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

[It’s so Joever]

For the record, on Tuesday morning I had a cardiac incident and a pulmonary embolism because of the lockdown.

Everyone who supported the lockdowns happy now?

For the record, more people have died from the virus than the entire f***ing Vietnam War in just two months. Yes I am happy with the lockdowns. No I am not happy with the situation.

[It’s so Joever]

Oh please. Quit being such an apologist for thugs. Oh goodie! They didn't actually cock and point their guns at legislate arguing in favor of keeping the shut down! Nothing to see here! Totally business-as-usual compatible with the open expression and exchange of ideas in the legislature why nonviolent needs!

Some of us carry guns. Yes, all the time. Just because you don't like guns doesn't mean carrying guns is a threat ... let alone terrorism. Or is the terrorism that they opposed the suspension of our fundamental rights and breathed in public without wearing a mask. I've seen so much hateful invective directed at people who support the Bill of Rights these past months its kind of hard to tell why we should "muh killz the terrist protesters!" Quit being an apologist for a comment clearly calling for violence against protesters. What do you think "treat them like terrorists" means in this context?

If you willfully break into the state capitol, defy social distancing orders during a pandemic, and do this all while knowing the full ramifications of your actions, you are a domestic terrorist in my mind. I wouldn’t want these f***ers to be arrested for several reasons, but they should all be identified and forced to sign a waiver so that they don’t take up hospital beds/ventilators if they get infected in their display of self-pitying egomania.
Quit being an apologist for people who are clearly criminals at best.

[It’s so Joever]

Imagine being such a paranoid coward that you think you need to carry a gun everywhere.

I mean, in some places which are far away from police departments, I get it. Also if you are a smaller (physically) person in a dangerous area, I would also understand. What I don’t really understand are why these terrorists feel the need to bring their guns to the Michigan State capitol. Are they planning on shooting at the ambulances they block?

[It’s so Joever]

Inslee extends stay at home order until the end of May at least.

https://katu.com/news/local/stay-home-order-to-be-extended-through-at-least-may-31-in-state-of-washington

Governor Jay Inslee has just announced that the Stay Home, Stay Healthy order will be extended until at least May 31.

Inslee said he will officially announce that the stay home order will be extended on Monday, May 4.

Gov. Inslee did deliver some good news for Washingtonians. Inslee has announced a Four Phase plan to reopen businesses in Washington.

Inslee said, "We have not won this fight against the virus."

Gov. Inslee said we are currently in Phase One of his plan to reopen businesses.

Inslee says we still will have a ban on large gatherings. He says his office continues to hear about gatherings with many people that are not permitted in our current Stay Home order.

Inslee said the following will be allowed in Phase 2:

Camping
Small gatherings of five people
New construction
Barbershops and Salons
Restaurants at 50% capacity
Inslee said the following will be allowed in Phase 3:

Gatherings of 50 people allowed
Restaurants can hold 75% capacity
Gyms and Movie Theaters can open at 50% capacity
Inslee says there will be 'at least' three weeks between phases so that the spread of the virus can be analyzed.

I usually like Inslee, but this is too far for Washington. If anything, East Washington should be reopening now while several other states in the South (And Colorado) should not be reopening.

[It’s so Joever]

Just out of curiosity, is it just the death numbers, or also the case numbers that are being fudged with in Florida?

[It’s so Joever]

I usually like Inslee, but this is too far for Washington. If anything, East Washington should be reopening now while several other states in the South (And Colorado) should not be reopening.

I have seen you say this multiple times, but in fact, the county with the most number of cases per capita is Yakima - on the east side of the Cascades (second is essentially a tie between Snohomish and Franklin - also in Eastern Washington). In fact, infection in Eastern Washington have slowed the least, definitely compared to Western Washington outside of King/Snohomish, but also the core metro.

The state is till averaging ~200 cases a day and 15 deaths... We're close, but not quite there. Inslee made the right call.

