All things political. Coronavirus Edition. (18 Viewers)

[Maxp]

I fear we are really going to be in a bad place due to the obvious cuts to the federal agencies that deal with infectious disease, but also the negative effect the Affordable Care act has had on non urban hospitals. Our front line defenses are ineffectual and our ability to treat the populous is probably at an all time low. Factor in the cost of healthcare and I can see our system crashing. What do you think about the politics of this virus?

 

[FullMonte]

But it can be a misleading as shirt way to put it if you're pretty gosh darned sure it is occurring but want to obscure that.

How so? Let's look at what the WHO was actually saying at the time:
--Chinese officials have not yet proven conclusively that the virus can be transmitted human-to-human
--Here is out guidance. Treat this like SARS/MERS using these protocols. (One of the protocols was to isolate infected individuals to limit person-to-person transmission.

So, what the WHO was saying, essentially was, "we aren't certain that this can be transmitted person-to-person, but we recommend treating it as if it can be until we can be sure." Isn't that the responsible way to act?

 

[bdb13]

How so? Let's look at what the WHO was actually saying at the time:
--Chinese officials have not yet proven conclusively that the virus can be transmitted human-to-human
--Here is out guidance. Treat this like SARS/MERS using these protocols. (One of the protocols was to isolate infected individuals to limit person-to-person transmission.

So, what the WHO was saying, essentially was, "we aren't certain that this can be transmitted person-to-person, but we recommend treating it as if it can be until we can be sure." Isn't that the responsible way to act?

I was more talking about China be in particular there than the W.H.O.

 

[FullMonte]

This was tweeted January 14:


And I'm not saying Trump is correct in pulling funding, I just find that Tweet to be curious.

What's curious about it? They tweeted out what was actually happening. They said that China had not found evidence that it could be transmitted person-to-person. That is a LONG WAY from saying that it could not be transmitted person-to-person.

Here is their emergency preparedness/response briefing, dated January 5. Under "WHO Advice" they recommend treating it like influenza and other acute respiratory infections. They include the recommendations for that, as well. The document titled "Infection Prevention and control of epidemic-and pandemic prone acute respiratory infections in health care, WHO guidelines" includes a section titled "B.4.2 Infection prevention and control precautions for diseases that can be opportunistically transmitted through droplet nuclei."

This section includes recommendations of: wearing appropriate PPE(including a mask), keep patients separated from other patients, and keep them at least 1m apart, limit the movement of patients and ensure that they are wearing a mask when outside their room.

So, while the WHO was saying that it wasn't proven that the virus could be transmitted from person-to-person, their guidance clearly said to treat it as if it could.

Pneumonia of unknown cause – China

www.who.int

 

[RobF]

The WHO reported that on January 14th.

Some additional context to that, and the information already posted by @N.O.Bronco:

January 14th was only a week after the coronavirus was identified (January 7th). It was four days after the first reported death. China was still over a week away from locking down Wuhan (January 23rd).

I think some people are forgetting how early January 14th was in this timeline. It is not at all remarkable that human-to-human transmission had not been confirmed at that point.

In addition to the rest of the WHO's twitter feed, showing that they were aware of the possibility of human-to-human transmission and encouraging measures accordingly, the WHO started releasing situation reports on the situation on January 21st, and you can see all of those here: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports

If you look at situation report 10 (January 30th), you can see that by the time Trump introduced his pseudo-ban on travel from China on January 31st, the WHO were working to enhance diagnostic capacity for 2019-nCov, with their objectives included limiting human-to-human transmission, including secondary infections among close context and health care workers, and identifying, isolating, and caring for patients early, achieving this through "rapid identification, diagnosis and management of the cases, identification and follow up of the contacts, infection prevention and control in healthcare settings, implementation of health measures for travellers, awareness-raising in the population and risk communication."

With regard to international travel, you can see their advice for international traffic, published on January 24th, over a week before Trump's 'ban'. For areas with ongoing transmission, they were advising exit screening, with confirmed cases or direct exposure individuals being placed under medical observation and avoid travel for 14 days, and health information campaigns at point of entry to raise awareness.

