Muzzled by the Chinese government.Quote:
Originally Posted by dakota87
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Muzzled by the Chinese government.Quote:
Originally Posted by dakota87
Strangely, African sent me a PM asking why he's been banned. He still doesn't get it.Quote:
Originally Posted by rodinuk
Ironically, the man who has been passing the buck and refusing to accept responsibility is now claiming that he has total authority when it comes to reopening the economy. https://www.politico.com/states/cali...isions-1275506Quote:
Originally Posted by broncofan
It's weird that Trump's approval ratings are holding up despite his floundering and blame-shifting and despite the obvious evidence that things are not going well. I can't conceive of this being the case if an Australian leader was behaving in a similar fashion. It's like a case of mass cognitive dissonance: when things are going well Trump is the all-powerful leader who deserves all the credit, but when things go wrong it's something beyond his control and the fault of others. Any fool can look good for a while if he comes into office at the right time, but surely dealing with a national crisis is the President's most important responsibility and the true test of whether he is any good.
Trump has fanatical followers who simply know he is doing the right thing, regardless of what anyone--or even he himself--says. I know a Trump diehard who posted something about Biden being incoherent. I asked him if he had watched any of Trump's insane daily press conferences. He said, "I don't need to."Quote:
Originally Posted by filghy2
He has millions of supporters who will not abandon him because they know the only alternative is socialism (which they think is identical to communism). They even think that the current supply shortages, stock market crash, and unemployment would be the normal state of things under socialism, and even though I'm no socialist I can't fathom how a capitalist system under strain and not functioning properly proves that socialism is a failure.
I also received the same PM and wrote a gentle reply, but it could not be sent as his account is either terminated or he can't receive PMs.Quote:
Originally Posted by filghy2
Amidst all the talk of shortages of equipment or too much of it, what is emerging is a crisis in care/nursing/residential homes, which I assume are more or less the same in Europe as they are in North America. It is a crisis of its own because the people living close to each other have nowhere else to go, other than their bedrooms, and the fear that Covid 19 is not always being recorded as the cause of death.
Last year Boris Johnson gave a speech outside Downing Street in which he said he not only intended to make social care a priority, he had a plan that would be presented to Parliament, but this did not happen. The fact that in the UK and countries like Germany the size of the elderly population, (say 70+) is growing, has made care of the elderly an issue that cannot be ignored for much longer, though I don't know what the right policies might be for an sector of the economy that is more consumptive than it is productive.
When we emerge from this crisis, there will be a long term problem: deciding what part of the economy gets the money required to stimulate jobs; I doubt the care home sector-like mental health- will be the priority.
It also makes me wonder if there will be a sharp divide between people who have savings or a steady income and those out of pocket and unemployed. I noted yesterday there were 6 pages of models on Chaturbate where before there would be four, and I can imagine people desperate now to get away and head off to Thailand or Spain or wherever they can find their desire, and I assume the escorts who are not receiving clients will be in great demand -but will there be a sufficient rise in the volume of 'trade' to restore this part of the economy to where it was before?
I think Trump’s approval ratings right now are at about 44 %...that’s not good. Even when the papers touted his 49% approval rating , or somewhere around that, that wasn’t good either.Quote:
Originally Posted by filghy2
In another post I mentioned how people judge politicians differently both before, and during a crisis (also after the crisis wears off ...but that’s for another conversation).
I’m not going to go back to Roosevelt’s years and I’m only going to site a few polls I saw (you can always google the rest) but here’s my take:
During 911, President Bush’s approval ratings were anywhere between 85% and 92%. His ratings before that weren’t too bad, even if you disagree with him, because he’s a likeable guy, but still. Mayor Giuliani’s (remember him? This was before he went totally nuts...lol) local approval was at something like 79%, with it being only 36% a year before (though his popularity was decent during his early stewardship of the city, when crime reduction was a huge priority). Governor Andrew Cuomo’s is at 87% ( with 70% of Republicans in NYS).
