All things political. Coronavirus Edition. (1 Viewer)

[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?

 

[SaintForLife]

SFL, I think we don’t have significant disagreements about Ebola. It’s transmitted by blood and body fluids, and because of the horrible nature of the disease, those fluids are shed in abundance by people who have the bad luck to catch the disease. Therefore the extreme isolation measures that had to be taken to contain the disease. I considered it to be highly contagious because those types of measures are needed. The main danger is to anyone caring for a sick person. Without extreme measures, they are pretty much certain to catch the disease due to exposure to the bodily fluids. So that is why I characterized it the way I did. It’s a dangerous disease, to this day, and I still maintain the medical experts did a great job containing it.

H1N1 started right here in our own “back yard”. It makes sense that there were more cases here of it than a virus that started in China.

I think that the fatality rate for Covid is not thought to end up at 3%, which is what you are using and is the current rate per confirmed case in the US, I think. If we have undercounted cases as much as some people think, that will be at least cut in half by the time the pandemic is over. I have read some opinions that it may end up as low as 1%. But this is just an aside, and not really relevant at this time, as the numbers will change as time goes on. It’s just hard to compare the stats from H1N1 to the stats from Covid because we don’t really know what the final numbers will be for Covid.

The reason why I brought up H1N1 was for context to show how hard it is to contain a contagious virus. It also showed how the Obama administration didn't handle it well and made a lot of mistake similar to Trump for Covid. I do realize there are some differences.

 

[dtc]

I don't believe the federal government could force any states to follow the policy the feds recommended.

Maybe not. We are, after all, a nation of self-entitled, greedy idiots.

That said, it would have been far better and over far quicker had our POTUS stood up at some point and said "this is a big deal. we need to wear masks and we need to maintain social distancing."

Had he used his actual power to order the production of mass quantities of PPE and pressured states and governors on his side of the aisle to take reasonable actions instead of denial, it would have been better.

Had Trump taken this seriously and done his job, this would have been far better, but instead he let Jared Kusher run a strategy based on election politics and optics and for that, we may not blame him for all of the deaths that eventually come, but there's a line. Maybe it's at beyond 10k or beyond 100k or something, but there's a line and Trump and Kushner have crossed it at breakneck speed.

 

[dtc]

That is what I am talking about. "Suggesting" it is probably more accurate than "proposing" because there was nothing formal about it - but I think the point is still the same. A President cannot do that, and I will take it a step further and say he should not be able to do that.

Desantis sort of did it in Florida. He banned travelers from NY, NJ and CT at least and banned travelers from La into the panhandle.

Not one single Republican that i heard mentioned a single thing about the blatant illegality of his act. Most, including me, supported it even knowing it wasn't a really constitutional act, but assuming it was a good strategy for the time.

Trump put the strong arm on him and it disappeared. Then we reopened to cries about how "Florida and red states shouldn't be paying taxes to support failed Blue states" directly from our TX and FL governors. Now, TX and FL are screwed while NY and NJ could go back about their business.

That's a direct failure of federal leadership and IMHO a picture of the failure of this administration.

They've done nothing except refuse responsibility for failures, lie about what they're doing and push nonsensical crud about their success.

 

[JimEverett]

Desantis sort of did it in Florida. He banned travelers from NY, NJ and CT at least and banned travelers from La into the panhandle.

Not one single Republican that i heard mentioned a single thing about the blatant illegality of his act. Most, including me, supported it even knowing it wasn't a really constitutional act, but assuming it was a good strategy for the time.

Trump put the strong arm on him and it disappeared. Then we reopened to cries about how "Florida and red states shouldn't be paying taxes to support failed Blue states" directly from our TX and FL governors. Now, TX and FL are screwed while NY and NJ could go back about their business.

That's a direct failure of federal leadership and IMHO a picture of the failure of this administration.

They've done nothing except refuse responsibility for failures, lie about what they're doing and push nonsensical crud about their success.