For countries without transmission, they were advising entry screening, with "early detection of symptomatic passengers and their referral for medical follow up", accompanied by "dissemination of risk communication messages at point of entry", establishing "proper mechanism for data collection and analysis".

Establishing comprehensive screening, expanding diagnostic capacity, following up, monitoring, and isolating at that stage would likely have been effective at slowing the introduction and spread of covid-19. But that wasn't done. Instead, an ineffective limitation was placed on travel from one affected region. That was a crude, ineffective, move at that stage, not a remarkable foresighted one. And it, unsurprisingly, failed.

 

[Optimus Prime]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California will be the first state to give cash to immigrants living in the country illegally who are hurt by the coronavirus, offering $500 apiece to 150,000 adults who were left out of the $2.2 trillion stimulus package approved by Congress.

Many Americans began receiving $1,200 checks from the federal government this week, and others who are unemployed are getting an additional $600 a week from the government that has ordered them to stay home and disrupted what had been a roaring economy.

But people living in the country illegally are not eligible for any of that money, and advocates have been pushing for states to fill in the gap. Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced he would spend $75 million of taxpayer money to create a Disaster Relief Fund for immigrants living in the country illegally.

“We feel a deep sense of gratitude for people that are in fear of deportations that are still addressing essential needs of tens of millions of Californians,” said Newsom, who noted 10% of the state’s workforce are immigrants living in the country illegally who paid more than $2.5 billion in state and local taxes last year..........

California to give cash payments to immigrants hurt by virus

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California will be the first state to give cash to immigrants living in the country illegally who are hurt by the coronavirus, offering $500 apiece to 150,000 adults who were left out of the $2.2 trillion stimulus package approved by Congress.

apnews.com

 

[surada]

Some additional context to that, and the information already posted by @N.O.Bronco:

January 14th was only a week after the coronavirus was identified (January 7th). It was four days after the first reported death. China was still over a week away from locking down Wuhan (January 23rd).

I think some people are forgetting how early January 14th was in this timeline. It is not at all remarkable that human-to-human transmission had not been confirmed at that point.

In addition to the rest of the WHO's twitter feed, showing that they were aware of the possibility of human-to-human transmission and encouraging measures accordingly, the WHO started releasing situation reports on the situation on January 21st, and you can see all of those here: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports

If you look at situation report 10 (January 30th), you can see that by the time Trump introduced his pseudo-ban on travel from China on January 31st, the WHO were working to enhance diagnostic capacity for 2019-nCov, with their objectives included limiting human-to-human transmission, including secondary infections among close context and health care workers, and identifying, isolating, and caring for patients early, achieving this through "rapid identification, diagnosis and management of the cases, identification and follow up of the contacts, infection prevention and control in healthcare settings, implementation of health measures for travellers, awareness-raising in the population and risk communication."

With regard to international travel, you can see their advice for international traffic, published on January 24th, over a week before Trump's 'ban'. For areas with ongoing transmission, they were advising exit screening, with confirmed cases or direct exposure individuals being placed under medical observation and avoid travel for 14 days, and health information campaigns at point of entry to raise awareness.

For countries without transmission, they were advising entry screening, with "early detection of symptomatic passengers and their referral for medical follow up", accompanied by "dissemination of risk communication messages at point of entry", establishing "proper mechanism for data collection and analysis".

Establishing comprehensive screening, expanding diagnostic capacity, following up, monitoring, and isolating at that stage would likely have been effective at slowing the introduction and spread of covid-19.. But that wasn't done. Instead, an ineffective limitation was placed on travel from one affected region. That was a crude, ineffective, move at that stage, not a remarkable foresighted one. And it, unsurprisingly, failed.

Thank you.. That is helpful. I don't think Trump was interested. He also ignored warnings/protocols in 2018 and 2019 about preparing for an epidemic and maintaing vigilence.


