Stark Reality of Ineptitude of Trump's Covid-19 Response

[_Some Schmo]

I highly recommend Republicans get out there and go back to normal. Shake hands and kiss strangers all you want.

That way, you can get it first, be the guinea pigs while science tests for a vaccine. I'll stay at home and wait for the vaccine. Experience tells me it's better to get a virus late in its life cycle. Better to get AIDS now than in 1985, for instance.

So, ya know... Have fun!

[_EAllusion]

[quote]How do you know the data you're getting is accurate or that it's being counted the same way as in the US. And I'm not really seeing mass death from this. I know a lot of people out of a job because of it but I've yet to meet someone who had corona virus.
[/quote]
Because you personally don't have anecdotes of coronavirus, you think 100k people or thereabouts dying and many more getting profoundly ill is just made up? Meanwhile, you think a diverse range of nations, including liberal democracies like Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand - all healthier democracies than the United States - are just falsely representing their very low numbers? Cool cool.

If you're going to rest your arguments on claims like this, you shouldn't pretend to be interacting with the reality-based community on those terms. If your point of disagreement is whether people are actually dying, Dr., then that's the issue at hand.

[_Some Schmo]

Trump telling people to "open up the economy" is his version of Jim Jones recommending to his flock a fresh glass of Kool-Aid. The more cults are different, the more they are the same.

[_MeDotOrg]

Covid-19 is God's way of teaching biology to humans.

[_MeDotOrg]

duplicate post - please delete

[_Res Ipsa]

Well it's encouraging to hear you ask that. How long is this partial shutdown going to be? How long should it be in your opinion? With no vaccine, whether we open now or 6 months from now, you're still going to get a spike in cases. Thankfully it hasn't been near as many deaths as the "scientists," predicted. We've done about as much as we can do to flatten the curve. We need to go back to work.

The stay at home rules for LA County are indefinite.

I don’t know how long “this” partial shutdown is going to be, because there’s lots of different partial shutdowns across the country with lots of different circumstances and decisions. It will depend largely on how people behave in each location and the capacity of the healthcare system to handle cases.

I’m not an epidemiologist or an infectious disease specialist, but I would say when the first of two things happen: (1) there are sufficient people, facilities, equipment, and supplies to have a reasonable chance to implement containment (test, isolate, trace, quarantine) while avoiding exceeding capacity of the health care system to treat patients. In Washington, we have a three-phase opening plan. Some of the smaller population counties will go straight to phase 2 because they have so few cases that containment can be reasonably implemented. Unlike the situation back in March, we have a better handle on numbers and can make more localized decisions.

(2) When new cases stop declining or start to increase. A certain percentage of people will not obey restrictions. As time goes on, that attitude spreads. As a practical matter, that’s as good as a position as you’ll be in to open, so you might as well start. The alternative is to start arresting people and putting them in the least healthy setting — jails. Not to mention the risks of armed confrontation.

Number 2 is based on practical concerns given the political environment in the US. Number 1 has two purposes. First, containment is the only way to reduce spread without lockdown. Second, as we expect infection rates to increase as we open up, we want to start from the lowest point possible. Otherwise, we’re that much closer to overrunning hospitals.

Whether the increase is a “spike” will depend on how people choose to act. It will be a balance between the how fast the disease will spread and the speed with which contact tracing can occur.

We haven’t done as much as we can to flatten the curve. But it’s clear that enough people won’t do what’s necessary to give many states a chance to implement containment. So, we’ll get to see what that looks like.

Even Los Angeles has a plan to reopen. But it’s based on data and metrics as opposed to arbitrary dates. I think that’s smart, even though it’s frustrating. We haven’t done this for a hundred years, and it’s a different world now.

Predicting infections and deaths is extremely difficult when there is exponential growth for some period. Being off a couple of percent during exponential growth can translate into being off by 50% a couple months later. It’s also an odd situation because the models are based on human behavior that the results of the models will change. That makes epidemic modeling especially tricky.

[_Res Ipsa]

Covid-19 is God's way of teaching biology to humans.

Or it’s humans‘ way of teaching politics to God.

[_Gunnar]

I expected you to be happy about this Gunnar. Look how good collapsing the world economy has been for the environment. Oil is down to $14/barrel with nowhere to store it. You above all people know that the biggest threat to humanity is climate change, not China, not coronavirus. You should be dancing in the streets.

You already know full well from what I wrote that I'm not at all happy about this pandemic. It is outrageously insulting to insinuate that I would be, and is nothing but a very lame attempt to deflect attention from Trump's pathetic incompetency that even you no longer have the chutzpah to deny.

This raging pandemic, whether you like it or not, does not diminish the reality and urgency of the climate change crisis in the slightest. You know from past experience that you can't come close to credibly challenging me on that reality, so you have apparently concluded that you have no other recourse other than directing personal insults at me. If that is all you have left, you have already lost the argument! Devastatingly so!

[_Gunnar]

32 countries are successfully beating the corona virus. The USA is not one of them. Just compare the graphs of these countries with that of the US, and it is obvious that, by comparison, our government is doing very poorly compared to these other countries. Besides that, the mere fact that the USA with barely 4.25% of the world's entire population and 32% of all the confirmed corona virus cases, as stated in my OP, is incontestable proof that the Trump administration has badly botched our response to this pandemic. It is just not possible to honestly and rationally deny that. The fact that there are undeniably other countries that are doing even worse than we are does not alter or weaken that conclusion.

Chris Hayes looks at how the U.S.’s coronavirus response compares to that of other countries: “It's really hard to look at all this data and come to any conclusion other than that our leaders are failing.” Aired on 05/13/2020.

[_Jersey Girl]

32 countries are successfully beating the corona virus. The USA is not one of them. Just compare the graphs of these countries with that of the US, and it is obvious that, by comparison, our government is doing very poorly compared to these other countries. Besides that, the mere fact that the USA with barely 4.25% of the world's entire population and 32% of all the confirmed corona virus cases, as stated in my OP, is incontestable proof that the Trump administration has badly botched our response to this pandemic. It is just not possible to honestly and rationally deny that. The fact that there are undeniably other countries that are doing even worse than we are does not alter or weaken that conclusion.

Chris Hayes looks at how the U.S.’s coronavirus response compares to that of other countries: “It's really hard to look at all this data and come to any conclusion other than that our leaders are failing.” Aired on 05/13/2020.

Am I mistaken or are we now on par with multiple shithole countries?