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COVID-2019 in America, effect on politics and economy
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov
^ How are you all (Americans) managing food (groceries, meat, veggies etc) in this lockdown? Stocked up or online ordering?
Probably all of the above.
Things are, depending on where you're at, pretty manageable.
Stores are limiting customers to 1 or 2 items on certain products, establishing certain times for only the elderly to shop, etc.
I'm going to my local grocery store either today or tomorrow, I'll report back on what I find.
“He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”
BSE is a poor analogy to most diseases as it is not a virus and there is little to no evidence that it is transmissible in conventional ways. BSE is transmitted via consumption of an infected animal - in particular the brain or spinal matter. Cows can't give it to each other or to humans unless one consumes the other. This is also true of Kuru, a similar disease in humans that is only transmitted by eating parts of infected people. Cows in the UK only got the disease because dead cows & sheep (who had a similar virus) were ground up and fed back to cows. A triumph of poor regulation & industrial farming.
The reason for the mass slaughter of cows in the UK was: 1) to stop people eating infected meat (177 deaths so far); and 2) to protect the British cattle industry from export bans by nations who didn't want their citizens dying from eating British cattle. Transmission to cows was prevented simply by stopping the practice of feeding them other dead cows & sheep.
It can be compared in the sense BSE too was the great scare of its time that resulted in a fix of horrendous cost for all the reasons you stated. I recall talking to some one in the meat industry there at the time who was livid at how the UK govt chose to deal with that crisis. The culling was excessive.
This is what Trump means when he says the cure must not be worse than the disease.
Whether the hit to the economies of numerous countries as a result of the lockdowns justifies saving the extra lives that would be lost to this disease ? Increasingly i don't think it will.
So when Trump says just like the flu he means come years end the deaths from this disease will not be significantly more than those lost to the flu.
The US is NOT and will NOT become like Italy or Spain. Neither for that matter will the UK, Germany, Australia, Canada and dare I say India.
And for the many that will require more trips to the food retailers, increasing customer's exposure to risk of infection.
Unfortunately so. I've held off on going to the store until I could get a mask to wear.
“He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”
I am hearing some news reports of examples of infection showing up in some populations in India & Pakistan. How prepared are those countries? Do you fear wide breakouts?
“Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
Mark Twain
From staten island, one of the five boroughs of NYC
Supermarket shelves seem stocked. Mask compliance around 50%
Parking lot not empty. Social distancing compliance is so so.
Seeing this made me realise the supply chain of food (any food) is so broken in India, that if not for middlemen (hate these guys), we'd starve even on normal days. Even Amazon (with deep pockets) is finding it tough to map the entire country for its supply chain to deliver fresh groceries, meat etc, in short perishables. It would need enormous scaling of operations, which needs enormous money, and then local permissions, which is the bane of all.
Btw, Amazon was delivering fresh produce in Pune, on a pilot project basis a year back. Don't know its status as of now.
Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!
Journalists are skipping Trump's daily coronavirus press briefings, saying they don't have enough news value
Reporters are skipping President Donald Trump's daily coronavirus news briefings, and TV networks are increasingly choosing not to broadcast them live, because they believe they don't have enough news value to risk breaking social-distancing rules.
In recent days there have been scores of empty seats in the White House press-briefing room, where Trump has delivered updates on the US battle against the novel coronavirus alongside public-health officials.
But instead of delivering key information and sober assessments of the situation to the American public, Trump has frequently resorted to tactics more familiar from his raucous campaign rallies: boasting of his accomplishments, floating misinformation, attacking the press, and taunting Democrats — with Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York a favored target.
According to The Washington Post, reporters are now "keeping their distance because they are concerned about the health risks at a time when many consider the president's evening news conferences to have become increasingly less newsworthy."
After two White House correspondents were recently suspected of having the virus, top media outlets including The Post, The New York Times, and CNBC stopped sending veteran correspondents to cover the briefings, The Post reported.
"Nowadays, it seems they make little news," The Times' executive editor, Dean Baquet, told The Post. "We, of course, reserve the right to show them live [via web streaming] if we believe they will actually make news. But that hasn't happened in quite some time."
'The information no longer appeared to be valuable to the important ongoing discussion around public health'
Cable networks have also skipped Trump's briefings. For more than a week, networks including CNN and MSNBC have been cutting away from Trump's briefings — or not showing them at all.
In response to criticism from the White House last week for not showing the president's briefing in full, MSNBC told The Hill in a statement that it wasn't broadcasting the full briefing "because the information no longer appeared to be valuable to the important ongoing discussion around public health."
During his press briefings, Trump has fielded questions and directed attacks at reporters from TV networks, including PBS' Yamiche Alcindor, whose probing questions frequently provoked the president's ire.
Trump abruptly changed his tone on the coronavirus this week.
On Sunday, he announced that US lockdown measures would be extended until April 30, and on Tuesday he unveiled new projections suggesting up to 240,000 Americans could die from COVID-19 even with strict measures to fight it.
But he has also continued to use briefings in recent days to attack reporters, solicit praise, and spread claims about unproven cures.
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I'd say the entire country would be better off skipping Trump's daily campaign rallies.
“He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”
I am hearing some news reports of examples of infection showing up in some populations in India & Pakistan. How prepared are those countries? Do you fear wide breakouts?
How prepared? I don't know. DE is very confident about India managing the outbreak. The government is trying its best to limit community transmission. Nizamuddin (Delhi) is the epicentre, fast forward, infected people from there probably have infected many more. I believe community transmission has already started.
Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!
I generally agree with the Colonel on this... that the whole thing is a big storm in a teacup. Sure I took to the sea (currently Malta, heading for Pillars of Heracles and the Atlantic) because I have two small people and yes people will die and sh*t happens every day. For sure 'quarantine' yourself so you do not catch it - or pass it on - but it not an existential crisis. Nine people out of ten who have had survived.
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