All things political. Coronavirus Edition. (19 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?

 

[TaylorB]

I would give him low marks for his communication in the early days. I don't know if it was denial, wishful thinking or what - but it's one of those things that makes little sense.

Trump is still communicating extremely poorly. I literally just watched him say on his fox town hall that people who got the Spanish flu had a 50/50 chance of dying or close to it, which is not even close to true, and that the mortality rate for COVID is substantially less than 1%, which he doesn't yet know. Even if he turns out to be correct about the COVID mortality rate (he very well might), he's falsely minimizing COVID by comparing it to extremely inflated Spanish flu numbers he just made up.

If it were as innocent as wishful thinking or denial, people like Dr. Fauci would stand a better chance of surviving as part of the public face of the response team. Trump knows Dr. Fauci tells the truth, and after an unlikely few weeks of appearing to acknowledge reality, Trump has now decided the truth is no longer in his own best interest. Eventually the truth-tellers like Fauci will no longer be visible or ousted entirely, and the only people at the pressers will be the sycophants who tell Trump and the public the lies he wants them to tell. That is the pattern; it's not complicated.

 

[Heathen]

This dude just doesnt get it.

I don't hate Trump.

I don't "hate" anyone. Not a party or person.

But this guy is what happens when getting what you want all your life comes full circle as leader of the free world in your 70s. Trump is tired of this annoying virus getting people sick and screwing up his economy so he wants to push to get everyone out of quarantine by Easter..smart:

Trump Expresses Outrage at Having to ‘Close the Country’ to Slow Virus (Published 2020)

Fleeing New Yorkers told to quarantine as Trump says the U.S. should reopen ‘by Easter.’

www.nytimes.com

 

[SFIDC3]

Well, as I finished my self-checkout at Sam’s Club this weekend, a worker was standing by with a towel and disinfectant to wipe down the touch screen as soon as I walked away. There was also a worker at the entrance wiping down each cart with disinfectant before all people took the carts in.

This is happening at most of the grocery stores here as well, they are doing a great job IMO. I always thank them when the opportunity arises...they are also heroes, along with everyone still working in the healthcare industry despite the risk to themselves....

Debunked. Simply reogarnized.

Total BS....[Sentence removed - - Inflammatory] I know someone firsthand who was involved with the original team. He is pretty convincing when explaining how and why we would be much better prepared for this were they still in place....

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

I've read a bunch of different accounts on whether the pandemic response team was totally disbanded or just moved to different units to handle. I don't really care - I think the administration should be judged on how well organized it was to handle this and how it all turns out. Basically it doesn't really matter if it was disbanded or just reorganized, the results should speak for themselves.

 

[Beach Friends]

Trump is still communicating extremely poorly. I literally just watched him say on his fox town hall that people who got the Spanish flu had a 50/50 chance of dying or close to it, which is not even close to true, and that the mortality rate for COVID is substantially less than 1%, which he doesn't yet know. Even if he turns out to be correct about the COVID mortality rate (he very well might), he's falsely minimizing COVID by comparing it to extremely inflated Spanish flu numbers he just made up.

If it were as innocent as wishful thinking or denial, people like Dr. Fauci would stand a better chance of surviving as part of the public face of the response team. Trump knows Dr. Fauci tells the truth, and after an unlikely few weeks of appearing to acknowledge reality, Trump has now decided the truth is no longer in his own best interest. Eventually the truth-tellers like Fauci will no longer be visible or ousted entirely, and the only people at the pressers will be the sycophants who tell Trump and the public the lies he wants them to tell. That is the pattern; it's not complicated.

It may just be that his understanding of epidemiology is beyond your comprehension. I don't know if you know it, but some of the best epidemiologists in the world have told Trump directly that they are astonished at how well he understands "that stuff." That's really hard to believe, because physicians rarely compliment lay people about their medical knowledge.

Seriously, and I am not saying it is a good thing, but I think people know Trump is a BS'r and they don't really care.
They take what he says with a grain of salt. They want the big picture, the details they will get elsewhere.

He is in that magical spot where one gets a pass. Usually that's reserved for comedians and really hot women, but in this instance the POTUS has managed to squeeze in there as well.

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

He is in that magical spot where one gets a pass. Usually that's reserved for comedians and really hot women, but in this instance the POTUS has managed to squeeze in there as well.

I don't know if this is true for large parts of the population. Sure for those of us on this board, and who follow this stuff very closely, we know not to take POTUS literally on most of this stuff. But I've talked to people who don't pay very close attention to politics and they do take the President seriously on everything. I think it's sub-optimal to have a president who the population can't take seriously on serious issues.

