(03-29-2020, 09:09 PM)BFritz21 Wrote: My first friend and best friend growing up thinks his whole family got it. He thinks his brother's family gave it to them when they came over, but he lives in Northern Kentucky , too, and not many people around here have tested positive for it, so seems weird. His family is feeling better but he's still struggling.
Does your friend not have millions of dollars to get tested? What a sucker.
(03-29-2020, 08:01 PM)6andcounting Wrote: My original post was just criticizing WHO for now admonishing countries for not preparing sooner when before WHO themselves told everyone there's no particular reason to believe it could be spread by humans to other humans. If WHO's best defense is that countries should have known better than to have listened to them - that just furthers my criticism of WHO.
That is not what the WHO wrote in that tweet.
Quote:As for Lou Dobbs, Trump and Fox News - that had nothing to do with my criticism of WHO. But I don't think criticism of Trump and WHO has to be mutually exclusive.
And that was a tweet. Not a recommendation. Not policy. A tweet. At one particular point in time. A time when there were approximately 41 cases and one death (three days prior to the tweet) globally and all cases were still contained in China. That tweet didn’t affect other country’s preparations one way or the other.
Quote: From the currently available information, preliminary investigation suggests that there is no significant human-to-human transmission, and no infections among health care workers have occurred. More information is required to better understand the mode of transmission and clinical manifestation of this new virus. The source of this new virus is not yet known.
Quote: As of 24 January 2020, human-to-human transmission has been confirmed largely in Wuhan city, but also some other places in China and internationally.
So just to review the timeline:
12/31/19 Cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology were reported
1/9/20 A novel coronavirus was determined to be the cause
1/14/20 the WHO tweeted the Chinese government claimed there was no evidence of human to human spread, but warned it is always a concern with respiratory illnesses and more information was needed; at this point there are approximately 40 cases
1/24/20 human to human spread had been confirmed; at this point there are approximately 300 cases with 1 in Japan, 1 in Korea, and 2 in Thailand
2/28/20 WHO raised level of alert to highest possible, Trump claimed it was a hoax; at this point there were approximately 84K cases and 3K deaths, it had spread globally to too many countries for me to bother listing
But Fox News doesn’t include the part where the UN warned that just because China says there is no evidence doesn’t necessarily mean it is true all in an attempt to give Trump cover from criticism.
Here's one of the biggest issues in all of this pandemic. The whole world expects China to behave in the way they did. We shouldn't, but that's par for the course with them. However, up until 2017, the world would not have expected the US to behave in the way we have. You can say whatever you want about whether or not this would have been as bad in the US with a Clinton administration, those hypotheticals are pointless. What we can say for certain, though, is that the US stepped back from being the global leader it was, and our government's behavior during this pandemic highlights that.
"A great democracy has got to be progressive, or it will soon cease to be either great or a democracy..." - TR
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." - FDR
(03-30-2020, 02:01 AM)oncemoreuntothejimbreech Wrote: That is not what the WHO wrote in that tweet.
And that was a tweet. Not a recommendation. Not policy. A tweet. At one particular point in time. A time when there were approximately 41 cases and one death (three days prior to the tweet) globally and all cases were still contained in China. That tweet didn’t affect other country’s preparations one way or the other.
If they had a particular reason to believe it could be spread they would have posted it as evidence. Instead they said there was no evidence.
It was a Tweet that parroted Chinese propaganda and misled everyone who read it. Nothing more, nothing less.
Listen at least Inspector Trump is on the trail of all those masks "going out the back door" of the New York Hospitals.
Obviouls tHE couldn't be misunderstanding the dire need for more and more gear and equipment (he keeps calling ventilators generators) so it must be some PLOT going on that the "lamestream media" with their "nasty" questions trying to be "cutie pies" is ignoring!
Someone, SOMEONE has to have the cajones to get him off the mic. He's doing more damage when he speaks than when he acts...or DOESN'T act as has been the case.
Your anger and ego will always reveal your true self.
(03-30-2020, 08:19 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: Here's one of the biggest issues in all of this pandemic. The whole world expects China to behave in the way they did. We shouldn't, but that's par for the course with them. However, up until 2017, the world would not have expected the US to behave in the way we have.
Totally agree with this.
(03-30-2020, 08:19 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: You can say whatever you want about whether or not this would have been as bad in the US with a Clinton administration, those hypotheticals are pointless. What we can say for certain, though, is that the US stepped back from being the global leader it was, and our government's behavior during this pandemic highlights that.