Good to know, although I was thinking of reopening the more rural parts of Washington as a testing ground first because of less population density and the fact that rural areas are going to inevitably be even more hard hit by the lockdowns than urban areas. In general, rural areas should be reopened first unless there is a rather large outbreak that isn’t present in urban areas.
I still think 200~ cases/day for a state with the population of Washington is probably at the point where they can reopen slowly, but I would honestly rather have governors be too cautious than the other way around.

[It’s so Joever]

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/scientists-conclude-people-cannot-get-coronavirus-twice/ar-BB13tm64?ocid=st2

Korean scientists definitively conclude that it's impossible for people to get it twice.

Yeah that would make sense.
Even the four cold-causing coronaviruses offer a few months of immunity, so this one isn’t likely to be worse.
The real question is how long does immunity last against Covid-19?
SARS and MERS have a few years of immunity, so that could be the case with this virus,
or it could be longer/shorter. I guess we will know in a few years.
Also even if there isn’t permanent full immunity, a second reinfection may also be a lot milder/asymptomatic in nearly everyone.

[It’s so Joever]

Conservatives rejecting remdesivir, still promoting hydroxychloroquine
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/02/donald-trump-coronavirus-remdesivir-229765

What a shame.
I never understood why hydroxychloroquine was so hyped when Remdesivir was obviously more promising since early February. I guess Trump supporters sometimes can’t think for themselves.

[It’s so Joever]

Conservatives rejecting remdesivir, still promoting hydroxychloroquine
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/02/donald-trump-coronavirus-remdesivir-229765

What a shame.
I never understood why hydroxychloroquine was so hyped when Remdesivir was obviously more promising since early February. I guess Trump supporters sometimes can’t think for themselves.

Trump and his followers don't understand the concept of admitting they're wrong--once they decide to get behind something they dig in and no amount of facts will convince them otherwise.

That’s exactly why we should deny hospital beds and medical treatment to those who were in the reopening protests, at least for now. Even better, let’s just give them as much hydroxychloroquine as they want for free. They can even decide their dosage sizes without extra cost!

[It’s so Joever]

Conservatives rejecting remdesivir, still promoting hydroxychloroquine
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/02/donald-trump-coronavirus-remdesivir-229765

What a shame.
I never understood why hydroxychloroquine was so hyped when Remdesivir was obviously more promising since early February. I guess Trump supporters sometimes can’t think for themselves.

Trump and his followers don't understand the concept of admitting they're wrong--once they decide to get behind something they dig in and no amount of facts will convince them otherwise.

That’s why the Democrats should engage in as much voter suppression of predominately Trump supporting rural areas as possible, at least in the short term. I hate to say it, but it’s essential for our survival as a country in the long run.

No no no no no!  That "cure" would indeed be worse than the disease.  Don't try to restrict people's right to vote, no matter how good your intentions may be.  That kind of thinking weakens our democracy; fatally, if taken far enough.

Good point, I changed my statement to a better idea for dealing with the idiots.

[It’s so Joever]

Conservatives rejecting remdesivir, still promoting hydroxychloroquine
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/02/donald-trump-coronavirus-remdesivir-229765

What a shame.
I never understood why hydroxychloroquine was so hyped when Remdesivir was obviously more promising since early February. I guess Trump supporters sometimes can’t think for themselves.

Trump and his followers don't understand the concept of admitting they're wrong--once they decide to get behind something they dig in and no amount of facts will convince them otherwise.

That’s exactly why we should deny hospital beds and medical treatment to those who were in the reopening protests, at least for now. Even better, let’s just give them as much hydroxychloroquine as they want for free. They can even decide their dosage sizes without extra cost!

That's absolutely disgusting. We cannot deny medical care based on political beliefs, and doctors often have to offer treatments to patients that they don't necessarily believe in. It's not okay to joke about giving a potentially fatal medication to someone just because you disagree with their life choices. In what world would that be anywhere close to acceptable?

Fair enough, how about we just extend the denial of treatment to those who break stay-at-home orders?
The hydroxychloroquine thing was more a joke.

