The Coronavirus, not the beer

[nsacpi]

"A lot of people say it will go away in April, with the heat."

"It's going to disappear one day, like a miracle."

"It will go away, just stay calm."

"President Xi is doing a really good job."

complacency aka chosen one is a pandemic's best friend

reality trumps alternative facts...what a surprise

bump

[thethe]

And yet a majority of americans approve.

Its like you all are out of touch. Who would have thunk it?

[Carp]

And yet a majority of americans approve.

Its like you all are out of touch. Who would have thunk it?

If you bothered to actually read the Gallup article, history tells us that ALL Presidents see a TEMPORARY spike in approval rating during/after a major national event. It's just noise. He'll be back to low 40 approval ratings in about a month or so.

[thethe]

If you bothered to actually read the Gallup article, history tells us that ALL Presidents see a TEMPORARY spike in approval rating during/after a major national event. It's just noise. He'll be back to low 40 approval ratings in about a month or so.

60% approve of his handling on the china virus.

[The Chosen One]

So how do we feel now that the checks won't come to Americas until May (if i read that correctly)?

There was such an urgency to get it passed that McConnell adjourned the Senate st pattys weekend for 3 days. And of course the last two days have been nothing in the headlines except jet fuel and equal pay.

So how did we get from Mnuchin saying money would come the week after the bill passage to two months?

[chop2chip]

So how do we feel now that the checks won't come to Americas until May (if i read that correctly)?

There was such an urgency to get it passed that McConnell adjourned the Senate st pattys weekend for 3 days. And of course the last two days have been nothing in the headlines except jet fuel and equal pay.

So how did we get from Mnuchin saying money would come the week after the bill passage to two months?

Okay Chuck. Great job squabbling the last 3 days for apparently nothing.

[nsacpi]

The new coronavirus is now taking off in the world’s poorest countries, which join the battle with even fewer weapons than developed nations, some of which have fumbled the pandemic’s early stages.

From Venezuela to Pakistan to the Democratic Republic of Congo—and nearly every developing country between—confirmed cases have started to spike in recent days, a sign the contagion is advancing exponentially, disease-control experts say.

“Extraordinary action is required if we are to prevent a human catastrophe of enormous proportions in our country,” said President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, among the nations hardest hit by the 1980s AIDS epidemic. Addressing the country Monday night, he announced a 21-day nationwide lockdown to be enforced by the military.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronav...=hp_lead_pos10

The humanitarian impact will ultimately be felt most in this group of countries. Same goes for the economic impact. Bangladesh for example has a big industry that makes clothes that are exported around the world. Orders are being cancelled on a massive scale and those businesses will go under. There is little or no safety net in those countries. No bailouts, etc. It will be devastating on an economic and humanitarian basis. The one silver lining is most of these countries skew young demographically. But there will be a lot of bad outcomes for younger people who are infected. Young people who have more of a chance to recover in developed countries.

[nsacpi]

childish

[nsacpi]

This is how you hold the Chinese government accountable for being a bad actor without stigmatizing an entire ethnic group. Not that hard.

[thethe]

Der speigel.....lol

[nsacpi]

The United States keeps reacting too late to the coronavirus, prolonging its economic pain and multiplying its toll on Americans’ health.

Why it matters: The spread and impact of the coronavirus may be unfathomable, but it's not unpredictable. And yet the U.S. has failed to respond accordingly over and over again.
First, it happened with testing — a delay that allowed the virus to spread undetected.

Then we were caught flat-footed by the surge in demand for medical supplies in emerging hotspots.

And the Trump administration declined to issue a national shelter-in-place order. The resulting patchwork across the country left enough economic hubs closed to crash the economy, but enough places up and running to allow the virus to continue to spread rampantly.

Between the lines: Proactive containment and mitigation steps would have required extraordinary political and economic capital, especially if they had come early in the process, when many Americans didn't grasp the full weight of this challenge.

But making decisions based on today’s information — without an understanding of how much worse tomorrow will be — is also politically and economically risky, and carries the extra cost of more deaths.
What they're saying: A senior Health and Human Services official told me that if they could do it all over again, they would have engaged the private sector to ramp up medical manufacturing in mid-January — about two months earlier than ended up happening.

