Pandemic threat? Anyone else concerned?
- Thread starter erkme73
- Start date
I choose US based products knowing it will come with a cost but the benefits I believe outlay the slight pain to my wallet.
Medicine as an example needs to be produced at home so we are not dependent on another country (even ’though we may not have all of the raw materials).
Food is another example. HAAS avocados from Mexico are a treat but not necessary for every day subsistence.
If we curb our purchasing from China it will hurt their economy. If we buy from home it will help our economy.
Medicine as an example needs to be produced at home so we are not dependent on another country (even ’though we may not have all of the raw materials).
Food is another example. HAAS avocados from Mexico are a treat but not necessary for every day subsistence.
If we curb our purchasing from China it will hurt their economy. If we buy from home it will help our economy.
There are already several countries that have chosen to essentially boycott products coming from mainland China (those countries include Taiwan and India). Realistically, its really impossible to avoid Chinese goods because the overall bulk of things are made there. To US-based corporations, their philosophy stands true: its profits before people, and according to China, its taking people out of poverty and to get them working without thinking about their overall well-being (think about the number of suicide nets placed around Foxconn's factory). Its not an overnight process. Most of the PCB's and batteries that power and operate our gadgets come from there (i.e. Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Dongguan, and Guangdong) which is the main reason why there was a serious supply shortage (there still is) a few months back. Many countries don't want to tap into their own raw materials mainly because of labor costs and having contingency plans in place. Take oil for example; the USA has a lot of oil in their backyard, in fact the oil is being reserved and stored in the event of issues faced with other regions of the world (i.e. OPEC).
I've been looking at NYS's DOH COVID Tracker Analytics, and it appears that many people are electing to get tested but are not showing positive results; either very minor symptoms or faulty testing kits once again. I've seen license plates come as far away as California, Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida in recent days.
Compared to April and May, there fewer people tested but more being tested positive for the virus. Now there is a large discrepancy in the data where there are far fewer positive cases, but more people being tested. This is good and bad; good because more testing being available to prospective patients and bad because we don't know how efficient testing is taking place and whether or not testing sites are being stationed in previously known hotspot areas. This could be an attempt to persuade the public that all is fine and go out and play and fuel the economy. Later you find out that there was a large explosion of cases in NYS. That is inevitable and sadly, I think this is what elected officials want eventually. There is much so hysteria across the USA that it leaves the educated person perplexed regarding the stance of many officials that partake in politics. This issue greatly became more of a political issue and less of a humane issue. It almost sounds like the UNSC is going to distance itself away from this once-great nation and even worse, possible even hold the US accountable for genocide against its own people. It may sound tough, but actions always determine the destiny of any essential body. There is no excuse for arrogance, ignorance, and laziness. The sunbelt states are all going to be held accountable to the maximum extent possible (Why the f@#K is DIsney World and Orlando Studios open? Profits before people is what the pundits say). The country's health officials should also look at their people-tracker to see where the people that took part in the mass exodus from New York went to. Its possible that many people from previous COVID hotspot areas (i.e. Washington, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut), migrated down south in attempt to escape from this virus. These officials need to get their act together before more speculation arises. People need the facts sooner or later. Other countries are dealing with their own mess, but many are still shocked that the USA is # 1 in number of COVID cases. Before the USA is accused and becomes a laughing stock (it likely already has become one), there has to be accountability and swift action to prevent cases from further exacerbating the fabric of this nation.
I've been looking at NYS's DOH COVID Tracker Analytics, and it appears that many people are electing to get tested but are not showing positive results; either very minor symptoms or faulty testing kits once again. I've seen license plates come as far away as California, Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida in recent days.