My point is, President Trump has the huge advantage of daily press conferences, when his opponent doesn’t even have the opportunity to really campaign. He also has the advantage of having two health officials , who are blessed in the charisma department. Even the economy isn’t as bad as it totally could be. All he has to do, is sound like a normal human being. He can introduce everyone and step aside...or not come out at all. He can even handle questions - all he has to do is not take any real gotcha bait and perhaps...and this one’s important...perhaps, admit he made some mistakes early on. Shit - almost everyone made mistakes early on (as Stavros mentioned in another post)...a pandemic doesn’t come up every year. At least he would’ve seemed human instead of thin skinned and petty. So my point is, his approval ratings, even when they were 49%, sucked during a crisis. I figure, with a totally non-professional guess for my part, his ratings during this crisis - even during these very polarized times, should be somewhere in the sixties...at the least.
I think he started relatively well early on , during the very first conferences..but as people watched more and more, his personality just couldn’t change. He has the inability to become a bigger person than himself. He’s totally misreading this and fucking it up.
WHO busts some myths about Covid 19, useful info-
https://www.who.int/emergencies/dise...c/myth-busters
I guess the other thing is that the states that voted for Trump have not generally been too badly affected as yet. When it really hits them - and it's hard to see why it won't given they've been more lax about social distancing - we should see his support start to erode. It's one thing to believe bullshit when it's about someone else; it's quite another to believe it when it relates to your direct experience.Quote:
Originally Posted by fred41
As far as I know, no president in recent decades has been reelected when the economy has been in recession or just coming out of one. Ford, Carter, and Bush I all lost when the economy was doing poorly. It looks like Trump's strategy may be to blame the Democrat states for not reopening the economy as early as he wants, but I can't see that working - especially as people will be able to see what happens in states that do his bidding.
He sent me two PMs so I'm flattered he likes me twice as much;). Then again the second one was on the profane side. I tried to respond and say something nice but could not.Quote:
Originally Posted by filghy2
There is a belief among some Trump supporters that harsh criticism of him is partisan. I watched two or three of his press conferences early on and I don't think I could root harder for someone to sound like they're knowledgeable and a professional. There is no standard by which he could be judged competent or even to have behaved like an adult.
I'm sure a big part of the problem is that he hasn't filled key positions with qualified people but instead with people he trusts who have no business being there. There is no doubt we will have to restart the economy before a vaccine is ready and Trump will be judged by whether he does it at the right time and whether in the places he does it there is sufficient testing to prevent outbreaks. He has a second chance as we go to the bottom of these state curves to do a thoughtful job, but I've come to expect incompetence followed by denial. Also, I'm of the opinion the federal government can't force states to open businesses as that's a state police power, but if states do it on their own the federal government should be facilitating it with lots of testing.
I agree that anyone in power was going to make at least one mistake. But when people care about what's going on they typically don't make more than one. If they can't get testing going and there's community spread, maybe they're more conscientious about distancing at the beginning. If they shut down too late and there's been too many outbreaks, maybe they're great at backing up the states with ventilators and ppe, and then do a great job of ramping up testing.Quote:
Originally Posted by fred41
He compounds one mistake with another and his insistence on wanting to make the economy boom in the middle of a pandemic instead of just preventing economic disaster and trying to stabilize things shows that he's done such a poor job because he doesn't care. Preventing deaths is not the right incentive system for him. He is a man who is not sensitive to the difference between 60,000 dead and 20,000 dead.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump
I'm not linking a particular tweet but his entire twitter timeline. It shouldn't need an explanation. Any society where someone writing stuff like this during a crisis isn't a pariah is in trouble. He not only shouldn't be a leader, decent people shouldn't interact with the guy.
Are there any Republicans who think Democrats (except for total fringe people) would be okay with this kind of trash from one of our leaders?
Completely agree. His entire timeline doesn't need any explanation and he shouldn't be leader at all. and no Democrats wouldn't be okay with this kind of trash from one their leaders.Quote:
Originally Posted by broncofan
Agree. No president in recent decades has been re-elected when the economy has been in recession. and Trump's strategy of blaming democratic states for not reopening the economy as early as he wants will backfire.Quote:
Originally Posted by filghy2
State Department cables warned of safety issues at Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...coronaviruses/
Taiwan says WHO ignored its coronavirus questions at start of outbreak
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-h...-idUSKBN21B160
Trump is on live now taking vengeance on the WHO. He's putting all US funding on hold. Brilliant move in the middle of a pandemic.
Because finding a scapegoat is the most important thing.
