You know how politicians like to use international test scores to bash our public schools? Here’s good reason to bash the politicians in D.C.
Teresa Hanafin of the Boston Globe writes:
The expected numbers of American deaths from the coronavirus unveiled by the administration yesterday was pretty shocking — 100,000 to 240,000 — although those numbers have been floating around among scientists, researchers, and epidemiologists for awhile now.
But for Trump to allow his task force doctors to reveal those numbers publicly was remarkable, and a sign that it has finally dawned on him that he’s is presiding over a devastating epidemic.
It’s beyond sad to contemplate how low those numbers could have been, and how many lives could have been saved, had Trump listened to the experts instead of being contemptuously dismissive for weeks.
Had he seized control of the situation and kicked the feds into high gear with an aggressive, comprehensive, and nationwide approach, we wouldn’t be talking about World War II-level deaths.
That’s what South Korea did, a country that reported its first case on the same day as the US: Jan. 20. South Korea immediately convened officials from 20 medical companies and ordered them to start producing tests.
As tests were approved, the government opened hundreds of drive-through testing sites. The tests were free to anyone who wanted one, with results within hours. Test kits were supplied to hospitals and clinics as well.
Within seven weeks, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had tested about 300,000 people out of a population of 51 million.
In the same time period, the United States tested only 60,000 people in a population of 330 million.
That’s how community spread happens: When you don’t know who has the virus, you can’t stop it from spreading. At a certain point, the virus outruns you, and you can do nothing but keep scrambling to catch up. That’s where we are.
Face masks were readily available to South Koreans in local pharmacies, with each person allowed two per week. In the US, even frontline medical workers are rationing and reusing face masks.
Another factor: South Korea’s national health care system, under which nobody has to worry that they’ll get a lower quality health care than somebody richer than them, hospitals don’t have to fret about low reimbursements when they treat the poor, and people don’t have to worry about being driven into medical bankruptcy as so many Americans are.
In the US, Trump’s sustained attacks on Obamacare means that millions more Americans are uninsured than when he took office. Now, of course, those uninsured Americans are desperate to enroll, but in an act of what Democrats say is simply utter cruelty, Trump is refusing to reopen the federal exchange so that the uninsured can obtain insurance before they or someone in their family, God forbid, contracts the virus.
Fortunately, some governors have reopened their state exchanges, so if you live in a state with Democratic leadership, you could be in luck.
The bottom line:
The US has close to 200,000 cases, about .06 percent of the population, and 4,400 deaths, a rate of 2.2 percent. (That rate has increased, not declined, as more cases are uncovered.)
South Korea has 9,900 cases, about .02 percent of its population, and 165 deaths, a rate of 1.7 percent.
By late February, South Korea was getting about 900 new cases a day. Today, it’s about 100. In contrast, the number of new cases in the US is still soaring.
While the trajectory of South Korean cases has declined, the US trajectory is solidly pointing upward, increasing at the fastest rate in the world.
It didn’t have to be this way.
I was sending information from the NYT and WaPo to a Trump supporter friend of mine. She wrote to tell me that she doesn’t listen to fake news. Facts from Johns Hopkins and the CDC were considered anti-American. She stated, “I am proud to be an American.”
Another friend of mine told me that she didn’t want any information that was against our president.
Isn’t it amazing that now, both friends believe that the US has a major problem?
I seriously doubt that either Trump supporter would even now believe that the continuous denials, untruths and delays spouted both by Fox and Trump caused us to be #1 in the world with the number of infections.
I do wonder if they would ever question a president who previously stated: “When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”
AND:
“You’re talking about 2.2 million deaths — 2.2 million people from this. And so, if we can hold that down, as we’re saying, to 100,000 — that’s a horrible number — maybe even less, but to 100,000, so we have between 100- and 200,000, we all together have done a very good job.”
When you get your “news” from two sources, Fox and Trump, nothing else matters to you.
