COVID-19 Megathread 5: The Trumps catch COVID-19

[Badger]

anyone else wanting to go out and join one of these protests against the quarantine? heard there was one in Nashville today, should have gone but I was tied up in Knox :<

obvious troll is trolling. reported.

He isn’t a troll, he just is greatly uninformed as to the severity of the crisis.

I mean, I'm greatly informed as to the severity that this crises poses to young people who are just starting out their careers. My wife and I are lucky that we are "essential employees" but I worry about all the other people our age just starting out and what this hysteria has done to the economy.

I'm honestly not worried about the elderly and immunocompromised. They can quarantine of their own accord, if they wish, but at least where I live, it seems like the older people are the least likely to do so, so I mean that's on them.

Like I said, if I die I die lol it's fine not like I care.

Husband of the year.

Seriously though, if your will to live is that weak, you really should seek professional help immediately for barely sublimated deep depression. Take care please.

[Badger]

I'm curious, given the history of adversarial governments using social media to organize protests in 2016, if there might be a third-party actor involved in these pro-COVID demonstrations that we're not seeing.

It is an open secret that the DeVos family organized the Michigan protests.

And Betsy the secretary of..... education.

Impeach now.

[Badger]

New York City has shut down all non-essential events through June. 

You know what that means... NO PRIDE! WOOO!

There is no way you're not a closet case.

[Badger]

Updated data from CDC show that more Americans over the age of 85 have died of COVID-19 than those under age 65.  The risks to young people are terribly overstated by the sensationalist media. 

It is a shame that an 86 year olds life means less to you people than the life of a 55 year old.

I can guarantee you it doesn't to him. He's just showing the truth.

But it's ok, continue to assume a moral high-ground which you don't have.

You might want to tone it down.

Quite the understatement.

[Badger]

Latest update to my firms efforts to get funding to get us through. We're doing reasonably well, amazingly enough, due to having laid off most of our staff. The amount of work I have I had assumed would run out by the end of the week for about 3 weeks now. However, I think this week might be it.

We were approved for a significant SBA loan, but the key word here is loan. This is not a PPP loan which can be forgiven and covers payroll, rent, health insurance, and one other major thing I can't remember. Our application for a PPP Grant was, I kid you not, lost by the SBA we discovered yesterday. It was all so infuriating to learn that apparently since the SBA was receiving 800 applications per hour, the bank's merely cherry-picked the biggest companies to Grant loans to. So small firms like mine got screwed, while taxpayer dollars went to places like Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. Small business support indeed!

Anyway, Congress apparently appropriated more money for the program yesterday so we are back in line for a grant ( or as Mister reactionary blithely refers to it "welfare checks". Awfully cheeky coming from a guy whose paycheck is entirely taxpayer-funded). In the meantime my wife and I may very well have to apply for unemployment this weekend. :

[Badger]

Here's a good question - How do these protest to re-open fit in with the Republican saying "All Lives Matter"?

"Sick and old people should just stay home."

Plus "fears of Coronavirus are blown way out of proportion by the media", and don't forget "the cure is worse than the disease!"

[Badger]

Latest update to my firms efforts to get funding to get us through. We're doing reasonably well, amazingly enough, due to having laid off most of our staff. The amount of work I have I had assumed would run out by the end of the week for about 3 weeks now. However, I think this week might be it.

We were approved for a significant SBA loan, but the key word here is loan. This is not a PPP loan which can be forgiven and covers payroll, rent, health insurance, and one other major thing I can't remember. Our application for a PPP Grant was, I kid you not, lost by the SBA we discovered yesterday. It was all so infuriating to learn that apparently since the SBA was receiving 800 applications per hour, the bank's merely cherry-picked the biggest companies to Grant loans to. So small firms like mine got screwed, while taxpayer dollars went to places like Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. Small business support indeed!

Anyway, Congress apparently appropriated more money for the program yesterday so we are back in line for a grant ( or as Mister reactionary blithely refers to it "welfare checks". Awfully cheeky coming from a guy whose paycheck is entirely taxpayer-funded). In the meantime my wife and I may very well have to apply for unemployment this weekend. :

Hang in there, Badger!

Thank you, ma'am. But you've helped remind me that I have my health, and with that perspective I really don't have that much to b**** about.