I would not say they are pointless. We can be pretty sure Clinton would have left the CDC alone and kept the pandemic squad on the NSC. And I am pretty sure she would not have made Bolton her national security adviser.
Had Clinton been elected, then
1) we WOULD be behaving the way the world expects us too, and
2) we would have been on the pandemic much earlier and more effectively and,
3) the whole time Trump supporters and Fox would be criticizing Clinton's "mishandling" and claiming decisive billionaire businessman Trump would be doing it all so much better were he president. He would have pushed all the bureaucracy aside and contained it "right away."
I hope many millions understand and consider such "hypotheticals" when they go to vote in November.
(03-30-2020, 08:21 AM)6andcounting Wrote: If they had a particular reason to believe it could be spread they would have posted it as evidence. Instead they said there was no evidence.
It was a Tweet that parroted Chinese propaganda and misled everyone who read it. Nothing more, nothing less.
"Parroting" does not include a warning that human to human transmission is always a concern. Parroting would leave that out, because it is precisely a "particular reason to believe it could be spread," regardless of "no evidence" at the moment.
And whom, exactly, would that factual report "mislead"?
Certainly not public health professionals. Whom then?
Content warning: Language. But this is video has some important information for everyone.
"A great democracy has got to be progressive, or it will soon cease to be either great or a democracy..." - TR
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." - FDR
(03-29-2020, 09:09 PM)BFritz21 Wrote: My first friend and best friend growing up thinks his whole family got it. He thinks his brother's family gave it to them when they came over, but he lives in Northern Kentucky , too, and not many people around here have tested positive for it, so seems weird. His family is feeling better but he's still struggling.
Still, that's got to be kinda cool to be a part of something that is helping Trump get such good ratings.
(03-30-2020, 08:21 AM)6andcounting Wrote: If they had a particular reason to believe it could be spread
Like evidence? Fifteen days into the outbreak and five days after determining the etiology they didn’t have evidence.
Quote:they would have posted it as evidence. Instead they said there was no evidence.
How can you post evidence you don’t have?
It’s kinda like the police and a murder suspect. “His mom says he didn’t do it, but it’s always a concern when you find a suspect at the scene of the crime. We’re gonna keep looking for evidence “
Quote:It was a Tweet that parroted Chinese propaganda and misled everyone who read it. Nothing more, nothing less.
And 10 days after warning it could be spread from human to human despite what China said and more research was needed or a total of 25 days after the first cases of pneumonia were reported and 15 days after determining the etiology was a novel coronavirus the WHO formally published it was spread from human to human.
There’s not a single public health organization tasked with preparing for pandemics that was fooled by that tweet. Because they don’t base their preparations upon tweets.
This is nothing more than the right wing media attempting to stir controversy.
It’s the Benghazi of pandemics.
Bottom line, the WHO informed the world this novel coronavirus was spread via human to human contact in approximately 3 weeks of its existence.
(03-30-2020, 08:21 AM)6andcounting Wrote: If they had a particular reason to believe it could be spread they would have posted it as evidence. Instead they said there was no evidence.
Should they have said that there was evidence?
Even if said evidence would merely have been an educated guess at that point?
(03-30-2020, 08:19 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: However, up until 2017, the world would not have expected the US to behave in the way we have.
Nope.
This goes for many things though. We also would not have epected the US of just not honoring treaties and agreements, or to favor dictatorships over democracies, or choosing and flat-out worshipping an indecent dumbass as president.
The US is the global disappointment of the decade in many respects.
(03-30-2020, 08:19 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: You can say whatever you want about whether or not this would have been as bad in the US with a Clinton administration, those hypotheticals are pointless.
I disagree with that one. Believing other administrations, past or hypethetical future ones, would have handled this better is a pretty essential thought to me.
The current one lies, misinforms, speculates and taunts its TV ratings when giving crisis updates. Not hard to imagine other presidents would have chosen a more constructive approach.
Quote:The missing six weeks: how Trump failed the biggest test of his life
When the definitive history of the coronavirus pandemic is written, the date 20 January 2020 is certain to feature prominently. It was on that day that a 35-year-old man in Washington state, recently returned from visiting family in Wuhan in China, became the first person in the US to be diagnosed with the virus.