Not surprised at all that Trump is withholding all funding on hold from the WHO. The same WHO he was praising a few months ago. Another prime example of him taking no responsibility for his poor handling of the CO-VID 19 Pandemic and blaming everybody else for his failures.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fitzcarraldo
1. I didn't respond to African's PM because I knew that would happen, and I don't think I could be as diplomatic as Stavros.Quote:
Originally Posted by broncofan
2. How long until Anthony Fauci gets the chop for the crime of speaking inconvenient truths?
3. Trump will probably withhold financial and other support from states who don't do his bidding (after all, they are not going to vote for him). He's getting pushback from his own side as state rights are a bedrock Republican principle. We'll see whether they go to water as usual. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/0...acklash-186887
It looks like I've roused Mr Fanti from the dead, but I guess there's not much harm as long as he's only posting links.
You may want to watch the Epoch Times video which I was alerted to and watched yesterday.Quote:
Originally Posted by MrFanti
With these words of caution-
a) Epoch Times is founded and funded by supporters of Falun Gong, so be wary of the 'Communism is evil' stuff, and no, this is not a backhanded compliment to Mao or Xi.
b) the central claim is that as no bats are sold in the wet marked in Wuhan, the virus originated elsewhere, specifically the P4 Laboratory which was conducting experiments on bats and coronaviruses. There is speculation that either this was part of a long term plan to create a vaccine that would give China first mover advantage in the market should another variants of SARS break out into an epidemic or even a pandemc; or that the Lab was engaged in experiments in a biological weapon, which is why the Party has covered up many of the facts. (The owner of the firm that might sell the vaccine is the grandson of former President Jiang Zemin).
c) the 'cock-up' theory is suggested by the American molecular biologist Judy Mikovits who claims when she worked at a lab in I think, Virginia in the 1980s health and safety procedures there were sloppy. I find this hard to comprehend in either the US or the China cases, but the key point is that no precise explanation is offered as to how the virus leaked from the lab, if that is what happened.
d) the video makes much of China's global ambitions, as if it were a shocking discovery -but if one bears in mind that since 1949 China has made so much of the century of humiliation it suffered from the Opium Wars of the 1840s to the Japanese occupation that began in 1931, then with this anxiety over its past, China's determnation to establish itself as Numero Uno in East Asia is as logical as it is potentially scary. But will China and Japan go to war?
e) the US closed its own biological weapons labs in 1973, but for all we know the Miilitary may have secret facilities or programmes to ensure it can stay in touch with what the USA's enemies are doing. And in the past, the US did experiment on its own citizens with bioweapons.
f) lastly, as I said before, the use of biological/virological weapons is too broad and unpredictable to be useful- even al-Qaeda had precise, limited targets in the US on 9/11, and effective ones too.
Nevertheless, if you want to see the video, it is here-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htMUCYkFO6M
For anyone interestd, I have posted my thoughts on the USA's temporary withdrawal of funding for the WHO in a different thread, which is here-
http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/sho...70#post1925070
Another country that has not been doing a good job is Sweden. Their testing is insufficient, as you can see from their case fatality rate, and their deaths are starting to spike. Today they had 170 deaths which per capita would be the equivalent of 5450 deaths in the U.S. I think they're making a mistake by not shutting down like everyone else.
This article is from yesterday so it doesn't include today's totals. https://www.medicinenet.com/script/m...iclekey=230288
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/
The one thing many people were worried about with these stay at home orders, were politicians over stepping their bounds and taking things too far. That's what's happening in Michigan with their governor and people took to the streets in their cars to protest her actions.
http://www.woodtv.com/health/coronav...lansing-today/
There are people in this article who believe that fishing is an essential activity in a pandemic, and that washing your hands alone will prevent you from getting a respiratory disease spread through droplets that people cough.Quote:
Originally Posted by blackchubby38
The state of Michigan had 153 deaths today and at the rate this country is going we'd have well over a million a year w/o distancing. We currently have 2347 today.
Anyone who believes a stay at home order at this point in Michigan, only three weeks from the initial order, is an excessive measure is not someone who thinks the economy should be slowly reopened based on the advice of epidemiologists and with at least three to four times our current testing capacity. It's possible if you cherrypick public health experts you can find one who doesn't think relaxing distancing while you're at the top of the curve would be a disaster, but most, including Scott Gottlieb, who is Trump's previous FDA head, think we need a lot more testing and the ability to conduct tracing so that we can become stricter as soon as community spread begins.