 

[JimEverett]

I've read a bunch of different accounts on whether the pandemic response team was totally disbanded or just moved to different units to handle. I don't really care - I think the administration should be judged on how well organized it was to handle this and how it all turns out. Basically it doesn't really matter if it was disbanded or just reorganized, the results should speak for themselves.

Also - what would the pandemic team have done? More tests is a distinct possibility, but I don't think more tests earlier in this process would have been some sort of magic bullet - just look at Europe.
Maybe more tests combined with detailed tracking and a huge invasion of privacy rights ala Korea? Perhaps, but given the distrust we in America have for politicians combined with the automatic distrust many have of opposition parties - how realistic was that?

Could anyone, pandemic team or not, convince states, cities, huge swaths of the population to "shut down" back in February when there were very few cases in the US?

 

[CoolBrees]

In my world there is an old saying- fail to plan, plan to fail. Or simpler, garbage in garbage out.


Jim, we will never know because those panels were eliminated. We will never know how prepared we could have been or how many lives could have spared, because we chose to do what we chose to do- and it is a shirt show.

 

[TaylorB]

It may just be that his understanding of epidemiology is beyond your comprehension. I don't know if you know it, but some of the best epidemiologists in the world have told Trump directly that they are astonished at how well he understands "that stuff." That's really hard to believe, because physicians rarely compliment lay people about their medical knowledge.

Seriously, and I am not saying it is a good thing, but I think people know Trump is a BS'r and they don't really care.
They take what he says with a grain of salt. They want the big picture, the details they will get elsewhere.

He is in that magical spot where one gets a pass. Usually that's reserved for comedians and really hot women, but in this instance the POTUS has managed to squeeze in there as well.

I think you're right about everything you said, with the caveat (as noted by the first response to your post) that I don't think everyone is aware that Trump is a liar, or at least the extent to which he is a liar. As recently as last week, some of my clients were parroting his line about the virus being a "hoax," and were seriously shocked to find out I didn't agree with them on that. I encounter that a lot in south Louisiana.

And no matter the % of people who trust him, I can't think of a more dangerous and disqualifying quality in a leader during a crisis than being a proven, recidivist liar. Whether you think the US death toll from COVID stops at 1,000, 2,000,000, or anywhere in between, lots of people are terrified and confused both about their health and about their jobs. The upcoming gut-wrenching decisions about what to do with the economy in the face of the virus are going to require input from smart people who can help us strike a proper balance between preventing the spread of the virus and mitigating the misery of an economic slowdown. The person in charge of those decisions lies far more than any person I've ever known, and nearly half the country either believes him or knows he's lying and doesn't care. The only thing I trust Trump to do is to make decisions that benefit him personally above all else, and to suppress the voice of anyone who stands in his way. It's a scary thought.

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

Also - what would the pandemic team have done? More tests is a distinct possibility, but I don't think more tests earlier in this process would have been some sort of magic bullet - just look at Europe.
Maybe more tests combined with detailed tracking and a huge invasion of privacy rights ala Korea? Perhaps, but given the distrust we in America have for politicians combined with the automatic distrust many have of opposition parties - how realistic was that?

Could anyone, pandemic team or not, convince states, cities, huge swaths of the population to "shut down" back in February when there were very few cases in the US?

Well, I think we'll eventually get a breakdown of our response and what we could learn. My completely non-expert opinion is that an appropriate response would have been an earlier travel ban from everywhere, not just China, since it was already spreading in Europe at the time of the China travel ban (not to mention Japan, Korea, Thailand, etc).

The benefit of having lots of tests available would have been to constantly test the population where a known case was found, and then allowing targeted lockdowns of that population center. For example, if someone in Seattle is diagnosed with COVID-19, if we have an abundance of tests, you could test everyone that person has come into contact with every couple of days. If multiple people start to test positive, you can order a quarantine for the workplaces and social circles of those peoples. And then you test those people regularly, expanding the quarantine as needed.

This is hindsight, but people won't self-quarantine unless they have some sort of assurance they'll be taken care of financially. So, there probably ought to be some sort of government funded pandemic quarantine fund, where if someone is ordered to quarantine, the government reimburses their employer and the employer must allow the worker to take the recommended time off to stay home. Or something along those lines.

 

[V Chip]

Also - what would the pandemic team have done? More tests is a distinct possibility, but I don't think more tests earlier in this process would have been some sort of magic bullet - just look at Europe.
Maybe more tests combined with detailed tracking and a huge invasion of privacy rights ala Korea? Perhaps, but given the distrust we in America have for politicians combined with the automatic distrust many have of opposition parties - how realistic was that?