On the very same day, 5,000 miles away in Asia, the first confirmed case of Covid-19 was reported in South Korea. The confluence was striking, but there the similarities ended.
In the two months since that fateful day, the responses to coronavirus displayed by the US and South Korea have been polar opposites.
One country acted swiftly and aggressively to detect and isolate the virus, and by doing so has largely contained the crisis. The other country dithered and procrastinated, became mired in chaos and confusion, was distracted by the individual whims of its leader, and is now confronted by a health emergency of daunting proportions.
Within a week of its first confirmed case, South Korea’s disease control agency had summoned 20 private companies to the medical equivalent of a war-planning summit and told them to develop a test for the virus at lightning speed. A week after that, the first diagnostic test was approved and went into battle, identifying infected individuals who could then be quarantined to halt the advance of the disease.
Some 357,896 tests later, the country has more or less won the coronavirus war. On Friday only 91 new cases were reported in a country of more than 50 million.
The US response tells a different story. Two days after the first diagnosis in Washington state, Donald Trump went on air on CNBC and bragged: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming from China. It’s going to be just fine.”
‘A fiasco of incredible proportions’
A week after that, the Wall Street Journal published an opinion article by two former top health policy officials within the Trump administration under the headline Act Now to Prevent an American Epidemic. Luciana Borio and Scott Gottlieb laid out a menu of what had to be done instantly to avert a massive health disaster.
Top of their to-do list: work with private industry to develop an “easy-to-use, rapid diagnostic test” – in other words, just what South Korea was doing.
It was not until 29 February, more than a month after the Journal article and almost six weeks after the first case of coronavirus was confirmed in the country that the Trump administration put that advice into practice. Laboratories and hospitals would finally be allowed to conduct their own Covid-19 tests to speed up the process.
Today, 86,012 cases have been confirmed in the US, pushing the nation to the top of the world’s coronavirus league table
Those missing four to six weeks are likely to go down in the definitive history as a cautionary tale of the potentially devastating consequences of failed political leadership. Today, 86,012 cases have been confirmed across the US, pushing the nation to the top of the world’s coronavirus league table – above even China.
More than a quarter of those cases are in New York City, now a global center of the coronavirus pandemic, with New Orleans also raising alarm. Nationally, 1,301 people have died.
Most worryingly, the curve of cases continues to rise precipitously, with no sign of the plateau that has spared South Korea.
“The US response will be studied for generations as a textbook example of a disastrous, failed effort,” Ron Klain, who spearheaded the fight against Ebola in 2014, told a Georgetown university panel recently. “What’s happened in Washington has been a fiasco of incredible proportions.”
Jeremy Konyndyk, who led the US government’s response to international disasters at USAid from 2013 to 2017, frames the past six weeks in strikingly similar terms. He told the Guardian: “We are witnessing in the United States one of the greatest failures of basic governance and basic leadership in modern times.”
In Konyndyk’s analysis, the White House had all the information it needed by the end of January to act decisively. Instead, Trump repeatedly played down the severity of the threat, blaming China for what he called the “Chinese virus” and insisting falsely that his partial travel bans on China and Europe were all it would take to contain the crisis.
‘The CDC was caught flat-footed’
If Trump’s travel ban did nothing else, it staved off to some degree the advent of the virus in the US, buying a little time. Which makes the lack of decisive action all the more curious.
“We didn’t use that time optimally, especially in the case of testing,” said William Schaffner, an infectious diseases specialist at Vanderbilt University medical center. “We have been playing reluctant catch-up throughout.”
As Schaffner sees it, the stuttering provision of mass testing “put us behind the eight-ball” right at the start. “It did not permit us, and still doesn’t permit us, to define the extent of the virus in this country.”
Though the decision to allow private and state labs to provide testing has increased the flow of test kits, the US remains starkly behind South Korea, which has conducted more than five times as many tests per capita. That makes predicting where the next hotspot will pop up after New York and New Orleans almost impossible.
In the absence of sufficient test kits, the US Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) initially kept a tight rein on testing, creating a bottleneck. “I believe the CDC was caught flat-footed,” was how the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, put it on 7 March. “They’re slowing down the state.”
The CDC’s botched rollout of testing was the first indication that the Trump administration was faltering as the health emergency gathered pace. Behind the scenes, deep flaws in the way federal agencies had come to operate under Trump were being exposed.
