US Politics: coughing for peace is like dying for the economy

[Week]

Good day, sir! 

[Freshwater Spartan]

It's a domestic and international crisis. The sad fact is that any President and his bully pulpit is going to suck up all the oxygen in the room. This President despite his innumerable flaws is good at one thing, sucking up all the oxygen in the room. Biden is not going to make too many headlines in this environment. No Presidential challenger could.

Biden's best bet is to organize, fundraise and plan. By all means I wouldn't want him to turn down an interview. But don't kid yourselves and think that any challenger is going to dominate the news cycle in this environment.  

Relax all. It's a gift. Every week Trump has to focus on the Virus is a week he can't use his bully pulpit to attack Biden. Eventually the election will resume its place as top story and I think Biden will do well then.

[Paladin of Ice]

4 hours ago, The Great Unwashed said:

CNN is reporting that Quest Diagnostics at just one lab has a testing backlog of 160,000 samples.

I wonder if that's the center at Teterboro, New Jersey, which gets the majority of specimens from NYC, NYC suburbs, and Jersey testing. Because if it's not, then dear gods I don't even want to know what their backlog looks like. (For folks not in the medical field, Quest is almost certainly the largest, most widespread, and most used reference lab for medical testing in the U.S.)

I want to take a second to quote something I posted in the last thread:

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A lot of hospitals and doctors offices (including my company) are sending Covid tests out to labs that are either hopelessly backlogged or under equipped, last Friday I had to try to help a nurse get an answer to why an elderly patient’s swab for Covid didn’t have a result from Quest Diagnostics 11 days after it was sent out, and that is by no means the only such example I’ve dealt with. We’ve practically given up on testing compared to the numbers we were doing two weeks ago because it takes too long to hear back and in all but the worst cases they’re going to be told the same thing about staying at home and what precautions to take. Only in cases where “it’ll make a difference in treatment” (read: where we expect the patient to need to go to the hospital and get special lung treatment to help with severe pneumonia like symptoms) do we really try to get a definite diagnosis. Well that, staff, and people who’ve had contact with someone who was confirmed to have it.

Stories in the news have talked a lot about hospitals having contracts with small labs that are out of all their supplies, they don’t even have test reagents to run tests or even, in extreme cases, to properly calibrate their machines.

Remember the bits in the two quote boxes when you look at the numbers of tests done or someone says how the healthcare system is catching up. The tests are literally weeks behind reality. The numbers you see are badly outdated, and the spread has only continued since then. Not just in NY, NJ, or Cali either, but in states like Florida, where just yesterday Governor DeSantis was saying that he wasn't going to take any measures to initiate a lockdown unless he heard otherwise from the White House, (and today he went ahead and did so) or Mississippi, where their governor was not only refusing to take measures, he was trying to override the towns that were and classifying practically every kind of work as essential so they could stay open no matter what.

The numbers you see are there despite the hundreds of thousands of tests in a backlog, the narrow criteria for testing that was put in place to try not to overload the system, the deterrences of cost and culture, the president and right wing media downplaying it all, etc. Despite all that, the numbers already look this bad. The reality is so much worse.

@Zorral

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However, I for one NYer am profoundly grateful that in this time he's governor and Cynthia Nixon is not. (I voted for her in the primary -- I think.  I know I didn't vote for C.  That was ... eons ago, in a galaxy far far far away.)

 

Agreed. For the first time since the early days of his first term, I'm glad Cuomo is governor. There's no cure for his chronic case of being a prick, but as long as he doesn't let his nasty side take him over he's exactly the kind of hyper-competent prick that should be running the state right now. Much better than someone I agree with more but is still learning how it all works.

[TrueMetis]

1 hour ago, Triskele said:

I cannot resist jumping off of this in a pivot in which I don't mean to focus on Simon at all, but I swear that there is a relatively new phenomenon, call it the 90% mistake or something, that is the result of the internet.  

It's some kind of law like Trisk's Law or something where since The Internet it's not only feasible but actually predictable that people that agree on like 90% of stuff will get into Go to Hell and Die territory over stuff.  This needs to be studied. 

When Raja called me problematic and definitely meant by that that I was a secret racist because I'd suggested that cause there was an article based on other national examples that maybe tacking right on immigration (but took care to say I didn't mean echo Trump) and was bringing it up in the first place as a way to beat Trump and so help the kids at the border...that was eye-opening.  Something has changed.   

More publicly, the absolute vitriol against Warren even though her and Bernie's platform are damn near identical, while on the other hand they can work with Joe Rogan just fine.

Not surprisingly this shit has alienated many people in marginalized communities.

[ThinkerX]

something I have noticed the past day or so...

 

lots of articles on the corona virus.  lots of articles with pictures of Trump signing documents or addressing fans or reporters or whatnot.  Yet...in most of those pictures, Trump is not alone, but at the center of a tight huddle of others, presumably advisers and cabinet members - despite the dire warnings of 'social distancing.'  So...given this behavior, I'm starting to wonder if Trump might actually catch this bug.  He's certainly arrogant enough to think himself bulletproof.  supporting evidence?  it already temporarily eliminated the republicans senate majority through the acts of a single careless senator who really should have known better.

So, say Trump does catch this bug and end up on a ventilator.  That be grounds enough to invoke the 25th amendment? 

[Martell Spy]

44 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

something I have noticed the past day or so...

