Slide to the back
Re: Virus thread, the political one.
Just when you want to think that the stupidity associated with politicizing a viral pandemic can't get much worse, Georgia swoops in with a prohibition against localities requiring folks to wear masks when in public. The real test will be when Kemp runs for re-election.Originally Posted by jclay
What a bunch of morons; the state "leaders" and their cheering sections.
Florida's current administration, it seems, has a worthy competitor for the MOTY (moron of the year) award.
Go vertical or go home....
Re: Virus thread, the political one.
’m a GOP Governor. Why Didn’t Trump Help My State With Coronavirus Testing?
2020-07-16 10:10:35.786 GMT
By Larry Hogan
(Washington Post) -- My wife, Yumi, and I stood on the tarmac, waiting in
cloth masks, on the morning of April 18. Finally, a Boeing 777 landed and
taxied to the far corner of Baltimore-Washington International Marshall
Airport. It was the first Korean Air flight ever to land at BWI, but it didn't
have a single passenger aboard. The crew of five had flown 14 hours, straight
from Seoul.
"Congratulations, honey," I told Yumi as the pilot turned off the engines.
"You helped save a lot of lives."
The plane was filled with 500,000 test kits for my state, where the
coronavirus had already infected 12,308 Marylanders and killed 463 of them.
The numbers were still climbing, and we would never be able to contain them
without mass testing. "Anybody that wants a test can get a test," President
Trump had declared the previous month. In reality, only 2,252 Americans had
been tested at that point in March. Across the country, my fellow governors
were desperately pleading for help on testing. But in early April, Trump said
it was the states' job.
Yumi was born and raised in South Korea, a country that had, by then, erected
a well-coordinated testing regime. So, with nowhere else to turn, Yumi and I
asked President Moon Jae-in for help. He arranged the sale of a half-million
test kits from LabGenomics, one of the world's leading medical testing firms,
for $9 million. It was a bargain considering the $2.8 billion in revenue we
projected the pandemic would cost Maryland.
Now the kits had arrived. The crew members came down together, walked over and
stopped six feet away. Yumi bowed, and the crew bowed in return. Following
their lead, so did I. Then a caravan of Maryland National Guard trucks
escorted by the Maryland State Police drove the tests from the airport to a
refrigerated, secure warehouse at an undisclosed location. The federal
government had recently seized 3 million N95 masks purchased by Massachusetts
Gov. Charlie Baker. We weren't going to let Washington stop us from helping
Marylanders.
This should not have been necessary. I'd watched as the president downplayed
the outbreak's severity and as the White House failed to issue public
warnings, draw up a 50-state strategy, or dispatch medical gear or lifesaving
ventilators from the national stockpile to American hospitals. Eventually, it
was clear that waiting around for the president to run the nation's response
was hopeless; if we delayed any longer, we'd be condemning more of our
citizens to suffering and death. So every governor went their own way, which
is how the United States ended up with such a patchwork response. I did the
best I could for Maryland. Here's what we saw and heard from Washington along
the way.
Trump's first public utterance about the coronavirus set the tone for
everything that followed. He was in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 22, after the
first American diagnosis. "Are there worries about a pandemic at this point?"
asked CNBC anchor Joe Kernen.
"We have it totally under control," Trump responded unhesitatingly. "It's one
person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It's going to be
just fine." And off the president went for the next eight weeks. The rest of
January and February were peppered with cheerful or sarcastic comments and
tweets, minimizing the outbreak's severity and the need for Americans to do
much of anything.
Only days after his first dismissal, we got our first scare in Maryland. A
traveler who'd been in China landed at BWI with sniffles, coughs and lung
distress. The passenger tested negative, but we were already making decisions
in the governor's office about how we should react when the first positive
cases arrived. "It won't be long," I assured our team.