[Badger]

Latest update to my firms efforts to get funding to get us through. We're doing reasonably well, amazingly enough, due to having laid off most of our staff. The amount of work I have I had assumed would run out by the end of the week for about 3 weeks now. However, I think this week might be it.

We were approved for a significant SBA loan, but the key word here is loan. This is not a PPP loan which can be forgiven and covers payroll, rent, health insurance, and one other major thing I can't remember. Our application for a PPP Grant was, I kid you not, lost by the SBA we discovered yesterday. It was all so infuriating to learn that apparently since the SBA was receiving 800 applications per hour, the bank's merely cherry-picked the biggest companies to Grant loans to. So small firms like mine got screwed, while taxpayer dollars went to places like Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. Small business support indeed!

Anyway, Congress apparently appropriated more money for the program yesterday so we are back in line for a grant ( or as Mister reactionary blithely refers to it "welfare checks". Awfully cheeky coming from a guy whose paycheck is entirely taxpayer-funded). In the meantime my wife and I may very well have to apply for unemployment this weekend. :

The busboys and waiters and cooks at Ruth's Chris are going to appreciate getting paid, and hopefully having a job in a few months.

Yes, and I don't begrudge them that. But you utterly missed the point of my post. Is that being that the fast overwhelming majority of applicants being small and otherwise profitable businesses like myself, which cumulatively employ far more people then larger businesses like Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, may not be able to keep our own staff having a job for the sole sin of not being a large business yet.

[Badger]

Las Vegas Mayor Karen Carolyn Goodman's interview with the manager Anderson Cooper goes viral for suggesting that the people in her city be a "control group" to see if the curve will rise, among other really dumb statements

Mayor Goodman seems more concerned about getting the casinos and hotels running again, then she is about the public safety or about addressing the problems of Las Vegas' massive homeless population.

Oscar was smart, but Shady. Carolyn's just dumb.

[Badger]

He hires the best people.

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1253075681908531200

I had to read this article just to see if maybe there was more to it and maybe the guy had some at least tangible background in public health prior to raising Labradoodles. Nope. When Azar was a deputy secretary of HHS way back in 2006, this dude worked as his confidential assistant, whatever that means, for one year. He spent 2012 through 18 breeding labradoodles. And now he's heading up the response to the coronavirus within HHS.

Un-freakin'-believable. This is what happens when you have a mindset that all government spending outside the Pentagon is BS, so the least you can do is promote your family and friends because, who's going to be really harmed by poor government service anyway? This is exactly the spirit we saw when Bush appointed his buddy, heck of a job brownie, to head FEMA, when his prior work experience was being president of the American Quarter Horse Association, from which he was fired!

I guess one can still support Trump if one assumes that coronavirus is still blown vastly out of proportion so having a grossly unqualified crony to the former healthcare industry lobbyist running the department is an okay sacrifice rather than seeing (gasp!) A democrat in the White House.

[Badger]

He hires the best people.

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1253075681908531200

Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job

This is an unnecessary smear against the high standing US Labradoodle Breeding community, viewed around the global as the premier source of Labradoodles.

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/special-report-former-labradoodle-breeder-tapped-to-lead-u.s.-pandemic-task-force-2020-04

"Before joining the Trump Administration in January 2018, Harrison’s official HHS biography says, he “ran a small business in Texas.” The biography does not disclose the name or nature of that business, but his personal financial disclosure forms show that from 2012 until 2018 he ran a company called Dallas Labradoodles.

The company sells Australian Labradoodles, a breed that is a cross between a Labrador Retriever and a Poodle. He sold it in April 2018, his financial disclosure form said. HHS emailed Reuters that the sales price was $225,000."

What? No Aussie Labradoodles in my neighbourhood.

Labradoodle lives matter!

[Badger]

Latest update to my firms efforts to get funding to get us through. We're doing reasonably well, amazingly enough, due to having laid off most of our staff. The amount of work I have I had assumed would run out by the end of the week for about 3 weeks now. However, I think this week might be it.

We were approved for a significant SBA loan, but the key word here is loan. This is not a PPP loan which can be forgiven and covers payroll, rent, health insurance, and one other major thing I can't remember. Our application for a PPP Grant was, I kid you not, lost by the SBA we discovered yesterday. It was all so infuriating to learn that apparently since the SBA was receiving 800 applications per hour, the bank's merely cherry-picked the biggest companies to Grant loans to. So small firms like mine got screwed, while taxpayer dollars went to places like Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. Small business support indeed!

