Coronavirus / COVID-19

[Csargo]

I mean, the economy is going to be in dire straits either way. This guy just makes me shake my head honestly. It's too late to go back on what they've already decided, then you just exacerbate the situation. Texas decided to sit in the middle of doing something or doing nothing, luckily some of the larger counties are locking down, which is promising albeit later than ideal. Our entire government seems like a train wreck.

[Montmorency]

There are those who feel particularly distressed or depressed at living with the conditions imposed by the pandemic response. To the extent they were satisfied with their pre-crisis lives, they can hold to that feeling as a lodestar. And definitely don't personalize global politics, both because it is unlikely a narrow perspective will offer insight or sound guidance, and because it will just feel like the whole world is conspiring against you and that's a scary and awful feeling.

Some great COVID-19 resources I've come across.

NYT Graph of Coronavirus Deaths over Time by US State and Country - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...y-country.html

Crude Polemical Three-Month US Fatality Projections According to Degree of Response - https://covidactnow.org/
For example:






Finally, finally, I found a database tracking all US COVID-19 testing! https://covidtracking.com/data/

Still amazing that we haven't caught up with South Korea, and that New York continues to maintain 25%+ of cumulative testing.
[Correction: South Korea has slowed testing dramatically in the last couple weeks, so with ~360K tests conducted the US has exceeded SK's current count of ~350K]

I mean, the economy is going to be in dire straits either way. This guy just makes me shake my head honestly. It's too late to go back on what they've already decided, then you just exacerbate the situation. Texas decided to sit in the middle of doing something or doing nothing, luckily some of the larger counties are locking down, which is promising albeit later than ideal. Our entire government seems like a train wreck.

It goes well beyond the abstract moral and empirical qualities of his position.

This is a wealthy and politically powerful man, almost literally telling us "Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make." It's the profligate general commending the valorous sacrifices of the army man on behalf of the nation while sending his army forward after a nugatory objective. His risk compared to the rest of his age cohort is small, and he is certainly not speaking for himself in any meaningful way when advancing putative tradeoffs between the wellbeing of elderly populations and the continence of the economy.

(Regarding which, see yet again:)

The choice is not

a) everyone stays home, economy hurt
or
b) everyone goes out again, economy fine

it's

a) everyone stays home, economy hurt
or
b) everyone goes out again, millions die, hospitals collapse, social chaos, economy hurt just as bad if not worse

It's not the men who have the political connections, the money, the priority of healthcare, the advantage and opportunity for having achieved higher baseline health who would be worst affected as part of the equation on the weighing of competing interests. It's the poor, the black, the Latino, the rural...

We should not begin to pretend that these rascals should even potentially be humored until they have displayed documentation refusing all but palliative medical treatment in the event of illness.

[Montmorency]

ATTENTION AMERICANS

Here is a resource that collects reports on grocery store crowding, availability of product, senior hours, etc.
https://survey123.arcgis.com/share/e...iIkR1oiZ0_kK2k
https://htorpey.maps.arcgis.com/apps...b71a8c74cc18b1

Unfortunately, it's not currently helpful because there's almost no user base. But in general, crisis or not, tools like this hopefully become the SOP of the cybernetic future.



The new party line: https://www.esquire.com/news-politic...people-stocks/

11. In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero. In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death. It is not by chance that a motto of the Falangists was Viva la Muerte (in English it should be translated as “Long Live Death!”). In non-fascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.

Good satire: I regret that I have but one grandparent to give for my country

“No one reached out to me and said, as a senior citizen, ‘Are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?’ And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in. … I just think there’s lots of grandparents out there in this country like me.”

— Dan Patrick, lieutenant governor of Texas

“We have to go back to work much sooner than people thought.”

— President Trump, who wants the country “up and raring to go by Easter”

YOUR COUNTRY STOCK MARKET NEEDS YOU! IS ASKING YOU TO GIVE YOURSELF, NEEDLESSLY AND TO NO ULTIMATE LONG-TERM BENEFIT!

Brave boomers, hardy millennials, Gen X, Gen Z, rise to the call! Will you make the ultimate sacrifice so that Donald Trump’s chain hotels will not have to remain closed for more than 14 days? Will you lay down your precious life, against expert medical advice, for literally no reason at all?

No death is too unnecessary, no gain too small.

Ask yourself whether your so-called reason for not volunteering your life in the hope that Donald Trump’s branded properties will not lose another day’s income is not instead a selfish excuse! Is your not getting to share the world with your grandchildren so great a prize that Donald Trump should be forced to be marginally worse off for a brief time? Think of all the money he has given up already to be president, which, he assured us, is LOTS — even when you remember what he gained back through emoluments!

Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic

Dare you not requite his sacrifice with all you have to give? This is rude and selfish of you, to say that your life is worth more than someone’s money. And I am not speaking of the money of people who need to go to work to feed their families, who are being devastated by this, who might be helped with a spreading of the social safety net. I am speaking of something greater. I am speaking of the stocks!
AD

We have the ability to support the individuals and businesses who would suffer from a shutdown of the length medically necessary to stem the virus, but why bother? When instead we can toss aside precious, irreplaceable human beings? Now is not the time for sensible measures. Think about what a good idea World War I was! Think of the stirring music and the posters! Is now any less the time for a senseless, massive loss of human life that will ultimately devastate the country far more than a failure to return to work for the months required? We cannot put a price on what will be lost — so how much could it possibly be worth?

Doctors, why do you hesitate to fling in your lot? Is the single mask you have been issued not sufficient? Do you not know that there is MONEY somewhere, dwindling? I would suggest that you plaster dollar bills to your face, but they are all needed to bolster the Businessmen in this difficult time. Yes, you have a family, but is the family LEGAL TENDER? Then why do you fear that you might never see it again?

