All things CoronaVirus

[calourie]

Hopefully, if it is not too late, we can follow a better course than Italy ended up on

https://www.yahoo.com/news/south-korea- ... 49558.html

An interesting article on the South Korean response to the threat of being overwhelmed by the virus. Their trends in reducing the threat are far and away the most promising in the world. I'm afraid Americans at the moment are a bit more chaotic when it comes to being civic minded and detail oriented. The civics aspect in this country tends to be distorted by our political partisanship as well as our predilection for promoting freedom of expression regardless of the consequences. In addition government preparedness appears to have suffered from a reduction in financing, and as a result of these and other factors it looks like we have gotten off the mark somewhat slowly, and will be playing catch up ball on both the health and therefore economic fronts for longer than might have been the case. We will catch up, though there will probably be more suffering among the aged and infirm and economic displacement across the board than had we coalesced to confront the matter sooner. Not much current good will come from aiming the giant blame finger at mistakes made in the past, other than to help us in adapting more effective future measures for dealing with this type of crisis once we get through it. Wishing all in here good health, and hoping for the best for all our families.

[DocBarrister]

Based on this website, as of 1438....current fatality rate in:
US: 1.9%
France: 2.1%
Germany: 1.6%
Spain: 3.7%
South Korea: .91%

Hoping we get down to 1%. That wouldn’t be a bad outcome.

It won’t be easy to match South Korea’s relative “success.”

Fact is, due to decades of Republican resistance to universal healthcare, our health care infrastructure is only built to serve a subset of our population. That leaves us with far fewer hospital beds per capita than nations like South Korea, which has compulsory national health insurance.

The United States has roughly 2.8 hospital beds per 1,000 people. South Korea, which has seen success mitigating its large outbreak, has more than 12 hospital beds per 1,000 people. China, where hospitals in Hubei were quickly overrun, has 4.3 beds per 1,000 people. Italy, a developed country with a reasonably decent health system, has seen its hospitals overwhelmed and has 3.2 beds per 1,000 people.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2 ... ied-about/

Garbage Republican health care policies are going to cost American lives in this crisis, even more than they cost lives during times without a crisis.

DocBarrister

[Trinity]

Will this be a problem? It’s a March 13th poll. The stupid burns.

[MDlaxfan76]

MDLF76:
Thanks for your questions.

No, the US is definitely on path to be the next global hotspot (unless another European country didn't ramp up testing...Italy's mistake).

Yes, test kits have been the limiting factor.

And there's no throughput issue with the WHO kits, others are doing them at a very high rate.
Just need to decide that it's a priority.

Which we didn't until very recently. (It's still not clear that Trump or even Pence gets it).
We're now way, way behind the curve.

It's going to require a massive surge in testing to get a handle on this and it's pretty darn clear that what we were told by Trump just 3 days ago everyone having availability next week is total BS.

You are a master of partisan political hindsight & second guessing.
Well meaning misjudgments by high ranking experts at CDC & FDA delayed a ramp up in testing capacity.
Do you seriously think that Trump or Pence intervened at those lower levels of govt ?
Or is the delay due to systemic bureaucratic obstacles at FDA & CDC, which were reasonable safeguards in previous crises, & a failed attempt to design a better test by CDC ?

Are you actually asking my opinion or is that merely rhetorical?

Yes, I think Trump wanted and got reduced testing because he didn't "want the numbers".
Just like he signals with all sorts of things and gets compliance, he did so with this as well.

Do I think that was entirely on him?
No, not entirely.
I think there was some arrogance throughout the upper echelons of government. "well meaning" but arrogance.
But when it became obvious that the first tests out the door were failing, it was a huge mistake not to accept the WHO tests.

But Trump at the same time was crowing about how few cases the US "had" and the great "success" of the decision to shut down (some) travel.

On your notion in another post that we shouldn't have been doing widespread testing, you are flat wrong.
And we should be doing it right now, but we don't have the tests in place to do so, so the 'triage' is indeed to only test the most severe cases...if there's ANY tests available even for them.

The testing capabilities will improve, but the virus will be quite widespread before that becomes the case.

The medical personnel are NOT yet overwhelmed and testing is definitely where effort should have been surged 8 weeks ago and thereafter. It's definitely what we should be doing heavily right now...if we had the tests.