State Governors have had the power to restrict travel into their States during a health emergency.
The idea of a national President doing so is/would be controversial to say the least.
It is far easier to seal off a national border - as EU countries did - than it would be for a national executive to seal off travel within the country: in the way China did. Western democracies highly frown on giving that sort of power to a Presdient, and justifiably so. And it seems even doubly odd for people who have in the past criticized Trump for having autocratic tendencies to argue he should have done something like that (not saying anyone on this board - just in the general sense that the criticism of Trump on the issue seems weird to me).

 

[MT15]

Nobody wants Trump to be more autocratic, at least not that I know of. I don’t think it’s too difficult, though, to imagine the difference in our handling of the pandemic had Trump handled things better than what he did.

Instead of downplaying it for months, he could have listened to his experts and spent the time preparing the US for the inevitable surge. He could have stockpiled PPE, he could have put a national testing policy in place along with a national contact tracing policy. His responses all along were exactly wrong: it’s going to disappear in April, hydroxychloroquine is a miracle cure, believe me it’s going to just disappear one day.

He’s still doing it, from what I understand he is going to go on tv today to claim that convalescent plasma is a miracle cure. We’ve been transfusing this since late April, as part of a study done in coordination with Mayo Clinic. We were hopeful about it, and it doesn’t seem to hurt anything, but I read just recently an email from the blood center that distributes our plasma that preliminary results are not all that promising. It’s definitely not the end all cure.

So why is he going to hype this up, if what I read is what he is going to say? It’s hard not to think that he is only thinking of his own political interests. In fact, his actions throughout the pandemic suggest that same thing. I believe his only motivation is self-interest.

ETA: here is an article about plasma treatment. At least it doesn’t appear to have negative effects, but whether it actually helps is in question. And it’s fairly expensive to keep giving it.

FDA authorizes plasma treatment despite scientists' objections

Until now, most Covid-19 patients who have received plasma have gotten it through an expanded-use program the FDA set up with the Mayo Clinic.

www.politico.com

 

[dtc]

State Governors have had the power to restrict travel into their States during a health emergency.
The idea of a national President doing so is/would be controversial to say the least.
It is far easier to seal off a national border - as EU countries did - than it would be for a national executive to seal off travel within the country: in the way China did. Western democracies highly frown on giving that sort of power to a Presdient, and justifiably so. And it seems even doubly odd for people who have in the past criticized Trump for having autocratic tendencies to argue he should have done something like that (not saying anyone on this board - just in the general sense that the criticism of Trump on the issue seems weird to me).

Who argued Trump should have taken more unconstitutional actions than he has already?

 

[SaintForLife]

Nobody wants Trump to be more autocratic, at least not that I know of. I don’t think it’s too difficult, though, to imagine the difference in our handling of the pandemic had Trump handled things better than what he did.

Instead of downplaying it for months, he could have listened to his experts and spent the time preparing the US for the inevitable surge. He could have stockpiled PPE, he could have put a national testing policy in place along with a national contact tracing policy. His responses all along were exactly wrong: it’s going to disappear in April, hydroxychloroquine is a miracle cure, believe me it’s going to just disappear one day.

Trump never said hydroxychloroquine was a cure. He said it was promising.

It wouldn't have been possible to stockpile PPE considering it was needed worldwide and most of the PPE comes from China. Also it didn't help that Obama used most of the national stockpile of PPE and never replaced it.

A third hard truth is that shortages of personal protective equipment — particularly N-95 masks — for health care workers will only get worse in the United States as global need continues to rise precipitously. There is no point holding out the false hope that the Defense Production Act will save the residents of the United States. Not enough manufacturing activities can be converted to produce masks in a matter of weeks. You can’t turn engine-making machinery into an N-95 respirator assembly line just because you want to.

For example, even as 3M was producing at 100 percent of its capacity (35 million N-95 masks a month), a single hospital in New York City used up more than two million masks in February, before the surge in Covid-19 cases there. And new production won’t happen for many months.

