COVID-2019 in America, effect on politics and economy

[Albany Rifles]

DE,

You are making this out to be a good news story. It's the least of a bad news story.

FEMA was supposed to provide PPE to Virginia per earlier agreements. FEMA reneged and left us hanging. This resulted in increased exposure to health care workers.

Our governor, an MD, worked hard to lock down but has been fought tooth and nail by the business interests. And no guidance from the federal government....and an abject lack of testing infrastructure.

That is why it took my son a week to get results. His quarantine was over before he got results.

Bottomline is this entire health crisis has been botched by the Federal government since Day 1.

And we are seeing a second increase in 19 states which had positive trends. This is not the 2nd Wave...it is a continuation of the 1st due to poor management.

[Double Edge]

For perspective. Case load of NY state alone still exceeds that of my entire country !!

Not for long though i expect we will blow through that in a day or two. Tri state is 553k

When i see the tri-state area under 2% after what they've been through you bet i'm elated.

It only took two months for the tri-state to get the numbers down. Because back in April nobody could say how long it would last.

For NY to come through this gives every one hope that this virus can be beaten.



This is NYC, can they keep it like that

It’s a “big, big, tremendous graph. An amazing graph like no one in the world has ever seen.” : D

These are small important battles won in a larger war.

As for waiting for test results that sounds around average. Around 4 days if you're lucky.

That's not the worst of it, i've read reports where patients passed by the time the results came back.

Of false positives from private labs turning people's lives upside down

Of false negatives misleading people and letting them infect others.

So i look for highlights, gotta protect the highlights, there's only so many in this long miserable saga.

From closing schools to mandatory stay-at-home orders, the Northeast was both the earliest region in the country to institute interventions, and the most hesitant to roll them back.

On average, Northeast states put restrictions into place on March 25, followed by the West on March 27, the South on March 29 and the Midwest on March 31, according data collected by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

More telling is how many of these intervention measures remain in place as states cautiously crack open once-shuttered doors.

In the Northeast, only 30% of restrictions had been lifted on May 21 on average, when one totals all unique measures, counting each state several times. The other three regions have lifted around 40% by the same metric. The West was the first to do so, on May 17 on average, followed by the South on May 20 and the Midwest on May 23. (These dates do not account for programs that have yet to conclude.)

The result of those policies seems clear: The Northeast, which was far and away the hardest-hit part of the country, has now seen the greatest improvement and seems to be on the best trajectory—driven mostly by New York’s and New Jersey’s aggressive policies.

The region’s rates of new daily infections per capita peaked on April 6 at 31.5 new cases per 100,000 residents. The Midwest, a distant second, peaked at 10.3 on May 4, while the South and West have remained relatively static at about 5.

As of June 10, that sequence has reversed. The Northeast is now the region with the lowest daily case rate, at 3.7. The Midwest, at 4.4., isn’t too far behind. Both have flattened the curve significantly in the last month or so. Meanwhile, daily case rates in the West and South have been on the rise, and are both now at about 6.5 per 100,000 residents.

[surfgun]

Crozier is done.
https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-...ore-roosevelt/

[Gun Grape]

Crozier is done.
https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-...ore-roosevelt/

A sad day for the US Navy.

Wonder if Bunker boy will step in to reverse this decision? Or does he only support convicted war criminals.

[TopHatter]

A sad day for the US Navy.

Wonder if Bunker boy will step in to reverse this decision? Or does he only support convicted war criminals.

I'll take "Convicted War Criminals" for $1000 please Alex.

[TopHatter]

COVID-19 Will Rage 'Like A Forest Fire' In Unprepared America, Top Doc Warns

COVID-19 will rage “like a forest fire” in a U.S. that has no clear plan to deal with it and has regressed to a dismissive, “pre-pandemic” attitude, a top infectious disease expert said Sunday.

America’s leadership is unfocused, Dr. Michael Osterholm told Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” unlike other parts of the world that remain vigilant against the pandemic.

The spread of COVID-19 is “like a forest fire,” warned Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

“I don’t think that this is going to slow down. I think that wherever there is wood to burn, this fire is going to burn. And right now we have a lot of susceptible people,” he said.