[seacoaster]

He is just a disgrace.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/31/co ... -response/

"For the United States, the answers are especially worrying because the government has intentionally rendered itself incapable. In 2018, the Trump administration fired the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command, including the White House management infrastructure. In numerous phone calls and emails with key agencies across the U.S. government, the only consistent response I encountered was distressed confusion. If the United States still has a clear chain of command for pandemic response, the White House urgently needs to clarify what it isIf the United States still has a clear chain of command for pandemic response, the White House urgently needs to clarify what it is—not just for the public but for the government itself, which largely finds itself in the dark.

When Ebola broke out in West Africa in 2014, President Barack Obama recognized that responding to the outbreak overseas, while also protecting Americans at home, involved multiple U.S. government departments and agencies, none of which were speaking to one another. Basically, the U.S. pandemic infrastructure was an enormous orchestra full of talented, egotistical players, each jockeying for solos and fame, refusing to rehearse, and demanding higher salaries—all without a conductor. To bring order and harmony to the chaos, rein in the agency egos, and create a coherent multiagency response overseas and on the homefront, Obama anointed a former vice presidential staffer, Ronald Klain, as a sort of “epidemic czar” inside the White House, clearly stipulated the roles and budgets of various agencies, and placed incident commanders in charge in each Ebola-hit country and inside the United States. The orchestra may have still had its off-key instruments, but it played the same tune.

Building on the Ebola experience, the Obama administration set up a permanent epidemic monitoring and command group inside the White House National Security Council (NSC) and another in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—both of which followed the scientific and public health leads of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the diplomatic advice of the State Department.

On the domestic front, the real business of assuring public health and safety is a local matter, executed by state, county, and city departments that operate under a mosaic of laws and regulations that vary jurisdiction by jurisdiction. Some massive cities, such as New York City or Boston, have large budgets, clear regulations, and epidemic experiences that have left deep benches of medical and public health talent. But much of the United States is less fortunate on the local level, struggling with underfunded agencies, understaffing, and no genuine epidemic experience. Large and small, America’s localities rely in times of public health crisis on the federal government.

Bureaucracy matters. Without it, there’s nothing to coherently manage an alphabet soup of agencies housed in departments ranging from Defense to Commerce, Homeland Security to Health and Human Services (HHS).

But that’s all gone now.

In the spring of 2018, the White House pushed Congress to cut funding for Obama-era disease security programs, proposing to eliminate $252 million in previously committed resources for rebuilding health systems in Ebola-ravaged Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. Under fire from both sides of the aisle, President Donald Trump dropped the proposal to eliminate Ebola funds a month later. But other White House efforts included reducing $15 billion in national health spending and cutting the global disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS. And the government’s $30 million Complex Crises Fund was eliminated.

n May 2018, Trump ordered the NSC’s entire global health security unit shut down, calling for reassignment of Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer and dissolution of his team inside the agency. The month before, then-White House National Security Advisor John Bolton pressured Ziemer’s DHS counterpart, Tom Bossert, to resign along with his team. Neither the NSC nor DHS epidemic teams have been replaced. The global health section of the CDC was so drastically cut in 2018 that much of its staff was laid off and the number of countries it was working in was reduced from 49 to merely 10. Meanwhile, throughout 2018, the U.S. Agency for International Development and its director, Mark Green, came repeatedly under fire from both the White House and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. And though Congress has so far managed to block Trump administration plans to cut the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps by 40 percent, the disease-fighting cadres have steadily eroded as retiring officers go unreplaced.

Public health advocates have been ringing alarm bells to no avail.Public health advocates have been ringing alarm bells to no avail. Klain has been warning for two years that the United States was in grave danger should a pandemic emerge. In 2017 and 2018, the philanthropist billionaire Bill Gates met repeatedly with Bolton and his predecessor, H.R. McMaster, warning that ongoing cuts to the global health disease infrastructure would render the United States vulnerable to, as he put it, the “significant probability of a large and lethal modern-day pandemic occurring in our lifetimes.” And an independent, bipartisan panel formed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies concluded that lack of preparedness was so acute in the Trump administration that the “United States must either pay now and gain protection and security or wait for the next epidemic and pay a much greater price in human and economic costs.”
The next epidemic is now here; we’ll soon know the costs imposed by the Trump administration’s early negligence and present panic. On Jan. 29, Trump announced the creation of the President’s Coronavirus Task Force, an all-male group of a dozen advisors, five from the White House staff. Chaired by Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, the task force includes men from the CDC, State Department, DHS, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Transportation Department. It’s not clear how this task force will function or when it will even convene.