Warnings Ignored: A Timeline of Trump’s COVID-19 Response ...
thebulwark.com/warnings-ignored-a-timeline-of...
Mar 25, 2020 · September, 2019: The Trump Administration ended the pandemic early warning program, PREDICT, which trained scientists in China and other countries to identify viruses that had the potential to turn into pandemics.

 

[surada]

What's curious about it? They tweeted out what was actually happening. They said that China had not found evidence that it could be transmitted person-to-person. That is a LONG WAY from saying that it could not be transmitted person-to-person.

Here is their emergency preparedness/response briefing, dated January 5. Under "WHO Advice" they recommend treating it like influenza and other acute respiratory infections. They include the recommendations for that, as well. The document titled "Infection Prevention and control of epidemic-and pandemic prone acute respiratory infections in health care, WHO guidelines" includes a section titled "B.4.2 Infection prevention and control precautions for diseases that can be opportunistically transmitted through droplet nuclei."

This section includes recommendations of: wearing appropriate PPE(including a mask), keep patients separated from other patients, and keep them at least 1m apart, limit the movement of patients and ensure that they are wearing a mask when outside their room.

So, while the WHO was saying that it wasn't proven that the virus could be transmitted from person-to-person, their guidance clearly said to treat it as if it could.

Pneumonia of unknown cause – China

www.who.int

I would like to hear Trump's justification for ignoring the warnngs.


Trump says 'nobody' could've predicted a pandemic like ...
www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-all-the...
Trump ignored multiple warnings about an impending pandemic and gutted the US agencies responsible for responding to such an outbreak. Menu icon A vertical stack of three evenly spaced horizontal ...

 

[bdb13]

@N.O.Bronco @FullMonte @RobF Thank you. I'll back off on reading too much into that one Tweet.

 

[FullMonte]

I know Kellyanne Conway can, at times, be laughable in her attempts to defend Donald Trump, but yesterday, she reached a new high (or is it a new low?)

"...but there's another reason some of the scientists and doctors say that there could be other strains later one. This could come back in the fall in a limited way. This is Covid-19, not Covid-1, folks. You would think that people charged with the World Health Organization facts and figures would be on top of that. This is just a pause right now. So, there is an investigation, examination to what happened. But, people should know the facts."

I guess she might have a point that in one of the previous 18 strains of this virus, they could have gotten on top of it....oh, wait...it's not called Covid-19 because it's the 19th strain. It's called Covid-19 because it was discovered in 2019.

 

[Dadsdream]

Some additional context to that, and the information already posted by @N.O.Bronco:

January 14th was only a week after the coronavirus was identified (January 7th). It was four days after the first reported death. China was still over a week away from locking down Wuhan (January 23rd).

I think some people are forgetting how early January 14th was in this timeline. It is not at all remarkable that human-to-human transmission had not been confirmed at that point.

In addition to the rest of the WHO's twitter feed, showing that they were aware of the possibility of human-to-human transmission and encouraging measures accordingly, the WHO started releasing situation reports on the situation on January 21st, and you can see all of those here: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports

If you look at situation report 10 (January 30th), you can see that by the time Trump introduced his pseudo-ban on travel from China on January 31st, the WHO were working to enhance diagnostic capacity for 2019-nCov, with their objectives included limiting human-to-human transmission, including secondary infections among close context and health care workers, and identifying, isolating, and caring for patients early, achieving this through "rapid identification, diagnosis and management of the cases, identification and follow up of the contacts, infection prevention and control in healthcare settings, implementation of health measures for travellers, awareness-raising in the population and risk communication."

With regard to international travel, you can see their advice for international traffic, published on January 24th, over a week before Trump's 'ban'. For areas with ongoing transmission, they were advising exit screening, with confirmed cases or direct exposure individuals being placed under medical observation and avoid travel for 14 days, and health information campaigns at point of entry to raise awareness.

For countries without transmission, they were advising entry screening, with "early detection of symptomatic passengers and their referral for medical follow up", accompanied by "dissemination of risk communication messages at point of entry", establishing "proper mechanism for data collection and analysis".