Maybe you should ask your friend about Dr. Fauci. He’s received security protection since he was receiving death threats from right-wing conspiracy theorists and thugs. Trump is not willing to remove him so far, even though he corrects the president numerous times for errors in press conference.
A pandemic should be the time when the federal government works to protect all the people. In addition to all the drama and lies, the federal government has turned a lot of the responsibility over to the states. Instead of coordinating efforts and using the federal stockpile, he created a market where states had to compete to purchase PPEs. This move left some of the lesser populated states like Montana out in the cold. The federal government outbid many of the the states in the auctions of PPEs. The president has also played politics with the distribution of materials. The federal government should facilitate, not impede disaster response. It also did not help that Trump sent 17.8 tons of our supplies to China in January when he was convinced that the US would escape the worst of this pandemic. This is the type of chaotic, clueless response we get when we elect someone that dismisses science.
Yes truly amazing. I normally only belittle Trump supporters. Don’t forget “American values” . What ever that means. Certainly not the ones we would like to pretend we believed in. Trump just exposes the rot that has been there for decades.
Fauci said yesterday that 1 in 4 Americans could be asymptomatic carriers right now. Birx said that the 100K-240K number is a best-case scenario, if we do everything “perfectly.
Like President Turnip’s “perfect phone call,” I guess.
If we do everything perfectly. Like ignoring anything said by Trump the Moronavirus infecting the body politic.
The numbers we are being given don’t add up. If the death rate, or mortality rate, among infected persons is 1.7 percent (the lower estimate), and the current population of the U.S. is 330,520,584, the percentage of Americans who will contract the virus (the morbidity rate) has to be unrealistically low for the number of deaths to be anywhere near 100K to 240K.
Population * percent infected (morbidity rate) * death rate among the infected (mortality rate among the infected) = x (total number of deaths)
What gives?
That was my reaction to those statements. If 1 in 4 Americans were actually infected, 240k deaths actually seems like an extraordinarily good outcome.
“Confirmed cases” seems like a metric too dependent on the variable of testing (which we seem to be doing only for people who are symptomatic and seek out the tests). “Deaths” seems like a lagging indicator. I am trying to watch new hospitalization and discharge rates, and I am really hoping to see them start to flatten soon. There are tentatively positive signs of that in NYC. (I am trying to stay hopeful.)
There is lots of uncertainty involved.
There is a large amount of uncertainty about the number who have been infected due to a lack of testing and the fact that some people show no symptoms.
There is also uncertainty about the death rate among those infected.
Though the rate for the US is now close to 2% and some countries have rates above 10%, its likely that this is on the high side rather than low side. In fact, the Lancet just published a study that put the estimate at 0.66%.
https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/490558-study-coronavirus-mortality-rate-lower-than
Why they carried it out to two places past the decimal point is not clear. I’d question whether it is that precise, given all the unknowns involved, but let’s ignore that😀
Death rate can and does actually vary from one country to another ( based on overall health and age of population and available health care, for example) but let’s assume Lancet’s estimate for US ( about 0.7%) which is still much (about 10X) higher than that of the seasonal flu (about 0.05% for US).
The reported death rate for the US is currently significantly (about 1%) higher than Lancet’s number but there is good reason to suspect that it is actually TOO high because it undoubtedly fails to account for people who get the virus and are not counted , be, because they have mild or no symptoms and don’t report to anyone. (That was precisely what the Lancet’s study was trying to account for in general)
The death rate is uncertain, but an even larger uncertainty lies in the total number who will eventually be infected.
But if one assumes the death rate to be 0.7% one can estimate the total deaths for any given infection rate.
With a death rate of 0.7%, if 0.5% of the population end up being infected one might expect total deaths to be around 11,550
If 1% end up being infected, its 23,100
If 5% “. …… its 115,500
If 10%…..its 231,000
If 20%…its 462,000
And if 25%, its 577,500
Obviously, any number of deaths is bad, but just how bad is largely dependent on the total number who are eventually infected.
But at this point, I’d have to say no one really knows how many will die because no one has any real handle on how many will be infected over the long term, although if we use the seasonal flu as a gauge, we might be able to get some idea.
