Coronavirus Outbreak...

[seanD]

That was my first reaction too. Between the emergency declaration and invoking this act, we are seeing the start of flexing presidential muscle. For now, I think both of these are warranted by the situation. It passes my "how would I be reacting if Obama did this?" test. But this president is not above using the situation to seize power, so we should all be watching carefully. I'm waiting to hear the words "martial law." Uttered by a man with dictatorial tendencies supported by a base that has shown admiration for strongmen and tends to follow an "authoritarian" model generally, they would be scary words indeed.

Yeah, I meant invoke, not passed. I don't really see any reason to go there in this situation, especially if it's being overblown like many are claiming it to be.

[carpedm9587]

Trump was working on it months ago. And what was the left doing? Mocking and deriding him for it. That and complaining that the task force he created wasn't diverse enough. Even today worrying about supposed racism is their primary concern.

The main problem was that the Chicoms were lying through their teeth about it giving everyone the impression that it wasn't all that serious so that it caught everyone off guard.

This claim has been reported multiple times. Consider the challenge put: besides forming committees, publicly playing down the pandemic, and being a fairly significant source of disinformation, what exactly did Trump do prior to his sudden conversion to "this is a problem," which I believe happened last week.

And I will give you that he closed the borders (after the virus had a foothold), but he has always wanted to close borders, so he basically found an excuse to do so in a way that no one could question/challenge. Other than that...what is the list of marvelous things Trump did between the origin of the virus and March 15th, when he had his change of heart?

[rogue06]

Read my post carefully, Sparko - it says "many," not all. Some of the countries with excellent survivability rates include Sweden, Norway, Canada, and Finland, to name a few. Yes, there are also outliers like Italy. But if you look at the death rates, they skew towards lower for most of these countries.

This is a habit many people have: take a claim about trending, find an outlier that does not conform, and use it as evidence that the claim is not valid. If you want to show a claim about trends not valid, you have to show the trend to be different - not cite a single case. That's statistics 101.

Looking at the list it appears that most of them on it have socialized medicine so it goes without saying that "many" of them have the lowest death rates. Conversely it also means that "many" of them have the highest death rates.

[carpedm9587]

Yeah, I meant invoke, not passed. I don't really see any reason to go there in this situation, especially if it's being overblown like many are claiming it to be.

Oh I think the "chicken little" calls have largely ended. Even MM seems to have stopped making that argument. Now we're likely to see revisionist explanations of the past. Trump has already claimed he called it a pandemic before anyone else, while he is on camera publicly saying he didn't think this was a pandemic. The man's divorce from reality is absolutely mind-boggling.

[rogue06]

Why can't we get Obama to stem the spread of the Chicom coronavirus? You know, like he claims he did with rising sea levels when he won the Democratic nomination for president.

[carpedm9587]

Looking at the list it appears that most of them on it have socialized medicine so it goes without saying that "many" of them have the lowest death rates. Conversely it also means that "many" of them have the highest death rates.

So coronavirus is reputed to have a morality rate of about 1%. I see three single-payer countries above that mark, and all of the rest are below. "Three" does not seem to me to be "many."

But as I type that I realize there is a stronger argument against my observation. If we use the exact same data and ask about non-single-payer above the 1% mark, the vast majority are below the 1% mark as well. So...I guess that particular distribution really doesn't tell us much of anything at all...

[simplicio]

I have wondered about the China situation for a while. After 19 days with growth between 0.0% and 0.25%, it turns out their numbers are largely meaningless. Note that their case count has stayed close to flat for 19 days at around 81,300, but their recovery count is now at 91,540 with 12,755 deaths reported. So, interestingly, only 81,304 have contracted the illness, but 104,295 have recovered or died. Amazing that...

Do you think that the Chinese government would risk fudging the data after the public relations disaster of the early part of the response?

[carpedm9587]

Why can't we get Obama to stem the spread of the Chicom coronavirus? You know, like he claims he did with rising sea levels when he won the Democratic nomination for president.

There is a head-scratching emoji around here somewhere...but I have no idea how to invoke it....


:what:
:confused:
:come-again:


ETA: Guess I found it on the first try!

[carpedm9587]

Do you think that the Chinese government would risk fudging the data after the public relations disaster of the early part of the response?

I don't know. I suspect they have been hiding infections. I have no clue why the recovered numbers are so high. Maybe it's just a mistake that will be fixed...?


ETA: Apparently a data entry error. The number has been adjusted down to 71K instead of 91K.

[RumTumTugger]

This claim has been reported multiple times. Consider the challenge put: besides forming committees, publicly playing down the pandemic, and being a fairly significant source of disinformation, what exactly did Trump do prior to his sudden conversion to "this is a problem," which I believe happened last week.

Give me a break he never said it wasn't serious or a he going on the little bit of information we had due to China's government not wanting to admit that things were worse they they told us was trying to forstall the Panic that the media was heck bent on creating. He did the best he could do given the information we did not have because hte China Government did not give us all of it

And I will give you that he closed the borders (after the virus had a foothold), but he has always wanted to close borders, so he basically found an excuse to do so no one could question. Other than that...what is the list of marvelous things Trump did between the origin of the virus and March 15th, when he had his change of heart?

as soon as we found out that the China Government lied about how bad it was He Started the Task force putting Pence in charge to coordinate it all so the Scientists and doctors on the task force could do their jobs of trying to get ahead of the virus that was the China Governments fault, got rid of stifling regulation so the private sector could work on getting Chicom covid tests, masks, etc he also gathered the private sector together to get ideas on what they could do to help name a few. Above all else trying to keep the American People Calm which was not helped by the so called reporting of the MSM which was designed to panic America after they had complained that Trump had overreacted in stopping travel from China when he did. Sorry carpedm you need to take those orangeman Bad glasses off to see what has been happening in front of your nose.