Establishing comprehensive screening, expanding diagnostic capacity, following up, monitoring, and isolating at that stage would likely have been effective at slowing the introduction and spread of covid-19. But that wasn't done. Instead, an ineffective limitation was placed on travel from one affected region. That was a crude, ineffective, move at that stage, not a remarkable foresighted one. And it, unsurprisingly, failed.

Hi RobF.

The United Nations and the World Health Organization took a severe turn toward the negative years ago here in the US and they have never recovered.

Neither would exist without US funding. Occasionally, they need to be reminded of that.

Putting Libya on the human rights commission and condemning the US for a variety of human rights abuses, all while supporting the likes of Hezbollah and Hamas, have led to threats of congressional de-funding bills through the years.

The bottom line is the WHO (and the UN in general) would not exist without US funding. We pour in billions of dollars and corrupt officials siphon it off just as quickly.

I'm sure I don't have to list the examples for you. Just Google "UN graft and corruption." There's plenty there and frankly, US citizens here are fed up with it. Putting an end to it, holding the UN accountable or ending our monetary support was one of the planks in Trrump's platform that was VERY popular.

So, go ahead and bash him for doing exactly what he said he was going to do. It just gives him more votes in November, not that you'll be voting, of course!

Stay safe!

Dadsdream

 

[surada]

I know Kellyanne Conway can, at times, be laughable in her attempts to defend Donald Trump, but yesterday, she reached a new high (or is it a new low?)

"...but there's another reason some of the scientists and doctors say that there could be other strains later one. This could come back in the fall in a limited way. This is Covid-19, not Covid-1, folks. You would think that people charged with the World Health Organization facts and figures would be on top of that. This is just a pause right now. So, there is an investigation, examination to what happened. But, people should know the facts."

I guess she might have a point that in one of the previous 18 strains of this virus, they could have gotten on top of it....oh, wait...it's not called Covid-19 because it's the 19th strain. It's called Covid-19 because it was discovered in 2019.

I have always thought she was stupid. A bright woman couldn't defend Trump day in and day out.

 

[Lapaz]

Hi RobF.

The United Nations and the World Health Organization took a severe turn toward the negative years ago here in the US and they have never recovered.

Neither would exist without US funding. Occasionally, they need to be reminded of that.

Putting Libya on the human rights commission while condemning the US for a variety of human rights abuses, supporting the likes of Hezbollah and Hamas, have led to threats of congressional de-funding bills through the years.

The bottom line is the WHO (and the UN in general) would not exist without US funding. We pour in billions of dollars and corrupt officials siphon it off just as quickly.

I'm sure I don't have to list the examples for you. Just Google "UN graft and corruption." There's plenty there and frankly, US citizens here are fed up with it. Putting an end to it, holding the UN accountable or ending our monetary support was one of the planks in Trrump's platform that was VERY popular.

So, go ahead and bash him for doing exactly what he said he was going to do. It just gives him more votes in November, not that you'll be voting, of course!

Stay safe!

Dadsdream

Even if there is some truth to WHO bias, which I doubt as I read more about the WHO's response, there is a time and place for action. It seems like the WHO acted appropriately, so I think this is another stupid action by Trump, even if he campaigned on that stupid action. Cutting the WHO in the midst of a pandemic is like firing your doctor, that by the way has given you good advice, in the middle of surgery. Also, just because some parts of the UN may have reacted poorly towards the US, whether justified or not, that doesn't imply that WHO is also biased. It is much like any organization with different agencies.

 

[Dragon]

Hi RobF.

The United Nations and the World Health Organization took a severe turn toward the negative years ago here in the US and they have never recovered.

Neither would exist without US funding. Occasionally, they need to be reminded of that.

Putting Libya on the human rights commission and condemning the US for a variety of human rights abuses, all while supporting the likes of Hezbollah and Hamas, have led to threats of congressional de-funding bills through the years.

The bottom line is the WHO (and the UN in general) would not exist without US funding. We pour in billions of dollars and corrupt officials siphon it off just as quickly.

I'm sure I don't have to list the examples for you. Just Google "UN graft and corruption." There's plenty there and frankly, US citizens here are fed up with it. Putting an end to it, holding the UN accountable or ending our monetary support was one of the planks in Trrump's platform that was VERY popular.