“I don’t see this slowing down through the summer or into the fall. I don’t think we’re going to see one, two and three waves. I think we’re going to just see one very, very difficult forest fire of cases.”

Other nations have “done a much better job” of stopping the spread of COVID-19, said Osterholm.

“We haven’t done that. ... We just have not really gotten the message across to the public yet that this is a very serious issue. We can’t shut down our economy, but we just can’t suddenly say we’re done with” COVID-19, he added.

A number of states are now dealing with record daily increases of COVID-19 cases because “everybody’s back to a pre-pandemic mindset,” Osterholm pointed out.

He noted the U.S. lacks a national plan that “really puts together what we’re trying to do” — leaving states to impose a patchwork of different responses.

“To hear the fact that we don’t want to do testing is wrong. Absolutely, we should be testing as much as possible,” Osterholm said. “Once we do have these positive tests, what are we doing to make sure that additional transmission isn’t occurring? How do we do contact tracing?”

President Donald Trump said at his campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday that he told his “people” to reduce testing in order to suppress reports of increased cases.

“When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find ... more cases,” Trump explained. “So I said to my people, ’Slow the testing down, please.’
______________

[tbm3fan]

I'll take "Convicted War Criminals" for $1000 please Alex.

Answer: Convicted war criminal whose nickname was Slobo as a child.

[Gun Grape]

I was actually thinking of that PoS Gallager

[TopHatter]

Fauci testified toady that he did not slow down any testing. The Republic can endure Trump. There are also plenty of governors and mayors that are far more culpable than Trump in the COVID epidemic, to say nothing of America's own citizens, so getting rid of Trump will not solve your COVID problem.

Trump Follows Through on Threat to ‘Slow the Testing Down’

During his Tulsa rally last weekend, President Trump said the quiet part out loud, confessing that he sees coronavirus testing as a political threat and wants to diminish America’s caseload by doing a worse job of measuring it. “Testing is a double edged sword,” Trump told the sparse Oklahoma crowd. “Here’s the bad part. When you do testing…. you will find more cases. So I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please.’”

After a gaslighty news cycle in which top deputies insisted that Trump was being facetious, Trump clarified, “I don’t kid,” and even expanded his thinking on Twitter: “Cases up only because of our big number testing.”

Science is not Trump’s strong suit. After a precipitous drop, the percentage of positive cases is now rising again — pointing to an increase in disease, not simply a greater availability of diagnostics. And as states like Texas that were largely spared in the initial months of the outbreak have emerged as hot spots, the United States just experienced a record for new cases, with 38,672 in a single day, surpassing a mark from late April.

Despite — or perhaps because of — these shameful numbers, the administration is following through on Trump’s orders to slow down testing. The Department of Health and Human Services has announced it will pull funding from more than a dozen drive-through testing sites across five states, including Texas, at the end of the month.

The move has left top Democrats incensed: “The pandemic is clearly getting worse in states nationwide,” Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, the ranking Democrat on the health committee, said in a blast to reporters, “and instead of trying harder to stop it, President Trump is apparently trying harder to hide it.”

Resources are not the issue. This move comes after Democratic senators called out the administration for failing to spend nearly $14 billion that Congress appropriated to increase testing.

Trump’s latest testing remarks build on a long history of him viewing the accurate testing of coronavirus cases as a public-relations threat. In March, when the pandemic was about to explode across America, Trump spoke at the Centers for Disease Control about his reluctance to let in infected passengers of a cruise ship because it would swell the U.S. total, which then stood at just 240 known cases. “I like the numbers being where they are,” Trump said. “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship.”

Trump hit this theme again in May as the COVID death toll neared 75,000: “In a way, by doing all of this testing,” he said, “we make ourselves look bad.” As the controversy swirled this week, Trump insisted America has done “too good a job” in testing.

The U.S. death toll from COVID is now nearly 125,000. Ironically, 90 percent or more of that grim tally could have been avoided with effective testing. Other developed countries that minimized the impact of this pandemic relied on early, aggressive testing to guide other mitigation efforts.
__________

God DAMN this lunatic. And God DAMN the people that support him!

[tbm3fan]

[B][SIZE=3]
God DAMN this lunatic. And God DAMN the people that support him!

