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

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

"Trump did Coronavirus" isn't going to have the same legs as "Bush did 9/11" as conspiracy theories go. He's not acting like someone trying to please his Chinese creditors, he's acting like someone who has no clue how to respond to a crisis he can't bully away.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Revealed: leader of group peddling bleach as coronavirus 'cure' wrote to Trump this week

Mark Grenon wrote to Trump saying chlorine dioxide ‘can rid the body of Covid-19’ days before the president promoted disinfectant as treatment

The leader of the most prominent group in the US peddling potentially lethal industrial bleach as a “miracle cure” for coronavirus wrote to Donald Trump at the White House this week.

In his letter, Mark Grenon told Trump that chlorine dioxide – a powerful bleach used in industrial processes such as textile manufacturing that can have fatal side-effects when drunk – is “a wonderful detox that can kill 99% of the pathogens in the body”. He added that it “can rid the body of Covid-19”.

...

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

[GeorgiaModerate]

The Trump loan story is real, and is problematic in and of itself; it's clearly a problem for the President to be under obligation to a foreign entity. 

As far as the bribery-to-look-the-other-way story, I'd have to see a lot of SOLID evidence to believe it's more than a conspiracy theory.

[woodley park]

"Trump did Coronavirus" isn't going to have the same legs as "Bush did 9/11" as conspiracy theories go. He's not acting like someone trying to please his Chinese creditors, he's acting like someone who has no clue how to respond to a crisis he can't bully away.

Frankly, we don't need a subplot about debt to China to attack Trump's disastrous response to COVID. Its much more straightforward to just attack his incompetence, inaction, and repeated downplaying of the threat, using his own words against him. His own words after all, have been repeatedly captured on video for months. Hard pass on whatever Abramson is cooking up.

[#TheShadowyAbyss]

As I said for the last few days the U.S is NOT declining, today ALONE we broke a record for new daily recorded cases at almost 37k

[Middle-aged Europe]

It's the best thing for everyone involved when Donald Trump just shuts the f**k up:

Trump skips questions at coronavirus briefing after disinfectant debacle

The daily briefing, which have sometimes gone as long as two hours, lasted just over 20 minutes.

A day after he floated the idea of using disinfectants and light to treat COVID-19, President Donald Trump declined to take any questions at his daily coronavirus briefing at the White House.

The briefing — which can sometimes last about two hours — was over in just over 20 minutes, following remarks from Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and FDA head Stephen Hahn. The two top government doctors charged with combating the coronavirus crisis, Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, were not in attendance.

...

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-skips-questions-coronavirus-briefing-after-disinfectant-debacle-n1192341

[Del Tachi]

https://thebulwark.com/we-cannot-reopen-america/

The movement to “reopen” America is a fallacy based on a fantasy.

The fallacy is the notion that lifting stay-at-home orders will result in people going back to their normal routines. This is false. The state-issued stay-at-home orders did not determine most people’s desires to stay home—they merely ratified behaviors that the vast majority of people and institutions were already adopting in response to COVID-19.

The fantasy is that we can go back to what the world looked like 12 weeks ago. This is not possible now and will not be possible until we possess a vaccine for the novel coronavirus.

Understand that I am not saying that stay-at-home orders should be indefinite. What I am saying is that whenever the stay-at-home orders are rolled back—whether it is tomorrow or a month from now—it will not result in anything like a “reopening” of the country.  And the sooner people grasp how completely and fundamentally the world has changed, the faster we’ll be able to adapt to this new reality.

This is true, lifting the stay-at-home orders won't bring the world back to where it was at the beginning of March.  There will be some people who will be willing to go out as they normally would have (and even more who would choose to go out on a more limited basis) once orders are lifted, but the the hit to public confidence will take a long-time to recover (potentially over a year, or until a vaccine is found).

However, I do think ending the stay-at-home orders will be an important part of instilling confidence; and if lockdowns can be ended safely, then things need to get back open as soon as possible.  I also think that, after a certain point, the harm that protracted lockdowns do does exceed the benefits of "flattening the curve", and once that point is reached we need to let people assume personal responsibility for how much risk they are willing to expose themselves to.  The relaxations on restrictions coming from states like Georgia and Colorado seem consistent with that goal.

And also, I think we all need to say this together:  this is not normal.  We don't need to accept restrictions on the movement of people, the death of locally-owned small business, the suspension of religious services, and millions of unemployed Americans as a new normal.  Its important that we remember that the most blunt force instrument of implementing social distancing (i.e., a stay-at-home order) should only be the most temporary of stopgap measures, and we should demand we move on from them as quickly as possible.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Already a record 37k new cases today. Oof.