[It’s so Joever]

I just saw a model that predicts 350,000 dead in the US alone by the end of June.

I lost hope I didn't even know I had.

It’s more possible than people think, keep in mind someone who said that 50,000 Americans would die from this at the end of April would have been called an alarmist back in March. I still think our (very weak) social distancing measures will help, and that number will be closer to 200,000. It still would be a tragic loss of life, but better than the worst outcome imaginable.
Luckily for us, Remdesivir and a possible vaccine may bail out the American people who have failed in the face of crisis.

[It’s so Joever]

Truth be told, I feel that mask laws would be good in theory, but the American politicians are too afraid to enforce them. We saw how many who broke the stay-at-home orders in front of the police weren’t arrested, and I highly doubt people who don’t wear masks would be arrested considering the precedent. Honestly, this crisis has really revealed just how truly eroded our society has become.
Modern American “culture” is a blight on our country.

[It’s so Joever]

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/05/03/nolte-they-told-us-lockdowns-were-about-flattening-the-curve-they-lied/

What had been a national effort to save lives, a noble effort of national unity, has been twisted by Democrat governors into something unnecessarily punitive that reeks of a partisan power play to destroy President Trump’s re-election chances. Give me a better explanation.  Because this is the bottom line…

Unless you’re willing to wait for a cure (that is at least a year away or might never come at all), when there is no risk the health care system’s going to crash, what is the point of waiting one more day to open up the country when waiting doesn’t make us any safer?

Normal, non-partisan people are asking this question as well.

Oh great, the supposed pro-lifer is now taking the “reopen now or bust” route.
This argument has been debunked so many times on this thread, I won’t even bother.
What I will day is that New Zealand is going to be able to open up because they took it seriously from day one. Ditto for South Korea. I warned conservatives since early March that we needed a strict national lockdown if we wanted to be able to get back to normal quickly. Plenty of others did as well, yet your party denied the problem. Trump said it would go away in April.
 Had the Republicans actually taken this threat seriously and not dawdled, this never would have gotten so out of control. We could have been open by now.
Blame Trump and America for letting it spread so much to the point we couldn’t control it.
And don’t make a false dichotomy between preventing a pandemic and the economy. Most economists believe the outcome of reopening to quickly will be worse for the economy in the long term as opposed to staying locked down longer.
In many states, reopening now is detrimental.
Granted, a few States can safely reopen now, provided they ramp up testing and close their borders as much as possible with other States.
But to claim we must completely reopen now everywhere because “it won’t help” is one of the most atrocious and absolutely untrue statements I have seen this week. You know better, or at least I wish you did.

[It’s so Joever]

237k tests today 27.3k new cases today
Last Sunday: 206k tests and 27k cases that that

What are you trying to imply here?

I think he’s just doing it so that we can see the numbers.
If I had to extrapolate from the data, this is a good thing and cases are going down, but it’s only two points so it’s not reliable to form a conclusion.

[It’s so Joever]

Although orders are important and do help improve our chances of beating the virus, social pressure is just as helpful for many.
If you know someone who is not social distancing, make sure you make it clear they are ruining the lives of others and are being entitled, selfish, ***holes. (Don’t say the last part) At the very least, express your concern with them.
Tell others who are immunocompromised/have other reasons to be worried about the virus, of people (who they know) who aren’t social distancing. If we want to defeat the virus, we need to make sure people feel socially pressured to be cautious and maintain social distancing, especially in the absence of proper governance.

[It’s so Joever]

It's amazing how they don't care.

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1257335077459165185?s=20

Well, that's my hope gone.

Bye, folks.

You are in Australia, you will be fine.
I would gladly switch places with you.

[It’s so Joever]

Where do they come up with this nonsense? It's obviously not going to reach 3,000 a day.

That's not obvious to me at all. I would have thought it was unlikely, sure. But I have no idea.

The fact that the media even reported this is alarmist garbage, which is irresponsible, and is no help at all. I literally almost had another cardiac episode when I saw it.

They are literally trying to have an excuse to keep us locked down even longer.