If this comes to pass and the count declines because of it I can think of how Trump could become even more Orwellian in nature...

[Double Edge]

Trump might still have a chance

How Covid-19 could get Trump re-elected | UnHerd | Jun 23 2020

If (and, yes, it’s a big if) the apparent second surges of Covid-19 turn out to be not too bad and overall deaths continue to decline over the summer, and if there is no big second spike in October, then Donald Trump’s scepticism would likely become more acceptable — and popular — as the months go by. Right now, only 13% of Americans are ‘not worried at all’ by the virus. But, equally, only 21% are ‘very worried’: that’s a lot of people in between, and they would surely become more relaxed if the pandemic dwindles.

An election campaign culminating in September and October in which Democrat voices are endlessly finger-wagging and calling for further restrictions, six months after the peak and with deaths right down, while Trump is promising freedom and a return to the ‘old normal’, sounds like a fight he is aching to have. Not even Make America Great Again – just Make America Normal Again.

[Dazed]

California does a lot of this. Best intentions really poor execution.

https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/20...e-1-3-million/ Abridged version

SAN JOSE (KPIX 5) — San Jose homeless advocates are demanding answers about how a city program to house people in trailers during the pandemic failed.Inside the parking lot, 90 refurbished FEMA trailers, which were a gift from the state of California, sit empty in what the city calls a “failed experiment” to house the homeless.

“If you invest $1.3 million in a project, you should have something to show for it. And all they have to show for it are empty trailers,” said homeless advocate Shaunn Cartwright.

The $1.3 million was used to refurbish and set up the trailers like an RV park. The city paid another $700,000 on a contract with homeless housing provider Abode Services to operate the park until October.

But sewage backed up, there were electrical problems and elderly people picked to live in the trailers because of pre-existing health conditions had trouble accessing the site.

Only 37 people lived in the trailers for three weeks before the city pulled the plug blaming escalating costs.

Added all up, the city spent over $54,000 per person on the failed plan.

Santa Clara County officials stepped in to move 25 of the residents into motel rooms.

Khamis said the city is moving ahead with permanent housing solutions for unhoused people, but like many, he wants answers on where the city goes from here.

“What happens to the trailers now? Are we going to sell them? What are we going to do? And what happens to the Abode contract? Are we going to get refunded?”

Khamis said he was later assured that the city would get a partial refund from Abode.

[TopHatter]

Trump again touts good news on COVID: It's going away by itself. (Someday. He hopes.)

On the day the United States recorded more than 50,000 new coronavirus infections for the first time, a figure that Dr. Anthony Fauci warned could double this summer, President Trump repeated what he has been saying about the pandemic ever since it began: That it would just go away by itself.

“I think we’re gonna be very good with the coronavirus,” Trump said in an interview with Fox Business on Wednesday. “I think that at some point that’s going to sort of just disappear, I hope.”

“You still believe so?” Trump was asked by the interviewer.

“I do, I do,” replied the president. “Yeah, sure, at some point — and I think we’re going to have a vaccine very soon too.”

The United States has had more COVID-19 cases and deaths than any other country in the world by far, with more than 128,000 fatalities, double the next highest total (according to Johns Hopkins University tracking), and nearly 2.7 million cases. But from the beginning, Trump has insisted the coronavirus was nothing to worry about, leading the government to take a laggard, passive approach toward testing, contract tracing and isolation.

Below are just some of the instances when Trump downplayed the pandemic, in which 50,203 new cases were reported Wednesday, the most ever in the U.S. on a single day.

Jan. 22

“We have it totally under control,” Trump said, adding, “It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”

Feb. 10

“Now, the virus that we’re talking about having to do — you know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat — as the heat comes in,” said Trump at a meeting with some of the nation’s governors. “Typically, that will go away in April. ... We have 12 cases — 11 cases, and many of them are in good shape now.”

“Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away. I hope that’s true,” he repeated at a campaign rally in New Hampshire that night.

Influenza typically follows that seasonal pattern. But the coronavirus is not the flu, and so far, warmer weather has not seemed to hinder its spread.

Feb. 24

“The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA,” Trump said in a tweet. “We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”

The next day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell nearly 1,000 points, to close at 27,081, and White House National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow said on CNBC, “We have contained this, I won’t say airtight but pretty close to airtight.”