Some quotes from the article:
“I just don’t see why I can’t take my kids out fishing. I don’t see why that’s not essential. We are old enough to wash our hands, be safe about it and use some common sense — that’s all it takes,”
A business owner from Hudsonville said, “I think a lot of it is hype. Just wash your hands and stay safe.”
https://www.vox.com/2020/4/14/212190...nomy-recession
Here's an interview with Scott Gottlieb. As I said, he was a Trump appointee, worked for the American Enterprise Institute, and seems to want people to get back to work. Yet his plan seems pretty cautious and contingent on our ability to prevent community spread. Do you really think they should unwind stay at home orders in Michigan now as opposed to 2-3 weeks from now?
It's strange that they have done so little testing. If you are going to pursue this strategy of not shutting down and relying on people behaving responsibly then surely you should be ramping up the testing and contact-tracing.Quote:
Originally Posted by broncofan
Previous generations came through the Great Depression and World War II - essentially 16 years of hardship because the economy did not properly recover before the war. How would these people have coped with that?Quote:
Originally Posted by broncofan
This virus is like a perfect storm that is exposing so many weaknesses in the US, part from the obvious one at the top:
- excessive focus on individual rights and free enterprise to the exclusion of the public good
- dysfunctional hyper-partisan politics
- systematic erosion of government capacity
- inadequate social safety nets
- poor health system
- denigration of scientific expertise
"- excessive focus on individual rights and free enterprise to the exclusion of the public goodQuote:
Originally Posted by filghy2
- dysfunctional hyper-partisan politics
- systematic erosion of government capacity
- inadequate social safety nets
- poor health system
- denigration of scientific expertise"
-Chapters for a book! Maybe you should write it? I would read it.
I'm sure we'll be seeing many books on this theme in the period ahead.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
I'm not sure I have the perseverance to write a whole book. I've managed to write papers of 30-40 pages in the past, and that was quite enough for me.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/16/...-to-treatment/
It looks like some data from the first clinical trials for Remdesivir might come out soon. The doctor at U Chicago has said that out of 113 patients enrolled with severe disease only two have died. I make some assumptions here but if our hospitalization rate is about 20% and our cfr is 4%, would you expect a fatality rate close to 20% for people with serious illness? Maybe I'm wrong. Don't want to peddle false hope, but we'll see what the data says.
I'm also curious if there are other designs that check whether it's effective in preventing people with mild disease from progressing to severe disease. Gilead's stock is up, but that just means people read the same articles I did.
I think the first point in Filghy's post is the most important. There's a kind of macho American individualism here, which says I should be able to do whatever I want, and f**k the rest of you. It's based on the false picture that society is just an aggregate of individuals. rather than seeing an individual as part of a community. It's me, me, me, never us -- or if us, just a small us (my family and friends perhaps). Nobody has a constitutional right to infect other people.
The Australian government has announced that current restrictions will remain in place for at least another 4 weeks. Decisions on easing them will depend on progress with testing, contact-tracing and increasing hospital capacity to deal with outbreaks.
Australia appears to be at least 2 weeks ahead of the US in flattening the infection curve, so that benchmark would suggest you should not be looking to reopen until at least early June.
It would also be nice if people who say they have a constitutional right to do something would explain what the right is, what their basis is for claiming the right, and whether it can be overridden by the state's interest in saving lives. A state law can infringe on constitutionally protected rights if the law is necessary to achieve a compelling government interest. Saving lives in a pandemic is a compelling government interest and there is no other way to achieve it until we have the capability to perform contact tracing. Mandated social distancing is only unnecessary when there is a treatment, really ubiquitous testing, or a vaccine. And yes, people's right to earn a living, to operate a business, or to engage in many other public activities are important, but they're not absolute.
When I looked at each state curve I thought June looked like the perfect time too. Something about seeing people wearing camo with guns in the middle of the street makes me feel like we're going to need a compromise. But while June may be a good time in terms of where we are on each state's curve, I'm not sure how we're going to get the testing capacity we need. We've hit a bottleneck in the last week at around 150,000 tests a day.
Quote:
Originally Posted by broncofan
We need to come to some sort of compromise because there is no way we can keep doing this until June. Its not good for the economy. Whether on the local, state, or federal level. Its also not good for people's physical, mental, and emotional well being.
I'm not going to lie, I wasn't happy today when I heard that Governor Cuomo extended the stay at home orders until May 15th. I think it should have been done on a two week basis.
I don't think there's a simple trade-off between health and the economy. If you open up too early you are likely to get a rebound in infections that forces you to reimpose restrictions. So it's likely that you end up with a longer period of economic and other pain just for the sake of a getting a temporary respite from it.Quote:
Originally Posted by blackchubby38
You don't have to do it all at once. You can stagger it out over the course of a few weeks. Especially if the number of people being admitted into the hospitals for Coronavirus continues to decrease.Quote:
Originally Posted by filghy2
I understand where you're coming from but I don't see how it could work out if we open the economy. Doctors now think 40% of transmission may occur before people have symptoms. People seem to be shedding the most virus on the first day they experience symptoms, which are often mild at the beginning.Quote:
Originally Posted by blackchubby38
I saw a video with Angela Merkel today where she was discussing basic reproduction number. She said she estimated Germany's was at about 1, which means that every infected person transmits to one other person. She talked about slowly opening things up and said they had calculated that if this value goes to 1.1 their hospitals would not be overwhelmed until September. If it's at 1.2 then July or something. But there is so little margin and the value without any distancing is at least 2.5. We don't even know what the sensitivity of this value is to half measures. We do know with no distancing it spreads like wildfire because that's what it did.
So I'm just curious what people think would happen if we open up? First what would open? Would people in offices with 100 people be tested? What testing capacity would we need to even be somewhat cautious? Nobody can get a test right now without symptoms no matter how many they stand to infect because capacity isn't there.
What I meant was that he could have extended the stay at home order until April 30th and then if need to be, extend it another 2 weeks.Quote:
Originally Posted by broncofan
Once tests become available, private businesses will be responsible for testing their own employees. Those who work for the government will be tested by public health departments. Those who work in the healthcare industry, will be tested by their respective employers.
We have to start asking ourselves some hard questions as to what the endgame is until a vaccine becomes available. Which is not happening for another 12-18 months. Are we looking to reduce the number of infections to an acceptable amount or are looking to make sure no one gets infected. We should be striving for the former because the latter isn't happening.
Are we looking to make sure that the hospitals aren't being overrun with Covid-19 cases or are we trying to make sure no one is admitted to the hospital with the virus. Because I'm quite sure that second scenario isn't a viable option at this time.
If this is truly a war, then we may need to accept the fact that there is going to be some collateral damage. We already have from an economic standpoint. The same goes for our physical, mental. and emotional well being. If someone committed suicide due to being out of work and the self isolation, was that an acceptable loss because of the greater good of society. If there is rise in domestic violence due to people being cooped up together, is that acceptable.
Until there is a vaccine or a form of treatment readily available that alleviates the symptoms of the Corona virus, there are still going to be deaths because if it. We may have to ask ourselves is there an acceptable number of daily deaths we can live with in order to get things back to normal.
As of last count, over 500 Covid-19 patients were safely discharged from the hospital that I work at. Lets say that's happening across a city and the number of admissions to the ICU go down as well. Lets say the daily number of deaths continue to decline. Shouldn't that be a goal that we should strive for?
Never mind.
got rid of a semi long post on American Individualism but....
While I’m here - I agree with Blackchubbies post above.
[QUOTE=blackchubby38;1925268
Until there is a vaccine or a form of treatment readily available that alleviates the symptoms of the Corona virus, there are still going to be deaths because if it. We may have to ask ourselves is there an acceptable number of daily deaths we can live with in order to get things back to normal.
[/QUOTE]
What will normal be, and when? If, for the sake of argument, the State of New York phases out the lockdown can we assume that retail outlets will open, be they department stores or diners or fast-food outlets? Because physical distancing is not easy in such places. Will clubs re-open, venues like the Met or Carnegie Hall or MOMA and such places, again, becasue if physical distancing is a key means of avoiding infection, such places must carry a risk. And then a General Hospital -surely the one place that has remained open and functioning where physical distancing is not only impossble, but at the closest proximity to the virus. I think as the number of new cases declines, the pressure to relax will mount, so I think that the risk element is going to be factored in, and the people responsible just hope and pray there is not a 'second wave'.
Finally, just as last night I leaned out of the window at 8pm to clap my admiration and gratitude for those in the NHS working round the clock to treat the sick and dying, be aware I was clapping for you too, and all your colleagues in health care across the USA.