Covid-19 Thread

[BlueJean Baby]

12 minutes ago, RussTCB said:

Georgia and Texas are open and / or opening. Here in Michigan, our stay at home order is currently extended until May 15th. We'll see what happens then. 

Georgia is reopening but our shelter in place order doesn't actually end until the 30th. Lots of restaurants refused to reopen yet though

[RussTCB]

Just now, BlueJean Baby said:

Georgia is reopening but our shelter in place order doesn't actually end until the 30th. Lots of restaurants refused to reopen yet though

Oh, well that's good to hear. 

[downzy]

4 hours ago, arnold layne said:

it is ridiculous to blame Donald Trump for the coronavirus

Yes it's ridiculous to blame Donald Trump for the existence of COVID-19.  Had Hillary Clinton been president there likely still would have been a world wide pandemic.

What people can blame Donald Trump for his America's response and ill-preparedness for the outbreak within America.  He has failed both at communicating factual information and for downplaying the threat despite receiving numerous warnings from various intelligence officials several months before things took off in the US.  There likely always was going to be an outbreak in the US, but it didn't have to be as bad as it is now.  55k dead and still counting.  The US accounts for one-third of the world's confirmed cases and a quarter of the world's dead.  By any metric the US federal response to this crisis has been abysmal.  Thankfully some states have had serious leadership that has helped steer their states away from worst case projections (though some were just lucky, others were not). 

5 hours ago, arnold layne said:

Trump does not have enough power to put in regulations to stop the spread completely. Given the amount of power he has, I think his response was as good as any other president could do.

That is factually incorrect.  Take some time to review how Obama responded to the Ebola crisis.  Not the same virus of course, but you'll see a completely different response.

Trump had the power to deploy the pandemic playbook that the previous administration left him.  He chose not to do so.  He had the power not to disband the pandemic response team.  He chose to do that.  He had the power to nominate a US liaison to the WHO.  He chose not to do that.  He had the power to get US testing capacity in order.  Again, he chose not to do that.  He's also chose not to coordinate, at the federal level, procure equipment and supplies to fight the outbreak, leaving states, counties and hospitals to compete against one another.  He has chosen to turn the daily updates on the outbreak into sad and transparent re-election ploys.  He chose to build up people's hopes about drugs that weren't approved for treating the viral outbreak (leading to at least one person overdosing on one of them), chose to suggest that the outbreak would be miraculously gone by April, and now is countering his medical experts by suggesting that COVID-19 will be gone by the fall (it won't be).  

[downzy]

1 hour ago, BlueJean Baby said:

Georgia is reopening but our shelter in place order doesn't actually end until the 30th. Lots of restaurants refused to reopen yet though

This is what's crazy about opening up businesses if people still don't feel it's safe to go out.  It's pointless.  

Moreover without re-opening schools, most people won't be able to go back to work without major assistance.

[Graeme]

A few pages back, I made a post wondering how the US would handle this pandemic's challenge to its individualist "everyone must work to survive" ethos. The answer is that it can't even tolerate suspending it for a short period of time.

[lame ass security]

1 hour ago, Graeme said:

A few pages back, I made a post wondering how the US would handle this pandemic's challenge to its individualist "everyone must work to survive" ethos. The answer is that it can't even tolerate suspending it for a short period of time.

You pegged that one my friend.

[arnold layne]

2 hours ago, downzy said:

Yes it's ridiculous to blame Donald Trump for the existence of COVID-19.  Had Hillary Clinton been president there likely still would have been a world wide pandemic.

What people can blame Donald Trump for his America's response and ill-preparedness for the outbreak within America.  He has failed both at communicating factual information and for downplaying the threat despite receiving numerous warnings from various intelligence officials several months before things took off in the US.  There likely always was going to be an outbreak in the US, but it didn't have to be as bad as it is now.  55k dead and still counting.  The US accounts for one-third of the world's confirmed cases and a quarter of the world's dead.  By any metric the US federal response to this crisis has been abysmal.  Thankfully some states have had serious leadership that has helped steer their states away from worst case projections (though some were just lucky, others were not). 

That is factually incorrect.  Take some time to review how Obama responded to the Ebola crisis.  Not the same virus of course, but you'll see a completely different response.

Trump had the power to deploy the pandemic playbook that the previous administration left him.  He chose not to do so.  He had the power not to disband the pandemic response team.  He chose to do that.  He had the power to nominate a US liaison to the WHO.  He chose not to do that.  He had the power to get US testing capacity in order.  Again, he chose not to do that.  He's also chose not to coordinate, at the federal level, procure equipment and supplies to fight the outbreak, leaving states, counties and hospitals to compete against one another.  He has chosen to turn the daily updates on the outbreak into sad and transparent re-election ploys.  He chose to build up people's hopes about drugs that weren't approved for treating the viral outbreak (leading to at least one person overdosing on one of them), chose to suggest that the outbreak would be miraculously gone by April, and now is countering his medical experts by suggesting that COVID-19 will be gone by the fall (it won't be).  

