COVID-2019 in America, effect on politics and economy

[TopHatter]

Cabin Fever is a mental disease. Rational thinking doesn't come into it. If it did, you stay in the Cabin.

I don't think these people would've stayed away, thinking rationally or not. It was just another way of giving the rest of the world the middle finger and they'd been egged on by Donald Trump for years.

I don't even think it has anything to do with cabin fever. Frankly, bikers as a group, are people you can't tell what to do, will then ignore whatever you have to say, and then go their own way which is exactly what they did.

Beat me to it

[Albany Rifles]

I don't think these people would've stayed away, thinking rationally or not. It was just another way of giving the rest of the world the middle finger and they'd been egged on by Donald Trump for years.



Beat me to it

The town government voted against having the Rally this year. The locals didn't want it...even though they knew what a positive impact the rally would have for the community. But they recognized the inevitable and prepared for it, very begrudgingly.

So even the folks who would get the most positive impact were dead set against it.

Even Sturgis wasn't helped with that sorry excuse for a governor in that state.

[TopHatter]

The town government voted against having the Rally this year. The locals didn't want it...even though they knew what a positive impact the rally would have for the community. But they recognized the inevitable and prepared for it, very begrudgingly.

So even the folks who would get the most positive impact were dead set against it.

Even Sturgis wasn't helped with that sorry excuse for a governor in that state.

Yep, that middle finger included the same place they've enjoyed so many parties over the years. And the governor was right there with them flipping the bird.

[surfgun]

A certain population that has been disproportionately exposed to the virus shows how these things happen.
http://www.wboc.com/story/42619911/s...llar21000-fine

[TopHatter]

Trump Says ‘Herd Mentality’ Will Save Us All From COVID

Undeterred by mounting criticism over his repeated dismissals of the severity of the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump doubled down on his claim that the virus will “go away” on Tuesday. Even if it doesn’t, he said, “herd mentality” will take over and save us all. The president made the remarks during a 90-minute town hall event hosted by ABC News late Tuesday in which he repeated many of the same rosy predictions that have previously been proven wrong. Apparently conflating “herd mentality” with “herd immunity”—which occurs when a large enough proportion of the population has built up immunity to an infectious disease, often through vaccination—the president insisted the country will recover from the pandemic even without a vaccine.

“It would go away without the vaccine … but it’s going to go away a lot faster with it,” Trump said, adding that “with time, it goes away.” “And many deaths,” ABC’s George Stephanopoulos noted. The president continued on as if he had not heard the remark, explaining that “you’ll develop like a herd mentality. It’s going to be herd-developed, and that’s going to happen, that will all happen …. But I really believe we’re rounding the corner.” When Stephanopoulos reminded him that even one of the lead members of the White House’s own coronavirus task force, Dr. Anthony Fauci, has disagreed with that assessment, Trump said: “But you know a lot of people do agree with me."
____________

"Herd mentality"....jfc. I think he's describing his base...

Whether you support this man or not, you gotta admit one thing: He's definitely the stupidest man to inhabit the White House in the history of this country.

[tantalus]

"Herd mentality"....jfc. I think he's describing his base...

That gave me a good laugh Cheers

[TopHatter]

For Trump, It's Not the United States, It's Red and Blue States

“If you take the blue states out...”

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump argued this week that the death toll from the coronavirus was actually not so bad. All you had to do was not count states that voted for Democrats.

“If you take the blue states out,” he said, “we’re at a level that I don’t think anybody in the world would be at. We’re really at a very low level.”

The statement was as jarring as it was revealing, indicative of a leader who has long seemed to view himself more as the president of Red America rather than the United States of America. On the pandemic, immigration, crime, street violence and other issues, Trump regularly divides the country into the parts that support him and the parts that do not, rewarding the former and reproving the latter.

While presidents running for reelection typically look at the map of the country through a partisan lens, they ostensibly take off such a filter when it comes to their duties to govern, or at least make the effort to look like they do. But that is an axiom Trump has rarely observed as he rails against “Democrat cities” and “badly run blue states.” And he has sought to punish them with tax policies and threats to withhold federal funding, while devoting far more time and attention to red states.

