hospitals reporting certain data. I'm not sure who Trump thinks will be providing these results. I certainly haven't gotten any letters telling me to change how I would report notifiable conditions.

 

[Aridas]

This is worrying:



https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-53392817

Add on the White House's campaign to undermine Fauci's credibility to that.

Still, that may not be as directly bad as, well...

Trump orders hospitals to bypass CDC in reporting Covid data, so his people see the numbers first

Looks like the official numbers for the US are about to get much more problematic, if Trump is successful. ETA - thank you SG for beating me to it.

The latter part is true but let's go with the lowest estimates:

Up to 90% of infectees are not reported or detected. If that's true, then it is most likely because of absence of symptoms or mild symptons.

Known symptoms, at least. There are a couple points worth noting in particular, though, when you say this. First, it's generally agreed that deaths are almost certainly being significantly under-reported as well. For example, the surges in dead on medical help's arrival heart attacks in areas that are hit hard by COVID have generally meant that they got skipped with testing so that resources could be focused on the living. Second, at last check, even what is likely a significant majority of asymptomatic cases have been ending up with scarred lungs - which is not even remotely close to the kind of thing that's harmless, even if it's not immediately noticable. Similarly, brain damage tends to also not be as easily detectable, but is likely to be depressingly common.

99% "harmless" is utter BS.

To be clear here, my response isn't about what Trump said, but rather about the actual facts.

 

[gypsyjackson]

Just seen this:

Ohio man shuns masks, dies of Covid (NY Daily News; other reports are available).

Army veteran, 37, so possibly relatively healthy, though the pics make him look a bit overweight. Hopefully didn’t infect anyone else.

 

[Belz...]

If only someone had posted trump’s complete quote, then added a math problem with 100% of coronavirus cases equals 99% totally harmless and 1% harmed, maybe you could have envisioned it earlier.

I don't understand your point there, but I've already conceded.

 

[Belz...]

Trump says it's Obama's fault for screwing up the testing....

Yeah I heard that... just... what?

 

[The Don]

Yeah I heard that... just... what?

tbh he's been saying this since early March (at least).

The reasoning goes that there was some FDA rule that the Obama administration had implemented which made diagnostic tests more difficult to have approved.

Of course it's complete garbage and is debunked every time it's brought up but eventually a lie becomes the truth for some people if it's repeated enough. Here's a factcheck article from March on the subject:

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/trumps-misplaced-blame-on-obama-for-coronavirus-tests/

 

[varwoche]

OK governor Kevin Stitt has covid.

He attended the Tulsa rally.

The stalwart, dimwitted Trump cultist isn't letting this little hiccup throw him off his game. "I'm not thinking about a mask mandate at all".

 

[The Don]

OK governor Kevin Stitt has covid.

He attended the Tulsa rally.

The stalwart, dimwitted Trump cultist isn't letting this little hiccup throw him off his game. "I'm not thinking about a mask mandate at all".

If he doesn't die then presumably he thinks it's fine and so no need for masks.

If he does die, then he's not in a position to do anything about masks.

Either way he won't be doing anything regarding a mask mandate.

 

[varwoche]

Speaking of dimwitted Republicans who attended the Tulsa rally and since tested positive... News about Herman Cain is scarce. Apparently he's still hospitalized. His bat **** crazy twitter feed has remained active, but not being operated by Cain.

 

[carlitos]

I don't understand your point there, but I've already conceded.

Thanks. I really don't know how you could have missed this post but here just for fun:

If we take 'harmless' to be literal, sure. But if we include mild symptoms and lack of complicstions as included in 'harmless', I'm not so sure.

The President said "totally harmless." That would mean that the other 99% of Covid-19 patients escaped with ZERO harm. Totally unharmed.

Trump pulled this number out of his ass, and I cannot understand where your numbers or estimates or whatever are coming from.

Maybe write out your numbers in a table so we can follow your logic? I see you seem to be multiplying 90% and 85%, which gets me to a number quite a bit less than 99%, but I can't tell what you are saying - asymptomatic, just kinda sick, what?

Remember, the President said this idiotic thing, so the bar for you to clear if you want it to be accurate is:

100% of Coronavirus cases =

99% "totally harmless" (I'll count sick for a couple of days like a cold here, since everyone gets colds)
+1% dead / seriously ill / hospitalized / sick for weeks / lifelong health effects

We have tested over 40 million people. By so doing, we show cases, 99% of which are totally harmless.

 

[Belz...]

Thanks. I really don't know how you could have missed this post but here just for fun:

I probably read that way too fast and missed it. It seems to ba a growing problem with age. I was going with the earlier, incomplete quote.

 

[Minoosh]

Do you mean here, or in general? Because if you mean in general, there appear to be a number of folks who take his word on the topic as gospel. Just yesterday at some self-indulgent press thingee or the other, Trump bloviated on how schools must open, and the gathered unmasked idiots applauded and nodded like . . . idiots.

My crazy catholic SiL and her family sure think he's the expert on this pandemic.

I wasn't talking about people in general, but the people whose job it is to respond to the pandemic. He has politicized things so much that I wonder if governors, cities or state health departments are maybe finally looking to what the science says re masks, reopening etc. The governor of my state is a Republican but not a total loon, and although he'll suck up to Trump in public I doubt if he's going to use anything Trump says when it comes down to, say, reopening schools. Also a lot of Republicans don't want to go to the GOP convention and some think it should be canceled. They're not taking Trump's word that it's going to disappear like a miracle anymore.

 

[Stacyhs]

Covid 19 info/data will no longer be reported to the CDC, but to the Trump administration instead. Does anyone else view this with distrust and the suspicion that the data will be manipulated to favor Trump?

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has ordered hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and send all Covid-19 patient information to a central database in Washington beginning on Wednesday. The move has alarmed health experts who fear the data will be politicized or withheld from the public.

The new instructions were posted recently in a little-noticed document on the Department of Health and Human Services website. From now on, the department — not the C.D.C. — will collect daily reports about the patients that each hospital is treating, the number of available beds and ventilators, and other information vital to tracking the pandemic.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/us/politics/trump-cdc-coronavirus.html

 

[Aridas]

Covid 19 info/data will no longer be reported to the CDC, but to the Trump administration instead. Does anyone else view this with distrust and the suspicion that the data will be manipulated to favor Trump?

Quite a few people.