Coronavirus

[Cigarbutt]

Other complementary data about attitudes (bipartisan to some extent) concerning exit strategies:

https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/493053-poll-voters-uncomfortable-with-going-to-most-places-when-social

 

@DooDiligence

"The only locations a majority of voters said they were comfortable returning to when restrictions are lifted were grocery stores, at 62 percent."

 

@Gregmal

New Jersey (is that where you live?) has quite a reputation for mosquitoes and some have suggested that it's because the state is "swampy".

 

@Investor20

Lately and because of the virus, i've been meeting many ex-colleagues who invariably ask: how was it possible to retire in your early 40s? Because i made many mistakes.

For interest:

https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2020/04/24/566159.htm

 

Humans have a tendency to converge and this polarization thing has to subside.

[rb]

Meanwhile, because his priorities are in order, Trump is trying to increase shipping rates to hurt Amazon (and everybody who order online) and bully the Washington Post during a time when everybody is ordering more online:

 

 

Trump just told the press pool that the US Postal Service should raise its shipping prices by four times -- and as leverage he threatened to withhold a congressionally-approved emergency coronavirus loan to USPS

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/23/10-billion-treasury-loan-usps/

 

To illustrate what a monumentally stupid idea this is consider this mind blowing fact. Approval for USPS=+82, approval for DJT=-11. The USPS is consistently the most popular US gov't agency with an approval rating of 90%. When did 90% of Americans agree on anything? By the way the latest numbers are from 2019. Do you think the approval is up or down since COVID with everyone getting home delivery?

 

Oh and while they're tripping over themselves to figure out how to bail out bankrupt oil companies, the USPS employs 4 times more people than O&G industry.

 

This will work out about as well as injecting bleach.

 

Sources:

 

https://www.people-press.org/2019/10/01/public-expresses-favorable-views-of-a-number-of-federal-agencies/

https://news.gallup.com/poll/203198/presidential-approval-ratings-donald-trump.aspx

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES1021100001#0

[KCLarkin]

Investor20, the full context of that WHO article is:

“ There are few reports of laboratory-confirmed cases who are truly asymptomatic, and to date, there has been no documented asymptomatic transmission. This does not exclude the possibility that it may occur. Asymptomatic cases have been reported as part of contact tracing efforts in some countries.”

[Investor20]

Investor20, the full context of that WHO article is:

“ There are few reports of laboratory-confirmed cases who are truly asymptomatic, and to date, there has been no documented asymptomatic transmission. This does not exclude the possibility that it may occur. Asymptomatic cases have been reported as part of contact tracing efforts in some countries.”

 

That is not the context.  That is the WHO statement on April 2nd :

 

"There are few reports of laboratory-confirmed cases who are truly asymptomatic"

 

January 27th article from Japan:

 

Both countries have tightened border controls and quarantine checkpoints to screen passengers, although the fact that carriers of the virus may not show detectable symptoms has been a major cause of concern.

 

https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/masks-out-as-japan-s-korea-report-new-cases

 

How did Japanese and Koreans knew of asymptomic carriers in January 27th that WHO is not aware on April 2nd?

 

Everyone knows Trump is not an epidemiologist or virologist. 

 

But we do expect WHO, CDC and Dr. Fauci to at least know what is happening in Korea and Japan as of January 27th (Japan and Korea already were worrying about asymptomatic carriers, wash hands, put border controls, use masks by Jan 27th)

[Dalal.Holdings]

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/24/coronavirus-trump-tries-to-walk-back-disinfectant-suggestion-claims-sarcasm.html

 

Not to be worried, he was being sarcastic. Making a joke. Kind of like what he’s done w the Presidency and what you want in a President during a pandemic where 50k Americans are dead.

 

Teflon Don strikes again, followers will lap it up “dur, he was just joking can’t you see that u libtards!”

[Liberty]

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/24/coronavirus-trump-tries-to-walk-back-disinfectant-suggestion-claims-sarcasm.html

 

Not to be worried, he was being sarcastic. Making a joke. Kind of like what he’s done w the Presidency and what you want in a President during a pandemic where 50k Americans are dead.

 

Teflon Don strikes again, followers will lap it up “dur, he was just joking can’t you see that u libtards!”