So, go ahead and bash him for doing exactly what he said he was going to do. It just gives him more votes in November, not that you'll be voting, of course!

Stay safe!

Dadsdream

Well if you google Trump and bribes you get this

“It’s just so unfair that American companies aren’t allowed to pay bribes to get business overseas,” Trump said, according to a passage published by the Post. “We’re going to change that.” The law is designed to prevent individuals and businesses in the U.S. from paying money or offering gifts to foreign officials as a way to win business overseas. Critics of the law complain that it puts U.S. businesses at a disadvantage in places where bribes are customary.

IF fighting corruption was really his agenda he would never propose such a law.

He was looking for a scapegoat to pass the blame of his horrible handling of the pandemic which due to his actions (like disbanding the “pandemic response team” and constantly trivializing the threat for weeks ) is making him look bad.

 

[Dadsdream]

Even if there is some truth to WHO bias, which I doubt as I read more about the WHO's response, there is a time and place for action. It seems like the WHO acted appropriately, so I think this is another stupid action by Trump, even if he campaigned on that stupid action. Cutting the WHO in the midst of a pandemic is like firing your doctor, that by the way has given you good advice, in the middle of surgery. Also, just because some parts of the UN may have reacted poorly towards the US, whether justified or not, that doesn't imply that WHO is also biased. It is much like any organization with different agencies.

Hi Lapz.

You do know there are already bills in Congress to de-fund the UN for its graft and corruption right?
Those bills are still in play. They just haven't been enacted.

H.R.249 - 115th Congress (2017-2018): Defunding United Nations Act of 2017

Summary of H.R.249 - 115th Congress (2017-2018): Defunding United Nations Act of 2017

www.congress.gov

 

[JimEverett]

*You* remember? Or you read it on some website that "remembered" and now you're memory is refreshed?

And comparing this (signs marking new projects funded by the ARRA) to changing an existing process to put Trump's meaningless vanity signature on federal checks is a huge reach. Not that it isn't expected from Trump apologists, but still...

No, I remember. Although I am not sure why it matters - I am guessing you remember as well or you would dispute the fact instead of making this stupid comment.

Not a huge reach at all unless you are brainwashed with a ridiculous the-sky-is-falling-mindset on every single thing Trump does or says.

 

[Dadsdream]

Well if you google Trump and bribes you get this


IF fighting corruption was really his agenda he would never propose such a law.

He was looking for a scapegoat to pass the blame of his horrible handling of the pandemic which due to his actions (like disbanding the “pandemic response team” and constantly trivializing the threat for weeks ) is making him look bad.

Hi Dragon.

Yes, I remember we discussed the foreign bribery issue at some length. I believe I even posted a chart showing which countries customarily required bribes to do business at all!

But, the notion of the UN becoming a puppet of terrorist states like Libya and a mouthpiece for terrorist organizations like Hamas has been an on-going concern for at least the past 30 years, to my recollection.

Having them become a mouthpiece for Chinese propaganda is merely a more recent turn of events on the same road.

 

[Saintamaniac]

I have always thought she was stupid. A bright woman couldn't defend Trump day in and day out.

Prostitutes, both male and female, don't sell themselves because they are stupid. They do it for the money.

 

[zztop]

I know Kellyanne Conway can, at times, be laughable in her attempts to defend Donald Trump, but yesterday, she reached a new high (or is it a new low?)

"...but there's another reason some of the scientists and doctors say that there could be other strains later one. This could come back in the fall in a limited way. This is Covid-19, not Covid-1, folks. You would think that people charged with the World Health Organization facts and figures would be on top of that. This is just a pause right now. So, there is an investigation, examination to what happened. But, people should know the facts."

I guess she might have a point that in one of the previous 18 strains of this virus, they could have gotten on top of it....oh, wait...it's not called Covid-19 because it's the 19th strain. It's called Covid-19 because it was discovered in 2019.

this forum really needs a facepalm reaction emoji