So many nationwide actions could have been taken in those early days but
weren't. While other countries were racing ahead with well-coordinated testing
regimes, the Trump administration bungled the effort. The test used by the
federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention early on was fraught with
inaccuracies, and onerous regulations hindered the nation's private labs. The
resulting disorganization would delay mass testing for almost two months and
leave the nation largely in the dark as the epidemic spread.
Meanwhile, instead of listening to his own public health experts, the
president was talking and tweeting like a man more concerned about boosting
the stock market or his reelection plans.
America's governors took a different approach. In early February, we descended
on Washington for the annual winter meeting of the National Governors
Association. As chairman, I had worked closely with the staff for months
assembling the agenda, including a private, governors-only briefing at our
hotel, the Marriott Marquis, to address the growing viral threat. We brought
in Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases, who was already widely admired but whose awesome
knowledge and straight-talking style hadn't yet made him a national rock star;
CDC head Robert Redfield; Ken Cuccinelli, the acting deputy secretary of
homeland security; Jay Butler, the CDC's deputy director for infectious
diseases; and Robert Kadlec, assistant secretary for preparedness and response
at the Department of Health and Human Services.
They hit us with detailed presentations and the unfiltered truth, as well as
it was known then. I remember hearing many dire claims: "This could be
catastrophic. . . . The death toll could be significant. . . . Much more
contagious than SARS. . . . Testing will be crucial. . . . You have to follow
the science — that's where the answers lie."
It was jarring, the huge contrast between the experts' warnings and the
president's public dismissals. Weren't these the people the White House was
consulting about the virus? What made the briefing even more chilling was its
clear, factual tone. It was a harrowing warning of an imminent national
threat, and we took it seriously — at least most of us did. It was enough to
convince almost all the governors that this epidemic was going to be worse
than most people realized.
During the retreat in D.C., the Republican Governors Association sponsored a
private dinner with the president. Backstage beforehand, I said hello to him.
We took a photo together. He was perfectly cordial, even though we'd
criticized each other in the past. Then he came out and gave one of his
unscripted rally speeches that seemed to go on at least an hour too long. I
don't remember him mentioning the virus, but he talked about how much he
respected President Xi Jinping of China; how much he liked playing golf with
his buddy "Shinzo," Prime Minister Abe of Japan; how well he got along with
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
Then, the jarring part: Trump said he really didn't like dealing with
President Moon from South Korea. The South Koreans were "terrible people," he
said, and he didn't know why the United States had been protecting them all
these years. "They don't pay us," Trump complained.
Yumi was sitting there as the president hurled insults at her birthplace. I
could tell she was hurt and upset. I know she wanted to walk out. But she sat
there politely and silently.
The next night, Saturday, Lee Soo-hyuck, the South Korean ambassador to the
United States, hosted a reception at his official residence for all the
governors and their spouses. Yumi had worked with the ambassador to plan the
event. Moon delivered a video message, welcoming the governors and thanking
them for Korea's very special relationship with the United States.
Speaking in Korean with English subtitles, he said how proud he was of Yumi as
the first Korean American first lady in the United States. Then he referred to
me as the son-in-law of the Korean people. It meant a lot to us to hear him
say that, though it would take a couple of months before we would learn just
how much his warmth would truly mean to the people of my state.
In the days and weeks that followed, as the coronavirus hit Maryland, we
worked frantically, issuing executive orders, holding news conferences,
calling other governors and federal infectious-disease experts, talking to
local officeholders, strategizing with my senior staff — and constantly
sanitizing our hands.
But the president was all over the place. He avowed, falsely, that "anybody"
could get a test, even as my fellow governors were desperately pleading for
help on testing. Then he shifted from boasting to blame. "We inherited a very
obsolete system" from the Obama administration, he claimed, conveniently
ignoring the fact that his own CDC had designed the troubled U.S. testing
system and that his own Food and Drug Administration had waited a full month
before allowing U.S. hospital labs to develop their own tests. On March 25,
the president was back to bragging again. "We now are doing more testing than
anybody by far," including South Korea, whose widespread testing program was
being praised around the world. This was true in absolute numbers, since we
are a much bigger country, but we'd tested far fewer per capita than the
Koreans had — 1,048 tests per million people vs. South Korea's 6,764 per
million — and of course that was the only figure that mattered. During one
White House briefing in late March, Trump said the issue had been dealt with.