 

Meanwhile, spin doctors like Scott Adams are claiming that Trump was actually making a sophisticated medical point, and Trump himself basically says he was talking about it, but was kidding.

 

Video of Trump saying it was sarcastic:

 

"Trump: I was asking the question sarcastically to reporters like you just to see what would happen..."

 

*facepalm*

[Dalal.Holdings]

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/24/coronavirus-trump-tries-to-walk-back-disinfectant-suggestion-claims-sarcasm.html

 

Not to be worried, he was being sarcastic. Making a joke. Kind of like what he’s done w the Presidency and what you want in a President during a pandemic where 50k Americans are dead.

 

Teflon Don strikes again, followers will lap it up “dur, he was just joking can’t you see that u libtards!”

 

Meanwhile, spin doctors like Scott Adams are claiming that Trump was actually making a sophisticated medical point, and Trump himself basically says he was talking about it, but was kidding.

 

Kind of like if you deflect all the blame for your handling of the pandemic to the WHO and Governors. Either way, it’s a win-win.

[arcube]

Everyone knows Trump is not an epidemiologist or virologist. 

 

Hahaha.. The problem is that he does not know that he is not one.

[Liberty]

Wow. Not that we needed more evidence that this pathological narcissist only thinks of himself, but there it is.

 

WASHINGTON — President Trump arrives in the Oval Office these days as late as noon, when he is usually in a sour mood after his morning marathon of television.

 

He has been up in the White House master bedroom as early as 5 a.m. watching Fox News, then CNN, with a dollop of MSNBC thrown in for rage viewing. He makes calls with the TV on in the background, his routine since he first arrived at the White House. [...]

 

The president sees few allies no matter which channel he clicks. He is angry even with Fox, an old security blanket, for not portraying him as he would like to be seen. And he makes time to watch Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s briefings from New York, closely monitoring for a sporadic compliment or snipe.

 

Confined to the White House, the president is isolated from the supporters, visitors, travel and golf that once entertained him, according to more than a dozen administration officials and close advisers who spoke about Mr. Trump’s strange new life. He is tested weekly, as is Vice President Mike Pence, for Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

 

The economy — Mr. Trump’s main case for re-election — has imploded. News coverage of his handling of the coronavirus has been overwhelmingly negative as Democrats have condemned him for a lack of empathy, honesty and competence in the face of a pandemic. Even Republicans have criticized Mr. Trump’s briefings as long-winded and his rough handling of critics as unproductive. [...]

 

Mr. Trump frequently vents about how he is portrayed. He was enraged by an article this month in which his health secretary, Alex M. Azar II, was said to have warned Mr. Trump in January about the possibility of a pandemic. Mr. Trump was upset that he was being blamed while Mr. Azar was portrayed in a more favorable light, aides said.  [...]

 

The daily White House coronavirus task force briefing is the one portion of the day that Mr. Trump looks forward to, although even Republicans say that the two hours of political attacks, grievances and falsehoods by the president are hurting him politically.

 

Mr. Trump will hear none of it. Aides say he views them as prime-time shows that are the best substitute for the rallies he can no longer attend but craves.

 

Mr. Trump rarely attends the task force meetings that precede the briefings, and he typically does not prepare before he steps in front of the cameras. He is often seeing the final version of the day’s main talking points that aides have prepared for him for the first time although aides said he makes tweaks with a Sharpie just before he reads them live

 

With two hours of the president’s day dedicated to hosting what is still referred to as a prime-time news briefing, who is going to actually fix the pandemic?

 

Even Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, one of the experts appointed to advise the president on the best way to handle the outbreak, has complained that the amount of time he must spend onstage in the briefings each day has a “draining” effect on him.

 

That circle has shrunk significantly as the president, who advisers say is more sensitive to criticism than at nearly any other point in his presidency, has come to rely on only a handful of longtime aides.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/us/politics/coronavirus-trump.html

 

Reddit comments that capture it well:

 

"Mr. Trump rarely attends the task force meetings that precede the briefings, and he typically does not prepare before he steps in front of the cameras"

 

"This is why you know the man is a fucking psychopath. Normal people have total panic attacks about being unprepared for something like an EMERGENCY LIVE NEWS BRIEFING FOR THE ENTIRE NATION ON A DEADLY PANDEMIC. Trump *enjoys* doing this, with no preparation at all, and it's basically the highllight of his day every day because he gets to be in charge of the briefing and the cameras are all on him. What he actually says isn't even important."