In the absence of a formal structure, the government has resorted to improvisation. In practical terms, the U.S. government’s public health effort is led by Daniel Jernigan, the incident commander for the Wuhan coronavirus response at the CDC. Jernigan is responsible for convening meetings of the nation’s state health commissioners and briefing CDC Director Robert Redfield and his boss, Azar. Meanwhile, state-level health leaders told me that they have been sharing information with one another and deciding how best to prepare their medical and public health workers without waiting for instructions from federal leadership. The most important federal program for local medical worker and hospital epidemic training, however, will run out of money in May, as Congress has failed to vote on its funding. The HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) is the bulwark between hospitals and health departments versus pandemic threats; last year HHS requested $2.58 billion, but Congress did not act.

On Thursday, the CDC confirmed the first human-to-human spread of the Wuhan coronavirus inside the United States, between a husband and wife in Chicago. While the wife acquired her infection traveling in China, she passed the virus to her husband on return to the United States. Though only six Wuhan coronavirus cases have been confirmed in the United States, with no deaths, Nancy Messonnier of the CDC told reporters on Thursday: “Moving forward, we can expect to see more cases, and more cases mean the potential for more person-to-person spread.”

As the number of coronavirus cases increases, Americans are growing more fearful, which is creating new problems that the government is leaving unaddressed.As the number of coronavirus cases increases, Americans are growing more fearful, which is creating new problems that the government is leaving unaddressed. Surveying the largest drug store chains in New York City on Wednesday, I found that all were sold out of medical face masks and latex gloves, as is Amazon. Searching online for protective masks reveals that dozens of products intended for use to block dust and particles far larger than viruses are garnering brisk sales—and none available that can actually prevent viral exposure. The surge in mask and glove sales to worried citizens all over the world needs refereeing. Bona fide anti-viral masks should be prioritized to front-line medical and public health staff, and the populace shouldn’t be misled into purchasing and wearing products that offer no genuine protection.
Countering misinformation, conspiracy theories, rumormongering, and discriminatory behavior against people believed to be disease spreaders requires thoughtful communication from leadership at the highest levels of government. None is in evidence. Instead, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross appeared on Fox Business on Thursday to fan the flames of fear for the sake of hypothetical business opportunities. “It does give businesses yet another thing to consider when they go through their review of their supply chain,” Ross said. “It’s another risk factor that people need to take into account. So, I think it will help accelerate the return of jobs to North America, some to the U.S., probably some to Mexico as well.” Meanwhile, Trump, asked at the recent World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland how he intended to respond to the epidemic, said the situation was under control and a world away from the United States.

In a statement released this week, Pompeo sought to calm Americans, saying, “People should know that there are enormous efforts underway by the United States government to make sure that we do everything we can to protect the American people and to reduce the risk all around the globe.” But late Thursday night, the secretary—in clear defiance of WHO’s admonishment against restricting travel to and from China—issued an advisory saying, “Those currently in China should consider departing.”

In recent days, a handful of policy leaders have been shifted from government positions focused on weapons of mass destruction and bioterrorism to the slowly emerging epidemic response infrastructure, such as Matthew Pottinger, Philip Ferro, and David Wade on the NSC and the bioterrorism expert Anthony Ruggiero. It’s not at all clear how they would handle an explosion of coronavirus cases, were such a dreadful thing to occur in the United States. “The full weight of the US Government is working on this,” a senior administration official told CNN on Tuesday. “As with any interagency effort of this scale, the National Security Council works closely with the whole of government to ensure a coordinated and unified effort.”

The last time the U.S. government and its many local and state counterparts faced an explosive pandemic on American soil was 2009, with the spread of H1N1, or swine flu. The then-new Obama administration was still filling key positions across the executive branch when the epidemic emerged that spring, and it struggled to set the proper tone in reaction to what turned out to be an exceptionally contagious, but not unusually virulent, form of influenza. The challenge revealed enormous gaps in America’s ability to swiftly manufacture vaccines, stock-outs of face masks and vital hospital supplies, and serious difficulty in keeping ahead of outright lies, conspiracy theories, and rumormongering on cable TV and social media. The much more deadly pandemic test came in 1981, with the arrival of HIV: It did not go well, as history has well established, because homophobia was so pervasive in the country and within government that gay men, rather than the virus killing them, were treated as a national scourge.