In 2018 the pandemic unit in the national security council – which was tasked to prepare for health emergencies precisely like the current one – was disbanded. “Eliminating the office has contributed to the federal government’s sluggish domestic response,” Beth Cameron, senior director of the office at the time it was broken up, wrote in the Washington Post.
Disbanding the unit exacerbated a trend that was already prevalent after two years of Trump – an exodus of skilled and experienced officials who knew what they were doing. “There’s been an erosion of expertise, of competent leadership, at important levels of government,” a former senior government official told the Guardian.
“Over time there was a lot of paranoia and people left and they had a hard time attracting good replacements,” the official said. “Nobody wanted to work there.”
It was hardly a morale-boosting gesture when Trump proposed a 16% cut in CDC funding on 10 February – 11 days after the World Health Organization had declared a public health emergency over Covid-19.
Schaffner, who describes himself as the “president of the CDC fan club”, said he has been saddened by how sidelined the CDC has become over the past two months. “Here we have the public health issue of our era and one doesn’t hear from the CDC, the premier public health organization in the world,” Schaffner said.
Under Trump, anti-science sweeps through DC
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which regulates the diagnostic tests and will control any new treatments for coronavirus, has also shown vulnerabilities. The agency recently indicated that it was looking into the possibility of prescribing the malaria drug chloroquine for coronavirus sufferers, even though there is no evidence it would work and some indication it could have serious side-effects.
The decision dismayed experts, given that Trump has personally pushed the unproven remedy on a whim. It smacked of the wave of anti-science sentiment sweeping federal agencies under this presidency.
As the former senior official put it: “We have the FDA bowing to political pressure and making decisions completely counter to modern science.”
Highly respected career civil servants, with impeccable scientific credentials, have struggled to get out in front of the president. Dr Anthony Fauci, an infectious disease expert who has become a rare trusted face in the administration amid the coronavirus scourge, has expressed his frustration.
This week Fauci was asked by a Science magazine writer, Jon Cohen, how he could stand beside Trump at daily press briefings and listen to him misleading the American people with comments such as that the China travel ban had been a great success in blocking entry of the virus. Fauci replied: “I know, but what do you want me to do? I mean, seriously Jon, let’s get real, what do you want me to do?”
Trump has designated himself a “wartime president”. But if the title bears any validity, his military tactics have been highly unconventional. He has exacerbated the problems encountered by federal agencies by playing musical chairs at the top of the coronavirus force.
The president began by creating on 29 January a special coronavirus taskforce, then gave Vice-President Mike Pence the job, who promptly appointed Deborah Birx “coronavirus response coordinator”, before the federal emergency agency Fema began taking charge of key areas, with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, creating a shadow team that increasingly appears to be calling the shots.
“There’s no point of responsibility,” the former senior official told the Guardian. “It keeps shifting. Nobody owns the problem.”
Amid the confusion, day-to-day management of the crisis has frequently come directly from Trump himself via his Twitter feed. The president, with more than half an eye on the New York stock exchange, has consistently talked down the scale of the crisis.
On 30 January, as the World Health Organization was declaring a global emergency, Trump said: “We only have five people. Hopefully, everything’s going to be great.”
On 24 February, Trump claimed “the coronavirus is very much under control in the USA”. The next day, Nancy Messonnier, the CDC’s top official on respiratory diseases, took the radically different approach of telling the truth, warning the American people that “disruption to everyday life might be severe”.
Trump was reportedly so angered by the comment and its impact on share prices that he shouted down the phone at Messonnier’s boss, the secretary of health and human services, Alex Azar.
“Messonnier was 100% right. She gave a totally honest and accurate assessment,” Konyndyk told the Guardian. And for that, Trump angrily rebuked her department. “That sent a very clear message about what is and isn’t permissible to say.”
Konyndyk recalls attending a meeting in mid-February with top Trump administration officials present in which the only topic of conversation was the travel bans. That’s when he began to despair about the federal handling of the crisis.
“I thought, ‘Holy Jesus!’ Where’s the discussion on protecting our hospitals? Where’s the discussion on high-risk populations, on surveillance so we can detect where the virus is. I knew then that the president had set the priority, the bureaucracy was following it, but it was the wrong priority.”
So it has transpired. In the wake of the testing disaster has come the personal protective equipment (PPE) disaster, the hospital bed disaster, and now the ventilator disaster.
Ventilators, literal life preservers, are in dire short supply across the country. When governors begged Trump to unleash the full might of the US government on this critical problem, he gave his answer on 16 March.