Each year, between 5% and 20% of the US population gets the flu.
If one assumes comparable infection rate (which, admittedly may not be valid, since there is evidence Coronavirus is more readily transmitted than flu) that would put the total number of deaths between 115,500 and 462,000.
Obviously, those are large numbers (roughly 10 times what one might expect for seasonal flu)
But don’t take any of this at face value because as I indicated above there is a large amount of uncertainty with all of this.
Perhaps the only thing that is clear is that it makes a great deal of sense to focus on minimizing the number of people exposed to the virus (through social distancing and self isolation of those who get it) because the total number of deaths largely depends on the number who get it.
My take: our officials are dramatically underestimating the likeliest scenarios in order not to scare the _____ out of people.
Frankly none of these scenarios scares me as much as this one:
It is odd to me that I see nobody (or nearly nobody, I haven’t scanned every post) in the comments on this site talking about the economic Armageddon that is already underway. Not sure if it’s because commenters here generally feel secure in their employment, or it’s so scary people just don’t want to consider it, or if the pandemic panic has left people with no bandwidth for other panics.
I did write a post about the fact that the stimulus checks will be arriving too late for people to pay their April rent or mortgage payments, utilities, and food costs and that they will be in even worse shape come May 1. Frankly, I’m scared to death. Especially since throughout the red states, the guns and ammo shops have sold out their stocks. “May you live in interesting times,” goes the old curse. So, here’s the question: what is to be done in response, to hold the country together, when this economic Armageddon is fully upon us? I also wrote a satire about Trump declaring martial law and a comment about his using this to fulfill his dream of being just like the folks he looks up to–Duterte, Bolsanaro, Putin, Dear Leader Kim, MBS. I suspect that people have a “it can’t happen here” attitude, but when there is MASSIVE economic disruption, governments change.
In my worst nightmares about this, we have detention camps for looters all over the country, troop carriers rolling down our streets, and families begging in the streets.
Here’s the deal: Only a coordinated national response can begin to handle what’s coming, and I’m not mistaking Trump for FDR. So, what are your ideas about this, Flerp? Now is a VERY good time to be thinking about what the response to the economic Armageddon is going to look like. This all has me thinking about those worse-case scenarios that the Defense and Intelligence services are always running–what happens after a nuclear strike, etc.
I don’t know what to do, Bob. I am paralyzed. I don’t think it’s realistic to expect a new trillion dollar aid package to issue every month. I am afraid we are making unprecedented and disastrous economic decisions on the basis of models that themselves are based on very imperfect data and being continuously revised. I hope for serological testing to be widely available sooner than we expect, and I hope to see new hospitalizations tapering off (NYC data continues to look hopeful on that right now), and I hope we can expand hospital capacity and get enough PPE available hospital on a quicker timeline. I don’t think a “shelter in place” into summer (or even into May) is a viable policy, and I am really afraid that we are entering a global depression that will cause untold death through poverty and conflict.
One thing that seems obvious is that we need full scale production of PPE. Hospitals in NYC have likely become transmission vectors. Staff ride the subway to work protected, and reuse PPE at work among the infected. This is something Trump could still direct (should have been done a month ago if not sooner) to happen.
Merkel said that she expected 60 percent of the population to catch this thing over the course of it.
Worth noting:
“The study published Monday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases medical journal estimates that about 0.66 percent of patients who become infected with the virus will die. When undetected infections aren’t taken into account, researchers found the coronavirus death rate was 1.38 percent.”
So, the adjusted death rate (which attempts to take into account uncounted cases of infection) is just slightly more than 2 times (2.1) the unadjusted rate.
So, a first attempt at “normalizing” the rate for the US might be to divide the reported death rate by 2.1.
The reported death rate for US is currently 2.2%, which divided by 2.1 is 1%.
If one assumes 1% death rate for US instead of 0.7% , all the total death numbers I gave above for various infection rates have to be multiplied by 1.4
Bob
Where does that estimate come from.
