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

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

I was a supporter of the restrictions, but the political motivations and double standards of these "experts" has resulted in me cutting my support. I don't want to hear any more "6 ft apart" or "wear a mask". I will be doing neither. F*** you and your agenda.

Sorry but that's an incredibly embarrassing reason to stop supporting restrictions.

He has a point. The sheer amount of hypocrisy is outrageous and astounding.
I am outraged at all sides at this point, it’s clear saving lives doesn’t matter to anyone in America, and just like the Pro-life GOPers are hypocrites, the Black Lives Matter rioters are hypocrites for going into large crowds during a pandemic that has killed 23k of the lives that matter.

I think Grassroots is being hasty and is acting irrational right now, but he has a good point. When will other Democrats denounce these protests as what they are,  intentional spreading of a deadly disease?

It looks to me like almost everyone at these protests is wearing a mask.



And in any case, it is not hypocritical to make a conscious decision that certain causes or principles are worth risking your life over.

Wearing a mask can only help so much when you are literally screaming at the top of your lungs while standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a cramped formation of thousands.

And sure, risking your life for a cause you believe in is wonderful, but this is going to kill hundreds-thousands of people who simply weren’t involved, who didn’t get that choice.

Keep in mind 23,000 black lives have been lost from this virus. Why are these protestors exacerbating a pandemic which is killing nearly 100x more black Americans in 2.5 months than the police do in a year?
Either these protestors are hypocritical, don’t really care about black lives and just want an excuse to say “guvment bad”, or are ignorant.

FYI: Snarking about people being forced to make Sophie's Choice is a really vile take.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Not sure if this has already been posted here or in another thread, but more than 1000 health professionals signed a letter supporting the BLM protests, but saying that *other* protests are still not good from a coronavirus perspective:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/05/health/health-care-open-letter-protests-coronavirus-trnd/index.html

"However, as public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people in the United States. We can show that support by facilitating safest protesting practices without detracting from demonstrators' ability to gather and demand change. This should not be confused with a permissive stance on all gatherings, particularly protests against stay-home orders."

This is what happens when political culture silences the majority of experts who do disagree with these protests. Let’s be honest, if a healthcare worker or epidemiologist said anything even slightly against these protests, he/she would be the target of a witch-hunting mob and would possibly lose their job.
We really are living in a post-factual society on both sides at this point.

The Right
"The pandemic is a hoax!"

"I have a right to kill grandma for a haircut!"

"Workers should be eager to die for billonaires!"

The Left

"We'll wear masks, but the government really needs to stop being cool with casually murdering our fellow citizens."

"Deploying soldiers against peaceful protesters isn't okay."

forumlurker: "Both sides do it!"

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1269762435713556481

Indeed, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico are suddenly jumping. For two months, Colorado was by far the worst of the Four-Corner States, but things have changed suddenly over the past few weeks.

So what's happening is heat isn't killing the virus? Huh.

In terms of the death toll, at least, it might be some combination of the virus becoming less deadly / us becoming more efficient in dealing with it / some states suppressing numbers to some extent. We know FL has engaged in this to some extent.

But no, heat itself is not enough. At its peak, worldwide, the virus was doing a fair bit of damage in places that have hot winters.

This is a conspiracy theory.  There is no evidence that any state is systematically undercounting COVID-19 deaths or diagnoses.

Wow. I guess a desperate (and totally unnecessary) effort to make Donald Trump look bad must be why that well-known hotbed of liberal conspiracy-fodder, The Economist, reported late last month that,

Official covid-19 death tolls still under-count the true number of fatalities

After trailing behind the death tolls of many European countries at first, America’s official covid-19 death count rose sharply in April. By May 27th it had passed 100,000 victims, more than any other country. Most American states do not publish recent records of deaths from all causes. But New York City, the worst-affected area, has provided reliable weekly data up to May 9th, as have the states of New Jersey, Illinois, Massachusetts and Michigan.

Between March 15th (the week New York passed 50 official fatalities) and May 9th, the city recorded 20,100 official covid-19 deaths, according to the revised estimate. This figure is 86% as high as the 23,500 excess deaths from all causes registered in the same period.

After New York City, the most affected area in the United States has been New Jersey, which has a similar population and suffered 12,300 excess deaths between March 15th and May 9th. The state only includes people who tested positive in its official death toll, which was 9,100 in the same period—74% as high as the excess.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://mobile.twitter.com/MelissaBlasius/status/1270110319520608257

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/Kevinliptakcnn/status/1271191270434758656

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/weijia/status/1271576628683038720

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/BWJones/status/1271981923015856130

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

New York is making the U.S.' coronavirus trends look better than they are

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1273016873945313280

Wow, thanks for ignoring us Westerners!
I assume this means we are legally allowed to secede?