If you can’t make nearly enough masks to meet the need, then you must conserve the masks you can make. Unfortunately, some hospitals in the United States are not employing science-based methods for conserving these invaluable lifesaving masks.

It’s Too Late to Avoid Disaster, but There Are Still Things We Can Do (Published 2020)

Our leaders need to speak some hard truths and then develop a strategy to prevent the worst.

www-nytimes-com.cdn.ampproject.org

 

[MT15]

So it’s Obama’s fault even though Trump had been president for a full 3 years at that point? That’s pretty funny. So if a football coach is three years into his tenure and has a losing season, it’s not his fault, for sure. Because three years is certainly not enough time to rectify any theoretical shortages.

Honestly, SFL, you say you don’t support Trump for president, why do you go out of your way to just make every excuse for him?

 

[lurk]

I don't think any reasonable person would either, its a new virus that caught the entire world by surprise because China and the WHO actively tried to cover it up and keep in under wraps. There is plenty blame to go around for every politician and medical professional out there but to try and pin it all on one person is just not correct.

Excuse you?

 

[superchuck500]

 

[Taurus]

This is how the danger of a malevolent con man manifests. Is Donald Trump out there killing people with his bare hands? Of course not, he doesn't have the stones. What he is doing is providing cover and inspiration for Americans to kill each other and themselves as a response to his narcissistic bleating.

 

[insidejob]

That's such a load of crap. I'd love to kick her out of my office and gladly see her in court.

 

[efil4]

I don't believe the federal government could force any states to follow the policy the feds recommended.

Sadly that's because you have no idea what real leadership looks and sounds like.

 

[coldseat]

The thing that's being missed in this whole conversation is that the president/federal government doesn't have to mandate or force any of these measures on states as long as there is a strong coordinated response with good communication and strong leadership that is fact based. If we had that from Trump and the administration along with the necessary federal supports, just about all state governors would gratefully work in conjunction. State governors, both Repulbican and Democratic where begging for this. The public would also follow along and comply more readily. There wouldn't be all this division.

We don't have that at all, we have the exact opposite. This was a time for us to be united and we failed miserably because of failed leadership. If Trump could have managed a proper response, he would be winning this election walking away.

 

[GrandAdmiral]

That's such a load of crap. I'd love to kick her out of my office and gladly see her in court.

Yep, and do it with a big smile at that. Just stupid.

 

[JimEverett]

The thing that's being missed in this whole conversation is that the president/federal government doesn't have to mandate or force any of these measures on states as long as there is a strong coordinated response with good communication and strong leadership that is fact based. If we had that from Trump and the administration along with the necessary federal supports, just about all state governors would gratefully work in conjunction. State governors, both Repulbican and Democratic where begging for this. The public would also follow along and comply more readily. There wouldn't be all this division.

We don't have that at all, we have the exact opposite. This was a time for us to be united and we failed miserably because of failed leadership. If Trump could have managed a proper response, he would be winning this election walking away.

I agree with you.
From a purely political sense this was an easy win for Trump. At some point, relatively early - even as late as mid-to-late March - had he come out with something like "we need to fight this things and I am going to put politics aside. . . . ." Go out and meet with Democratic (and Republican) governors - even if just for a photo-op, try and give governors what they needed, etc. And at least give the appearance of trying to fight the virus as a common enemy . . . nothing hard at all, and he would be in a much much better spot politically.

I think that is tue even if the results would have been basically the same as they are now. Sort of playing off the point I was trying to make above: Americans would be less likely to focus blame based on the fact of, for example, Germany having a fraction of the death rate we have, or Italy having the virus under control in a much faster way than we have, etc. had Trump shown some degree of discernible leadership and concern for Americans in general.

 

[Farb]

Sadly that's because you have no idea what real leadership looks and sounds like.

Sadly, you are correct. Most Americans have never seen real leadership in our elected officials.

 

[Farb]

Excuse you?

Was I incorrect?