"I haven't heard about testing for weeks," the president insisted.
Really?
As Trump was making these comments, I was requesting his approval to conduct
joint testing at the National Institutes of Health. I even called Francis
Collins, the head of NIH, to make this request, but he stopped me before I
could. Not to argue but to plead: "Actually, Governor," he said, "I'm glad you
called, because I was going to ask you for help." At NIH headquarters, he
explained, his people had the capacity to perform only 72 tests a day. "I
don't even have enough tests for my immune-compromised patients or for my
staff," he said. He wondered if I might prevail upon Johns Hopkins, whose
Suburban Hospital is across the street from NIH, to do some testing for him.
I could only shake my head at that. The federal government — a much bigger and
better-funded institution, with tens of thousands of scientists and physicians
in the civil service — wanted my help! Governors always do the hard work, make
the tough decisions and take the political heat. But an undertaking as large
as a national testing program required Washington's help. We expected
something more than constant heckling from the man who was supposed to be our
leader.
Trump soon disabused us of that expectation. On April 6, he declared that
testing wasn't Washington's responsibility after all. "States can do their own
testing," he said. "We're the federal government. We're not supposed to stand
on street corners doing testing."
It was hopeless, waiting around for him. Governors were being told that we
were on our own. It was sink or swim. And if I didn't do something dramatic,
we simply would not come close to having enough tests in Maryland.
Luckily, I had a special ally on my side: Yumi Hogan.
We'd all seen how South Korea, hard hit at first by the virus, conquered its
outbreak with a swift program of social distancing, testing and contact
tracing. Yumi was almost a celebrity in her home country. (I remembered the
cheering people waiting on the sidewalk once outside our hotel in Seoul:
"First lady! First lady!") And hadn't Moon recently called me a Korean
son-in-law? Maybe the Koreans would be willing to help.
On Saturday, March 28, I asked Yumi to join me on a call with Ambassador Lee.
We spoke about the special relationship between Maryland and Korea, and Yumi
made a personal plea in Korean, asking for the nation's help.
That request set in motion what we called Operation Enduring Friendship, 22
days of vetting, testing and negotiating an unprecedented set of protocols.
Our scientists and doctors spoke to their scientists and doctors. Eight
Maryland government agencies got involved, as did their counterparts in Korea.
It took dozens and dozens of phone calls, night after night — sometimes it
seemed like all night — working through language barriers and a 13-hour time
difference.
Moon's team helped to cut through miles of bureaucratic red tape and connected
us directly with executives at LabGenomics, a molecular diagnostics company.
We explained what we were trying to achieve in Maryland and how desperate our
need was. The LabGenomics people seemed to understand.
The scramble eventually culminated in the arrival of those half-million tests.
I could finally breathe a sigh of relief: We had the tools at least to learn
the scope of the outbreak.
I thought we might get a congratulatory word from the president. Trump always
had a taste for bold gestures — but, apparently, only for bold gestures he
could claim. The president spent much of the following Monday's White House
briefing criticizing me and dismissing what we had done. "The governor from
Maryland didn't really understand" about testing, Trump grumbled. "The
governor of Maryland could've called Mike Pence, could've saved a lot of
money. . . . I don't think he needed to go to South Korea. I think he needed
to get a little knowledge."
The president's comments that day seemed to confuse test kits with testing
labs, but whatever. It was a great day for Maryland.
Pence called me a few days later. We had a friendly and productive
conversation on a range of topics related to Maryland and the National
Governors Association. At the end of the call, I jokingly said: "By the way,
the president said that instead of working with South Korea, I should have
just called you to get tests. If I had known it was that easy, I could have
saved a heck of a lot of effort!" He chuckled, but there wasn't much else to
say.