Since the great influenza pandemic of 1918, the United States has been spared terrifying epidemics. Americans now are epidemic voyeurs. They watch YouTube videos of China’s struggles. They see the government attack its epidemic by building a 1,000-bed quarantine hospital in a single week, lock down cities larger than New York or Los Angeles, ramp up 24/7 manufacture of face masks and protective gear, deploy its armed forces medical corps to treat ailing citizens, send enormous convoys of food and supplies to anxious citizens of Wuhan, and release terrifying, growing tallies daily of its swelling patient populations. They look in horror at panicked lines of masked people waiting to learn if their fevers are caused by the deadly disease, at bodies lying on cold floors in overcrowded hospitals, and at people crying out from behind their masks for help. And they ask, “What would the United States do? What would the White House do?” The answers are not reassuring."

[youthathletics]

Will this be a problem? It’s a March 13th poll. The stupid burns.

Interesting poll you posted....a sociologist could have a field day explaining "the why", it pans out like that.

[dislaxxic]

Trump Says He Had No Idea His Pandemic Response Team Was Disbanded. What If That’s True?

Just another anti-Trump hit piece, right? The guy just can't catch a break. He's grow into his job sometime in the next 4 years, once the media and the Libs lay off him...

..

[DocBarrister]

The Fed just cut its benchmark short-term lending rate to 0% and instituted a $700 billion quantitative easing program.

Haven’t seen that since the Great Recession.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/15/economy/ ... index.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/15/federal ... ogram.html

Apparently, the Fed feels the economy is at far more risk than Mnuchin and the Trump administration does.

The Fed can’t save our economy. Only a vigorous and timely public health response would have prevented a major economic meltdown, and Trump already failed in that regard.

DocBarrister

[Matnum PI]

You can buy anything from any online retailer. Their ratings are irrelevant. You order the product, it's shipped, it arrives, done... until something goes wrong. Until you receive a faulty product, until there's no way to contact the retailer for a return, until etc. It's when problems arise that businesses are tested. For years, well before he was POTUS, Trump espoused bizarre, irrational theories. Many of these theories being anti-liberal, anti-media, and... anti-science. We knew Trump had a very-serious science Achilles heal, specifically diseases, and... Now we're paying for it. We knew what his Google Rating was, we read the reviews, we knew what was possible, and, unfortunately, now we're paying for it.

[a fan]

It's going to be SO MUCH worse than the recession. How the F do these economist and policy wonks get their freaking jobs in the first place?

Called it 10 days ago.... as if that was some feat of thinking. You can't shut down economic activity for 2 or 3 months without a meltdown. This is NOT complicated. And when it rolls through the EU? All these issues compound themselves.

Riddle me this: how is it everyone thinks bills are going to get paid if every company's accounting Dept. is sitting at home? Sure, SOME activity will be there, but there's a reason we have offices. We actually need the *hit sitting in offices to do our jobs. And what happens when shut down the mail?

I don't get why Congress and Trump don't have one single person in their ear smart enough to understand this.

Direct cash deposits.

Mortgage forgiveness.


Needs to happen before there is total panic. Canada is actively on it. Heck, all Trump has to do is TELL people not to worry about rent/mortages, and that direct deposits will arrive in 48 hours, and everyone will calm down.

https://www.citynews1130.com/2020/03/13 ... c-trudeau/

[old salt]

MDLF76:

OS :
Do you seriously think that Trump or Pence intervened at those lower levels of govt ?
Or is the delay due to systemic bureaucratic obstacles at FDA & CDC, which were reasonable safeguards in previous crises, & a failed attempt to design a better test by CDC ?

Are you actually asking my opinion or is that merely rhetorical?

Yes, I think Trump wanted and got reduced testing because he didn't "want the numbers".
Just like he signals with all sorts of things and gets compliance, he did so with this as well.

Do I think that was entirely on him?
No, not entirely.
I think there was some arrogance throughout the upper echelons of government. "well meaning" but arrogance.
But when it became obvious that the first tests out the door were failing, it was a huge mistake not to accept the WHO tests.

But Trump at the same time was crowing about how few cases the US "had" and the great "success" of the decision to shut down (some) travel.

On your notion in another post that we shouldn't have been doing widespread testing, you are flat wrong.
And we should be doing it right now, but we don't have the tests in place to do so, so the 'triage' is indeed to only test the most severe cases...if there's ANY tests available even for them.