“By waiting to fully appreciate and acknowledge this as a once-in-a-lifetime crisis, this was a colossal missed opportunity," the official said.

Now, even as testing and hospital capacity remain limited, President Trump is eager for an economic recovery — even though, by all estimates, the outbreak is only going to get worse.

Removing social distancing measures is “a catastrophically bad idea. The human cost would be devastating, and the economic toll from that devastation might be even steeper than what we’re seeing right now,” Indiana University’s Aaron Caroll and Harvard’s Ashish Jha wrote earlier this week in The Atlantic.

Case in point: The Trump administration squashed rumors more than a week ago that it was considering a national shelter-in-place policy. But it might have done some good at that point.

“The economic impact is severe in scope, but limited in duration," Raymond James wrote in a research note dated March 15.

But just a week later, the firm published a new note: “The government has likely missed its window ... The failure to establish a nationwide lockdown and instead allow individual states to make those decisions is likely going to result in the spread continuing.”

The bottom line: When I asked the HHS official how all of this keeps happening, the official said it’s at least partially due to disconnects — between Trump and his administration; between the government and the private sector, and between the U.S. and the rest of the world.

“At the end of the day, the virus has slipped through all those cracks that exist between all of these entities,” the official said.

https://www.axios.com/underestimatin...sam&stream=top

Many governments have gotten caught flat-footed. When the crisis recedes, the data will speak. We will be able to see which states did best. Which countries did best. Which medical systems did best. And which ones failed. And we will be able to draw conclusions.

[nsacpi]

Taking bold action to safeguard the health of millions of Americans, Dr. Anthony Fauci has tricked Donald J. Trump into believing that there is no Easter this year, Fauci has confirmed.

After hearing Trump declare on Tuesday that he hoped to reopen the country on Easter Sunday, an alarmed Fauci decided to spring into action.

“I ran down to my computer and mocked up a phony 2020 calendar with no Easter on it,” Fauci said. “Then I showed it to Trump and said, ‘There’s a problem with your plan, Mr. President. There’s no Easter this year.’”

According to Fauci, Trump was initially baffled by the news. “How could that be?” Trump asked. “There’s Easter every year.”

This is a leap year,” the quick-thinking virologist replied.

The esteemed epidemiologist said that his dealings with Trump have now entered a new phase. “I’ve given up on containment, and I’m just doing mitigation,” he said.

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/boro...al-type=earned

[goldfly]

childish

seriously

we have the worst people "leading" at the absolute worst time

[goldfly]

Feb. 26: “And 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.” — Trump

goes to see where we are at a month after saying this:

March 25th: Coronavirus Cases: 64,765 Deaths: 910

[Dalyn]

And yet a majority of americans approve.

Its like you all are out of touch. Who would have thunk it?

The majority of Americans are definitely out of touch. Think about that for a second.

The main reason we still have a chance to minimize the damage is because we have state governments. Trump has been a disaster throughout.

[nsacpi]

Always worth checking in on our FINNISH friends.

If I had to bet on a country that gets policy right (both medical and economic) during this crisis it would be FINLAND.

Denmark and Canada for place and show.

Germany will do well too because for some reason their hospitals have a yuge number of ventilators per capita compared to other European countries.

btw 19.4 is european for 4/19...which I believe is after Easter this year

[Dalyn]

60% approve of his handling on the china virus.

This kind of ****ing ****...

[nsacpi]

Personally, I never had chosen one pegged as an Easter guy. I always saw him more as an Indigenous People's Day kinda guy.

[50PoundHead]

Okay Chuck. Great job squabbling the last 3 days for apparently nothing.

I hope you're ready to aim your vitriol towards Senators Graham, Scott, and Sasse seeing how they are now planning to throw sand in the gearbox. $500 billion in corporate bailouts and they are worried about working people supposedly gaming the system (as if they ever have ever had that much power).

[Runnin]

60% approve of his handling on the china virus.

60% are completely wrong on this.

The Trump response has been one giant screw up and he is the singular reason so many people are about to die. People cling to their leaders in times of crisis because they have no other choice, but his mishandling and lack of leadership, aka lying and ignoring the experts is plain for all to see.

The Trump Response is a clusterfck of incompetence and inaction. That 3 AM scenario has come to pass and anyone who thinks Trump is doing a good job probably also think things will be back to normal soon.