“President Trump views and uses politics as a popularity contest, rewarding those he considers personally loyal to him,” said David Lapan, a former senior official in Trump’s Department of Homeland Security who is now at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “This isn’t high school, and lives are at stake, often with tragic results.”

The contrast with his predecessors in moments of national crisis could hardly be more stark. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush invited the Democratic senators from New York, Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, to the Oval Office to collaborate on how to help the victims and repair the damage.

When Superstorm Sandy slammed into New Jersey just days before the 2012 election, President Barack Obama broke off from campaigning to travel to the ravaged state where he stood side by side with Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican who was supporting his opponent, to pledge solidarity in recovery efforts.

But these are more partisan times, and Trump is a more overtly partisan figure than perhaps any modern president. Through months of the pandemic, he has at various moments lashed out at Democratic governors, blaming them for any failures. His comment Wednesday about not counting deaths in blue states reflected an effort to lay responsibility for the worst pandemic in a century on his opposition, and he repeated it at a campaign rally Thursday night in Wisconsin.

“It’s so unworthy of a president,” Tom Ridge, a Republican former governor of Pennsylvania and later secretary of Homeland Security under Bush, said Thursday. “It’s beyond despicable. It’s soulless.” He added that the virus was an equal-opportunity killer. “It’s almost unspeakable in the middle of the pandemic to try to divide the country on a political basis when COVID-19 is really bipartisan.”

Schumer, now the Senate Democratic leader, went to the floor to denounce Trump. “What kind of president looks at the number of dead citizens in the country he is supposed to lead — and in attempt to glamorize himself — dismisses every American who died in a state that didn’t support him politically?” Schumer said. “What a disgrace. It’s monstrous. Not a shred of empathy. Not an ounce of sorrow. What kind of president do we have?”

In a statement Thursday, Sarah Matthews, a White House spokeswoman, said Trump’s policies “uplift all Americans” and that he fights “for people of all backgrounds,” including in fighting the coronavirus. “But it’s no secret some Democrat-run states and cities have failed to create economic growth, secure their streets or protect the most vulnerable against this virus,” she said.

Some of the president’s supporters suggested the criticism of his comments has been overwrought and perhaps hypocritical. Ari Fleischer, who was White House press secretary for Bush, said Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats “blame everything they don’t like on Trump,” whether he deserves it or not.

“I do think Trump is on high ground when he points out that cities with Democratic mayors are not doing a good job handling the riots,” Fleischer said. “Frankly, I view urban issues, not just the riots but quality of life issues that are important, as openings for Republicans to make their case in areas where one-party rule has been the norm for decades.”

Trump came to office making the same sorts of promises of bipartisanship that other presidents have. “I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all Americans,” he declared in his victory speech after being elected in 2016. “And this is so important to me.”

But once in office, he relished warring with Democratic governors and mayors. He attacked blue states for “sanctuary” policies resisting cooperation with federal immigration crackdowns, and he has sought to penalize states like deep-blue California for environmental policies that go beyond the standards he has set at the federal level. More recently, he threatened to take funds from four “anarchist jurisdictions” with Democratic mayors who in his view have not done enough to suppress protests against racial injustice that turn violent.

Trump set the tone early with the signature tax cut legislation that passed in 2017 and limited the federal deduction for state taxes, effectively raising taxes on many high-income earners in blue states and creating what Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York at the time called “an economic civil war” between blue states and red states. Trump subsequently changed his own residence from blue New York, where the tax change hit hard, to the redder Florida, where there is no state income tax. He has urged others to leave New York as well.

“Trump has never seen himself as president of the United States,” said Stuart Stevens, a top strategist to Mitt Romney when he was the Republican presidential candidate in 2012 and now an outspoken critic of Trump. “He’s a gang leader, and you are either in his gang or you are the enemy.”

