US politics: sick semper tyrannis

[HoodedCrow]

When you get conflicting results like this, there is lying going on. Trump does it to himself and his staffers. I hope Trump survives.

[VigoTheCarpathian]

This is only semi-serious, but with the culture of ridiculing masks and discouraging their use, and the cascading shitshow of spreading, would there be any legal standing to sue, i.e.,  for workplace safety under OSHA, or similar to the cases where people knowingly spread HIV?  Showing up to events with a positive test and no mask seems like reckless, if not malicious (skipping the test, attempted infecting Biden conspiracy) endangerment of lives.

[DireWolfSpirit]

I'm on some kind of sugar high from viewing all this fantastical, conservative, incompetence.

I feel like I should have had to pay some price of admission to enjoy this full frontal meltdown.

It's a Brand New Day and life is beyond grand again!

 

[Martell Spy]

23 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

So Mark Meadows says Trump is in pretty bad shape:

Path to Full Recovery Not Clear, Chief of Staff Says https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10/03/world/covid-trump

He meant to be an anonymous source, but failed. What's with these clowns?

That said, even if Trump doesn't die, a significant amount of damage to him isn't outside the realm of possibility. And I don't see him voluntarily invoking the 25th, or Pence and the Cabinet doing it for him either.

So we are likely to have a President on a respirator. He'll be about as affective with his job as before, though, so nothing to see here.

Now Meadows is saying that Trump is doing well and that he is demanding documents.

[Clueless Northman]

2 hours ago, JEORDHl said:

Like, it honestly defies belief how they're all just...

so fucking stupid. 

 

 

To be blunt, I think there will be some Darwin Awards hopefuls, if not nominees, there around...

[A Horse Named Stranger]

2 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Now Meadows is saying that Trump is doing well and that he is demanding documents.

So he is braindead (ok, that's been the case for at least four years now), and they are playing Weekend at Bernie's.

[Zorral]

Everywhere around here Halloween is already in effect: windows of every kind of space from CVS to clothing retailers (and ya, customers are inside the stores) are packed with costumes and masks and party decorations.

My feeling right now is that since Melania so despises her job as First Lady to decorate the WH for Christmas and for children, she should just go all in with Halloween.  It should be really easy as they've had four years already of working their best shots to turn it into a House of Horrors.

 

[VigoTheCarpathian]

1 minute ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

So he is braindead (ok, that's been the case for at least four years now), and they are playing Weekend at Bernie's.

Yep - signing all kinds of executive orders and Proud Boi missives with his clammy limp pen hand.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

1 minute ago, Zorral said:

Everywhere around here Halloween is already in effect: windows of every kind of space from CVS to clothing retailers (and ya, customers are inside the stores) are packed with costumes and masks and party decorations.

My feeling right now is that since Melania so despises her job as First Lady to decorate the WH for Christmas and for children, she should just go all in with Halloween.  It should be really easy as they've had four years already of working their best shots to turn it into a House of Horrors.

 

You can't celebrate Halloween without the Great Pumpkin.

[Zorral]

3 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

You can't celebrate Halloween without the Great Pumpkin.

Good 'un there!   Though you just made poor Charlie Brown cry, coz, you know, none of this is his fault!  Unless, his eternal willingness to let Lucy make a fool of him with the football shows him to be donor-like?

Still it boggles the mind that he was knowingly among his donors who were writing him quarter million dollar checks: no mask, shaking hands, in their faces.  How do they feel about this now?

I made a guess it's Barr or Mitch who is the asymptomatic super spreader within their crowd.

 

[sologdin]

demanding documents

this confirms the mendacity.  as if trump descends to read. he was born with all relevant knowledge.

[Ran]

10 minutes ago, sologdin said:

demanding documents

this confirms the mendacity.  as if trump descends to read. he was born with all relevant knowledge.

To be fair, news clipping packets packed with commenatary about him are certainly among his favorite reading material. I suspect those are the "documents" he wants to "review", assuming he's genuinely well enough to do that.

[Fez]

42 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Now Meadows is saying that Trump is doing well and that he is demanding documents.

I'm sure it's a coincidence, but saying he "is working with documents" was literally the cover story for Boris Yeltsin whenever he was black out drunk and supposed to have been somewhere.

[Impmk2]

8 hours ago, Xray the Enforcer said:

This should probably go in the Covid thread, but fuck it. 