 

lots of articles on the corona virus.  lots of articles with pictures of Trump signing documents or addressing fans or reporters or whatnot.  Yet...in most of those pictures, Trump is not alone, but at the center of a tight huddle of others, presumably advisers and cabinet members - despite the dire warnings of 'social distancing.'  So...given this behavior, I'm starting to wonder if Trump might actually catch this bug.  He's certainly arrogant enough to think himself bulletproof.  supporting evidence?  it already temporarily eliminated the republicans senate majority through the acts of a single careless senator who really should have known better.

So, say Trump does catch this bug and end up on a ventilator.  That be grounds enough to invoke the 25th amendment? 

Fox News will immediately spin it as Trump taking a bullet for the average American worker.

[Guest]

8 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

First you gave us The Tiger King, and now this?

I've yet to decide whether The Tiger King makes me more proud, or more ashamed, to be an Okie than I've ever been in my life. The jury's still out.

Quote

You're monsters, and your Sooners deserve to always lose in the first round of the college football playoffs. 

Fuckin-A right. You're talking to a Cowboys alum, son. Go Pokes!

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

6 hours ago, Triskele said:

Dr. Fauci needs security.  What a repulsive species you humans are.  

What happened?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

5 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

something I have noticed the past day or so...

 

lots of articles on the corona virus.  lots of articles with pictures of Trump signing documents or addressing fans or reporters or whatnot.  Yet...in most of those pictures, Trump is not alone, but at the center of a tight huddle of others, presumably advisers and cabinet members - despite the dire warnings of 'social distancing.'  So...given this behavior, I'm starting to wonder if Trump might actually catch this bug.  He's certainly arrogant enough to think himself bulletproof.  supporting evidence?  it already temporarily eliminated the republicans senate majority through the acts of a single careless senator who really should have known better.

So, say Trump does catch this bug and end up on a ventilator.  That be grounds enough to invoke the 25th amendment? 

If he is unable to discharge the duties of the office of the President of the United States, absolutely.

[Fragile Bird]

4 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

What happened?

Threats against his life (and against his family) for advancing ideas of social distancing and shutting down businesses and schools. He’s part of the conspiracy against Trump, trying to damage his re-election by hyping up the risks presented by the virus.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

10 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Threats against his life (and against his family) for advancing ideas of social distancing and shutting down businesses and schools. He’s part of the conspiracy against Trump, trying to damage his re-election by hyping up the risks presented by the virus.

:facepalm:

Because of course radical Trumpanistas cannot accept that their savior could have been wrong when he called COVID-19 a “hoax”.

[Fragile Bird]

6.648 M unemployment claims.

[Raja]

15 hours ago, Triskele said:

When Raja called me problematic and definitely meant by that that I was a secret racist

And I still find your assertions in those threads problematic ( and for accuracy, you were called out on some of that stuff by lots of people that regularly participate in these threads, not just me) - And I'll say now, as I said then, if you had put forward specifics as to what you meant, I would have listened. But you didn't, it was always put in vague terms that showed a lack of understanding towards the current health policy landscape when it comes to immigrants and undocumented immigrants.

I don't think you're a secret racist, and this is something I stated even then, most people in these threads are generally allies to brown immigrants like me, but I don't think *anything* I stated even came close to 'go to hell & die' category - in fact, I'm pretty sure it was *your* posts that got deleted because of name calling.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

44 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

6.648 M unemployment claims.

In one week. Holy shit.

ETA: Context, that's double of what happened last week, which was five times higher than the previous record. And it's just beginning. 

[Raja]

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

Threats against his life (and against his family)

Jesus

[Larry of the Lawn]

6 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

In one week. Holy shit.

ETA: Context, that's double of what happened last week, which was five times higher than the previous record. And it's just beginning. 

I tried to file on the NY website on Tuesday but it was slammed.  Going to try again tomorrow

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

I tried to file on the NY website on Tuesday but it was slammed.  Going to try again tomorrow

It will be like that for weeks. 

[Fragile Bird]

29 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

In one week. Holy shit.

ETA: Context, that's double of what happened last week, which was five times higher than the previous record. And it's just beginning. 

I wonder what Fox was spinning. Last week they were claiming on the day before and right up until the number was released that ‘top experts’ were predicting 1.8 or 1.9 M claims were coming. Anyone here actually watch Fox?

[Maithanet]

4 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I wonder what Fox was spinning. Last week they were claiming on the day before and right up until the number was released that ‘top experts’ were predicting 1.8 or 1.9 M claims were coming. Anyone here actually watch Fox? 

Can't speak for Fox, but I saw a couple of mainstream articles (WaPo was one I think) that said economists/forecasters were expecting between 4 and 5 million.

[Fez]

25 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

It will be like that for weeks. 

The optimistic outlook would be that that was the last week before the the aid package was passed. And that, with the huge amount of funds now flowing to businesses that agree to maintain payroll, the number of layoffs will slow down dramatically for the next few months. And that the backlog of claimants can get processed more quickly.

OTOH, that relies on that money actually getting out the door quickly. And also, with the expanded UI eligibility, there may be a lot of sole operator businesses and gig workers applying going forward as well. My dad (runs a sole practice law firm) is going on UI now that's he eligible; he only takes assigned cases these days, and with the courts closed in his state he has no work and no income.