The president’s travels reflect his priorities. Not counting Maryland, where Air Force One is based, or states where he has properties (New York, New Jersey, Florida and Virginia), Trump has spent about four times as many days visiting states that supported him in 2016 as he has in those that voted against him, according to data compiled by Factba.se, a service that tracks the president’s statements and actions.

It did not go unnoticed that Trump remained all but silent for weeks about the wildfires that have been ravaging California, Oregon and Washington, all states that voted against him and almost certainly will again. When he finally did make a one hour and 50 minute visit to California on Monday to be briefed on the natural disaster, he was asked if he cared about blue states.

“Let me just tell you about your nasty question,” he snapped. “I got a call from the governor immediately, and I called him immediately. In fact, he returned my call. And on that call, I declared it a national — an emergency. I gave an emergency declaration. That was immediate. So don’t tell me about not doing, because I gave immediate.”

Indeed, Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, later during that visit praised the president for his assistance before carefully raising their disagreement on climate change. “I want to thank you and acknowledge the work you have done to be immediate in your response,” Newsom told him.

But by the next day, Trump was again bashing “Democrat-run states,” repeating his opposition to a coronavirus relief package that would provide financial aid to states afflicted by the virus.

“Why do you keep talking about Democrat states?” George Stephanopoulos asked him during a town hall-style meeting in Philadelphia hosted by ABC News. “They’re American states.”

“No,” Trump replied. “The Democrat-run states are the ones that are doing badly, George.”

To the extent that is true, it may be at least partly because of the president’s other observation, that Democratic states were also hit harder by the virus.

States that voted against Trump in 2016 have seen 103,918 deaths, according to the latest New York Times tally Thursday afternoon, compared with 91,525 in states that supported him. If measured by which party controls the governorship, then the death count is even worse in blue states, with 116,782 deaths to 78,661 in red states. Measured against population, those blue states have about 25% more deaths than red ones.

But that hardly defines cause and effect; the virus arrived from overseas first in blue states, which had dense cities where it spread readily. Even making such a calculation struck public health officials as crassly inappropriate. Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, who served as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration under Obama, recalled working as health commissioner for both Republican and Democratic mayors of New York City and never feeling that public health was made a partisan issue. She found Trump’s comment “startling” with no benign explanation.

“Either he was saying that he doesn’t care about the lives of people who likely would not vote for him, or he cares more about appearances than the realities of a devastating disease that is killing people,” she said. “If there ever was a circumstance that should have unified us as a country, working together across political and other divides, it should have been a communicable disease threat such as COVID-19.”
___________

surfgun When you said you love Donald Trump because he's "the anti-lefty", was this what you had in mind?

[TopHatter]

Sixty-nine percent of Americans have no confidence in Trump on coronavirus vaccine

Despite president Donald Trump’s claims that a coronavirus vaccine will soon be available, new polling shows that a majority of Americans have no confidence in him to confirm that it is safe.

An ABC News/Ipsos poll released on Sunday shows that 69 per cent of Americans do not have confidence in the president vouching for the effectiveness of a vaccine — 53 per cent saying they have no confidence at all in him doing so.

Conversely, just nine per cent of Americans have a great deal of confidence in the president to confirm the effectiveness of a vaccine, and just 18 per cent have “a good amount” of confidence.

The president has insisted that a vaccine is close to being approved. On Friday he tempered some of his recent comments saying that there will be enough doses for every American by April.

Health experts, including Robert Redfield, director of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, have spoken of a timeline that makes a vaccine widely available in summer or autumn of 2021.

The president said he thought Mr Redfield had made “a mistake” and was “confused”.

Currently, 72 per cent of Americans are concerned that they, or someone they know, will be infected with Covid-19 — down from 77 per cent in July.

The poll also shows a decrease in the number of Americans that say they are likely to get inoculated by “a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine”. Since May there has been a 10 point fall from 74 per cent to 64 per cent.

This is due almost entirely to more Republicans saying that they are unlikely to get a vaccine. In May 75 per cent said that they would, and that figure has now dropped to 50 per cent. 80 per cent of Democrats say they will get the vaccine.