Compared to April and May, there fewer people tested but more being tested positive for the virus. Now there is a large discrepancy in the data where there are far fewer positive cases, but more people being tested. This is good and bad; good because more testing being available to prospective patients and bad because we don't know how efficient testing is taking place and whether or not testing sites are being stationed in previously known hotspot areas. This could be an attempt to persuade the public that all is fine and go out and play and fuel the economy. Later you find out that there was a large explosion of cases in NYS. That is inevitable and sadly, I think this is what elected officials want eventually. There is much so hysteria across the USA that it leaves the educated person perplexed regarding the stance of many officials that partake in politics. This issue greatly became more of a political issue and less of a humane issue. It almost sounds like the UNSC is going to distance itself away from this once-great nation and even worse, possible even hold the US accountable for genocide against its own people. It may sound tough, but actions always determine the destiny of any essential body. There is no excuse for arrogance, ignorance, and laziness. The sunbelt states are all going to be held accountable to the maximum extent possible (Why the f@#K is DIsney World and Orlando Studios open? Profits before people is what the pundits say). The country's health officials should also look at their people-tracker to see where the people that took part in the mass exodus from New York went to. Its possible that many people from previous COVID hotspot areas (i.e. Washington, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut), migrated down south in attempt to escape from this virus. These officials need to get their act together before more speculation arises. People need the facts sooner or later. Other countries are dealing with their own mess, but many are still shocked that the USA is # 1 in number of COVID cases. Before the USA is accused and becomes a laughing stock (it likely already has become one), there has to be accountability and swift action to prevent cases from further exacerbating the fabric of this nation.
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Frankenscript
Known around here
- Dec 21, 2017
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Per Worldometers, USA posted more than 1000 COVID-19 deaths yesterday, 1001 to be exact. This is the first time we had more than 1k in a while. The 7 day average is rising, now around 760/day.
Meanwhile ODD things are going on, between Trump hijacking the metrics from CDC, the Georgia governor Kemp disallowing locally-tuned mask rules, and the inexplicable screwups in data reporting by a few (but important) Florida labs. If these labs were in liberal states one might suggest they were monkeying with the data intentionally to hype the positivity rate, but these were a mix of labs with no obvious agenda. Meanwhile the Republican machine continues to denigrate the top expert in the US.
My suspicious nature leads me to believe this is part of a campaign to undermine confidence in the system, which plays into Trump's narrative...
Sent from my ONEPLUS A6013 using Tapatalk
Meanwhile ODD things are going on, between Trump hijacking the metrics from CDC, the Georgia governor Kemp disallowing locally-tuned mask rules, and the inexplicable screwups in data reporting by a few (but important) Florida labs. If these labs were in liberal states one might suggest they were monkeying with the data intentionally to hype the positivity rate, but these were a mix of labs with no obvious agenda. Meanwhile the Republican machine continues to denigrate the top expert in the US.
My suspicious nature leads me to believe this is part of a campaign to undermine confidence in the system, which plays into Trump's narrative...
Sent from my ONEPLUS A6013 using Tapatalk
Welcome to the DSA 
Every elected official is perplexed by the current matter. It doesn't a take genius to figure out what needs to be done to curb the number of cases. After all, its all commonsense. To the affected states, it doesn't hurt to listen and follow what other countries have done (i.e. Singapore and Taiwan). Each state in the USA is like a mini-nation. There is definitely a break somewhere between state and federal assistance.
Every elected official is perplexed by the current matter. It doesn't a take genius to figure out what needs to be done to curb the number of cases. After all, its all commonsense. To the affected states, it doesn't hurt to listen and follow what other countries have done (i.e. Singapore and Taiwan). Each state in the USA is like a mini-nation. There is definitely a break somewhere between state and federal assistance.
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Sure
www.cnbc.com
CEO of Lysol maker says sales are still up as a result of coronavirus pandemic
"We're making 20 times the amount of sanitizer in July as we did last year. It just gives you the sense of the demand that there is," said Laxman Narasimhan, CEO of Lysol maker Reckitt Benckiser.
www.cnbc.com
Are these really uncertain times? Or people just delusional?
www.cnbc.com
Consumers spent at pre-Covid levels, but virus spread and jobless rate could make economic boost temporary
Consumers spent at pre-Covid levels in June, but the virus spread and high unemployment suggests the recovery may take longer than expected.
www.cnbc.com
Most people getting tested are those that experienced one or more symptoms, but not necessarily COVID-19 related. The threat is real
mat200
IPCT Contributor
- Jan 17, 2017
- 15,099
- 25,503
Jeremy Howard shares the work professionals have volunteered to help keep the USA economy stronger and reduce the impact of Corona VIrus pandemic>
Truly a lot of effort has been made to get us to accept that source control is critical in this, and that the WHO has consistently been incorrect and misleading due to their failure to be proactive on this.