Click Here to see the story as it appeared an the Washington Post website.
Copyright 2020 The Washington Post
-0- Jul/16/2020 10:10 GMT
Burnum Upus Quadricepus
Re: Virus thread, the political one.
Prince Fucksupalot ("Husband of the Goya Bean Queen) back in April:
"We're on the other side of the medical aspect of this, and I think that we've achieved all the different milestones that are needed. The federal government rose to the challenge, and this is a great success story. And I think that that's really, you know, what needs to be told. I think you’ll see by June that a lot of the country should be back to normal, and the hope is that by July the country’s really rocking again"
We be rocking yet?
Wheel Suck-Slacker
Re: Virus thread, the political one.
what even is the political reasoning for this?
Go vertical or go home....
Re: Virus thread, the political one.
I'm picking up the slack for Guido who is enjoying his wood kayak.
When I was a child, I remember 'fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me'
Month Later, Pence’s Wildly Optimistic View of the Pandemic Has Proved Almost Entirely Wrong
2020-07-16 13:50:19.511 GMT
By Philip Bump
(Washington Post) -- Even at the time it was written, the fundamental
proposition offered by Vice President Pence in his Wall Street Journal piece
on June 16 was dubious. No second wave of the novel coronavirus pandemic was
emerging, he wrote — an obviously true claim only because the first wave had
not ended.
But that wasn't Pence's point. His point was that the numbers showed that the
United States had the pandemic well in hand and that there was no reason to
believe anything but that things would keep getting better. He dropped a
number of data points about case growth, test rates and deaths to reinforce
his optimistic point.
A month later, Pence has been proved wrong in nearly every way on every bit of
data he offered. The vice president, as the head of the government's response
to the pandemic, presented a case for his own success that was shown to be
inaccurate often only days after his article was published.
The core of his case was articulated in two paragraphs.
While talk of an increase in cases dominates cable news coverage, more than
half of states are actually seeing cases decline or remain stable. Every
state, territory and major metropolitan area, with the exception of three,
have positive test rates under 10%. And in the six states that have reached
more than 1,000 new cases a day, increased testing has allowed public health
officials to identify most of the outbreaks in particular settings — prisons,
nursing homes and meatpacking facilities — and contain them.
Lost in the coverage is the fact that today less than 6% of Americans tested
each week are found to have the virus. Cases have stabilized over the past two
weeks, with the daily average case rate across the U.S. dropping to 20,000 —
down from 30,000 in April and 25,000 in May. And in the past five days, deaths
are down to fewer than 750 a day, a dramatic decline from 2,500 a day a few
weeks ago — and a far cry from the 5,000 a day that some were predicting.
Broken down as individual assertions, Pence's arguments can be seen as
completely incorrect.
"While talk of an increase in cases dominates cable news coverage, more than
half of states are actually seeing cases decline or remain stable."
At the time he wrote this, it was generally correct, depending on how you
define "stable." If we say that stability necessitates deviating no more than
2.5 percent from the average daily number of new cases week over week, Pence's
claim was accurate at the time of publication.
But in short order, it wasn't. Within a week, most states were seeing new
cases grow by at least 2.5 percent, week over week. As of Monday, only 11
states had experienced declines in their seven-day averages of new cases since
a week ago.
"Every state, territory and major metropolitan area, with the exception of
three, have positive test rates under 10%."
This was apparently false at the time, as our coverage reflects. Pence has
data we don't, so it's hard to be too certain about the numbers he was working
with.
What's clear, though, is that this is now obviously false. Data from the Covid
Tracking Project through Monday shows that more than a fifth of states have
positive test rates in excess of 10 percent.
This is important largely because it makes it much harder to track outbreaks.
Experts think you can effectively keep the rate of new cases from growing if
you're seeing no more than 10 percent of tests return positive. To stamp out
the virus, testing rates need to be closer to 3 percent, allowing the tracking
of those who were in contact with the infected person.