The testing capabilities will improve, but the virus will be quite widespread before that becomes the case.

The medical personnel are NOT yet overwhelmed and testing is definitely where effort should have been surged 8 weeks ago and thereafter. It's definitely what we should be doing heavily right now...if we had the tests.

You're dodging the question. Do you think Trump or Pence intervened to get the CDC to reject the WHO test & design their own test, then forbid FDA from issuing Emerg Use Auth for private & state lab developed tests ?

You're obsessed with Trump's rhetoric. The prompt travel restrictions did have a + impact (compared to Italy & EU neighbors).

Sure it would have been helpful if CDC had accepted the WHO kit or if their test worked as intended.
But (imho) you overstate the value of early, widespread testing, unless you can do it sufficiently to impose travel restrictions & lock down hot spots sooner, which would be controversial & challenging in a nation of our size, dispersal, freedom & mobility.
Even if you test negative, you still need to practice social distancing & avoid the vulnerable.
Something we were all encourared to do voluntarily as soon as the first cases popped up in the US

Of 200k S Koreans tested with flu like symptoms, 96% tested negative.
They still need to take the same precautions & self-recovery measures had they not tested.
Maybe in a nation as compact, crowded & ordered as S Korea, that helped isolate hot spots & contain community spread.
I'm not convinced testing a few weeks earlier would have been equally as effective in the US.

Let's examine the lessons learned analysis as we prep for the next new pandemic, or the next wave of COVOD19.
There'll be plenty of time for post crisis analytical study, ...w/ Congressional show trials to scratch your itch.

[DocBarrister]

MDLF76:

OS :
Do you seriously think that Trump or Pence intervened at those lower levels of govt ?
Or is the delay due to systemic bureaucratic obstacles at FDA & CDC, which were reasonable safeguards in previous crises, & a failed attempt to design a better test by CDC ?

Are you actually asking my opinion or is that merely rhetorical?

Yes, I think Trump wanted and got reduced testing because he didn't "want the numbers".
Just like he signals with all sorts of things and gets compliance, he did so with this as well.

Do I think that was entirely on him?
No, not entirely.
I think there was some arrogance throughout the upper echelons of government. "well meaning" but arrogance.
But when it became obvious that the first tests out the door were failing, it was a huge mistake not to accept the WHO tests.

But Trump at the same time was crowing about how few cases the US "had" and the great "success" of the decision to shut down (some) travel.

On your notion in another post that we shouldn't have been doing widespread testing, you are flat wrong.
And we should be doing it right now, but we don't have the tests in place to do so, so the 'triage' is indeed to only test the most severe cases...if there's ANY tests available even for them.

The testing capabilities will improve, but the virus will be quite widespread before that becomes the case.

The medical personnel are NOT yet overwhelmed and testing is definitely where effort should have been surged 8 weeks ago and thereafter. It's definitely what we should be doing heavily right now...if we had the tests.

You're dodging the question. Do you think Trump or Pence intervened to get the CDC to reject the WHO test & design their own test, then forbid FDA from issuing Emerg Use Auth for private & state lab developed tests ?

You're obsessed with Trump's rhetoric. The prompt travel restrictions did have a + impact (compared to Italy & EU neighbors).

Sure it would have been helpful if CDC had accepted the WHO kit or if their test worked as intended.
But (imho) you overstate the value of early, widespread testing, unless you can do it sufficiently to impose travel restrictions & lock down hot spots sooner, which would be controversial & challenging in a nation of our size, dispersal, freedom & mobility.
Even if you test negative, you still need to practice social distancing & avoid the vulnerable.
Something we were all encourared to do voluntarily as soon as the first cases popped up in the US

Of 200k S Koreans tested with flu like symptoms, 96% tested negative.
They still need to take the same precautions & self-recovery measures had they not tested.
Maybe in a nation as compact, crowded & ordered as S Korea, that helped isolate hot spots & contain community spread.
I'm not convinced testing a few weeks earlier would have been equally as effective in the US.

Let's examine the lessons learned analysis as we prep for the next new pandemic, or the next wave of COVOD19.
There'll be plenty of time for post crisis analytical study, ...w/ Congressional show trials to scratch your itch.

The lesson is, foolish people like you supported (and, incomprehensible as it may seem, still support) an unfit moron, Donald Trump, for president.

The entire nation will suffer for your idiotic choices.

DocBarrister

[old salt]

MDLF76:
Thanks for your questions.