Anyway, Congress apparently appropriated more money for the program yesterday so we are back in line for a grant ( or as Mister reactionary blithely refers to it "welfare checks". Awfully cheeky coming from a guy whose paycheck is entirely taxpayer-funded). In the meantime my wife and I may very well have to apply for unemployment this weekend. :

Latest update, and it goes from bad to nearly Kafkaesque. While we are awaiting our PPP loan to (hopefully) go through, I decided that I and my wife, who is also my firm's office manager, have to bite the bullet and file for unemployment effective this coming Monday. I tried to do so about an hour ago. I have a preexisting account from about four years ago when I briefly collected unemployment for several weeks after being laid off by a government office. It turned out quite for the best as it gave me the impetus to finally go back to Private Practice.

Anyway, I obviously can't remember what my PIN number from four years ago was, and after one attempt and receiving the message that if I unsuccessfully try two more times I'd be locked out of my account, I clicked the link for forgot PIN. The link requested my name, and then requested me to enter my social security number. I did, and and after a few seconds of the rotating circlr icon showing the computer was thinking, it instructed me to retry I did this three times and received a message that it couldn't go through it this time and to call the following toll free number for assistance. I called the number, and after entering my social was given an automated message that call volume is so large right now that I need to call back later. I repeated this entire cycle four times with the same result.

Thus I can't apply for unemployment by phone, nor can I do it online, nor am I permitted to do so in person. F*** this world.

[Badger]

https://twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/1253329870790078466

This model doesn't take into account anything about how we have observed COVID-19 actually spreading thus far or environmental factors (like warmer weather, less reliance on public transit, etc.) that favor the South.  Urban areas have higher infection rates despite doing relatively more social distancing, and I don't expect that to change once things start gradually opening back up.

What are your thoughts on Georgia reopening tomorrow? Even Trump has said that he disagrees with that decision, and in my view, it is reckless. Sure, the South may have factors that work to its favor, but nothing can be taken for granted, and there should be at least some precautions in place when reopening the economy.

I think something's got to give in regards to the stay-at-home restrictions.  Georgia appears to be blazing a trail, but the relaxations are more measured then what is being reported in the media. I don't see it as any less controlled than Colorado's phased-in reopening on April 26.  The most important aspect of Kemp's plan, IMO, is allowing hospitals to resume elective procedures (i.e., like hip replacement surgeries) with is going to help immensely with severe financial bleeding hospitals are seeing due to the cessation of most outpatient procedures. 

Don’t you remember?
When Kemp does it, it’s a mass murder, but when Polis does it, it’s just responsible reopening.

It is more than reasonable 2 have significantly greater suspicion of the motives and judgment of such decisions made by leaders who openly scoffed at and downplayed the outbreak from day one, as opposed to those who took the matter seriously and enacted prompt responsible shut down measures.

 I admittedly am skeptical of reopening hair salons and tattoo parlors this early, and I'm not yet willing to say Polis is making the right decision here. However, it is not unreasonable to trust someone like Kemp significantly less when his entire record and rhetoric the last several weeks have shown consistently poor leadership and foresight.

[Badger]

https://twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/1253329870790078466

This model doesn't take into account anything about how we have observed COVID-19 actually spreading thus far or environmental factors (like warmer weather, less reliance on public transit, etc.) that favor the South.  Urban areas have higher infection rates despite doing relatively more social distancing, and I don't expect that to change once things start gradually opening back up.

What are your thoughts on Georgia reopening tomorrow? Even Trump has said that he disagrees with that decision, and in my view, it is reckless. Sure, the South may have factors that work to its favor, but nothing can be taken for granted, and there should be at least some precautions in place when reopening the economy.

I think something's got to give in regards to the stay-at-home restrictions.  Georgia appears to be blazing a trail, but the relaxations are more measured then what is being reported in the media. I don't see it as any less controlled than Colorado's phased-in reopening on April 26. The most important aspect of Kemp's plan, IMO, is allowing hospitals to resume elective procedures (i.e., like hip replacement surgeries) with is going to help immensely with severe financial bleeding hospitals are seeing due to the cessation of most outpatient procedures.  