( you can also say the same of the CDC and many elected "leaders" ... honestly, it should not have taken this much work by volunteers to get this accepted... )
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Truly a lot of effort has been made to get us to accept that source control is critical in this, and that the WHO has consistently been incorrect and misleading due to their failure to be proactive on this.
( you can also say the same of the CDC and many elected "leaders" ... honestly, it should not have taken this much work by volunteers to get this accepted... )
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Yeah, the west will blame everything on the Russians. I'm keeping my Russian Dolls. Oh and one more thing, why would the west think that Russia is trying to tap into vaccine data when its a global collaboration to begin with?
Another way to be distracted while making strides in the vaccine development. There are lives at stake! (oh that includes the top 1%) I find it bullshit when so-called pundits think that multi-millionaires have an advantage here in terms of survival.
Another way to be distracted while making strides in the vaccine development. There are lives at stake! (oh that includes the top 1%) I find it bullshit when so-called pundits think that multi-millionaires have an advantage here in terms of survival.
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It has been a long time since I've come back to this thread. And up until about three weeks ago, I was firmly in the camp that the virus, while real, was being grossly exaggerated by the media to create political harm to the current Administration.
In fact, doctors and nurses were being furloughed, hours cut, overflow tents dismantled, and the surge everyone was predicting never came.
About three weeks ago, the hospital where my wife works on the easternmost part of Hillsborough county near Tampa Florida, began seeing a consistent and Rapid increase in the number of covid patients. Most of them are between 30 and 50 years old, and every 12 hour shift she sees at least 20 patients that are critically ill.
Most of the hospitals in her area are on bypass, with ambulances diverting to hospitals that are further away that have more capacity. Operating rooms have been converted to ICU rooms, and as of yesterday mobile ICU 18-wheelers were brought in to help with the overload.
The patients are coming in with 70% oxygen saturation, they are put on 100% high flow oxygen, put in the prone position, and their saturation improves to about 90%. Within an hour, they crash have to be intubated, and are sent to the ICU we're about half of them died.
Last week a COVID patient literally coded in the parking lot as he was trying to come in to the ER. Walking under his own power towards the doors, he collapsed, and his heart stopped. They worked on him outside the hospital as they brought him in.
What is particularly troublesome is that every night, the number of sick increases, and the severity of their illness is clearly worse. It is like a flood that keeps getting higher and higher, with no capacity remaining. She is burning out, and when she calls me, she's usually in tears and completely exhausted. It is every bit as bad as we were initially told it would be.
However, now the media is saying the opposite. A few days ago Disney world opened, and the local media that covered it interviewed the Disney doctor, who claimed there's no risk, and local Orlando hospitals have plenty of capacity remaining. That is total BS. All of the hospitals are so full, most are on bypass - even ones that have never been on bypass before.
I am a trump supporter. I am conservative through and through. So is my wife. If there's one silver lining from all of this, prior to COVID, my wife was completely apolitical. She simply did not care about politics. Now, after seeing how the media lies, how politicians lie, and how published medical papers are politically biased and fraudulent, she is firmly on the Trump train. she has had her Awakening, and realize that nothing is as it seems.
She is a member of multiple emergency physician groups on Facebook. The vast majority of practicing ER physicians are very liberal. Many suffering from TDS. In fact she has screenshots of doctors who post if they have patients who come in with red maga hats, they would prefer to let them die so it would be one less Trump voter.
We are all told the doctors are held with high regard, that they are altruistic, and above all follow the Hippocratic oath to do no harm. But obviously they too, or just people with strong opinions. As are the academic researchers who publish total crap with the sole purpose of creating political damage.