What joy are people? What is so precious in being alive, a human being with the ability to experience this maddening and brilliant world, when you know that somewhere, the Dow is going down instead of up? The chance to make it go up instead of down — even for a flicker of a moment — is that not worth everything? What makes life worth living? I am pretty sure it is not “possessing any connection whatsoever to other human beings”; or else the president has been doing it very wrong.

Here is your chance to serve! And there is still a place in the line for the people who did not ask to be volunteered — but you must help them! You can sacrifice them, too, by your decision, because this disease conveniently does not understand who is stepping up and who is not.

Just as we do not make any attempt to regulate traffic so that people do not perish needlessly in car accidents, just as when buildings are aflame we do not keep people from congregating inside them, so, too, must we now rush back to normalcy, at an unthinkable cost, to no purpose whatsoever.

We’ll have the country open by Easter! Think what more glorious fate there could possibly be than to die for nothing at all!

[ReluctantSamurai]

A day in the life of a hero:

https://www.vox.com/2020/3/24/211929...twitter-thread

[Montmorency]

Aesop wrote it first: Trump quietly seeks allies' coronavirus help even as he insists 'a lot is being done'

The US has reached out to South Korea and other nations for help in getting enough supplies to fight the coronavirus pandemic in a sharp counterpoint to President Donald Trump's narrative that the domestic response is enough to combat the crisis.

Seoul's Blue House issued a statement describing a Tuesday call between Trump and President Moon Jae-In that focused on the outbreak. Trump used the conversation to ask Moon if South Korea could provide medical equipment to the United States, the Blue House said. A White House readout of the same call made no mention of Trump's appeal.
The White House request to South Korea appears to be just one of several it has made to allies and other countries for equipment to fight the novel coronavirus. Foreign Policy magazine reported that the State Department sent US ambassadors in eastern Europe and Eurasia to ask their hosts to "ramp up exports and production of life-saving medical equipment and protective gear for the United States."
[...]
The Pentagon has expressed its thanks to South Korea for supplying coronavirus tests for US military use until American testing equipment arrived on the peninsula. On Tuesday, the Blue House said that South Korea was once again happy to come to Washington's aid.
According to the Blue House, Moon responded to Trump's request for equipment by saying, "If there's spare in the country, (we) will support as much as possible," and telling Trump that FDA approval might be needed for the medical equipment. According to the statement, Trump said he would take action so any South Korean exports could be approved immediately.

Wow. This clip of Trump at his presser should probably be training material for resident psychiatrists.
https://twitter.com/NikkiMcR/status/1242231879488716800

And while raving about the beautiful vision of packed churches on Easter Day, he said the quiet part yet again.

"They had things in there that were terrible — windmills all over the place ... windmills that kill the birds and ruin the real estate, right?" Trump said.

Washington must focus on "the workers," the president said. "Workers first."

Trump said in his second interview on Fox that he wasn't concerned about the costs associated with what could be a $2 trillion stimulus package, because he considered that to be an investment.

"It's not really spending, because a lot of it is helping companies" through loans, he said. "It's loaded to save corporations," he said, specifically mentioning Boeing.

Always remember, this is what they believe. For a parallel example, look at what Baba Yaga has to say about coronavirus (hint: take a close look at her cite).

More on the Republican party line, literally lol:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

No conscience. But a bill appears set to pass today.




A study challenging the approach taken by the Imperial College. Author suggests the global pandemic may be at a more advanced stage than is typically thought, with the current testing regime everywhere massively underreporting the true scope of contagion. If anything, these controversies are a reminder of how fast this has hit us and how little we know for certain. No antibody test for prior infection has yet been developed to my knowledge, for example.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020...lf-of-u-k.html

[ReluctantSamurai]

Gotta love this tweet:

Inability to smell and/or taste is a symptom of Covid-19. Inability to read a simple chart is a symptom of being Ann Coulter.

Almost fell out of my chair laughing

No conscience

No ability to think for themselves and post something original, either

[ReluctantSamurai]

With the United States now claiming the third highest number of SARS-CoV-2 cases identified, the situation is pretty much like a "bullet train" heading across the nation. This woman's situation is being repeated over and over again:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52019509

Frustrated and even more ill, Dr Bahorik calls the Department of Health. Despite exhibiting symptoms, and given her age and previous spells of pneumonia, they were inflexible. On protesting, a nurse suggests she speak to her congressman. She calls the office of Senator Bob Casey, where she is advised to contact the Department of Health.

After several terrible days of sickness, Dr Bahorik hears of eight coronavirus testing sites in the neighbouring county of Lehigh Valley. It is an hour's drive and she is feeling weak but goes to the test centre in Macungie, Pennsylvania. Once again she is told that because she had not travelled to a high risk country or been in known contact with someone with coronavirus, she cannot have a test. Having once been a doctor in the US Army Reserve, Dr Bahorik contacts her Veterans Affairs hospital. They later tell her that they do not have Covid-19 testing kits. By this stage, Dr Bahorik's chest pain and coughing has worsened.

"They keep reporting that there are so few cases in my county, but they are not testing," Dr Bahorik tells me. "I feel like I've done as much as I can, but that the system has beaten me down," she says. "I almost feel like I'm a lone voice screaming, 'Open your eyes, we have to do something about this!'"

And yet, our Fearless Leader gets on the TV saying how "beautiful" it would be to see churches full for Easter Sunday.

Yep. Fear porn. Whelp....if churches fill for Easter Sunday in two and a half weeks......be very afraid if you live in the US.