In a phrase that will stand beside 20 January 2020 as one of the most revelatory moments of the history of coronavirus, he said: “Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment – try getting it yourselves.”
To date, the Trump administration has supplied 400 ventilators to New York. By Cuomo’s estimation, 30,000 are needed.
“You want a pat on the back for sending 400 ventilators?” Cuomo scathingly asked on Tuesday. “You pick the 26,000 who are going to die because you only sent 400 ventilators.”
‘A total vacuum of federal leadership’
In the absence of a strong federal response, a patchwork of efforts has sprouted all across the country. State governors are doing their own thing. Cities, even individual hospitals, are coping as best they can.
In an improvised attempt to address such inconsistencies, charitable startups have proliferated on social media. Konyndyk has clubbed together with fellow disaster relief experts to set up Covid Local, an online “quick and dirty” guide to how to fight a pandemic.
“We are seeing the emergence of 50-state anarchy, because of a total vacuum of federal leadership. It’s absurd that thinktanks and Twitter are providing more actionable guidance in the US than the federal government, but that’s where we are.”
Medical personnel are silhouetted against the back of a tent at a coronavirus test site in Tampa, Florida. Photograph: Chris O’Meara/AP
Her hospital is relatively well supplied, she said, but even so protective masks will run out within two weeks. “We are all worried about it, we’re scared for our own health, the health of our families, of our patients.”
Early on in the crisis, Griffeth said, it dawned on her and many of her peers that the federal government to which they would normally look to keep them safe was nowhere to be seen. They resigned themselves to a terrible new reality.
“We said to ourselves we are going to get exposed to the virus. When the federal government isn’t there to provide adequate supplies, it’s just a matter of time.”
But just in the last few days, Griffeth has started to see the emergence of something else. She has witnessed an explosion of Americans doing it for themselves, filling in the holes left by Trump’s failed leadership.
“People are stepping up all around us,” she said. “I’m amazed by what has happened in such short time. It gives me hope.”
But her emails...
But she responded to Benghazi too slowly...
Morons.
Your anger and ego will always reveal your true self.
(03-30-2020, 02:07 PM)hollodero Wrote: I disagree with that one. Believing other administrations, past or hypethetical future ones, would have handled this better is a pretty essential thought to me.
The current one lies, misinforms, speculates and taunts its TV ratings when giving crisis updates. Not hard to imagine other presidents would have chosen a more constructive approach.
This is responding to you and to Dill. When I say those hypotheticals are pointless, it is pointing out that paying that game right now isn't helpful. Pointing out the failures of this administration, like the firing of the person we had in China, the disbanding of the pandemic response team, the claims this was a hoax, etc., is fine. But what good does looking at hypotheticals of a Democratic administration really do? Trump ****** up. Point it out every minute of every hour of every day. I just don't see a good reason to discuss "what if Hillary..."
On a side note, my governor just issued a stay at home order but fishing is still allowed. So if you'll excuse me...
"A great democracy has got to be progressive, or it will soon cease to be either great or a democracy..." - TR
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." - FDR
(03-30-2020, 03:34 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: This is responding to you and to Dill. When I say those hypotheticals are pointless, it is pointing out that paying that game right now isn't helpful. Pointing out the failures of this administration, like the firing of the person we had in China, the disbanding of the pandemic response team, the claims this was a hoax, etc., is fine. But what good does looking at hypotheticals of a Democratic administration really do? Trump ****** up. Point it out every minute of every hour of every day. I just don't see a good reason to discuss "what if Hillary..."
On a side note, my governor just issued a stay at home order but fishing is still allowed. So if you'll excuse me...
(03-30-2020, 10:04 AM)Dill Wrote: "Parroting" does not include a warning that human to human transmission is always a concern. Parroting would leave that out, because it is precisely a "particular reason to believe it could be spread," regardless of "no evidence" at the moment.
And whom, exactly, would that factual report "mislead"?
Certainly not public health professionals. Whom then?
They put a qualifier on their Chinese propaganda. Stunning and brave.
(03-30-2020, 02:01 PM)hollodero Wrote: Should they have said that there was evidence?
Even if said evidence would merely have been an educated guess at that point?
If they had evidence it can be spread person-to-person and didn't put it out there so that countries can make their own decision about preparing for the worst, I would say they screwed up.
Coronavirus
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