As she put it, she does not know what to believe. She cant trust anything, even published peer-reviewed scientific data. And what she is experiencing right now in Florida hospitals is PTSD level stuff.
I just cannot figure out what switch was flipped. Why was the media lying and exaggerating the severity of the illness while hospitals were running empty and healthcare workers were being furloughed? And now, that very clearly hospitals are drowning in critically ill patients, the media is saying the opposite. What happened? Who benefits? Why the deception?
Sorry about the long post. My wife said yesterday, if people could see how sick these people are, how are takes every fiber in their body just to take the next breath, people wouldn't want to leave their homes. They would certainly be wearing masks everywhere. she is begging me to not leave the house unless absolutely necessary.
In fact, doctors and nurses were being furloughed, hours cut, overflow tents dismantled, and the surge everyone was predicting never came.
About three weeks ago, the hospital where my wife works on the easternmost part of Hillsborough county near Tampa Florida, began seeing a consistent and Rapid increase in the number of covid patients. Most of them are between 30 and 50 years old, and every 12 hour shift she sees at least 20 patients that are critically ill.
Most of the hospitals in her area are on bypass, with ambulances diverting to hospitals that are further away that have more capacity. Operating rooms have been converted to ICU rooms, and as of yesterday mobile ICU 18-wheelers were brought in to help with the overload.
The patients are coming in with 70% oxygen saturation, they are put on 100% high flow oxygen, put in the prone position, and their saturation improves to about 90%. Within an hour, they crash have to be intubated, and are sent to the ICU we're about half of them died.
Last week a COVID patient literally coded in the parking lot as he was trying to come in to the ER. Walking under his own power towards the doors, he collapsed, and his heart stopped. They worked on him outside the hospital as they brought him in.
What is particularly troublesome is that every night, the number of sick increases, and the severity of their illness is clearly worse. It is like a flood that keeps getting higher and higher, with no capacity remaining. She is burning out, and when she calls me, she's usually in tears and completely exhausted. It is every bit as bad as we were initially told it would be.
However, now the media is saying the opposite. A few days ago Disney world opened, and the local media that covered it interviewed the Disney doctor, who claimed there's no risk, and local Orlando hospitals have plenty of capacity remaining. That is total BS. All of the hospitals are so full, most are on bypass - even ones that have never been on bypass before.
I am a trump supporter. I am conservative through and through. So is my wife. If there's one silver lining from all of this, prior to COVID, my wife was completely apolitical. She simply did not care about politics. Now, after seeing how the media lies, how politicians lie, and how published medical papers are politically biased and fraudulent, she is firmly on the Trump train. she has had her Awakening, and realize that nothing is as it seems.
She is a member of multiple emergency physician groups on Facebook. The vast majority of practicing ER physicians are very liberal. Many suffering from TDS. In fact she has screenshots of doctors who post if they have patients who come in with red maga hats, they would prefer to let them die so it would be one less Trump voter.
We are all told the doctors are held with high regard, that they are altruistic, and above all follow the Hippocratic oath to do no harm. But obviously they too, or just people with strong opinions. As are the academic researchers who publish total crap with the sole purpose of creating political damage.
As she put it, she does not know what to believe. She cant trust anything, even published peer-reviewed scientific data. And what she is experiencing right now in Florida hospitals is PTSD level stuff.
I just cannot figure out what switch was flipped. Why was the media lying and exaggerating the severity of the illness while hospitals were running empty and healthcare workers were being furloughed? And now, that very clearly hospitals are drowning in critically ill patients, the media is saying the opposite. What happened? Who benefits? Why the deception?
Sorry about the long post. My wife said yesterday, if people could see how sick these people are, how are takes every fiber in their body just to take the next breath, people wouldn't want to leave their homes. They would certainly be wearing masks everywhere. she is begging me to not leave the house unless absolutely necessary.
bigredfish
Known around here
Thanks for this @erkme73
We live in very troubling times. Never thought I would see the country so off the rails. I fear it will get worse.