All I am saying is that I believe China and to a lesser extent the WHO are just as much to blame for downplaying the virus. Donald Trump was going off of their word earlier this year. Let's not forget he started travel restrictions when the media was screaming "It's just the flu!" back in February. The WHO also did not support Donald Trump's travel policy. It appears he made a step in the right track at the time.

But that is over and done with. 

When it comes to domestic policy, managing a virus is a micro issue. He works for the federal government. Do you believe it is feasible for the federal government to take control over state policies during a pandemic? There is a political process to do things. Georgia is opening up this weekend. Is that Trump's fault? What is he supposed to do?

Quite clearly, Americans need to take a step back and see what is best for the entire country. Everybody has to point fingers. Democrats blame Republicans and Republicans blame Democrats. Where is the accountability for everyone? Where is China's accountability? Why won't the WHO say they made a mistake? 

It isn't all on Donald Trump. Could he have done things differently? Sure. But we cannot throw Trump under the bus and expect to hold him to a higher standard when China and the WHO refuse to do so either. 

Clearly humanity has lost it's way. Instead of helping our country, we want to throw our political enemies into the fire. It is time for everyone to admit mistakes from both sides of the isle. 

Edited April 28, 2020 by arnold layne

[cineater]

Missouri goes back to work Monday with social distancing minus those counties who have different restrictions.  Not sure how that's going to workout, maybe help a few hang on.  Funny they only talked about businesses, nothing reminding people how to protect themselves or recommendations for their precautions.

[marlingrl03]

5 hours ago, BlueJean Baby said:

Georgia is reopening but our shelter in place order doesn't actually end until the 30th. Lots of restaurants refused to reopen yet though

Same here...we are open and yeah lots of restaurants dont have the PPE or hand sanitizer required to open so they are like nope! We will stay closed till we have the items required and it's safe for both employees and customers. 

Speaking of PPE we just got a huge shipment of masks from China...hopefully they did us right. We will see.

[downzy]

1 hour ago, arnold layne said:

All I am saying is that I believe China and to a lesser extent the WHO are just as much to blame for downplaying the virus. Donald Trump was going off of their word earlier this year.

Except other countries still planned to have contingencies in place if China wasn’t able to contain the outbreak. The day before the WHO declared it a pandemic, Trump said this: "And we're prepared, and we're doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away."  His own intelligence agencies had warned him in January of the real risks this outbreak posed and the need to prepare (which affirmed the pandemic playbook devised and provided by the Obama administration. Blaming the WHO and China doesn’t excuse the fact that America is facing the highest number of infections and deaths despite the outbreak occurring later than other nations and giving the US more time to prepare (which was squandered). 

 

1 hour ago, arnold layne said:

Let's not forget he started travel restrictions when the media was screaming "It's just the flu!" back in February.

First, unless you’re talking about Fox News, “the media” never screamed it was just the flu. That’s nonsense. 

Second, if Trump was really concerned about the outbreak he would have done more than give lip service to to his xenophobic base. Most cases on the east coast have been traced to Europe, not China. 

1 hour ago, arnold layne said:

When it comes to domestic policy, managing a virus is a micro issue. He works for the federal government. Do you believe it is feasible for the federal government to take control over state policies during a pandemic?

The president has both limited and expansive authorities when it comes to managing a pandemic. He does not have the authority to open and close states, but he does manage the agencies and resources that could have greatly reduced the spread through ramped up testing and case tracing. The failure in testing made the problem significantly worse.  That failures lies with the Trump administration.

1 hour ago, arnold layne said:

Where is China's accountability? Why won't the WHO say they made a mistake? 

It isn't all on Donald Trump.

The global pandemic isn’t on Trump. But America’s shit response is. He is the President. Other nations were able to get on top of it. America under Trump wasn’t one of them. 

1 hour ago, arnold layne said:

Clearly humanity has lost it's way. Instead of helping our country, we want to throw our political enemies into the fire. It is time for everyone to admit mistakes from both sides of the isle. 

Humanity hasn’t lost its way. America isn’t humanity. There are a lot of good responsible people, in America and other countries, doing the right thing. Both sides of the isle weren’t in charge and hence the responsibility isn’t equally shared.

We should hold elected officials to account when they fuck up. 
 