Pence's use of 10 percent as the threshold helps mask how much worse things
have gotten. If we use a lower threshold of 5 percent — still above the level
needed to suppress the outbreak — the state-level picture is much worse.
"And in the six states that have reached more than 1,000 new cases a day,
increased testing has allowed public health officials to identify most of the
outbreaks in particular settings — prisons, nursing homes and meatpacking
facilities — and contain them."
It was hard at the time to evaluate the extent to which the claim about
containing outbreaks was accurate. Now, though, we can clearly see that either
the claim was wrong or that the expansion of new cases in these settings is
incidental to the spread of the virus.
Pence's claim that only six states were seeing more than 1,000 new cases a day
(again looking at the seven-day average of new cases) was generally correct at
the time. Since then, that number has grown, with 11 states hitting that mark.
More alarming is the number of states where new cases are substantially higher
than that. At the time, only one state was seeing more than 2,500 new cases
daily — California. On Monday, five were.
"Lost in the coverage is the fact that today less than 6% of Americans tested
each week are found to have the virus."
Again, this was true at the time. Again, it no longer is.
Pence wrote his Journal piece when the rate of positive tests over the prior
seven days was near a low. But it was already clearly the case that the
decrease in positivity rate had slowed. Within days, it began trending back
upward quickly. On Monday, it was nearly twice the rate it was when Pence
wrote.
"Cases have stabilized over the past two weeks, with the daily average case
rate across the U.S. dropping to 20,000 — down from 30,000 in April and 25,000
in May."
This was optimistic at the time, as the seven-day average of new cases
nationally had already started heading back up. It was also an odd boast: A
"stabilizing" rate of new cases means a pandemic that is being accepted, not
one that's being combated.
This is also the metric on which Pence was the most wrong. The daily average
of new cases has skyrocketed since he wrote.
"And in the past five days, deaths are down to fewer than 750 a day, a
dramatic decline from 2,500 a day a few weeks ago — and a far cry from the
5,000 a day that some were predicting."
For weeks after Pence wrote, this seemed to be the sole point on which his
optimism was warranted. The seven-day average of new deaths kept heading lower
and lower.
Experts warned that this probably wouldn't last. The surge in new cases was
not consistent with an ongoing decrease in deaths simply by virtue of the
mortality rate of the virus. In the past week, the experts were proved
correct, as the seven-day average of new deaths suddenly and sharply began to
increase again.
We are now seeing more deaths per day than we did when Pence wrote. As the
White House seeks to undercut coronavirus task force member Anthony S. Fauci's
pessimistic view of the pandemic because of his having been optimistic or
incorrect early in the outbreak, Pence's presentation of where the numbers
were headed have consistently been shown to be wildly wrong.
It's harder to judge other claims Pence made, including about testing capacity
(which seems to be wavering) and the availability of personal protective
equipment. We can, however, judge Pence's conclusion in his piece.
"The media has tried to scare the American people every step of the way, and
these grim predictions of a second wave are no different," he wrote. "The
truth is, whatever the media says, our whole-of-America approach has been a
success. We've slowed the spread, we've cared for the most vulnerable, we've
saved lives, and we've created a solid foundation for whatever challenges we
may face in the future. That's a cause for celebration, not the media's
fearmongering."
and what about this medal for DeSantis...
'Where Does Ron DeSantis Go to Get His Apology?' | National Review
Issimo
Re: Virus thread, the political one.
Because masks are now political, and his base thinks masks are tyranny. Also the GOP argument about limited, locally focused government ends the second they're in power.
The greatest gift COVID-19 ever got was the Republican Party.
Sonny Crockett
Re: Virus thread, the political one.
Nailed it. They only favor small government when they're not running the government.
"I guess you're some weird relic of an obsolete age." - davids
Rouleur
Re: Virus thread, the political one.