Are you talking about Angela Merkel?
She’s very smart but not an epidemiologist.
Where did she get that estimate?
I’m not saying I doubt it — or don’t doubt it. I honestly have no idea.
But I think one has to be very careful to specify who did the estimate.
Angela Merkel. Yeah, PhD chemist with a specialty in quantum chemistry who has published peer-reviewed papers in her field. This is the sort of person the Germans elect to the Presidency, as opposed to Americans, who seem to prefer a guy who thinks that Charles is Prince of Whales and Belgium is a city. Angela Merkel’s 60-70 percent figure was the subject of headlines for a day or two about a month ago. No idea where she got it, but I assume she wouldn’t use the figure without having a decent source. She’s not Trump, who just pulls _____ out his _____ or off Fox or from telephone calls with his similarly cognitively challenged friends.
“Our officials are dramatically underestimating the likeliest scenarios in order not to scare the _____ out of people.”
I’d say that is a safe statement, given that Trump originally said it was a hoax😀
That he said that this was another Democrat hoax should have scared the _____ out of people. It did me. That’s when I thought, well, this is going to get as bad as it can get.
Because, of course, viruses have no prob crossing state lines, so the only way to tackle this thing is with a coordinated national response. Here in Flor-uh-duh, our Trumpty Dumpty toadie governor was fine with having hundreds of thousands of kids from all over the country on our beaches and in our bars as this pandemic spread.
If one assumes the 1% death rate , even the upper number given by Trump admin (240,000) would correspond to only about a 7% infection rate.
That would be at the low end of the infection rate for seasonal flu , which is normally between 5% and 20%.
I’ve read that coronavirus has about 2x the infection rate of flu, but that would presumably be under normal social interaction circumstances. I would assume that all the business closure, social distancing and self isolation that is going on would reduce that some, but the question is how much?
At any rate, if we use flu infection rate as a guide, even the latest “worst case” number for deaths does seem optimistic.
And IF the 60% infection rate estimate actually turns out to be right, that would mean nearly 2 million deaths in the US alone.
But as I said, I have no idea about the 60% estimate. Might be reasonable, but might not be (quantum chemists notwithstanding😀)
The irony is that all chemistry is basically quantum chemistry because quantum mechanics governs atoms, molecules and chemical reactions.
But tacking quantum on the front does make everything sound impressive.
Maybe I should change my blogging handle to SomeDAM Quantum Poet
And you could call yourself Bob (the) Quantum Shepherd.
And FLERP! would be Quantum FLERP!
QUERP!
The primary constituents of the universe: Quarks and QUERP! s
Quantum Poetics
Quantum Poetics
Is for the athletics
With poetry jumps
From Einsteins to Trumps
SomeDam, Flerp, I recently had a friend, alas, become involved in a ridiculous religious cult called Marconics, founded by a loony British lady. She holds “energy healings” at $450 a pop to “uncap” and “align” people’s “chakras” and calibrate their “quantum DNA” so that they can unload their “karmic baggage” and receive the “light energy” being beamed down from the invisible mother ship, now circling the Earth, which is manned by the “Galactic federation” of “Ashantic Warriors.” The purpose of the “healings” is to effect the “transformation” of Homo sapiens into lightworkers, who are “fifth-dimensional beings,” reincarnations of ancient gods, capable of protecting us from the invisible, green, reptilian aliens from Alpha Draconis who are trying to take over the Earth so they can mine the blue crystals of power beneath the surface. The transformation into our new “Quantum state,” she says, is called “ascension” and is possible because we have come to the place in the “galactic plane” where we can draw upon the energies of the Pleiades. I’m not making any of this up. I wish I were. It’s what this woman and her partner are teaching these cultists.
–Bob Shepherd, ex Quantum English Teacher and Textbook Writer, Author of Quantum Short Stories
So basically you are saying she is a Quantum Kook?