 

[downzy]

1 hour ago, marlingrl03 said:

Same here...we are open and yeah lots of restaurants dont have the PPE or hand sanitizer required to open so they are like nope! We will stay closed till we have the items required and it's safe for both employees and customers. 

Speaking of PPE we just got a huge shipment of masks from China...hopefully they did us right. We will see.

Not sure why any business would open right now considering the potential civil liability of having either an employee or customer contract the virus.  

[DieselDaisy]

11 hours ago, arnold layne said:

I do not watch the news. All of the major networks have their own agendas. They skew facts and statistics to support their own narrative. 

Instead I look for medical publications, look at the numbers, and base my own conclusions. Critical thought is a skill that is no longer present in the United States. I think it would be better for everyone to stop paying attention to CNN and Fox, do a little unbiased research of their own, and form their own opinions on the subject. 

------

On another subject, it is ridiculous to blame Donald Trump for the coronavirus. People here attack him like he caused the pandemic itself. 

American Politics is a complex subject. Trump does not have enough power to put in regulations to stop the spread completely. Given the amount of power he has, I think his response was as good as any other president could do. States rights are real. It is not as if Donald Trump can tell the entire country to shut down. There is a political process.

And I didn't vote for him. This is a take from someone who did not vote for Trump and will not vote for him in 2020. 

The pandemic transcends politics. It doesn't care if you are a Democrat or Republician. We would have had the same problem if Obama was in office right now.

You cannot reason with people whose main rhetorical grasp of the COVID-19 situation is merely to blame Donald Trump 100% of the time. I suppose some people are finding their political biases fulfilled by the crisis.

[action]

arguably, britain waited too long to to put people in quarantaine too. Not to mention the netherlands.

And what to say about belgium, who cut back finances on hospitals, destroyed millions of mouth masks before the epidemy, and which has one of the worst relative death / people ratios in the world.

I'd argue that, for all its faults, china was the most effective country in stopping the disease. but their measures were very drastic, even going as far as to make people disappear. It wasn't an approach we would want in our democracies, but still, it was effective.  

People who say "so or so hasn't handled the epidemy correctly" should realise that the best results are shown by a country that is thoroughly dictatorial. Is that what we want here in the west? Well, I'm not supporting that, that's for sure. I'd rather a couple of thousand people more die of this virus, than putting a whole nation under a dictatorship. 

There is no ideal way to handle this. Sweden doesn't even have a lockdown, and they're not doing so bad.

I wonder, with a country like the USA that has cities like new york, which are hugely populated, how you're going to prevent a massive outbreak there without resorting to dictatorial means.

Edited April 28, 2020 by action

[Gavin82]

Argentina bans all flights until  1st Sep

Trump once again blames China

Germany sees there cases rise again

8th June looks likely for football P League etc i dont follow any football so domt keep up too date on this.

 

[SoulMonster]

9 minutes ago, action said:

People who say "so or so hasn't handled the epidemy correctly" should realise that the best results are shown by a country that is thoroughly dictatorial. Is that what we want here in the west? 

As @downzyrecently pointed out, many countries have been able to handle this demonstrably better than many others. Just look to New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Germany or Finland. They have handled this very well without having to resort to as severe measures as China.

Another point, one of the reasons China had to employ such draconian measures was that by the time they realized what they were up against they had little time to curb the outbreak before it became a catastrophe. That's because they got hit by an unknown disease and had to figure out what it was and how to treat patients. Other countries were warned about what was going to happen by China and could make reasonable preparations without having to copy China's approach to achieve a comparable result. By the time the virus hit Germany, the government there knew what they were up against, they had the methods and protocols to test it, they knew how to treat it, and they knew that if they weren't diligent about testing, quarantining, monitoring the spread, having sufficient capacity in the ICU, etc, they would see the same escalation that were observed in China in the early stages of the outbreak. So they made sensible preparations. Some governments chose not do, for various reasons, and they tend to struggle more now as the result.

So no, you are wrong in implying that countries who do poorly aren't to blame because they couldn't act like China did. You are probably right that they couldn't but it wouldn't have had to be necessary as we know from those countries who have coped well with the pandemic. 

38 minutes ago, DieselDaisy said:

You cannot reason with people whose main rhetorical grasp of the COVID-19 situation is merely to blame Donald Trump 100% of the time. I suppose some people are finding their political biases fulfilled by the crisis.