Besides the overt politicization of wearing masks, there's this insidious attitude of "live and let live" even among the less politically persuaded. The attitude is, wear a mask if it makes you comfortable, or don't, no judging. Which of course is a problem because unless everyone wears masks we're never going to climb out of this abyss. Another example of how American culture and attitudes make us highly vulnerable to a pandemic.
I'm still amused by the hypocrisy of the conservative view that they shouldn't have to wear a mask if they don't want to, but at the same time they're enraged at the idea that anyone could be allowed to happily exist without being a miserable working stiff. I'm convinced the entire conservative world view is based on schadenfreude.
Go vertical or go home....
Re: Virus thread, the political one.
or the logical extreme, you can't have an abortion but you can infect someone with covid by not wearing a mask.
Issimo
Re: Virus thread, the political one.
I think it's less that and more "Fuck you I got mine."
Tied and soldered
Re: Virus thread, the political one.
the biggest simple mistake made was telling everyone that masks protect others, not yourself...if it had been the other way 'round, and the usual lies appealed to self preservation here my guess is this might have gone a bit differently...appealing to their vanity and own self interest would have gone much further...promoting caring about the health and welfare of others left the stadium parking lot a very long time ago in Amerika...
Burnum Upus Quadricepus
Re: Virus thread, the political one.
Press secretary Gidget Goebbels(or is it Baghdad Barbie) says that science should not get in the way of reopening schools and that this administration has had a historic response to the COVID crisis. Well I guess that second part is true.
Slide to the back
Re: Virus thread, the political one.
You heard it here first: The published number of Covid19 infections in Florida will surpass California; I'm figuring about 16 days based on current data. And then NY....in the cross hairs! It's like Hamilton just working his way up from a bad start with plenty of laps to go.
A human demographic can ignore biology; but biology ain't gonna ignore them.
Buckle up, it's gonna be a bumpy ride.
Rouleur
Re: Virus thread, the political one.
And keep in mind CA has nearly twice the population of FL.
Hoping the numbers will level off soon here in CA, as many counties are closing back down. However, most of CA is "red" by area, and those places are in full head-in-sand mode right now. My in-laws live in a very rural area of CA and my MIL recently said there is a lot of social pressure in her little town to *not* wear a mask. She actually fears getting yelled at when wearing a mask in the hardware store. The only thing saving these areas from NYC style virus disaster is lower population density.
Rouleur
Re: Virus thread, the political one.
I have similar observations from rural, upstate NY. I was in a Home Depot last week just outside the boundary of the Adirondack State Park. The sign on the door said masks required for entry. Inside was a different matter. Many of the customers and staff had no masks. Some of the staff only put their masks on when near customers with masks. It was clear that many people in this very Republican part of NY were not following the state mask mandates.
Greg
Rolls with style
Re: Virus thread, the political one.
Looks like Home Depot just changed their tune and will begin mandating masks on customers, albeit with a several day delay. They attempted to play both sides here in Washington, claiming it was about staff safety, which is one reason why you won't find me in one of their stores.
KUOW - Home Depot not following Washington state mask mandate. Says it's risky for staff
Dan Fuller, local bicycle enthusiast
Steher 10000
Re: Virus thread, the political one.
Actually camping, making photographs and hiking in the woods of western MA...
Thanks for picking up the slack ;-)
Guy Washburn
Photography > www.guywashburn.com
“Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”
– Mary Oliver
Grimpeur
Re: Virus thread, the political one.
"The science should not stand in the way" of reopening schools.
-- Kayleigh McEnany
One amazing thing about statements like that is that they leave the non-cheering portion of the audience speechless. How does one mount a (peaceful) challenge against a position like that?
Chikashi Miyamoto
Merckx
Re: Virus thread, the political one.
Did anybody there when she said that raise their hand and ask "So what's the acceptable death toll amongst the children and their teachers? Not looking for exact figures, just take a swag and throw out some ballpark numbers so we know what you're thinking."
Burnum Upus Quadricepus
Re: Virus thread, the political one.
With Trump and his merry band of MAGAfokkers, the acceptable death toll is n + 1.
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