One thing to keep in mind with the REGN-COV2 treatment ("Regeneron" is the company name, not the drug name): it's a mixture of two monoclonal antibodies. Now, back in the day, I was a possible candidate for a similar kind of treatment (but for a very different problem) with monoclonals and I gotta say, this kind of therapy isn't something to fuck around with. All of these have so-called "black box warnings" due to an unusually high incidence of anaphylactic shock. This isn't surprising, because that's generally what happens when you inject enormous foreign proteins -- especially ones intended to trigger another part of your immune system -- into your body. The protocol for my treatment included close observation by medical staff for up to an hour after injection in case I keeled over from anaphylaxis and/or a heart attack. 

Anyway my point is that yes, this treatment might be a very good one but it isn't without risk, including a risk of dying from the treatment itself. It will also be wildly expensive (all antibody-based treatments are, because they're relatively difficult to manufacture). 

 

Not that I disagree with your overall point - experimental treatments shouldn't be fucked around with, but I'm not sure you can generalise antibody treatments like this - it really depends what the target is.

Monoclonal treatments which necessarily target self-antigen (so treatments for cancers, various autoimmune conditions, afaik are the vast majority on the market at the moment), have a predictably far worse risk profile than a recombinant monoclonal antibody targeting foreign antigen, in this case SARS-CoV-2. On a quick google for the phase 2 results - the REGN-COV2 had 4 severe adverse events in the approx 300 participants (interestingly none in the high dose, 8g treatment group), which is still nothing to be sniffed at, but isn't the massively high numbers reported for some anticancer therapies.

[Trebla]

An interesting visual guide by the New York Times that shows who interacted with whom and when concerning the Trump coronavirus outbreak. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/02/us/politics/trump-contact-tracing-covid.html

One takeawaythat people are talking about is that it's possible Trump gave it to Hope Hicks and not the other way around. 

 

[Zorral]

8 minutes ago, Trebla said:

An interesting visual guide by the New York Times that shows who interacted with whom and when concerning the Trump coronavirus outbreak. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/02/us/politics/trump-contact-tracing-covid.html

One takeawaythat people are talking about is that it's possible Trump gave it to Hope Hicks and not the other way around. 

 

The photo at the top of that linked piece is from the get well rally on Staten Island, organized by one of the heads of the police department.  Though there is some mask wearing most people are not, and the cops howling at the crowd -- and making no sense at all -- are not wearing masks. There's a twitter video of this, which I posted in the Covid thread.  The crowd yells #1 # 1 #1 USA USA USA FOUR MORE YEARS FOUR MORE YEARS FOUR MORE YEARS, and the woman in the front, very much leading the rally, is either one of the cops or married to one of them? comes through as an utter religious fanatic in the throes of faith worship event, even sobbing.

It's both nuts and terrifying.

 

[IheartIheartTesla]

Apparently some Proud Boys are standing vigil outside Walter Reed, including Gavin McInnes.

Anyway, my source of information for a lot of news is the live Guardian feed, and I just saw this tidbit (from a Vanity Fair correspondent):

Quote

Sherman went on to cite Republicans close to the White House who have said the president’s situation has been “far more dire” than indicated and that Trump repeatedly asked aides if he was going to die before he was transported to Bethesda facility.

“Am I going out like Stan Chera? Am I?” Trump is alleged to have said, a reference to the president’s friend and longtime supporter who died from coronavirus in April.

Basically he was told to go to Walter Reed while he could still walk, since he was going to be taken there regardless and it would look bad if he had to be wheeled there (something we all knew). But the death rattles are new.

[maarsen]

5 hours ago, DMC said:

The two of them was a joke in reference to Donald and Melania actually being affectionate with each other.  As for contact with his kids, just because the family is medieval in its nepotism doesn't mean they're in close physical contact with each other that much.  Hell, wouldn't be surprised if Melania and Ivanka had a mutually agreed upon social distancing policy well before covid.

The House of Commons in England and Canada do something similar. The opposing seats are across an aisle that is two sword lengths wide.

[Castellan]

2 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

Now Meadows is saying that Trump is doing well and that he is demanding documents.

Its strange that the doctors who should be disinterested professionals were prepared to put on a show at the press conference and down play his state, then his chief of staff wants to do an off the record contradiction of that, then gets caught out so runs out and says Trump is asking for documents.

a pathetic world when everyone jumps for a tyrant

[Gaston de Foix]

He has the best medical care in the world.  He will recover and like Boris pretend he's been through a transformational experience rather than a victim of his own carelessness.  All this stuff about his fear of dying etc. is just inside baseball.  

2020 has just been about testing the proposition that humans are rational, principled and facts matter.   Turns out, not so much.