We live in very troubling times. Never thought I would see the country so off the rails. I fear it will get worse.
Frankenscript
Known around here
- Dec 21, 2017
- 1,288
- 1,201
Hi @erkme73 , let me start by thanking you for this post. Any first hand (we trust you to represent your wife's observations fairly, in my view) accounts "on the ground" are very important so that others who are experiencing some other reality can hear it from someone we trust, to help build up a picture. Also, please convey my sincerest appreciation to your wife who is working heroically in an impossible situation. My thoughts are with you and her and frankly everyone that is struggling with this thing.
My wife is a presumptive positive case (her first test result from swab last Tuesday July 7 isn't due to be resulted until next Tuesday, two full weeks out) but had a "mild version" of it: a week of weird "more than allergy symptoms, followed by a week of feeling like crap, followed by a week of gradual improvement." She tested negative at a hospital 6 days ago.
For perspective, the majority of my friends and close contacts are somehow involved in the medical system, with concentrations in the NY area, Detroit, Houston, and Maryland as well as Indiana where I live. Many are front line doctors, or researchers who are closely connected to front line response.
I've got a lot of things to say in response to your note. I'd like to say I'll keep this apolitical, but I don't think it is possible to do that. I'll keep it fact based, at least. You bring up a lot of great questions. We see some things from different perspectives. I respect yours even if I disagree with elements of it.
One of the most important things to remember, now that we are all Monday morning quarterbacking this thing, is that we now have data and understanding that we largely lacked in March/early April.
It's clear now that the hotspots we had early on needed a certain critical mass to become the horrible things that make it onto the news. So, the NY/NJ/Philly area was a nightmare, New Orleans and Detroit were bad, but much of the rest of the country was not critical except in contained places like nursing homes and other care facilities that recorded ~40% of the early deaths. The surge didn't come to many places because either the lockdowns broke the chain of infection, or people simply taking precautions to minimize contact slowed the spread. By and large R values dropped before official lockdowns, but didn't drop below 1 until after lockdowns. They quickly went above 1 after lockdowns expired. Anyway, most of the country was spared the worst. Indiana had 30-50 deaths a day for a while, and at one point was close to 70% ICU use (half of which was non-covid use). This means we could have had about one more doubling (a few days of pre-precautionary spread) before we would have maxed out eventually. We locked down just in time to prevent the kind of thing you are seeing now.
This is a tragedy unfolding in real time. There were enough infected people walking around in Florida (many of whom weren't sick or thought it was just allergies) that when the restrictions were lifted and young people went back to the bars (and all manner of other exposure-prone activities), the virus spread. It takes a month or six weeks to really see a peak, because of long presymptomatic/asymptomatic periods and just the way it infiltrates. Then all at once it seems, everyone is sick.
Depends which media you listen to. The media I've been listening to the most (CNN, NYT, WaPo, NPR) has been warning that this was going to happen (not might happen, but for sure) since DeSantis aligned with Trump on a re-opening narrative very early on. Keep in mind it was Florida that "accidentally" mis-aligned numbers to show steady improvement at one point and it was Florida that fired a statistician when she tried to blow the whistle and say the data didn't support the re-opening narrative DeSantis was pushing. This was all over the liberal media but I rarely saw this kind of thing on Fox (yes, I look at Fox news pretty much every day to get a differential viewpoint from my liberal bubble). Right now, CNN is pushing an article about a report prepared for the White House Task Force which says 18 states need to roll back re-opening because of the crisis you are witnessing. It's being ignored by the WHTF. I don't see it on Fox right now because it contradicts the "Everything is fine" Trump narrative. This is his statement earlier this month:
"Now we're open, and we want to stay open and we will stay open. We're not closing. We'll put out the fires as they come out," Trump said at a White House event earlier this month. And as for schools:
"WASHINGTON - White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said on Thursday that “the science should not stand in the way” of schools reopening in the fall, despite concerns from health leaders regarding opening educational institutions amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has been worsening in several states in recent weeks.