 

"It's really difficult to understand just how different he is from 'normal' people. He's in a human skin but he doesn't have the same mental processes as the rest of us, not at all. All that matters is that *he* is the center of attention, for as many people as possible. Everything else is just noise. So while most of us would completely shit our pants at the thought of being grilled on live TV by journalists with millions of people watching, for Trump that's practically his idea of heaven.

 

The actual topic, the questions, the details, none of this matters to him at all. All that matters is that everyone is focused on HIM."

 

">he hastily plows through them, usually in a monotone, in order to get to the question-and-answer bullying session with reporters that he relishes

 

It's SO obvious that he does this. He literally sounds like he RESENTS getting through the legit/important stuff, like it is a literal waste of his time."

[LC]

All Trump supporters please start injecting bleach intravenously asap, kk thx OK. Your sacrifice is appreciated. We will remember you fondly.

 

You guys are really fucked in US if this is the typical attitude of a non Trump supporter. Start a civil war, already.

 

Just in case it needs to be said: Do not put household disinfectants into your body  ;D

[Jurgis]

All Trump supporters please start injecting bleach intravenously asap, kk thx OK. Your sacrifice is appreciated. We will remember you fondly.

 

You guys are really fucked in US if this is the typical attitude of a non Trump supporter. Start a civil war, already.

 

Just in case it needs to be said: Do not put household disinfectants into your body  ;D

 

Don't listen to LC. He's a liberal who's trying to confuse you with facts. Listen only to Herr Presidente. Make America Bleached Again!

[Liberty]

More on the false negative with antibody tests:

 

 

NEW:  NYC Health Dept has sent alert to all medical providers advising *not* to use anti-body tests to diagnose prior covid infection nor to assess immunity.

 

This is due to high rate of false negatives/positives and uncertainty about how immunity works.

 

Dose of reality folks.

 

 

For those not familiar with the bayesian math, let's say you have a test that is 99% effective. To most people that sounds really really good and accurate.

 

But let's say you have 1% of the population infected with the disease you're looking for.

 

So you test 1000 people. There's 10 person really infected. But you also get 10 false positives (1%).

 

This means you'll have 20 positives, and 50% of them are incorrect, with the 99% accurate test.

 

Accuracy may be be lower than 99% with many tests, I've seen some thought to be 95%, so you get the idea..

[Liberty]

All Trump supporters please start injecting bleach intravenously asap, kk thx OK. Your sacrifice is appreciated. We will remember you fondly.

 

You guys are really fucked in US if this is the typical attitude of a non Trump supporter. Start a civil war, already.

 

Just in case it needs to be said: Do not put household disinfectants into your body  ;D

 

Don't listen to LC. He's a liberal who's trying to confuse you with facts. Listen only to Herr Presidente. Make America Bleached Again!

 

We're going to have to go with the American Cleaning Institute on this one:

 

[rb]

Fuck me! Preliminary study in France indicates that nicotine may prevent smokers from catching coronavirus.

 

https://www.qeios.com/read/article/574?mod=article_inline

 

I never thought anything positive could ever come out of my smoking. Preliminary or not.

 

Just in case it needs to be said: Do not start smoking to avoid COVID 19.

[Gregmal]

Fuck me! Preliminary study in France indicates that nicotine may prevent smokers from catching coronavirus.

 

https://www.qeios.com/read/article/574?mod=article_inline

 

I never thought anything positive could ever come out of my smoking. Preliminary or not.

 

Just in case it needs to be said: Do not start smoking to avoid COVID 19.

 

Haha I saw this. Still waiting for someone to find some fine print saying "paid for by Phillip Morris"

[SHDL]

So how is BTI, now with TWO potential cures for the virus, not up 350%?

[rb]

I don't know. Cause just got released.

 

It's preliminary. And they do correlation. The sample size at 350 is not great but not bad either.

 

TLDR is that smoking incidence in COVID patients is much lower than in the general population - really the opposite of what you would expect. Hypothesis is that nicotine used the same ACE2 receptor that the virus uses and basically when it wants to attach to the lung the place is taken. I was here first kind of thing.

[StubbleJumper]

I don't know. Cause just got released.