I literally cannot take this.

We easily can and possibly will hit 3k deaths per day over a three day average. Will you own up to being wrong yet again when/if we reach that grim milestone? Or will you just blame the media as usual?

[It’s so Joever]

Where do they come up with this nonsense? It's obviously not going to reach 3,000 a day.

That's not obvious to me at all. I would have thought it was unlikely, sure. But I have no idea.

The fact that the media even reported this is alarmist garbage, which is irresponsible, and is no help at all. I literally almost had another cardiac episode when I saw it.

They are literally trying to have an excuse to keep us locked down even longer.

I literally cannot take this.

We easily can and possibly will hit 3k deaths per day over a three day average. Will you own up to being wrong yet again when/if we reach that grim milestone? Or will you just blame the media as usual?

do u admit to being an extremist who has called for people to lose their voting rights and to be refused medical treatment because of political differences

No.
I am not calling for all Republicans, for all Libertarians, for all Democrats to be punished. I have no problem with different beliefs. If you want to cry about lockdowns online, be my guest. That changes when you willingly break orders designed to protect the American people in a national crisis. Unlike the GOP, I actually am for law and order, something Blue Avatars have forgotten.


I am guilty of wanting to enforce basic viral-prevention orders. I honestly wouldn’t take away voting rights from repeat offenders, but I would absolutely deny them medical treatment, especially in the event of a shortage. I would also gladly record them and make sure it is on a criminal record.
 If that makes me an extremist, then so be it.

Besides, considering your emperor’s iconic chant four years ago was “Lock her up!” You really are in no position to even speak.

[It’s so Joever]

Regarding the leaked CDC model estimating 200K cases and 3K deaths per day:

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1257392630331293696

In other words, the New York Times and CNBC almost gave me a heart attack over nothing. Nice.

Not trying to be rude or intrusive, but if you are really experiencing cardiac problems due to the news, maybe you should consider disconnecting a bit (if you can) for your own sake.

[It’s so Joever]

https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1257344749784137732?s=20

We're not going to be able to stop the Flu Klux Klan until we get rid of their Chief Cheerleader.

Trump calls protesters who carried guns into the Michigan Capitol 'very good people' and says the governor should 'make a deal' with them

I am ashamed, but not surprised this happened in our State.

[It’s so Joever]

Let's continue to listen to those protesters.

https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1257626866791448576

It's not surprising to see this, but what will most Americans think once we hit 25% or even 30% unemployment, and the economy has completely crashed? When we have breadlines in every city, mass foreclosures across the country, mass bankruptcies, and millions of jobs permanently lost? At some point, people will have to make a choice between their financial well-being and their fears for their health, and that is an impossible choice for many.

It's a sad day when people pick the economy over their health or other peoples health.

But for many people, the economy and their personal health are inseparable. As you very well know, many people only have insurance coverage because of their jobs. And of course, many others have no insurance coverage at all, even with a job. Depriving them of that would put them further into the hole. Do you think it is morally just for someone to be unemployed and to be reduced to begging at a food bank for sustenance, and to hope that they won't be evicted? All for the sake of a months-long lockdown that will not bring a cure to this virus, and by itself will cause more disruption and more harm? I don't think so.

That's a flaw in the healthcare system (a feature, I guess, for right wingers). Has nothing to do with the impact of coronavirus and everything to do with decades of failure of US leadership.

I certainly am not trying to argue that our healthcare system is "perfect" or "flawless"-it is far from that. What I am trying to say is that there is a point where the stay-at-home orders become unsustainable for millions of Americans. And Governors across the country have begun to recognize that.

I agree, we do need to actually lift the lockdowns soon. There is obviously a point of economic damage which will hurt more people than if the virus infects 70% of the population and hospitals are overloaded. As much as it pains me to say it.
The problem is, we have decided to barely enforce these lockdowns. IMHO, a strictly enforced three week lockdown (with more restrictions) is infinitely better for everyone than months of a pseudo lockdown. The problem is, by trying to appease the loonies of this country, most governors have honestly made things worse. I think states that aren’t seeing dramatic new case reductions (alongside testing increases) should do something like this and then reopen. We can’t afford half-measures, they are making things worse.

