The coronavirus spread updated in real time

[_Jersey Girl]

Little Mike Bloomberg a.k.a. Mini Mike a.k.a. Mayor Mike Bloomberg is heading up the contact tracing program for NY which will likely serve as a model for other states. He, DeBlasio, and Cuomo are going to put Trump to shame in full public view.

Wait for it...

[_Some Schmo]

Trump should be convicted of negligent manslaughter, as should Fox News, and all the idiot lemmings mimicking their BS about CV.

Is there another example of a world leader just letting his own citizens die in such an obvious and cavalier manner? He's a public menace. He should be shot and replaced. (Or at least replaced... being shot would be a bonus).

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Another world leader as bad as Trump? Bolsonaro..

- Doc

[_Jersey Girl]

I don't know what thread this fits in but...

White House blocks Fauci from testifying before Congress
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... e-congress

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

An article about Trump: ““We’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people,” he said in a virtual “town hall” meeting on Fox News. “That’s a horrible thing. We shouldn’t lose one person over this.”

But he credited himself with preventing the toll from being worse. “If we didn’t do it, the minimum we would have lost was a million two, a million four, a million five, that’s the minimum. We would have lost probably higher, it’s possible higher than 2.2.””

He said a little while ago we’d see... You know what? Never mind. If you read that above and don’t understand he needs to be out of office I don’t know. I just don’t.

- Doc

[_Icarus]

Another world leader as bad as Trump? Bolsonaro..

- Doc

Fo sho

[_Jersey Girl]

Live updates: Vice President Pence says coronavirus task force could be disbanded within a month as death toll tops 70,000

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2 ... update-us/

Trump's out of his friggin mind if he ever had something resembling a mind to start with.

[_MeDotOrg]

Live updates: Vice President Pence says coronavirus task force could be disbanded within a month as death toll tops 70,000

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2 ... update-us/

Trump's out of his friggin mind if he ever had something resembling a mind to start with.

Trump's modus operandi is to talk about a problem as long as it is helping his ratings. The briefings were only about the dissemination of information so long as the forum provided a platform for Trump.

But the virus is different past issues like, for example, the wall. Trump can talk about building the wall, how much of the wall has been built, trot out new pieces of the wall at a Presser. But the fact that it remains UN-built is not a significant day-to-day problem for the President. We are not being inundated by pictures of illegal aliens flooding across the border. Trump is not confronted by daily totals of how much wall has been built from national and international monitoring agencies.

The virus is a different kind of problem. It does not go away. It is the number one topic each and every day for virtually everyone. And the metrics to understand the battle cannot be fudged as easily as the numbers about how much wall has been built. When Trump the virus would magically disappear, he was living in the transactional now. It was the most convenient answer in the moment. In previous situations he has been able to duck and cover after statements like that, but a Pandemic has both greater stakes and a pretty simple scorecard. There is a death tally every day. He has tried to present Covid-19 response as a re-election theme. But there is a real-time reality check on the President's claims. America is 4% of the world's population, and 30% of Covid-19 infections. You don't have to be Dr. Fauci to understand what those numbers mean.

When confronted by an accusation that he made a mistake, Trump's narcissism invariably leads him to deflect responsibility on to someone else. And now, rather than saying it's his fault, he is basically saying it is not the responsibility of the Federal Government, it is the responsibility of the states. Trump says if I can't win, I won't play. If people don't love what I'm doing, I won't do anything.

What it looks like to me is that Trump knows that people will die and the economy will go down. What he wants to happen is to have the country open early, take a small hit in the number of deaths, and have the economy back in the pink in November. He will comparison shop on scientific models until he finds one that fits his theory. If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.

But given the haphazard way that states are reopening and the laughably inadequate testing and tracing, I fear we will quite possibly be in the teeth of a second infection wave by November.

[_MeDotOrg]

Today I heard Trump describe the people returning to work as 'warriors'. Sending people to die without protection reminded me of another type of 'warrior' of the 80's:

HEIR TICKET TO PARADISE IS the blood-red headband and the small metal key that they wear into battle. ''Sar Allah,'' (''Warriors of God''), some of the headbands read in Farsi script, identifying the wearers as divinely designated martyrs who will use their keys to go directly to heaven if killed in the holy war against Iraq declared by their leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomei ni. The headbands and the keys are worn by young boys, aged 12 to 17, who are recruited by local clergy or simply rounded up in the villages of Iran, given an intensive indoctrination in the Shiite tradition of martyrdom, and then sent weaponless into battle against Iraqi armor. Often bound together in groups of 20 by ropes to prevent the fainthearted from deserting, they hurl themselves on barbed wire or march into Iraqi mine fields in the face of withering machine-gun fire to clear the way for Iranian tanks. Across the back of their khaki-colored shirts is stenciled the slogan: ''I have the special permission of the Imam to enter heaven.''

We here in America would never behave that ways comparable to Islamic religious fanatics. We'll just tell meat packers they have to go back to work under conditions that could kill them.

Perhaps the Trump administration can start printing "Warriors of Capitalism" headbands...

[_Gadianton]

Just checking out the new 'projections' feature on worldometer. It's a good thing Rush Limbaugh rejects 'models' or rather 'math', because the models ain't looking too good for Florida, whose policy has essentially been set by Rush himself, the presidential medal of honor winner. The deaths for today hit just shy of the upper-bound prediction of 70 at 68, so it's on track for some good times. Nevada also nearly hit its upper bound, but that's 10 -- well, it's one of those 'model' things invented by so-called 'climate-science'. So Subs and Ajax, you guys hitting the Florida beaches in June? Got your tickets yet? A right-wing friend of mine sent me a link to a youtube video about government control called "freedom vs. fear". I think I'll ask him if he's got his tickets for a Florida vaca ordered yet, as clearly he's on the side of freedom.