Says the guy who have been defending Donald Trump and arguing that China cased the pandemic 

[DieselDaisy]

2 minutes ago, SoulMonster said:

Says the guy who have been defending Donald Trump

Donald Trump is academic unless you are American. Arguing about Trump if you are British, Norwegian, Canadian etc seems a misguided exercise. You are currently a recipient of your own country's coronavirus policies - not Donald Trump's. You are now locked in your house wanking to pornhub because your government ordered it so, not Trump. The reason those schools were closed a week too late was a decision made by your own countries. The reason you are walking around with a stupid mask is because of your governments. Why therefore do you choose to criticise the elected leader of another country, and not discuss the strategies and decision making of your own? I don't understand this. I don't think I'll ever understand this. 

 

[SoulMonster]

1 hour ago, DieselDaisy said:

Donald Trump is academic unless you are American. 

I will bring this point up for the third time, although I have no hope you will actually address it:

Trump is defunding the WHO. That affects us all.

I even put it in bold for you. You're welcome. Now can you stop spreading that moronic Little Englander belief that during a pandemic what other countries do has no bearing on us?

[SoulMonster]

1 hour ago, DieselDaisy said:

and not discuss the strategies and decision making of your own?

What? Are you piecing together a new straw man now, that I don't discuss domestic strategies? Have you not seen my posts on Norway vs. Sweden in terms of approach to handling COVID-19? Have you not seen my updates on what we are doing in Norway?

1 hour ago, DieselDaisy said:

I don't understand this. I don't think I'll ever understand this. 

I agree.

[SoulMonster]

@DieselDaisy Furthermore, I find it absolutely priceless how you can go on tirades about people criticising Trump, arguing that it doesn't matter at all what other countries do, then the very next moment you will shell out all kinds deserved and undeserved criticisms of China, including blaming them for starting the pandemic and causing people to die elsewhere and how they are morally culpable for this. Absolutely priceless. Are you just too dense to see the irony?

It does matter what other countries do because we are all interconnected. No country is an island (there is still movement of goods and people all over the world). What China did, or didn't do, affected the timing of when the disease hit other countries, and how hard it hit; likewise, if USA doesn't curb the disease they will become a hotspot for infecting other regions as they start opening up their societies, and when Trump decides to defund an important organization that is important for not only dealing with this disease but all others, that affects us too. 

So everybody else are just as entitled to criticise Trump for his mismanagement of the disease as you are for criticising China for theirs. Just get over it, will you? If you so desperately want to defend Trump maybe actually defend him on specific things he do and not attempt such a flawed and hypocritical argument as you have been peddling?

[Gavin82]

Both Spain & France plan too announce plans too ease there lock down+

As of May 1st in Austria events up too 10 people will be allowed altho people will be asked too keep a meter apart.

Norweigan Airlines are in trouble now also saying it will keep a majority of its operations grounded untill April 2021

[downzy]

5 hours ago, DieselDaisy said:

You cannot reason with people whose main rhetorical grasp of the COVID-19 situation is merely to blame Donald Trump 100% of the time. I suppose some people are finding their political biases fulfilled by the crisis.

Nobody is blaming Trump for the outbreak and pandemic. Where they find fault is Trump’s inability to display any real leadership that has resulted in the US to be one of the hardest hit and least prepared countries in the world, in contrast to Trump’s incredulous claims that he’s doing a fantastic job and takes no responsibility for the rampant spread and death of the virus. 

[downzy]

5 hours ago, action said:

And what to say about belgium, who cut back finances on hospitals, destroyed millions of mouth masks before the epidemy, and which has one of the worst relative death / people ratios in the world.

Belgium’s death rate isn’t fairly comparable to other countries since it counts anyone who died who showed symptoms or were previous exposed to someone with a confirmed infection. This is a very loose (but likely far more accurate) means of calculating the death toll than what almost every other country is using. 

5 hours ago, action said:

People who say "so or so hasn't handled the epidemy correctly" should realise that the best results are shown by a country that is thoroughly dictatorial. Is that what we want here in the west? Well, I'm not supporting that, that's for sure. I'd rather a couple of thousand people more die of this virus, than putting a whole nation under a dictatorship. 

South Korea, New Zealand, and Australia - all democracies, would counter this argument. 

[marlingrl03]

8 hours ago, downzy said:

Not sure why any business would open right now considering the potential civil liability of having either an employee or customer contract the virus.  

Believe me....I totally agree. Even the CDC based on their models and such said we were opening 2 weeks early. Smdh. 

[Gavin82]

France gives May 11th date too re opening of small shops etc

[arnold layne]

5 hours ago, SoulMonster said:

Trump is defunding the WHO. That affects us all.

Excuse me, is this the same WHO who told us all that there was no evidence of human to human transmission and that travel bans from China was unnecessary?

Yeah ok. We can do without them thanks. I don't want to pay them.