COVID-19 Megathread 3: Third time's a charm

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

That was probably one of his best briefings in a while. Bipartisan praise and the like. Still a low bar, however.

You don't think it was marred by his suggestion for turning Easter into the Donald Trump version of Jonestown?

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

One month ago:https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1232058127740174339

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Coronavirus Treatment Developed by Gilead Sciences Granted “Rare Disease” Status, Potentially Limiting Affordability

On Monday afternoon, the Food and Drug Administration granted Gilead Sciences “orphan” drug status for its antiviral drug, remdesivir. The designation allows the pharmaceutical company to profit exclusively for seven years from the product, which is one of dozens being tested as a possible treatment for Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.

Experts warn that the designation, reserved for treating “rare diseases,” could block supplies of the antiviral medication from generic drug manufacturers and provide a lucrative windfall for Gilead Sciences, which maintains close ties with President Donald Trump’s task force for controlling the coronavirus crisis. Joe Grogan, who serves on the White House coronavirus task force, lobbied for Gilead from 2011 to 2017 on issues including the pricing of pharmaceuticals.

“The Orphan Drug Act is for a rare disease, and this is about as an extreme opposite of a rare disease you can possibly dream up,” said James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology International, a watchdog on pharmaceutical patent abuse.

You may remember Gilead Sciences from this:

Untangling the Trump administration’s lawsuit over an HIV prevention drug

The U.S. government says in a lawsuit that Gilead, the maker of the anti-HIV drug Truvada, owes the U.S. public royalty money.

The U.S. government routinely sues pharmaceutical companies for making false claims, bilking Medicare, illegal kickbacks, and sloppy manufacturing practices. But on 6 November, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed suit against Gilead Sciences Inc. of Foster City, California, for reasons that cannot easily fit on a bumper sticker. At the center of the dispute are monkey studies done by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) with a Gilead drug called Truvada, and the drug’s use as part of a highly effective HIV prevention strategy called pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP).

Truvada for PrEP has earned Gilead billions of dollars, and the government contends it deserves some of those earnings because it helped develop the intervention. Specifically, the government alleges Gilead failed to obtain licenses to use four patents that CDC obtained on research results related to PrEP. “Gilead has repeatedly refused to obtain a license from CDC to use the patented regimens,” the federal lawsuit states. “Meanwhile, Gilead has profited from research funded by hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars … but has not paid any royalties to CDC.” The lawsuit contends that “Gilead’s conduct was malicious, wanton, deliberate, consciously wrongful, flagrant, and in bad faith.”

Drugmaker Gilead reaches multiyear agreement with White House to donate HIV prevention med

Pharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences has agreed to donate drugs that reduce the risk of HIV transmission for up to 200,000 people a year, the Trump administration says.

The agreement between Gilead and the Trump administration will last until at least Dec. 31, 2025, and possibly through the end of 2030, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement Thursday. Gilead will donate its PrEP medication Truvada, which is used to reduce the risk of HIV infection and usually sells for $1,600 to $2,000 a month in the United States.

The deal will "help us achieve our goal of ending the HIV epidemic in America!," President Donald Trump said in a tweet.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/markmackinnon/status/1242798008170938369

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https://twitter.com/jamie_love/status/1242572551550898176

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https://twitter.com/Amy_Siskind/status/1242959885823770624

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"Praise me or watch your citizens die." The latest demand from Dictator Don.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1243353170996350976

As is the case every single day, Mr. Trump makes a strong argument that the United States and the world would be better off if he'd died yesterday.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

To break the massive wall of text here....we are so screwed

https://twitter.com/bad_takes/status/1243356330951204864?s=09

It's going to be horrible beyond what we can really comprehend even now, but the end result is that the dead are going to disproportionately be GOP voters (elderly, male, rural).

(To be clear, we are all going to suffer horribly - Trump cultists and good people alike. But the final electoral impact seems near-certain to be to the disadvantage of those who willfully chose to create the present circumstances, which does have a certain sort of karma to it.)