[It’s so Joever]

Let's continue to listen to those protesters.

https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1257626866791448576

It's not surprising to see this, but what will most Americans think once we hit 25% or even 30% unemployment, and the economy has completely crashed? When we have breadlines in every city, mass foreclosures across the country, mass bankruptcies, and millions of jobs permanently lost? At some point, people will have to make a choice between their financial well-being and their fears for their health, and that is an impossible choice for many.

It's a sad day when people pick the economy over their health or other peoples health.

But for many people, the economy and their personal health are inseparable. As you very well know, many people only have insurance coverage because of their jobs. And of course, many others have no insurance coverage at all, even with a job. Depriving them of that would put them further into the hole. Do you think it is morally just for someone to be unemployed and to be reduced to begging at a food bank for sustenance, and to hope that they won't be evicted? All for the sake of a months-long lockdown that will not bring a cure to this virus, and by itself will cause more disruption and more harm? I don't think so.

That's a flaw in the healthcare system (a feature, I guess, for right wingers). Has nothing to do with the impact of coronavirus and everything to do with decades of failure of US leadership.

I certainly am not trying to argue that our healthcare system is "perfect" or "flawless"-it is far from that. What I am trying to say is that there is a point where the stay-at-home orders become unsustainable for millions of Americans. And Governors across the country have begun to recognize that.

I agree, we do need to actually lift the lockdowns soon. There is obviously a point of economic damage which will hurt more people than if the virus infects 70% of the population and hospitals are overloaded. As much as it pains me to say it.
The problem is, we have decided to barely enforce these lockdowns. IMHO, a strictly enforced three week lockdown (with more restrictions) is infinitely better for everyone than months of a pseudo lockdown. The problem is, by trying to appease the loonies of this country, most governors have honestly made things worse. I think states that aren’t seeing dramatic new case reductions (alongside testing increases) should do something like this and then reopen. We can’t afford half-measures, they are making things worse.

Don't blame the governors for the lack of a coordinated, cohesive national response

I do blame the governors.
I also blame Trump, FOX News, and the awful modern American culture.
The governors should have been willing to more strictly enforce lockdown measures within their respective states, and it is partially their fault for not doing so.
That being said, I understand why many simply couldn’t due to Agent Orange pitting States against eachother in a f*****d up Hunger Games for ventilators and because America is a nation of self-righteous, spoiled egomaniacs (not everyone, but way too many) who will protest if their hair looks bad.
The governors did screw up, and they deserve some blame, that doesn’t mean I excuse the “presidency” we have today and the faults of the American people.
We had the most resources, the most time, and the most knowledge, and we still failed.

[It’s so Joever]

If the task force is disbanded, I don't think we'll ever be free of this pandemic. Not until we have a vaccine, which might never happen; we've never created a vaccine for a coronavirus.

We would have to learn to live with it, although I think it's impractical to expect social distancing, masks, and all the rest to continue indefinitely. Our society eventually acclimatized itself to HIV/AIDS, to give an example of what the path forward might look like if there is no vaccine.

Well, social distancing is already fraying. But I really think we need a Wuhan-style lockdown until there's a vaccine.

That’s insane, even for me.
A Wuhan style lockdown until a vaccine would devastate society.
We need a Wuhan style lockdown for at most, three weeks to allow the virus to diminish to the point we can isolate and contain pockets while allowing Americans elsewhere to work (with proper social distancing and masks)

[It’s so Joever]

I think we will identify a working vaccine (possibly with some worrisome side effects) sometime in July. But that doesn’t mean we will be out of the dark. At best, we will have the vaccine available for healthcare workers by Autumn, and would be able to distribute it throughout vulnerable populations throughout January. Sadly, in some parts of the US (larger cities, unlucky towns) it’s possible we will have reached herd immunity by the time the vaccine is available (largely because of our “leadership” and culture)