“The president has said unmistakably that he wants schools to open,” McEnany said at a White House press briefing. “And when he says open, he means open and full, kids being able to attend, each and every day at their school.”" LINK
Governor Kemp has gone so far as to ban mask requirements at a local level in Georgia. Didn't conservatives used to push for local control wherever possible? There's a difference between conservative and following Trump. This is it.
It's not my place to criticize anyone for their views. Both parties are using this crisis to press whatever advantage they can. But, the long and short of it is, the liberals (and their media) have been saying "this is a big deal, this is a problem, we need to crack down and get this under control." The conservatives led by Trump and Fox have been saying "this is going to go away like a miracle, the hospital scenes from NYC in March were fake news..." and so on. For sure liberals made plenty of mistakes, like criticizing early bans on travel from China (I was PRO-TRAVEL BAN, by the way, and so were most of my liberal doctor friends, specific to the hotspots, and we facepalmed when some liberal mountpieces cried xenophobia).
This disgusts me and there's no excuse for anyone saying stuff like this, even in personal (non-work) spaces. However, many of my (liberal) friends expressed anger at Trump supporters who violated lockdown, failed to mask in public, and acted like the whole March/April crisis period was fake simply because it was happening mostly in liberal locations. The people (Trump supporters primarily) who were flouting the rules were going to be putting health care workers at risk when they get sick. And drawing resources from others who got sick through no fault of their own. How many liberals do you think attended Alabama coronavirus parties? So, while there's never an excuse for outlier healthcare workers to do the things you mentioned, the main body of healthcare workers are FRUSTRATED and ANGRY that so many people have been taking it lightly, not masking, specifically following Trump's lead. I PERSONALLY witness defaced "A hero lives here" signs (used to mark health care worker homes in appreciation for their pandemic efforts) that were painted over with FAKE NEWS markings. I wish I had taken a picture but was driving and couldn't stop.
I know a lot of researchers and most of them just want to publish facts. There are outliers on both sides who want to support one party or another. No profession is free of this.
Again my heart goes out to her. For so many, this is the most frightening time of their lives, and because the situation has been weaponized (yes, by both sides), her lack of trust is understandable. Many of us share it.
Again, the liberal media has been bashed by the right wing folks for whipping the pandemic into a frenzy of fear, over-reporting and making it out to be more than it is. Well, now that has come home to roost and many more republican areas are becoming hotspots (along with California!) and they are seeing the crisis was real all along. The hijacking of the data feed from the CDC to Trump-installed cronies at HHS will remove a layer of transparency in the data and does not bode well for the American public to understand what is really going on. This isn't TDS; it's reality. Don't believe me? Wait a few months...
We have different politics, listen primarily to different news sources, but on this we are 100% aligned. THANK YOU for your post. Please see my responses as an attempt to explain some of your questions/observations, and not in any way an attack on your or your amazing wife. The strength she has to do what she must is a testament to the best that humanity has to offer.
My wife is a presumptive positive case (her first test result from swab last Tuesday July 7 isn't due to be resulted until next Tuesday, two full weeks out) but had a "mild version" of it: a week of weird "more than allergy symptoms, followed by a week of feeling like crap, followed by a week of gradual improvement." She tested negative at a hospital 6 days ago.
For perspective, the majority of my friends and close contacts are somehow involved in the medical system, with concentrations in the NY area, Detroit, Houston, and Maryland as well as Indiana where I live. Many are front line doctors, or researchers who are closely connected to front line response.
I've got a lot of things to say in response to your note. I'd like to say I'll keep this apolitical, but I don't think it is possible to do that. I'll keep it fact based, at least. You bring up a lot of great questions. We see some things from different perspectives. I respect yours even if I disagree with elements of it.
One of the most important things to remember, now that we are all Monday morning quarterbacking this thing, is that we now have data and understanding that we largely lacked in March/early April.