[It’s so Joever]

Looking at Illinois now (its a major population center so we should be watching it as a State)
Illinois's cases are surging, but that is due to expanded testing, as the state just reached their 10,000 per day goal. Similarly, I believe that while cases are most likely going down in the whole country, we might continue to see case p/d increases as testing surges. So while our cases per day rate might increase, the reality of the number of new cases might still be the opposite until our testing reaches that point.
That doesn’t mean we should be reopening everywhere, but we should be wary of extrapolating conclusions from case rises due to testing capacity. Another metric to use would be positivity rate, which gives a good picture on how deep the outbreak is in a certain community.
https://wgntv.com/news/coronavirus/illinois-records-largest-single-day-increase-with-over-2700-covid-19-cases-goal-of-10k-tests-per-day-reached/

[Joe Biden is your president. Deal with it.]

Why so much new cases? Backlogged or testing?

[Roll Roons]

Why so much new cases? Backlogged or testing?

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1253804899957080065

Per Nate Silver, a significant increase in testing. The percentage of positive tests is actually down from yesterday.

[#TheShadowyAbyss]

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1253804899957080065

[Roll Roons]

Also New York has the fewest daily deaths since April 1: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/nyregion/coronavirus-new-york-update.html

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

Also New York has the fewest daily deaths since April 1: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/nyregion/coronavirus-new-york-update.html

The NY region is definitely past the peak, but the rest of the country is catching up now.

[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

[emailking]

Businesses in Georgia that reopened are reporting they're not getting any customers pretty much. One barber shop in Atlanta reported on fridays they usually get 80 to 100 people but so far today they only got 2

I wonder if it's even cost effective to stay open if that doesn't start to pick up.

[PSOL]

Taxpayers will pay restaurants to feed seniors in California

Taxpayers will pay restaurants to make meals for millions of California’s seniors during the coronavirus pandemic, an initiative that could pump billions of dollars into a devastated industry while generating sales tax collections for cash-strapped local governments, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Friday.

Newsom predicted millions of people 65 and over would be eligible for the free food, a figure that could push the cost of the program into the billions for just one month of deliveries. Newsom said the federal government will cover 75% of the cost while state and local governments will pay for the rest.

To be eligible, seniors must either live alone or live with one other person who is also eligible. They can’t earn more than $74,940 per year (or $101,460 for a household of two) and they must have documented exposure to the coronavirus. Anyone already getting money from other federal food programs would be ineligible.

What an ingenious solution. I do hope it gets implemented nationwide to feed at-risk seniors.

Probe: Breakdown in protecting feds during virus evacuation

A management breakdown led to some federal employees being sent to help American evacuees from the coronavirus epidemic in China without proper protective equipment, federal investigators have concluded.

Friday’s report from investigators at the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed central allegations from a government whistleblower who complained in February that some HHS employees were deployed without adequate protection while others arrived with full gear. It found that some federal employees had to beg the local county for gear such as masks.

The report was released Friday evening by congressional offices.

Looks here, yet another incompetent move made by this administration.

Unions denounce Las Vegas mayor's call to re-open casinos

UAW president Rory Gamble, whose union represents casino workers in Las Vegas along with automobile workers across the United States, called on Nevada politicians to denounce Goodman at a time when states are looking at how to re-open businesses in ways that keep workers safe.

“UAW Casino employees, their families and the community are not test subjects for her irresponsible theories on public health and the COVID-19 virus,” Gamble said in a statement.

FF move by unions just wanting to keep their members and the general public safe.

[emailking]

Ok so we were definitely not past peak the last 2 weeks. We may not even be now. We'll have to see what next week brings. But even if we get 5 days in a row in the 20s, that doesn't mean we've peaked yet either. As I said before, the curve could be very messy.

As for the increased number of tests, look we'll never know when people got infected. Positive tests is all we have to go on. A decrease in the percentage of positive tests doesn't mean we're past peak. If anything, that would be expected as we start testing more people.

[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....

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/AnnaESanders/status/1253818333243355136

[ProudModerate2]

https://twitter.com/AnnaESanders/status/1253818333243355136

OMG, could this be true?
And yet we still have people who want to re-elect this Orange-Killer-Klown.

[ProudModerate2]

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

There are over 52,000 deaths in the USA, and he is being "sarcastic" during a Covid-19 pandemic briefing. Just think about that for a second or two.