Don’t you remember?
When Kemp does it, it’s a mass murder, but when Polis does it, it’s just responsible reopening.

It is more than reasonable 2 have significantly greater suspicion of the motives and judgment of such decisions made by leaders who openly scoffed at and downplayed the outbreak from day one, as opposed to those who took the matter seriously and enacted prompt responsible shut down measures.

 I admittedly am skeptical of reopening hair salons and tattoo parlors this early, and I'm not yet willing to say Polis is making the right decision here. However, it is not unreasonable to trust someone like Kemp significantly less when his entire record and rhetoric the last several weeks have shown consistently poor leadership and foresight.

Can you just admit that you're letting partisan considerations color your evaluation of how governors have been responding to this crisis?  Georgia hasn't seen any considerable growth in new cases in almost two weeks and has done approximately twice as many tests as Colorado.  The "motivations" of the governors in question don't change these facts.  Georgia is one of the states best-positioned to responsibly reopen, at this point.

As a small business owner, I also figured you'd be more sympathetic to nail/hair salons who have not been able to operate for well over a month now despite historically being some of the most well-regulated industries from a public health standpoint.  Kemp and Polis are correct in considering that The lost jobs, wages and income security resulting from these arbitrary stay-at-home orders has to end at some point (and probably sooner rather than later).    

No, I believe I am accurately assessing how political partisanship has thoroughly colored the response to the crisis by certain Governors like Kemp. I am not in phatically stating that Georgia is wrong, though I suspect they are, based on the figure to flatten the Curve. Kemp has shown no signs of an epiphany in the last several weeks contrary to the know-nothing talking points he is continually spouted. So no, suspicions against him as well warranted.

Again, I'm not certain that Colorado is taking the right Steps either. To the extent that I may not be as aware as the governor of the state as to the exact up-to-the-minute health statistics and advice they are receiving from their health professionals, I would be more inclined based on performance - - not partisanship - - to trust their governor over Kemp. But again, I view Colorado's reopening with some apprehension.

Course I'm sympathetic to small business owners in the s*** we are going through. It is a noxious to me that we have frittered away what was a bounding National Surplus in the early 2000s and pissed them away with needless wars in the Middle East End wholesale tax cuts to the donor class. We could have used that Surplus first in the Great Recession for a more vibrant stimulus package, and even more so now. but let's not forget that at least According to some links from respectable organizations posted in this thread recently that even Economist are not in favor of reopening soon as it's just going to cause more economic dislocation by likely permitting a resurgence of the outbreak.

[Badger]

Latest studies show infection rates much higher, which means a much lower death rate.

I’ve been saying this from the very beginning. Biggest overreaction ever.

It seems weird to me that almost 50 thousand deaths in US so far are being written off as an overreaction.....

https://twitter.com/gdinwiddie/status/1250130371242582016

This cannot be reposted enough.

[Badger]

AP-NORC poll: Few Americans trust Trump's info on pandemic

President Donald Trump has made himself the daily spokesman for the nation’s coronavirus response. Yet few Americans regularly look to or trust Trump as a source of information on the pandemic, according to a new survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Just 28% of Americans say they’re regularly getting information from Trump about the coronavirus and only 23% say they have high levels of trust in what the president is telling the public. Another 21% trust him a moderate amount.

Confidence in Trump is higher among his supporters, though only about half of Republicans say they have a lot of trust in Trump’s information on the pandemic — and 22% say they have little or no trust in what he says about the COVID-19 outbreak.

44% of Americans at least moderately trust Trump on giving advice regarding the Coronavirus, even though he has been repeatedly shown to me possibly the most ignorant repository of the statements, misinformation, and outright suppression of reality possibly in the entire country.

Trump supporters are brainwashed cultists, chapter 3721.

[Badger]

Unfortunately, in this instance, Trump said something (as was correctly quoted by Arch) completely stupid, and none of the reporting of the actual real scientific results are being discussed.

This is the real Trump Derangement Syndrome, right here folks.

[Badger]

https://twitter.com/dwallacewells/status/1251922312770748417

Trump supporters, you are complicit with this. How can you even begin to justify continuing to support this Administration? Serious question.

[Badger]

Before suggesting injecting Lysol, he actually said "I'm not a doctor but I have a big you-know-what".

Not only dangerous, but supremely embarrassing.

Did he? Genuinely?