It's clear now that the hotspots we had early on needed a certain critical mass to become the horrible things that make it onto the news. So, the NY/NJ/Philly area was a nightmare, New Orleans and Detroit were bad, but much of the rest of the country was not critical except in contained places like nursing homes and other care facilities that recorded ~40% of the early deaths. The surge didn't come to many places because either the lockdowns broke the chain of infection, or people simply taking precautions to minimize contact slowed the spread. By and large R values dropped before official lockdowns, but didn't drop below 1 until after lockdowns. They quickly went above 1 after lockdowns expired. Anyway, most of the country was spared the worst. Indiana had 30-50 deaths a day for a while, and at one point was close to 70% ICU use (half of which was non-covid use). This means we could have had about one more doubling (a few days of pre-precautionary spread) before we would have maxed out eventually. We locked down just in time to prevent the kind of thing you are seeing now.
This is a tragedy unfolding in real time. There were enough infected people walking around in Florida (many of whom weren't sick or thought it was just allergies) that when the restrictions were lifted and young people went back to the bars (and all manner of other exposure-prone activities), the virus spread. It takes a month or six weeks to really see a peak, because of long presymptomatic/asymptomatic periods and just the way it infiltrates. Then all at once it seems, everyone is sick.
Depends which media you listen to. The media I've been listening to the most (CNN, NYT, WaPo, NPR) has been warning that this was going to happen (not might happen, but for sure) since DeSantis aligned with Trump on a re-opening narrative very early on. Keep in mind it was Florida that "accidentally" mis-aligned numbers to show steady improvement at one point and it was Florida that fired a statistician when she tried to blow the whistle and say the data didn't support the re-opening narrative DeSantis was pushing. This was all over the liberal media but I rarely saw this kind of thing on Fox (yes, I look at Fox news pretty much every day to get a differential viewpoint from my liberal bubble). Right now, CNN is pushing an article about a report prepared for the White House Task Force which says 18 states need to roll back re-opening because of the crisis you are witnessing. It's being ignored by the WHTF. I don't see it on Fox right now because it contradicts the "Everything is fine" Trump narrative. This is his statement earlier this month:
"Now we're open, and we want to stay open and we will stay open. We're not closing. We'll put out the fires as they come out," Trump said at a White House event earlier this month. And as for schools:
"WASHINGTON - White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said on Thursday that “the science should not stand in the way” of schools reopening in the fall, despite concerns from health leaders regarding opening educational institutions amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has been worsening in several states in recent weeks.
“The president has said unmistakably that he wants schools to open,” McEnany said at a White House press briefing. “And when he says open, he means open and full, kids being able to attend, each and every day at their school.”" LINK
Governor Kemp has gone so far as to ban mask requirements at a local level in Georgia. Didn't conservatives used to push for local control wherever possible? There's a difference between conservative and following Trump. This is it.
It's not my place to criticize anyone for their views. Both parties are using this crisis to press whatever advantage they can. But, the long and short of it is, the liberals (and their media) have been saying "this is a big deal, this is a problem, we need to crack down and get this under control." The conservatives led by Trump and Fox have been saying "this is going to go away like a miracle, the hospital scenes from NYC in March were fake news..." and so on. For sure liberals made plenty of mistakes, like criticizing early bans on travel from China (I was PRO-TRAVEL BAN, by the way, and so were most of my liberal doctor friends, specific to the hotspots, and we facepalmed when some liberal mountpieces cried xenophobia).
This disgusts me and there's no excuse for anyone saying stuff like this, even in personal (non-work) spaces. However, many of my (liberal) friends expressed anger at Trump supporters who violated lockdown, failed to mask in public, and acted like the whole March/April crisis period was fake simply because it was happening mostly in liberal locations. The people (Trump supporters primarily) who were flouting the rules were going to be putting health care workers at risk when they get sick. And drawing resources from others who got sick through no fault of their own. How many liberals do you think attended Alabama coronavirus parties? So, while there's never an excuse for outlier healthcare workers to do the things you mentioned, the main body of healthcare workers are FRUSTRATED and ANGRY that so many people have been taking it lightly, not masking, specifically following Trump's lead. I PERSONALLY witness defaced "A hero lives here" signs (used to mark health care worker homes in appreciation for their pandemic efforts) that were painted over with FAKE NEWS markings. I wish I had taken a picture but was driving and couldn't stop.