No, the US is definitely on path to be the next global hotspot (unless another European country didn't ramp up testing...Italy's mistake).

Yes, test kits have been the limiting factor.

And there's no throughput issue with the WHO kits, others are doing them at a very high rate.
Just need to decide that it's a priority.

Which we didn't until very recently. (It's still not clear that Trump or even Pence gets it).
We're now way, way behind the curve.

It's going to require a massive surge in testing to get a handle on this and it's pretty darn clear that what we were told by Trump just 3 days ago everyone having availability next week is total BS.

You are a master of partisan political hindsight & second guessing.
Well meaning misjudgments by high ranking experts at CDC & FDA delayed a ramp up in testing capacity.
Do you seriously think that Trump or Pence intervened at those lower levels of govt ?
Or is the delay due to systemic bureaucratic obstacles at FDA & CDC, which were reasonable safeguards in previous crises, & a failed attempt to design a better test by CDC ?

Post a link to CDC mentions that they slowed down testing to manage the crisis.

As usual, that's not what I said. Willful distortion.
Triage of medical capacity is in effect.
Personnel & supply resources are being focused where most urgently needed, moving forward.

We are behind. That’s the point. We didn’t have to be. When you reduce the emphasis on preparedness and then “refuse help” (unless you are China) this is what you get. You make it seem as though the way we are postured today was our posture 3 weeks ago. After a 2 month head start no less.

How did we "refuse help" ? CDC's failed attempt to produce a more reliable test than the WHO's ?

Reduce emphasis on preparedness ? Is there a shortage of career SES officials in HHS & DHS ?
Are you questioning the commitment of these dedicated career professionals to prepare, from one Admin to the next ?

[old salt]

MDLF76:

OS :
Do you seriously think that Trump or Pence intervened at those lower levels of govt ?
Or is the delay due to systemic bureaucratic obstacles at FDA & CDC, which were reasonable safeguards in previous crises, & a failed attempt to design a better test by CDC ?

Are you actually asking my opinion or is that merely rhetorical?

Yes, I think Trump wanted and got reduced testing because he didn't "want the numbers".
Just like he signals with all sorts of things and gets compliance, he did so with this as well.

Do I think that was entirely on him?
No, not entirely.
I think there was some arrogance throughout the upper echelons of government. "well meaning" but arrogance.
But when it became obvious that the first tests out the door were failing, it was a huge mistake not to accept the WHO tests.

But Trump at the same time was crowing about how few cases the US "had" and the great "success" of the decision to shut down (some) travel.

On your notion in another post that we shouldn't have been doing widespread testing, you are flat wrong.
And we should be doing it right now, but we don't have the tests in place to do so, so the 'triage' is indeed to only test the most severe cases...if there's ANY tests available even for them.

The testing capabilities will improve, but the virus will be quite widespread before that becomes the case.

The medical personnel are NOT yet overwhelmed and testing is definitely where effort should have been surged 8 weeks ago and thereafter. It's definitely what we should be doing heavily right now...if we had the tests.

You're dodging the question. Do you think Trump or Pence intervened to get the CDC to reject the WHO test & design their own test, then forbid FDA from issuing Emerg Use Auth for private & state lab developed tests ?

You're obsessed with Trump's rhetoric. The prompt travel restrictions did have a + impact (compared to Italy & EU neighbors).

Sure it would have been helpful if CDC had accepted the WHO kit or if their test worked as intended.
But (imho) you overstate the value of early, widespread testing, unless you can do it sufficiently to impose travel restrictions & lock down hot spots sooner, which would be controversial & challenging in a nation of our size, dispersal, freedom & mobility.
Even if you test negative, you still need to practice social distancing & avoid the vulnerable.
Something we were all encourared to do voluntarily as soon as the first cases popped up in the US

Of 200k S Koreans tested with flu like symptoms, 96% tested negative.
They still need to take the same precautions & self-recovery measures had they not tested.
Maybe in a nation as compact, crowded & ordered as S Korea, that helped isolate hot spots & contain community spread.
I'm not convinced testing a few weeks earlier would have been equally as effective in the US.

Let's examine the lessons learned analysis as we prep for the next new pandemic, or the next wave of COVOD19.
There'll be plenty of time for post crisis analytical study, ...w/ Congressional show trials to scratch your itch.

The lesson is, foolish people like you supported (and, incomprehensible as it may seem, still support) an unfit moron, Donald Trump, for president.