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

To break the massive wall of text here....we are so screwed

https://twitter.com/bad_takes/status/1243356330951204864?s=09

yeah I just saw the whole interview..........Has trump lost his damn mind

He is on here seriously suggesting that people in New York don't need 30,000 ventilators because he claims that some hospitals only have 1 and he is accusing Cuomo of somehow inflating the number of ventilators his state’s public health system needed in this crisis just to make him look bad

This is a Crazy interview that shows trump at his absolute worst
all he has done is provided more ammo to the very people he says he dislikes and make no mistake a lot of future Attack Ads are going to be using clips for from this interview.

I makes him look terrible, reckless, irresponsible and reminds many Americans who maybe rallying around him at the moment why they hate him so much in the first place

I just cant believe my ears.
Is there someone at the White House who can slap him and wake him up?
The doctors and nurses are saying they need ventilators like yesterday, yet alone 2 weeks from now.
OMG, what is wrong with trump?
He is not taking this seriously! People are dying!

Lol. What on earth  has led you to think that Trump (or his enablers and lackeys) would care about other human beings?

He is taking this seriously, and has been for a little over two weeks now, once it finally penetrated to his brain that COVID-19 could impact him personally. For example, he's very worried about the cruise ship industry:
https://mobile.twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1243357749297049600

But care about other people, or <gasp> actually do his damned job? Roflmao  - Trump couldn't President if his own life depended on it. He's fractally awful - a vile waste of DNA at any conceivable scale or resolution. The only thing surprising is that anyone is still surprised at how awful he is at everything. (Although that will probably come across as some sort of cosmic challenge, and I'll be surprised that he's managed to find new depths of depravity and insanity to sink to. If humanity is an ocean, with our best  and brightest as foaming waves at the surface, Trump is the business end of drilling rig a few kilometers below Challenger Deep.)

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/crampell/status/1243346211563765761

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Im going to attempt to do the impossible and Play devils advocate for President Trump

As many of you on here already know Trump is your classic narcissistic
He needs for people to constantly praise him at all times and tell him how awesome he is.
Kim and Putin have already picked up on this because They know all they have to do is say a few nice words to the guy and he gives them everything they could ever ask for

Maybe its time our governors start having that same mentality
Im not saying they have to like it but I think they should all get on the phone right now and Give trump whatever BS praise he is asking for in order to get what they can out of him.

hell if I was governor I would tell him he is the greatest president since Lincoln if he would shut up and give my state everything it needs lol

Not let me be clear about this The Governors and mayors should not have to do this but if helps save lives and get them the resources they need then it is worth it in the end

Even setting aside the cost to our democracy from that scenario, there's a bigger problem with it. Mr. Trump is an incompetent moron in addition to being insane and corrupt. He couldn't lead effectively if he wanted to. We have to aceppt that, so long as Mr. Trump and his appointees remain on the scene, our national government will operate with only a small fraction of its possible effectiveness.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Trump touts great success as US becomes world's worst virus epicenter

As America became the epicenter of the global coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump downplayed the escalating national crisis.

His comments at Thursday's afternoon briefing underscored the growing duality of the fight: While the President is telling a tale of great successes, of a government powerfully mobilizing, front-line health care workers are facing gruesome scenes in hospitals in a growing number of hot spots.
Later, ignoring traditional codes of the presidency at a time of trial, the President lashed out in a TV interview at Democratic governors channeling appeals from overwhelmed health care workers in their home states as Covid-19 exacts an increasing toll.

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https://twitter.com/revrrlewis/status/1243162967555870721

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https://twitter.com/JohnKerry/status/1243552337429438464?s=20

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1243572588200280064
NAZBOL GANG.

We are living in a day and age where John Kerry has agreed with Trump on Twitter, Donald Trump has complimented John Kerry...on Twitter, a stimulus bill passed through the House that involved TWO TRILLION dollars and only ONE Republican House member publicly spoke out against it, it's March 27th and there is not a SINGLE professional sporting event being played anywhere in America, the UK Parliament is shut down for a month, gas is averaging $2.05 a gallon, GM is gearing up to mass produce medical equipment, and Atlas Forum is no longer.  

2020, y'all.  

No, just the first quarter of 2020. Imagine what experiences 2020 has lined up for the rest of its run!

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/kenvogel/status/1243668002949730310?s=21

The governors should demand Trump's immediate removal, or start seizing and selling federal assets to pay their states' epidemic-related costs.