I know a lot of researchers and most of them just want to publish facts. There are outliers on both sides who want to support one party or another. No profession is free of this.
Again my heart goes out to her. For so many, this is the most frightening time of their lives, and because the situation has been weaponized (yes, by both sides), her lack of trust is understandable. Many of us share it.
Again, the liberal media has been bashed by the right wing folks for whipping the pandemic into a frenzy of fear, over-reporting and making it out to be more than it is. Well, now that has come home to roost and many more republican areas are becoming hotspots (along with California!) and they are seeing the crisis was real all along. The hijacking of the data feed from the CDC to Trump-installed cronies at HHS will remove a layer of transparency in the data and does not bode well for the American public to understand what is really going on. This isn't TDS; it's reality. Don't believe me? Wait a few months...
We have different politics, listen primarily to different news sources, but on this we are 100% aligned. THANK YOU for your post. Please see my responses as an attempt to explain some of your questions/observations, and not in any way an attack on your or your amazing wife. The strength she has to do what she must is a testament to the best that humanity has to offer.
Q™
IPCT Contributor
sebastiantombs
Known around here
You do need to follow something other than lame stream fake news sources. That quote from Kayleigh McEnany has already drawn fire because it is totally false and not, at all, in context. Another Acosta piece of junk. In fact she said that science does support opening schools, which multiple studies do seem to support along with the fact that schools have either re-opened or remained open all over Europe with no significant increase in transmission from being open.
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Frankenscript
Known around here
- Dec 21, 2017
- 1,288
- 1,201
This is very formulaic:
1. White House says something stupid/factually wrong/taken out of context
2. Liberal media points out that something dumb was said
3. Right wing folks either claim what was said WASN'T said or taken out of context.
4. Liberals post full text / video or other proof of what was said.
5. Right wingers now claim the soundbites are real and point to cherry picked facts that support the truth of the soundbites
6. Liberals point out the facts are cherry picked and don't actually say the meaning the WH would like them to say.
7. WH, SCOTUS, or republican proxies do something even more outrageous that distracts from the original gaff
So...
1. WH Press Secretary says President wants schools open all the way and that (direct quote) "The science should not stand in the way of this." Then goes on to cite Dr. Scott Atlas supporting president's views.
2. Most of the world laughs at this statement, widely reports it.
3. @sebastiantombs : "That quote from Kayleigh McEnany has already drawn fire because it is totally false and not, at all, in context. Another Acosta piece of junk."
4. She absolutely said it; I've watched the full briefing segment from multiple sources. Here it is but most major sources have the same timeframe clip: LINK
5. @sebastiantombs : " In fact she said that science does support opening schools, which multiple studies do seem to support along with the fact that schools have either re-opened or remained open all over Europe with no significant increase in transmission from being open"
6. Scott Atlas as discussed prior is a republican moutpiece widely derided in his views by most other doctors, not just here, but around the world. He was discussed some days earlier in this thread. As for the scientific support for re-opening schools, you can't compare the US to most other nations because they have crushed their infection curve by the time the kids went back to school so the risk of any one student or school worker being infectious was VERY LOW. The US has more infections now than ever so the risk of any one person in the school is much higher. Depending where you look and how you pull the data, we have roughly 20-100 times as many infected people per capita. So, the model used in Europe is not something that would work for us. Also, I've read the JAMA articles (have you?) and they say it is urgent to get the kids back into schools, and provide guidelines, many of which either require space, money, or other resources than many districts have available in the short term (as in, this fall). THEY DO NOT SAY IT IS APPROPRIATE TO SEND KIDS BACK unless we can do a lot of things that currently are unlikely to happen. So again, It's a case of the WH fabricating a narrative by making false comparisons, with a veneer of respectability by falsely attributing statements to respected sources.
7. This brings us back to the WH apparently ignoring a report saying reopening needs to roll back: Task force report says 18 states in coronavirus 'red zone' should roll back reopening
Q™
IPCT Contributor