Statistically, the West doesn't exist. Our clout at the national level is an artifact. You've got the West Coast and then nothing until you get to the Midwest (and eastern Texas).

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/NYTScience/status/1274925886148694016

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/GeoffRBennett/status/1275943979792687104

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/SenDuckworth/status/1276271749106225162

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/karltaro/status/1276722692100517888

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

These past few months have definitely changed my perspective on things. You got a fair number of people advocating for economic destruction, erosion of civil liberties, and downright anarchy

Perhaps they've been desensitized by fours years of the GOP telling them that economic destruction, erosion of civil liberties, and downright anarchy in the highest halls of government are all just fine?

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Federal officials allowed distribution of COVID-19 antibody tests after they knew many were flawed

Federal officials failed to immediately stop the distribution of many COVID-19 antibody tests they knew were flawed, leading to inaccurate data about the spread of the virus. Congress is now investigating why the FDA did not review the tests it allowed to be distributed widely throughout the U.S. Sharyn Alfonsi's three-month investigation into the faulty tests will be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, June 28 at 7 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

the problem is the media class, who amplified the COVID fearmongering before doing a complete 180 to downplay virus concerns as protests started.  Now that public attention regarding the protests has started to wane, they're back to shrieking about masks keeping schools closed.  Everything they do is to paint Trump and Republicans in the worst light possible.   

Out of morbid curiosity, what do you think would be a good light to paint - among other things -  nonstop lying, tweeting white power videos, using Nazi campaign iconography, ignoring the deaths of American soldiers, and bailing on his job to go golfing in the middle of a pandemic?

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1278405761077477376

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Mr. Trump appears to have had an extra helping of incoherence this morning:
https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1278686839210233859

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/GeoffRBennett/status/1279167084023500801

Is Trump trying to lose this election

No. He's given up on winning it. Instead, he's creating as much chaos as possible in order to increase his chances of getting away with stealing it.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

The chairs at Mr. Trump's narcissistic wallow were apparently zip-tied together.  
https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/1279168956339798018?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwca...

Oops, forgot to include the gaslighting by the Junior Presidential Electra Complex Tzarina and Senior Presidential Babysitter:
https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1279241127938359296

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

And this isn’t how Europe deals with general unemployment, right?  Is it a completely new set of  programs that multiple countries managed to efficiently assemble regardless of ideology of the government or opposition?  That also doesn’t strike me as a progressive vs. conservative difference.

The reason for paying employers is so they keep people employed rather than firing them. That way it's not an unemployment issue at all. Basically, it allows the businesses to not sink from having to continue to pay wages, but also not lose their employees. It's a much better way to maintain the shape of the economy, IMO.

I think I agree with this.
I’m just wondering why it seems like both parties in the US thought that just directly giving people extra money was a better solution.  Like, what’s the other side of the argument, whether you are a progressive or a conservative?

The loans to small businesses were based on requiring them to pay their employees, with forgiveness of the loan if they did so. One problem with this was at the same time there was a bonus payment for unemployment benefits, such that some employees could make more money being unemployed than working. This infuriated the employees that their employers required them to work, and the employers were dismayed to discover their employees were lazy layabouts.

This is a nice example of a particular split in Republican thinking.

When large corporations or wealthy individuals take advantage of the technicalities of law and finance to their advantage (i.e. Donald Trump's self-described motivation behind his many bankruptcies), Republicans see it as "being smart" or "the free market in action". But when working-class individuals do the same thing, they're described as shameful degenerates.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1279773674149740544

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Trump claims 99% of COVID-19 cases are "totally harmless".

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-2020-salute-america/

Jobs and companies are coming back to our country like never before.  The power of tariffs being imposed on foreign lands that took advantage of the United States for decades and decades have enabled us to make great trade deals where there were none.  Tens of billions of dollars are now paid to the United States Treasury by the same countries.

But there and then we got hit by the virus that came from China.  And we’ve made a lot of progress; our strategy is moving along well.  It goes out in one area, and rears back its ugly face in another area.  But we’ve learned a lot.  We’ve learned how to put out the flame.  We’ve made ventilators where there were none by the tens of thousands, to the point that we have far more than we need, and we are now distributing them to many foreign countries, as a gesture of goodwill.

Likewise, testing — there were no tests for a new virus, but now we have tested over 40 million people.  But by so doing, we show cases, 99 percent of which are totally harmless.  Results that no other country will show, because no other country has testing that we have — not in terms of the numbers or in terms of the quality.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1280209106826125313

From Johns Hopkins, today:




Edit: added link