[Badger]

It's hard to top everything he's said before, but Trump pretty much topped all the other stupid sh** he's said before yesterday by telling people to essentially inject clorox to cure the virus. My god we are doomed.

And yet, not one of his current supporters will give up on him. Admitting error in their choice of President is simply not in their DNA at this point.

[Badger]

Dettol And Lysol Maker Warns Against Drinking And Injecting Disinfectant After Trump Suggestion

The makers of Dettol and Lysol, have been forced to issue a strong warning telling people not to inject or drink disinfectant, after President Donald Trump contradicted experts and wrongly suggested it could be ingested to treat coronavirus.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/isabeltogoh/2020/04/24/dettol-and-lysol-maker-warns-against-drinking-and-injecting-disinfectant-after-trump-suggestion

Always amazing again and again that people elected this guy as President ...

Far more amazing that 40 to 45% of voters still support him.

And yes, I will repeat this this out every. Single. Time. That Trump yet again, for literally the umpteenth thousandth time has said or done something that would get any other president laughed / hounded out of office, or likely impeached.

I suppose that looking at my family members, mostly extended but even including my father, who are fundamentally decent people, that at some point their conscience and rationality will kick in and say, gee, I may be conservative and / or a Republican, this guy really is a terrible terrible option to continue leading this country with four more years.

Trump supporters have continuously disappointed me and the rest of their country so that's far, but my belief in people's ability to change continues to flicker

[Badger]

The leader of a bleach-drinking cult wrote to Trump days before he suggested the use of disinfectants as treatments for humans suffering from the coronavirus

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/24/revealed-leader-group-peddling-bleach-cure-lobbied-trump-coronavirus

Every time I think we finally, at long last, hit bottom....

[Badger]

What do you guys think? Could this turn into something or is it a nothing burger?

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1253785676274970625?s=20

Looks like another crank theory to file next to the Hooker Piss Tape.

Other than the fact it's extremely well documented, cites numerous credible media sources, has multiple such sources corroborating his argument, fits Trump's MO to a T, and provides an undeniable motive, and there is an actual novel insertion in the recent trade deal that would hold China harmless for such incidents as by sheer coincidence a pandemic outbreak, you are absolutely right!

As noted in another post, I'll be the first to agree that Seth Abramson is generally a sketchy Source. However, this is a surprisingly cogent and well documented argument he presents. Good enough that just standard knee-jerk denial that Trump is a chronic f****-up just won't cut it as a response.

[Badger]

https://mobile.twitter.com/thehill/status/1253734108448120834

a) Trump's probably lying and making up excuses for his behavior,

b) if Trump's not lying the question is whether a global pandemic is really the right time for the President of the United States to troll the press, instead of acting, um, presidential.

There's no reason whatsoever to give him Trump the benefit of the doubt regarding the mind blowing, but still lesser evil of option b. There was absolutely zero in his tone, body language, or delivery that implies he was just trolling the Press. Offering BS insane ball excuses that literally make his medical advisers cringe publicly on camera next to him is something we've seen over and over again. As is when even his gargantuan idiocy reaches Quantum Mass that he walks it back with blatant lies.

[Badger]

At this rate, we'll hit 1,000,000 cases by Monday.

There are already over a million cases of coronavirus in the United States, and probably several million at this point, as the serology studies have indicated. However, why was there such a significant increase in the number of cases today? Coronavirus is on the verge of overtaking the Vietnam War in terms of the number of officially recorded casualties, and I don't think the White House's estimate of 60,000 is going to hold up.

Yes. I update the post from the same source every day at around the same hour. That's the net increase from yesterday at 8:00PM CST.

And, just from active cases alone and assuming not a single additional case take place after today, we're looking at around 100,000 deaths already. In reality, we can be looking at least a couple hundred thousand.

If states start opening up again in the midst of this (I'm looking at you, GA, FL, and TX), we can start thinking of parts of a million. This is really serious.

Georgia's reopening has definitely been ill-advised, but Texas seems to be taking greater precautions, comparable to those here in Colorado. What framework do you think should be established for lifting shutdowns? As I've noted before, I don't think they can be sustained beyond June. Nevertheless, it is very likely that coronavirus approaches or even surpasses the casualty figures of either World War I (116,516) or World War II (407,000).

I thought Colorado was also doing an (ill advised) early opening.