Neither candidate does especially well in polling as to whether they are trusted to confirm any vaccine’s effectiveness. Democrat Joe Biden performs better than the president with 41 per cent showing confidence in him, but this is against 52 per cent lacking confidence in him.

Respondents were asked which candidate they considered “more honest and trustworthy” no matter who they planned to vote for. Biden led with 58 per cent to Trump’s 39 per cent.

Understandably, Americans are more trusting of public health officials and institutions, but even then, recent accusations of government interference in data and reporting may have hit levels of confidence.

Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the CDC have the confidence of 62 per cent and 61 per cent of respondents.

The Food and Drug Administration (57 per cent), Department of Health and Human Services (53 per cent), and World Health Organisation (53 per cent) also all fared well in the poll.

Drug companies performed less well, with 52 per cent saying that they do not have confidence in them.

Polling was conducted between 18-19 September from a nationally representative probability sample of 528 adults.

There have been almost 6.8 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the US to date and 200,000 officially recorded deaths.
_____________

Imagine electing a pathological liar....only to have a once-in-a-century pandemic sweep across the nation, to say nothing of the entire world, and then realizing "Oh shit..."

[JRT]

Trump Says Herd Mentality Will Save Us All From COVID
{{{ snip }}}
Whether you support this man or not, you gotta admit one thing: He's definitely the stupidest man to inhabit the White House in the history of this country.

[JRT]

Anthony Fauci, Rand Paul Clash at Coronavirus Hearing

Published on Sep 23, 2020

Dr. Anthony Fauci clashed Wednesday with Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky over Paul's claim that New York's rate of coronavirus infection is significantly down because it has achieved herd immunity. In a heated exchange during a Senate hearing on the U.S. government's COVID-19 response, Paul asked Fauci if he has any "second thoughts" about advising the country to shut down economically during the height of the pandemic last spring. Fauci responded that he does not regret saying that was the only way to stop "the explosion of infection." Paul shot back that despite Fauci lauding New York and Gov. Andrew Cuomo for it's response to the pandemic, the state, according to the Senator, has a death rate "among the highest in the world despite shuttering businesses and schools earlier this year." Fauci told Paul that he has "misconstrued" the data, adding that he's "done that repetitively in the past." The nation's top infectious disease expert said New York "made some mistakes," early on. But he said the state has been able to get it's positivity rate down to one percent or less because it has followed the task force's guidelines Paul challenged that assessment saying: "Or they've developed enough community immunity that they're no longer having the pandemic because they have enough immunity in New York City to actually stop it." Fauci told Paul sternly that he was "not listening." "In New York it's about 22 percent (of the population with COVID antibodies). If you believe 22 percent is herd immunity, I believe you're alone in that," Fauci said. Paul, a libertarian, has long been critical of government lockdown measures, calling them "authoritarian."

.

[JRT]

{{{ snippet from quoted article: }}}
Despite president Donald Trump's claims that a coronavirus vaccine will soon be available, new polling shows that a majority of Americans have no confidence in him to confirm that it is safe.

Almost on cue, here he is eroding trust. Trump seems to be insinuating that the FDA's mandated safety testing requirements for vaccines are just political, and that Trump and/or his lackeys may overrule those requirements.

[TopHatter]

Almost on cue, here he is eroding trust. Trump seems to be insinuating that the FDA's mandated safety testing requirements for vaccines are just political, and that Trump and/or his lackeys may overrule those requirements.

This nightmare has to end. We can't survive another 4 years of a deranged child being "in charge"

[tbm3fan]

Almost on cue, here he is eroding trust. Trump seems to be insinuating that the FDA's mandated safety testing requirements for vaccines are just political, and that Trump and/or his lackeys may overrule those requirements.

Now what group will be the least likely to go out and get vaccinated given all this? Why of course his base who have been conditioned to not trust anything. They deserve everything coming down the pipe...

[InExile]

This nightmare has to end. We can't survive another 4 years of a deranged child being "in charge"

But her emails!. Benghazi!

Oh wait, its 2020..........

[DOR]

I'm confused.
How does a pro-Trumpet, anti-vaxxer deal with all this?