–SomeDAM Quantum Poet
She had a revelation when she was transported to the invisible ship and interviewed by its captain, an Ashantic warrior who looked a lot like Fabbio. It “was revealed” to her that she was “Grace Elohim,” who in a previous life billions of years ago designed DNA to be the basis of life on Earth. I have a fascination with crazy cults. This one is as crazy as it gets. I actually read her books because they were so fascinatingly pathological.
I also read about another cult that believes that virgins can give birth and that a cookie can turn into the body of God.
FLERP: “Not sure if it’s because commenters here generally feel secure in their employment, or it’s so scary people just don’t want to consider it, or if the pandemic panic has left people with no bandwidth for other panics.”
ALL OF THE ABOVE.
Bob you keep topping yourself. “President Turnip” is my favorite yet. It’s utterly consistent: cut it open & it’s the same all the way through — but tragically, it’s a vegetable.
Meanwhile, GET THIS: the Washington Post reported about a half hour ago that Dr. Fauci, a voice of reason and facts amid this crisis, needs more security…..in part, because of threats of some sort from hard right Trump supporters.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/anthony-faucis-security-is-stepped-up-as-doctor-and-face-of-us-coronavirus-response-receives-threats/2020/04/01/ff861a16-744d-11ea-85cb-8670579b863d_story.html
Absolutely, totally incredible! And, disgusting. Talk about a new dark age.
Attack the scientists.
Attack the journalists.
Attack the truth.
No wonder the United States is so far behind South Korea.
Absence of a universal health care system in the US contributed to pandemic. A well-funded and well-managed evidence-based system would have anticipated it, planned for it, and ensured sufficient equipment and facilities to test and treat people without dependency on the uncertainties of presidential or congressional leadership.
So, you’re saying foresight, preparation, governing. Makes far too much sense, so obviously that will never happen.
Absolutely, Arthur. If there was ever any question in people’s minds that we need a universal, single-payer healthcare system, Medicare4All, the alternately farcical and tragic lack of ability of our system to deal with this crisis should make this abundantly clear. I won’t go into a long dissertation about this, though it would be easy enough to do.
End the reign of the U.S. healthcare RICOs. Medicare4All, now!!!
I just saw a news report saying that here in Florida, coronavirus treatment will cost an uninsured person an average of $35,000. The cost to people with employer-based insurance will typically be between $9,000 and $20,000.
There is no provision in the stimulus package just passed to pay for any of this.
And yet the Democrat front runner, Mr. Biden, still continues to oppose Medicare For All. And there are people like the 69-year-old woman quoted in the NYT yesterday, who said she could wait another for years for Medicare For All.
“Safety net for me, but not for thee …” SMDH
“‘Democrat’ front runner. Hmmmm. Either a troll or a dupe for buying into it.
The actual mortality rate of total infections is much lower 0.6 or even 0.4 in some Chinese provinces with low infection numbers. Between 4 and 6 times the flu. But then they are also assuming the total infection rate is that of a mild flu season. We are calculating the current mortality rate on the basis of the severe morbidity rate(Hospitalizations ) as that most of our testing has focused on those who were already fairly sick; in order to be eligible for the limited testing in most places.
.6 x 35 million 210k
Of course when your health systems get overwhelmed we are looking at 11% mortality rates. In that severely morbid group. You can’t model what you don’t have data on. If you are not testing randomly and extensively your data is skewed by the groups you are testing.
The key feature of this virus is that 20% hospitalization rate. Compared to the Flu with a 1% hospitalization rate. Think of that as the disease .
Remember the clowns who sneered and mocked Bernie’s Medicare for all. Who said that you would lose your wonderful employer supplied insurance or union negotiated insurance. Now those same people who lost their jobs have lost their health insurance. At least the folks in the other democratic countries will not go bankrupt from medical costs.
Absolutely, JJ. When I was teaching & the parapros were organizing their union & negotiating for their insurance (I was helping, as a union bldg. rep.), one woman told me, “Oh, I don’t have to worry about health insurance. We get it from my husband’s employer.”
Guess what? Two months later, her husband suffered a fatal heart attack, & there went her insurance.