Tell me what you would have done differently Carpe given we did not know what was happening till January after the horse left the China Barn.

[rogue06]

Do you think that the Chinese government would risk fudging the data after the public relations disaster of the early part of the response?

They're still lying. They haven't stopped. Just look at their claiming that the Chicom coronavirus originated in the U.S. Moreover they are flooding social media with falsehoods in attempt to sow confusion and cause trouble. We've even seen it being repeated here on Tweb such as this:

Ok, I give up. For some reason the tweet only displays intermittently. Bottom line is American children are being stabbed out of xenophobia because of the insistence on calling Coronavirus "Chinese virus".

[rogue06]

There is a head-scratching emoji around here somewhere...but I have no idea how to invoke it....


:what:
:confused:
:come-again:


ETA: Guess I found it on the first try!

00000000000000ab000-00aaaf2.jpg

[simplicio]

They're still lying. They haven't stopped. Just look at their claiming that the Chicom coronavirus originated in the U.S. Moreover they are flooding social media with falsehoods in attempt to sow confusion and cause trouble. We've even seen it being repeated here on Tweb such as this:

Maybe they've hired Steve Bannon and Brietbart News!

[carpedm9587]

Give me a break he never said it wasn't serious or a he going on the little bit of information we had due to China's government not wanting to admit that things were worse they they told us was trying to forstall the Panic that the media was heck bent on creating. He did the best he could do given the information we did not have because hte China Government did not give us all of it

In his own words...

as soon as we found out that the China Government lied about how bad it was He Started the Task force putting Pence in charge to coordinate it all so the Scientists and doctors on the task force could do their jobs of trying to get ahead of the virus that was the China Governments fault , got rid of stifling regulation so the private sector could work on getting Chicom covid tests, masks, etc he also gathered the private sector together to get ideas on what they could do to help name a few. Above all else trying to keep the American People Calm which was not helped by the so called reporting of the MSM which was designed to panic America after they had complained that Trump had overreacted in stopping travel from China when he did. Sorry carpedm you need to take those orangeman Bad glasses off to see what has been happening in front of your nose.

Tell me what you would have done differently Carpe given we did not know what was happening till January after the horse left the China Barn.

Pence was put in charge of the response on February 26, five weeks after the first case in Washington and long after we knew that China had downplayed the virus. By then the CDC had already started developing their own testing kits. A proven protocol developed in Germany was already published on the WHO website (that happened even BEFORE our first case), but decisions makers rejected it in favor of spending two weeks developing and testing our own. The "regulation" thing has been bandied about a lot, but no one seems to be able to say exactly what regulations were cleared out of the way. Do you know? I certainly cannot find anything. The only thing I can find is that state labs were given the green light to develop and produce their own tests last Monday (3/16), WELL after the pandemic was underway. I know of no regulations that limited the development/production of masks, except the very recent change to liability for the manufacturers, but that also happened within the last week.

As for keeping the American people calm, spewing disinformation day after day is not a source of "calm" for most of us to actually acknowledge that this man lies most of the times he opens his mouth. Fauci has been a solid source of information, but Trump seems to fairly regularly either contradict him or downplay his message. As for "orangeman bad glasses," it is not bias if it is true. Claiming "bias" is simply a convenient way to dismiss those who speak out against Trump. After all, if we're "biased," you don't actually have to listen, do you?

As for what I would have done...there are several things:

• Been honest from the outset with the American people about the severity of the virus.
• Directed the CDC to validate the German protocols and clear state labs to develop tests as soon as he WHO declared a global pandemic.
• I would never have allowed the global health response team within the NSC to be disbanded, not in the age of global travel and the new array of viruses we have been seeing. The last pandemic was only 10 years ago.
• Brought governors and the mayors of major cities into the loop at the outset, especially those with detected infections, to get action going at the state level as quickly as possible.
• Identified supply gaps, invoked the Defense Production Act, and actually acted on it as soon as the gaps were identified. We have known that hand sanitizer, masks, and ventilators (to name a few things) were likely to be in short supply for weeks now.
• Instructed my entire cabinet and congressional leaders (which have required actually meeting with them) to get on the same page and push the social-distancing and hand-washing message everywhere and consistently, instead of the garbled messaging from such characters as Nunes, Pence, Carson, and Trump himself, to name a few.
• Adopted a "the buck stops here" posture - it is the mark of a leader who is taking charge. "Not my fault" is the whine of a toddler.
• Used a declaration of national emergency to ensure that ALL tests would be free to those taking them. At present, they are only free to those with insurance, AFAIK.

I could continue, but I'm pretty sure all of this will be dismissed as "Monday morning quarterbacking." However, we had leaders calling for such actions weeks ago. Unfortunately, most of them held the title "Democrat," so we certainly wouldn't want to actually do something the opposing side is calling for, right?

Our national polarization is resulting in unnecessary deaths.

[carpedm9587]

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Ohh..I thought your references was to something that actually happened. My bad.