The civil war with the Banana Republicans is coming anyway, and the epidemic will make state or intra-state preparation impossible. Might as well control when it starts.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

When I was a kid I thought America was the greatest country and the year 2020 would be the future with incredibly technology and amazing human achievements.

 2020 sucks, the American government looks totally incompetent, all over the world voters have embraced regressive governments with an eye towards the past.

The Iron Heel was published in 1908, and its story about the rise of the Oligarchy concludes in 1932, the year Huxley published Brave New World. SF great Robert Heinlein first published, If This Goes On— in 1940. George Orwell published 1984 in 1949. William Gibson published Neuromancer in 1984. We've been headed here for a long, long time.

None of them had the whole picture in one go - after all, fiction has to be believable, and Mr. Trump is pretty unbelievable - but they paint a pretty accurate portrait of us all the same.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/trump-asks-pastors-to-pray-for-reelection-calls-nov-3-one-of-the-biggest-dates-in-the-history-of-religion/

We have a very, very big election coming up, especially if you’re evangelical—if you’re evangelical, if you’re Christian, if you’re, frankly, almost any faith. And I guess probably you could go any faith, Tony, if you think about it. But we have a very important election coming up. We have people on the other side that are against a lot of the things we all stand for. And you know one of the things I’m most proud of is knocking out the Johnson Amendment, where the people that we most respect, namely the people on this line, you weren’t able to speak your will, speak what you thought, speak about where you stand politically, what’s good for the church, what’s good for all of the things that we represent. And we knocked out the Johnson Amendment. They would have held you very horribly responsible if they wanted to, and they did in some cases. What they did to the people that we want to hear from, and people that your people want to hear from, so importantly. So, we’re able to do that and many other things. And so, it’s just going to be, it’s a big date, Nov. 3—that’s going to be one of the biggest dates in the history of religion, as far as I’m concerned. So, I want you to be, we have to keep aware of that, ‘cause as we fight this, people are forgetting about anything else. You turn on the news, and all you see is the coronavirus or whatever—some people call it the Chinese virus, they call it a lot of different things—but the virus, that’s all you see. You don’t see anything else.

Setting aside his mendacity and inability to use the English language, Mr. Trump is not entirely wrong. November 3rd will give the American "Christian conservative" movement (not Christian, not conservative, but definitely well-described as a sort of movement) one final chance to drop its reputation in the toilet and flush.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

I'm no constitutional scholar obviously but wouldn't the 9th and 10th amendments have something to say about the orange idiot locking down anything?

He'll just say that Article 2 gives him the power to do it, and all the Banana Republicans will fall in line. (Unless they've fallen over dead first, of course.)

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Anyways, we could have prevented a second wave, but it’s too late now. In about one-two weeks, what is happening in New York will emerge in mid-size American cities. Expect (but not limited to) Atlanta, Charlotte, the DC area, pretty much all of non-panhandle Florida, Nashville, Las Vegas, and Phoenix to be possible hotspots. Other midsize cities may also be affected. Had we adopted the “authoritarian” lockdown measure I have been pushing for weeks, this second wave would have been preventable.

It stopped being preventable November 8th, 2016.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/michikokakutani/status/1244096183913644033

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https://twitter.com/ParkerMolloy/status/1244075229464481792

'Scandal' isn't the right word. It's more like 'indictment'.

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https://twitter.com/GavinNewsom/status/1244029584808402945

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https://twitter.com/politico/status/1244353720969723904

Feb. 21st
Kudlow doesn't see 'major blow' to U.S. economy from coronavirus

March 6th
Kudlow says coronavirus won’t cause U.S. recession b

nder pointed questioning during interviews on two cable-business networks, Kudlow maintained an optimistic tone about the economic outlook, at various times, saying the hit to the economy from the COVID-19 disease would be “temporary” and “short-lived.”

And there's much more.

These people aren't simply stupid - they are, at absolute best, criminally incompetent. That Mr. Trump and his cohorts are still in power is utterly inexcusable.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Donald Trump now claims over one hundred thousand dead Americans will be a "very good job".

“If we can hold that down, as we're saying to 100,000 [deaths], it's a horrible number, maybe even less, but to 100,000, so we have between 100,000 and 200,000, we all together have done a very good job,” said Trump, who predicted that the peak number of deaths will occur in two weeks.

https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1244394427805769728

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/keithboykin/status/1244373578507845632