She became the President of the District Parapros Union.
I’ve always said, “Your insurance is your insurance–don’t ever count on your spouse’s insurance.” For all those people who had insurance & now don’t have jobs, but were opposed to Medicare for All (so ALL Americans could be insured–it’s not a case of “I’ve got mine!”),
well–right–now they’re in the same, sad boat.
Heartbreaking…& I’m betting all those formerly insured, employed people in the remaining primary states would vote for Bernie now.
J.J.: I think the comment I wrote back to you disappeared, or I didn’t hit post comment. Anyway, I recall when I was teaching & the parapros were forming a union to fight for health insurance. One said to me, “Oh, I don’t have to worry about insurance. I have my husband’s insurance.” Guess what? Two weeks later, her husband suffered a fatal heart attack, & just like that, her insurance was gone.
She became the President of the Parapro Union.
I’m betting all those formerly employed, formerly insured people (“I’ve got mine, & it’s better!”) whose states haven’t yet voted will, I hope, be voting for Bernie. The fat lady (me!) has not yet sung, & it’s not over yet…
&, BTW, I haven’t yet seen a petition to Biden that he needs to debate Bernie (as was supposed to happen in April), but if someone could create one (I’m not good at doing things like that), it would be terrific.
Everyone needs to be transparent…especially now.
Your excellent comments came through. There’s no accounting for the quirks and eccentricities of this crazy word press. Once my former school district went on strike for about a week. Most of the teachers (99.99%) supported the strike but a few knuckleheads crossed the picket line. I saw a colleague cross the picket line, enter the school and teach along with all the substitutes who were shipped in. Nothing happened to him, no one harassed him or gave him hard time but he got all the raises and benefits that we fought for. The man passed away a few yeas ago. I take no pleasure in his death because I am human and my expiration date will come eventually as well. Not to mention it was many years ago and I would not wish death on anyone for being a scab.
Taiwan is also another success story. From The Guardian site: As the UK, US, Italy, and other countries outside China struggle to cope with rising cases of the virus within their borders, many are taking note of Taiwan’s successes. Experts and officials say effective controls in Taiwan can be attributed to the use of technology, a central command centre, its single-payer healthcare system, and swift decision making.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/13/how-taiwan-is-containing-coronavirus-despite-diplomatic-isolation-by-china
Yes indeed. PBS Newshour reported on this last night. TAIWAN PREPARED for the coming attack. As soon as they heard about some thing going on in Wuhan they investigated and then put into effect the plan they had already made. They are now sending out 10 million face masks to other countries that need them including 1 million to the U. S.
They saw, they acted, they conquered.
Of course we have ‘trump who would not even put in place a person to prepare for the coming virus.
INSANITY EXEMPLIFIED.
The billionaire Robert Kraft, who owns the New England Patriots, sent the team plane to China and bought 1.4 million N-95 face masks for medical professionals.
Very generous of him but where is the federal government? Our government?
Trump believes that he IS the government. And so he calls up his buddy Bob and has him send a plane. I’m sure we’ll hear about the great good that Dear Leader did there sometime soon at one of his Trump Pep Rallies and Coronavirus Briefings.
Ellis Marsalis passed away from complications related to COVID yesterday. He was a great musician and respected teacher who was locally famous in New Orleans, but his sons’ fame was international. His philosophy of teaching would have been music to the ears of most here. From the HuffPost story, “When asked how he could teach something as free-wheeling as jazz improvisation, Marsalis once said, ‘We don’t teach jazz, we teach students.'” He got it.
Wow. What is being lost now….. and what a quote. Thanks.
He certainly taught his sons well. Years ago, I heard Branford Marsalis play with the English rock star Sting. There was none of the typical big stage theatrics hype at this concert. In other words, the show didn’t star the lighting and sets and special effects. It was just five people on the stage playing their instruments incredibly well and singing and making glorious music. So rare these days. Rare and wonderful
Here’s the rest of the story, Bob: I was fortunate to have attended one of the seminal jazz concerts of the past 40 years in 1984 when Miles Davis played for the first time at an evening concert for the N.O. Jazz & Heritage Festival. Opening was Wynton. They hated each other because Wynton publicly ridiculed Miles for not being true to the spirit of jazz. It was a night that showed two very distinct and diverging styles of jazz. I can distinctly remember being the last two in the audience in our seats when the show was over, reflecting on Miles in stunned silence. In the audience was Sting. A short time after the show he poached two members from each of their bands, drummer Omar Hakim and bassist Daryl Jones (who has been Rolling Stones bass player since early 90s) from Miles’s band and pianist Kenny Kirkland and Branford from Wynton’s band. It was and still is considered one of the collectively most talented groups ever by many musicians. I’ve been slavishly devoted to Miles and Wynton ever since. They rank numbers one and two in number of albums in my collection.
Wow. Lucky you!!! Thanks for sharing that, Greg! I’m a big fan of Miles Davis. An amazing player and human being. Kind of Blue remains the bestselling jazz album of all time, with good reason. Here’s the kind of willpower Davis had. He developed a heroin habit, and he needed to kick it, so he locked himself into a loft in a barn on his father’s property (his Dad was a dentist or something like that) and told his family not, under any circumstances, to let him out until he was clean. He went through that withdrawal successfully entirely on his own. Breathtaking.
Just saw this as I finished message above. Roney was something else.
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/824801424/wallace-roney-intrepid-jazz-trumpeter-dies-from-covid-19-complications-at-59
Day broke again on April 2, and the sun appeared to rise, as it always does, due to the Earth’s rotation. “Nobody could have predicted this,” said Donald Trump, speaking from the Rose Garden. “It was like, who knew?”
INDEED!!!
Who could POSSIBLY have known?
True and not funny.
The Onion:
Careless Imprisoned Migrants Showing Zero Respect For Social-Distancing Rules
EL PASO, TX—Revealing a total disregard for the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control, a photograph leaked Wednesday shows imprisoned migrants in a U.S. detention facility completely ignoring the social-distancing guidelines experts agree are necessary to contain Covid-19. “It’s like they’re not even trying to keep 6 feet apart,” said Laura Britton, a local accountant and mother of three, who viewed the photo of several dozen detainees crowded together in a small cell and expressed frustration that the self-isolation efforts her family had undertaken would be “all for nothing” if so many others broke the rules. “We’re gonna have to quarantine even longer because of unbelievably selfish people like this. There’s eight of them sharing one bed, and not to be rude, but a lot of them look like they haven’t washed their hands in a long time. Some look really young, too, and while they may not be showing symptoms, they could still spread the disease to more vulnerable people. Seriously, where are those kids’ parents?” At press time, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced it would begin strict enforcement of the CDC’s social-distancing guidelines by moving each of the migrants into solitary confinement.
https://www.theonion.com/careless-imprisoned-migrants-showing-zero-respect-for-s-1842621244%3Futm_medium=sharefromsite%26utm_source=theonion_email&utm_campaign=top
😀 😀 Sorry but I love gallows humor. Especially the quote from the “soccer mom.”
Thank you Diane for sharing this summary describing the reality of what we are experiencing in the USA. Trump indeed dropped the ball and contributed to this extreme situation. Sadly, his supporters (similar to how cult followers praise the leader) continue to say he has done a fantastic job in handling the crisis.
Brandi Browskowski-Durow: I read yesterday that Trump’s assessment that if the US ONLY has 100,000-240,000 deaths that ‘we have done a good job’ was meant to make Trump look good IF a lesser number of people died. Apparently, he pulled those numbers out of the imagination of his wonderful, intelligent, magnificent, increasingly huge gut.
I am totally disgusted with the lack of leadership. States are biding against each other for needed supplies with the prices skyrocketing. Medical personnel are having to put their lives at risk because even they don’t have the necessary protective gear.