Could anyone, pandemic team or not, convince states, cities, huge swaths of the population to "shut down" back in February when there were very few cases in the US?

I'm kind of with you on this -- the pandemic team being disassembled doesn't really make a difference when the person/people who would have been getting their advice on this burgeoning pandemic wouldn't have heeded the advice in the first place.

 

[Farb]

https://www.cnn.com/business/live-news/stock-market-news-today-032420/index.html

Maybe some good news. Maybe the idiots we elected will actually do something to help us? One can hope.

 

[JimEverett]

Well, I think we'll eventually get a breakdown of our response and what we could learn. My completely non-expert opinion is that an appropriate response would have been an earlier travel ban from everywhere, not just China, since it was already spreading in Europe at the time of the China travel ban (not to mention Japan, Korea, Thailand, etc).

The benefit of having lots of tests available would have been to constantly test the population where a known case was found, and then allowing targeted lockdowns of that population center. For example, if someone in Seattle is diagnosed with COVID-19, if we have an abundance of tests, you could test everyone that person has come into contact with every couple of days. If multiple people start to test positive, you can order a quarantine for the workplaces and social circles of those peoples. And then you test those people regularly, expanding the quarantine as needed.

This is hindsight, but people won't self-quarantine unless they have some sort of assurance they'll be taken care of financially. So, there probably ought to be some sort of government funded pandemic quarantine fund, where if someone is ordered to quarantine, the government reimburses their employer and the employer must allow the worker to take the recommended time off to stay home. Or something along those lines.

Don't get me wrong - I think our lack of testing has been a total, complete, abject failure of the highest order. I just don't think more testing is a magic bullet to this thing and I would point to countries that had much better testing than us and who are suffering, at least up to now, in worse ways.

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

Don't get me wrong - I think our lack of testing has been a total, complete, abject failure of the highest order. I just don't think more testing is a magic bullet to this thing and I would point to countries that had much better testing than us and who are suffering, at least up to now, in worse ways.

Yes, there has to be some sort of action plan that is guided based on testing. And I agree, the most effective solutions would raise a lot of objections since it requires following the government's order to stay put, which is hard to do in our society.

 

[dtc]

Use a parasite treatment for fish to treat coronavirus?
Did the president say that? No.
Did some moron get on the Internet and look up the names of chemicals and post it as a bogus home cure? Probably.
Did someone unwisely follow the bogus treatment on the Internet and poison himself? Yes.
Heck, a Virginia poison center has issued an alert telling people not to drink bleach to cure coronavirus.
I realize that for people of a certain mindset, it doesn't matter what the president says, it's the wrong thing.
Same thing when I used to come in at dawn after a night of playing cards with the guys . . . no matter what I said, it was wrong.
The only remedy seemed to if I pulled out my winnings and handed my wife her a 50% cut.
Say, this is similar!

Virginia poison center reminder: Do not drink bleach to cure coronavirus

The Blue Ridge Poison Center says that exposure to cleaning products is the second leading cause of calls to poison centers nationwide.

www.nbc12.com

When I come home at 5am my wife is generally happy to see me, but that's because I don't say too many stupid things that encourage my daughter to hate anyone with a brown skin tone or to disavow what she's being taught in Biology.

But that's just me.

 

[dtc]

Take a deep breath, look at my response again. I answered the question - he has brought a sense of calm over the country. I know you're not the perfect exemplar of that - but I really think you would be even worse if it wasn't for OG 45.

You think calm is a reasonable way to describe us?

If so, pass the joint.

 

[Dadsdream]

When I come home at 5am my wife is generally happy to see me, but that's because I don't say too many stupid things that encourage my daughter to hate anyone with a brown skin tone or to disavow what she's being taught in Biology.

But that's just me.

What on earth are you talking about?
What the heck brought on the race card this time?

 

[dtc]

What on earth are you talking?
What the heck brought on the race card this time?

You are defending the lies and stupidity spoken by the POTUS as acceptable and then couching it in your own interaction with dadwife.

I'm addressing a tiny little bit of the overall river of nonsense and lies that have come from Trump's mouth. I'm unable to cordon off one stream of nonsense from the other in order to rationalize the acceptance of your argument.

Trump is a liar and buffoon. The totality of his lies and stupid statements must be considered when you take his advice. Those who believe him are subject to a lower standard that I believe puts them at risk for believing him when he gives them medical advice or proffers an invalid remedy to a deadly virus.