On Wednesday, July 1, the Dow closed at 25,734.

Feb. 26

During a briefing on the virus, Trump said the case total would zero out soon, congratulating himself on the administration’s progress.

“Again, 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.”

Feb. 27

“We have done an incredible job,” Trump said at the White House. “We’re going to continue. It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear. And from our shores, we — you know, it could get worse before it gets better. It could maybe go away. We’ll see what happens. Nobody really knows. The fact is, the greatest experts — I’ve spoken to them all. Nobody really knows.”

A week later, touring the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Trump downplayed the need to consult with experts, pronouncing himself an authority on the subject: “People are really surprised I understand this stuff,” he said. “Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability.”

March 30

“It will go away,” Trump said at a coronavirus briefing. “You know it — you know it is going away, and it will go away. And we’re going to have a great victory. … I want to have our country be calm and strong, and fight and win, and it will go away.”

March 31

“It’s going to go away, hopefully at the end of the month. And, if not, hopefully it will be soon after that,” Trump said at a task force briefing.

April 3

“It is going to go away,” Trump said when asked about his earlier prediction. “I said it’s going away, and it is going away.”

On that day the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. was about 276,000.

April 28

“Today the U.S. hit a grim milestone of 1 million cases of the coronavirus,” CNN’s Jim Acosta said. “Back in late February, you predicted that the number of cases would go down to zero. How did we get from your prediction of zero to 1 million?”

“Well, it will go down to zero, ultimately,” said Trump, likely correct in the technical sense.

April 29

At a briefing, Trump was asked how he was sure the worst of the pandemic was behind the United States.

“Well, I think that like other things, we’re going to, hopefully, we’re going to come up with a vaccine, you never know about a vaccine, but tremendous progress has been made,” the president replied. “Johnson & Johnson and Oxford and lots of good things, you’ve been hearing the same things as I do. Tremendous progress has been made, we think, on a vaccine. You always have to say ‘think,’ and then you have to test it, and that takes a period of time. But, uh, a lot of movement and a lot of progress has been made on a vaccine.

“But I think what happens is it’s going to go away,” he continued. “This is going to go away. And whether it comes back in a modified form in the fall, we’ll be able to handle it, we’ll be able to put out spurts, and we’re very prepared to handle it. We’ve learned a lot, we’ve learned a lot about it, the invisible enemy.”

May 8

“I feel about vaccines like I feel about tests: This is going to go away without a vaccine,” Trump said at the White House. “It’s going to go away, and we’re not going to see it again, hopefully, after a period of time.

“They say it’s going to go — that doesn’t mean this year — doesn’t mean it’s going to be gone, frankly, by fall or after the fall,” he continued. “But eventually it’s going to go away. The question is will we need a vaccine. At some point it’s going to probably go away by itself. If we had a vaccine, that would be very helpful.”

June 16

During an executive order signing at the White House, Trump said a vaccine would be helpful but not necessary to see the virus disappear.

“I always say, even without it, it goes away,” Trump said. “But if we had the vaccine — and we will — if we had therapeutic, or cure — one thing sort of blends into the other — it will be a fantastic day. And I think that’s going to happen, and it’s going to happen very soon.”

June 23

“It’s going away,” said Trump at an event in Arizona, which saw a record high for deaths from the virus just over a week later.

_____

What a great plan...it'll go away even without a vaccine! But yeah, let's talk about WHO and CDC and Fauci.

[Officer of Engineers]

What a great plan...it'll go away even without a vaccine! But yeah, let's talk about WHO and CDC and Fauci.

He's right. It will go away on its own ... when there is no one left to infect, ie those who can die has died. That is just the history of plagues. COVID-19 is just a very minor virus when compared to the truly deadly plagues of history: Spanish Flu, Black Death. The world came out of those without a vacine.

[TopHatter]

He's right. It will go away on its own ... when there is no one left to infect, ie those who can die has died. That is just the history of plagues. COVID-19 is just a very minor virus when compared to the truly deadly plagues of history: Spanish Flu, Black Death. The world came out of those without a vacine.

No argument here, plagues are fires that burn through their own fuel.

I'm more concerned about this man's utter lack of any plan or concern.