The Orange Menace/Moron is still busy saying who is at fault and never sees that HE is personally responsible for the increase in deaths in the US due to his delays, denials and just plain ignorance.
The US burns and Trump has worthless press conferences to once again prove he is the greatest president this country has ever had. He has no compassion nor even cares about the continuing destruction that he has put on this country. Don’t ask him how this country feels when its citizens are worrying. That’s a nasty question.
The only good thing that I can say at this time is that I still have the freedom to bitterly complain.
Trump is preparing to declare victory if ”only” 100,000-240,000 people die. Given what we know about him, he will declare victory no matter how many people die.
We should all relax now that Pence and Jarred are working to help during this crisis. [Good grief. No wonder this country is falling behind. Get some intelligent experts working on the problems, not sycophantic want-to-be’s.]
Jared brought peace to the Middle East. Isn’t it amazing how intelligent he is?
……………………………
Behind the scenes, Kushner takes charge of coronavirus response
04/01/2020
Dozens of Trump administration officials have trooped to the White House podium over the last two months to brief the public on their effort to combat coronavirus, but one person who hasn’t — Jared Kushner — has emerged as perhaps the most pivotal figure in the national fight against the fast-growing pandemic.
What started two-and-a-half weeks ago as an effort to utilize the private sector to fix early testing failures has become an all-encompassing portfolio for Kushner, who, alongside a kitchen cabinet of outside experts including his former roommate and a suite of McKinsey consultants, has taken charge of themost important challenges facing the federal government: Expanding test access, ramping up industry production of needed medical supplies, and figuring out how to get those supplies to key locations.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/01/jared-kushner-coronavirus-response-160553
Perhaps this was Politico’s April Fool post.
TESTING
When its first case was reported (Jan 20), “Korea immediately convened officials from 20 medical companies and ordered them to start producing tests. As tests were approved, the government opened hundreds of drive-through testing sites.”
Action was underway even before that, per Science Mag (3/17 article): “After the novel coronavirus emerged in China, Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) raced to develop its tests and cooperated with diagnostic manufacturers to develop commercial test kits. The first test was approved on 7 February, when the country had just a few cases.”
At our end, test devpt was hampered by CDC, & they botched their own first assay.
We’ve heard this blamed on Trump admin cuts to CDC, but congress hasn’t enacted his desired slashes (e.g. Trump proposed reducing their fiscal 2020 budget by $750million for fiscal 2020; congress instead increased it $420million).
STAT News (3/26) carried an opinion by CDC veteran Pierre Rollin, who finds today’s CDC “sitting on sidelines” compared to past, & blames “… layers of bureaucracy, created in the late 2000s , fostered increased top-down regulation, slowing or blocking initiative and innovation. Productivity declined as research and clinical laboratories were saddled with strict and complicated Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) rules and an insistence on FDA-approved tests — even for tests developed and run only in CDC reference laboratories.”
And worse… “Inexplicably, offers by CDC laboratorians to volunteer for the Covid-19 response and support the coronavirus laboratory with added manpower were refused by CDC administrators, who seem incapable of understanding the dire situation occurring outside the organization’s gates, hiding behind cumbersome regulations developed for peacetime settings.”
“TRAVEL BAN”
Meanwhile, our FIRST fed response– Trump’s so-called travel ban from China [“travel band-aid” per Obama’s Ebola man Klain]– which excluded US citizens & their immediate families — didn’t take effect until Feb 2. Klain pointed out in Jan alone we admitted 300k visitors from China, horse out of barn. Defense Production Act wasn’t invoked until… 3/27!
BUT WE’RE NOT SOUTH KOREA
We’ve lost time for political reasons and weak leadership, at unconscionable cost.
Nevertheless, the comparison– at least as regards potential for quick distribution of tests & PPE– is apples and pomegranate seeds. S Korea has less than 1/6 our population, squeezed into an area a mere 1% of ours. And their potential to quickly manufacture anything is presumably nearly triple ours, just using thumbnail comparison of % economic output driven by mfg. AND they don’t have to coordinate with 50 state govts.