 

It's preliminary. And they do correlation. The sample size at 350 is not great but not bad either.

 

TLDR is that smoking incidence in COVID patients is much lower than in the general population - really the opposite of what you would expect. Hypothesis is that nicotine used the same ACE2 receptor that the virus uses and basically when it wants to attach to the lung the place is taken. I was here first kind of thing.

 

 

Careful!  If you publicize this too much, Trump might start telling people to start sucking on neonicotinoids to prevent covid (they would do this right after drinking bleach to cleanse their body!).  I guess it's more palatable than the idea of shoving a flashlight up your ass....

 

 

SJ

[LC]

Carcinoma to COVID:

 

"You must be new here, kid, but I run this block"

[DooDiligence]

Fuck me! Preliminary study in France indicates that nicotine may prevent smokers from catching coronavirus.

 

https://www.qeios.com/read/article/574?mod=article_inline

 

I never thought anything positive could ever come out of my smoking. Preliminary or not.

 

Just in case it needs to be said: Do not start smoking to avoid COVID 19.

 

Haha I saw this. Still waiting for someone to find some fine print saying "paid for by Phillip Morris"

 

Here you go.

 

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-17/philip-morris-money-is-funding-pro-vaping-coronavirus-spin

[SHDL]

Haha. I just hope the finding wasn’t an artifact of smokers dying in greater numbers before they had a chance to get tested.

[Liberty]

Leadership in New Zealand:

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/04/jacinda-ardern-new-zealand-leadership-coronavirus/610237/

[vinod1]

At last... another potential cure!

 

After a Homeland Security official mentioned the ability of disinfectants like bleach to kill the coronavirus on surfaces, Trump remarked on the effectiveness.

 

“And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?” Trump said during his daily press briefing at the White House. “Because you see it gets on the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it’d be interesting to check that. So that you’re going to have to use medical doctors, but it sounds — it sounds interesting to me.”

 

Yes, I see it now: intravenous bleach infusion, bombardment with UV rays, gamma rays, etc etc and patients will be straight up cured! And his apologists were out defending hydroxychloroquine because this guy was behind it...

 

We now proudly celebrate ignorance in our culture--and you see the manifestation here on this forum and in the population at large. The consequences of said ignorance unfortunately does not merely fall on the ignorant, but spreads to the wider population via collateral damage. Oh well.

 

A really sad state of affairs. When he was just being elected, some smarter republicans argued that Trump's rhetoric was a deliberate case of playing 3d chess to win the election and anger the libs. And that he would soften, that they could right the ship from within, etc. Gradually this line of thinking disappeared and rather than acknowledging their mistake it morphed into something else: tacit and complicit acceptance of utter idiocy.

 

Very astute observation. I did believe that logic that Trump talks that way but would not act stupidly. But with the way he is responding to Covid it is now glaringly obvious that this is sheer madness.

 

I do credit Trump, whether for right reasons or not, that he is the only president to address the threat of China and the threat it is posing.

 

His actions with regard to Covid are absolutely retarded. Who tweets that he might seal off New York ahead of time and then say there is no need? Who retweets that a crucial member of his Covid team (Dr. Fauci) to be fired? Injecting bleach?

 

Vinod

[Read the Footnotes]

I do credit Trump, whether for right reasons or not, that he is the only president to address the threat of China and the threat it is posing.

He talks a good game on China, but his record is very weak. If you really wanted to be tough on China, you would not be isolationist. The USA shifting to isolationism creates a void for China to fill.

 

For example, he is complaining about the WHO and Chinese influence on the WHO. China's influence on the WHO has undoubtedly increased during Trump's reign because of the Trump administration pulling back. So when he is surprised at the new degree of influence of China on the WHO, his solution is to de-fund them further reducing the US influence.

 

It's going to be rich when he quits funding NATO or the UN and then complains about other countries having more influence.

 

Similarly, several smaller countries including middle eastern countries have relied on the US CDC in situation like this in the past. They have publicly said that the US CDC's message has been so confused that they are no longer relying on the US and that it has been suggested that the Chinese CDC might be the best option for them instead.

 

Someone needs to tell Trump to lead, follow, or get out of the way. In the case of Coronavirus, he is doing more harm than good and is wasting years of goodwill, influence and trust that the USA had built up.

[Liberty]

One month ago: