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Cont: The Trump Presidency: Part 23

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The Don said:
They can, but they won't be the *official* data and so can be dismissed by the Trump Administration as fake news from dubious sources. :mad:
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Agreed. But some non-official source putting out the numbers and having those numbers challenged as non-official is better than not.

Also, the numbers can be challenged on a state-by-state basis, too. Presumably the state n umbers are official for the state, being collected by the state.

Obviously it's horrible that we're now reduced to playing this game, but it's better than not playing at all. I'm just trying to imagine what an actual response to this situation will be, rather than just bemoaning how horrible it is (which it is).
 
Paul2 said:
Agreed. But some non-official source putting out the numbers and having those numbers challenged as non-official is better than not.
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No. We're in a post-facts world. It's not better than not. It's nothing.

As long as two sets of "facts" exists, they've won.
 
Speaking of truth deniers, Gov. De Santis of Florida is claiming that Covid 19 coverage 'fell out of the news' in May and that he wasn't even asked about it:
“Well, I think now this is back in the news. I think people understand. Look, it was natural. It wasn’t much, I mean, I would do press events in May, I would never be asked about coronavirus,” DeSantis said June 26. “It was about all these other things. Now it’s something that they are (asking about).”
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While a lot of the media was focused in late May/early June on the BLM protests, it is blatantly untrue that the pandemic wasn't in the news also and that De Santis was, in fact, asked on many occasions about it.

As Florida journalists covered weeks of protests across the state, media outlets continued their pandemic coverage. In the week following Floyd’s death, we found news articles about Florida’s COVID-19 case numbers, reopenings of beaches and gyms in Broward, a photo gallery of pandemic life in Jacksonville, updates on openings and closings in southwest Florida, and the impact of the pandemic on hurricane planning, just to name a few of thousands of examples we found in Nexis.

We found that multiple transcripts of DeSantis press conferences in May show reporters asking him about lifting COVID-19 restrictions on businesses, the state’s rising unemployment and flawed benefits system, the plan for addressing spikes, and outbreaks in nursing homes and prisons.
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https://www.tampabay.com/florida-po...ely-claims-he-was-never-asked-about-covid-19/

De Santis also proudly proclaimed last May that the media prediction that FL would be the next corona virus hot spot due to failure to shut down beaches, etc. was completely wrong:

And part of the reason is that because you got a lot of people in your profession who waxed poetically for weeks and weeks about how Florida was gonna be just like New York. Wait two weeks, Florida's gonna be next, just like Italy, wait two weeks.
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"We've succeeded, and I think that people just don't want to recognize it because it challenges their narrative, it challenges their assumption," DeSantis declared at a press conference alongside Vice President Mike Pence.
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It seems to me that De Santis just doesn't want to recognize that the media was right because it challenges his own narrative.
 
JoeMorgue said:
No. We're in a post-facts world. It's not better than not. It's nothing.

As long as two sets of "facts" exists, they've won.
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But that would mean accepting anything Trump says, from how big the inauguration was, to the Ukraine phone call, etc., etc., etc.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Yes. As most all of his supporters will do.
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The point was whether it was advisable to much back with a non-official set of numbers. To not do so, as you suggested, would be the same rationale to counter none of the thousands of lies of the Administration.
 
kookbreaker said:
Apparently data is already disappearing with the new ‘report to the White House’ policy.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/16/us-...stration-shifted-control-from-cdc-to-hhs.html

But don’t worry, Trump isn’t uniquely bad.
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According to the news story, the dashboard tool disappeared from CDC's website, but it was back up again in a matter of hours to days. I don't know if it has all the same information. There was a strong backlash from public health officials on this, which I hope means that state officials and federal disease wonks will insist on transparency*.

And if they're a vaccine by November? I probably would give Donald Trump some small credit for the win. But if he takes the presidency, it's a given that the feds would **** up any massive inoculation event. Or maybe I'm wrong; states may be finding ways to work together to do it right.

ETA: By this I mean health officials really don't want to be seen cooking the books on this thing. Too much political downside for covering anything up. I could be wrong, but if I were an epidemiologist I'd want the best, most timely, most accurate information and would want to do things right.
 
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Minoosh said:
And if they're a vaccine by November? I probably would give Donald Trump some small credit for the win.
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Why would you give him any credit at all? Virtually every leader in the world right now is moving heaven and earth to find a vaccine, so this is literally the absolute minimum we should expect from the president of the United States. And we all know that literally any other person as President would almost certainly do a better job at that absolute minimum than Trump is capable of. I will be entirely unsurprised if, when the full history of this pandemic is known, we find out that Trump somehow slowed down the creation of a vaccine.
 
Minoosh said:
And if they're a vaccine by November? I probably would give Donald Trump some small credit for the win.
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Horatius said:
Why would you give him any credit at all? Virtually every leader in the world right now is moving heaven and earth to find a vaccine, so this is literally the absolute minimum we should expect from the president of the United States. And we all know that literally any other person as President would almost certainly do a better job at that absolute minimum than Trump is capable of. I will be entirely unsurprised if, when the full history of this pandemic is known, we find out that Trump somehow slowed down the creation of a vaccine.
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Horatius's point is spot on. The credit for a vaccine has to go to the scientists.

The question is how did the leader of the free world handle the crisis? Did he accept responsibility for managing it and pull the nation together? No, he acted like it wasn't happening and generally acted like an idiot. He proved very clearly that he is over his head.
 
Horatius said:
Why would you give him any credit at all? Virtually every leader in the world right now is moving heaven and earth to find a vaccine, so this is literally the absolute minimum we should expect from the president of the United States. And we all know that literally any other person as President would almost certainly do a better job at that absolute minimum than Trump is capable of. I will be entirely unsurprised if, when the full history of this pandemic is known, we find out that Trump somehow slowed down the creation of a vaccine.
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Wouldn't it be great if China came up with an amazingly effective treatment? The PDJT would certainly be facing a tough time then!
 
JoeMorgue said:
But that's how it works. You give people an alternative source of information.

The actual facts aren't hard to get. What this move allows people do to do is point at another set of facts and create the illusion that there is debate.

There's an old, rather cliched saying that a man with one watch always knows the time, a man with two watches is never sure.

This is slapping another watch on our wrists.
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I heard that once somewhere myself :)
The meaning was a little different, though. Something about the more information one collects- the less certain they are of their own "rightness".
 
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alfaniner said:
Wouldn't it be great if China came up with an amazingly effective treatment? The PDJT would certainly be facing a tough time then!
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I think there's a greater chance a WHO-led project will get there first.

What then?
 
Minoosh said:
And if they're a vaccine by November? I probably would give Donald Trump some small credit for the win.
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Why? For gawd's sake, WHY??? What has he done to speed up the arrival of a vaccine? Or, more basically, what has he done to support the existence of a vaccine? Any thing at all?

He has disdain for expertise in general and scientific knowledge in particular. I suspect more than one scientist at the CDC has resigned in disgust over Trump. Has he been cheer-leading research scientists in the relevant fields? Has he demanded more funding for them? Has he ever visited a research lab; he had time to visit his stupid wall on the southern border. Has he ever praised a scientist in a press conference? Or ever?

No, he gets NO credit for what may come out to help slow the spread of the virus or to prevent it. None. Zero. Nada. Zip.

ETA: I see this has been covered already. But I'll leave this here because the mere idea of crediting Trump makes me ROYALLY PISSED.
 
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acbytesla said:
Horatius's point is spot on. The credit for a vaccine has to go to the scientists.

The question is how did the leader of the free world handle the crisis? Did he accept responsibility for managing it and pull the nation together? No, he acted like it wasn't happening and generally acted like an idiot. He proved very clearly that he is over his head.
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Yes, I know that. But I'm not going to hope for a failure just because it might help Trump. What I really hope is happening is that competent federal bureaucrats, Congress critters, state politicians and the world health-care apparatus are going full-tilt to gather information and fight the epidemic without worrying too much about what Trump thinks. But if he's strenuously encouraging suppressing data, then **** him. I wish he'd just get out of the way. That would show real leadership but he might not be capable of it.
 
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