The entire nation will suffer for your idiotic choices.

DocBarrister

I exercised no choice.
I did not support or vote for candidate Trump.
I do not have the power to remove him.
If your party could nominate a moderate electable candidate,
we would not be having this discussion & you'd need a different scapegoat for this crisis.
Do you find the leaders of the EU nations more to your liking ?
How are things for their citizens ?

[Typical Lax Dad]

MDLF76:
Thanks for your questions.

No, the US is definitely on path to be the next global hotspot (unless another European country didn't ramp up testing...Italy's mistake).

Yes, test kits have been the limiting factor.

And there's no throughput issue with the WHO kits, others are doing them at a very high rate.
Just need to decide that it's a priority.

Which we didn't until very recently. (It's still not clear that Trump or even Pence gets it).
We're now way, way behind the curve.

It's going to require a massive surge in testing to get a handle on this and it's pretty darn clear that what we were told by Trump just 3 days ago everyone having availability next week is total BS.

You are a master of partisan political hindsight & second guessing.
Well meaning misjudgments by high ranking experts at CDC & FDA delayed a ramp up in testing capacity.
Do you seriously think that Trump or Pence intervened at those lower levels of govt ?
Or is the delay due to systemic bureaucratic obstacles at FDA & CDC, which were reasonable safeguards in previous crises, & a failed attempt to design a better test by CDC ?

Post a link to CDC mentions that they slowed down testing to manage the crisis.

As usual, that's not what I said. Willful distortion.
Triage of medical capacity is in effect.
Personnel & supply resources are being focused where most urgently needed, moving forward.

We are behind. That’s the point. We didn’t have to be. When you reduce the emphasis on preparedness and then “refuse help” (unless you are China) this is what you get. You make it seem as though the way we are postured today was our posture 3 weeks ago. After a 2 month head start no less.

How did we "refuse help" ? CDC's failed attempt to produce a more reliable test than the WHO's ?

Reduce emphasis on preparedness ? Is there a shortage of career SES officials in HHS & DHS ?
Are you questioning the commitment of these dedicated career professionals to prepare, from one Admin to the next ?

[Bart]

Don't know if this is out there yet: Ohio closing all restaurants and bars for in person service at 9 pm. I doubt Andy will be far behind in NYS.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Don't know if this is out there yet: Ohio closing all restaurants and bars for in person service at 9 pm. I doubt Andy will be far behind in NYS.

Indefinitely or closing at 9PM every night?

[DocBarrister]

It's going to be SO MUCH worse than the recession. How the F do these economist and policy wonks get their freaking jobs in the first place?

Called it 10 days ago.... as if that was some feat of thinking. You can't shut down economic activity for 2 or 3 months without a meltdown. This is NOT complicated. And when it rolls through the EU? All these issues compound themselves.

Riddle me this: how is it everyone thinks bills are going to get paid if every company's accounting Dept. is sitting at home? Sure, SOME activity will be there, but there's a reason we have offices. We actually need the *hit sitting in offices to do our jobs. And what happens when shut down the mail?

I don't get why Congress and Trump don't have one single person in their ear smart enough to understand this.

Direct cash deposits.

Mortgage forgiveness.


Needs to happen before there is total panic. Canada is actively on it. Heck, all Trump has to do is TELL people not to worry about rent/mortages, and that direct deposits will arrive in 48 hours, and everyone will calm down.

https://www.citynews1130.com/2020/03/13 ... c-trudeau/

The last time the nation faced an economic crisis like this, we had the good fortune of having a Senate and House controlled by Democrats.

Now we have Moscow Mitch in charge of the Senate. Would have been nice if Mitch had kept the Senate in DC to pass the House Family First emergency bill Passed on Friday.

I’m sure the Democrats in Congress want a massive stimulus bill.

Good luck in getting the moron Republicans to go along with anything close to what you’re suggesting. They’re probably willing to pass some tax cuts for the rich and large corporations and call it a day.

Remember, those same idiot Republicans didn’t want to save America’s iconic auto industry.

What makes you think they want to save you?

DocBarrister

[ardilla secreta]

Cuomo to close schools in NYS till 4/20.

[Bart]

Don't know if this is out there yet: Ohio closing all restaurants and bars for in person service at 9 pm. I doubt Andy will be far behind in NYS.

Indefinitely or closing at 9PM every night?

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4 ... oronavirus