COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron

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https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1308532275697586183

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https://twitter.com/StarTribune/status/1309523201408602113

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https://twitter.com/DoctorYasmin/status/1311524415948099585

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https://twitter.com/JamesGleick/status/1311349170511450112

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From this past April:
https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1248099064765460481

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https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1312462466983501824

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https://twitter.com/RoKhanna/status/1313145421657640962

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https://twitter.com/ddiamond/status/1312038486183219200

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White House Blocks New Coronavirus Vaccine Guidelines

Top White House officials are blocking strict new federal guidelines for the emergency release of a coronavirus vaccine, objecting to a provision that would almost certainly guarantee that no vaccine could be authorized before the election on Nov. 3, according to people familiar with the approval process.

“The public must have full faith in the scientific process and the rigor of F.D.A.’s regulatory oversight if we are to end the pandemic,” the biotech industry’s trade association pleaded on Thursday, in a letter to President Trump’s health secretary, Alex M. Azar II, asking for release of the guidelines.

The Food and Drug Administration submitted the guidelines to the Office of Management and Budget for approval more than two weeks ago, but they stalled in the office of Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff. Their approval is now seen as highly unlikely.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

New Woodward audio: Trump said in March he was too busy to meet with Fauci

    TRUMP: "Yes, I guess, but honestly, there's not a lot of time for that, Bob. It's a busy White House. This is a busy White House. We've got a lot of things happening. And then this came about. Look, we have the greatest economy on Earth. The greatest economy we've ever had. And in one day, this thing came in and we had a choice to make. Close everything up and save potentially millions of lives, you know hundreds of thousands of lives. Or don't do anything and watch, look at body bags every day being taken out of apartment buildings."

    FAUCI: "Who told you that?"

    TRUMP: "Me. I told me that."

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He just pulled the plug on any relief bill until after the election. The dumb mother finkser. Why is he so bad at populism??

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1313551795646541824

Wow. So much crazy to unpack there.

How does he think he's going to get something different after the election, with either this Congress or the next?

I wonder how Republican Congressional leadership feels about being referred to by Trump as "my representatives"?

There's the gaslighting ("not negotiating in good faith").  The obvious lies. There's an ongoing COVID-19 wave in the Midwest and Mountain West. The presumption that a loss is impossible. That's he's bailing on helping Americans in favor of pushing an unpopular, rushed nomination.

And then there's the fact that the market he's bragging about tanked in response to the tweetstorm.  (I wonder who in Trump's circle may have shorted the market earlier?)

I think this sums up the month for Mr. Trump so far:


Still four weeks to go! (Hopefully we can avoid any national or planetary nuclear Elmo's, but I'm not going to hold my breath.)

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

An explosive new documentary details how Jared Kushner's coronavirus task force consisted mainly of 20-something volunteers buying PPE with personal email accounts

Similar allegations were made last month:
‘It was a government of chaos’: Kushner’s coronavirus task force whistleblower says he was pressured to ‘fudge’ death data model

Mr Kennedy said that he decided to join Mr Kushner’s team of volunteers after a friend recommended it to him, and did it because he thought it “didn't seem political.”

However, when he started the job, he realised that the group of around 20 volunteers had no experience of sourcing and buying medical supplies, and were made up of people from various different fields.

He also told Ms Meyer that he believed he was joining a group of volunteers that would assist another team working on procuring the supplies, but quickly found out that was not the case.

“We were the team,” Mr Kennedy said. “We were the entire front-line team for the federal government.”

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https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1315292328047894528

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https://twitter.com/propublica/status/1315421675945709568

Trump has "drained the swamp"  by turning it into a bottomless pit.

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From the long-ago days of March, 2020:

Trump says 200,000 Americans could die from coronavirus, because he’s done “a very good job”

President Donald Trump just dramatically redefined success on the country’s response to the coronavirus.

Barely a month ago, Trump claimed the coronavirus would go away on its own. Then he said it paled in comparison to the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak, which killed about 12,500 Americans. Now he’s saying that the estimates showing Covid-19 could kill 100,000 Americans — roughly equivalent to two Vietnam Wars or 38 September 11 attacks — actually reflect how effective he’s been.

During a news conference on Sunday, Trump said that a final US coronavirus death toll somewhere in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 people would indicate that his administration has “done a very good job.”

(In the the United States at least 214,000 people have died from COVID-19, with no signs the deaths will stop in the near future.)

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https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1317822838519128068

That's a lot of words to say "ignore it and pretend its gone away".

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https://twitter.com/JamesFallows/status/1320095039289233411

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One year ago:
https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1187829299207954437

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https://twitter.com/TopherSpiro/status/1321098402768310272

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https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1321435418987024384

Death. Cult.

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https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1321435418987024384

Death. Cult.

At least they are honest. They don't give a rat's ass about the plebes that come to their Nuremberg rallies.

They are not honest. They couldn't be honest if their lives depended on it.

Honest - Scrupulous with regard to telling the truth; not given to swindling, lying, or fraud; upright.

Shameless - Having no shame, no guilt nor remorse over something considered wrong; immodest; unable to feel disgrace.

Trump and his fellow abusive criminal traitors are shameless.

They've also shifted to mass death "herd immunity" as their COVID-19 strategy:

Despite publicly downplaying it, President Donald Trump and his team of White House advisers have embraced the controversial belief that herd immunity will help control the COVID-19 outbreak, according to three senior health officials working with the White House coronavirus task force. More worrisome for those officials: they have begun taking steps to turn the concept into policy.

Officials say that White House adviser Scott Atlas first started pushing herd immunity this past summer despite significant pushback from scientists, doctors and infectious disease experts that the concept was dangerous and would result in far more Americans getting sick and dying. Since then, various White House advisers have tried to play down the idea that the administration has implemented a strategy for COVID-19 based on herd immunity, which holds that if enough people contract a disease and become immune from it, then future spread among the broader population will be reduced.

But those working on the government’s COVID response say that the attempts by the White House and Atlas to steer clear from using the phrase “herd immunity” are merely a game of semantics. Privately, one of those sources said, the actual policy pursuits have been crafted around a plainly herd immunity approach; mainly, that the government should prioritize protecting the vulnerable while allowing “everyone else to get infected,” that source said.

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https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1322001939266109441?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

(I post this only because I've been assured by many Republicans that the actions of a President's sons are very important and we should judge their fathers by their behavior.)

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https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1320353720132128768
https://twitter.com/Olivianuzzi/status/1324926651633963010

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11/6 (Today): <F>

• Cases: 10,058,586 (+139,064 | ΔW Change: ↑52.87% | Σ Increase: ↑1.40%)
• Deaths: 242,230 (+1,277 | ΔW Change: ↑22.79% | Σ Increase: ↑0.53%)

Good GOD that is a large number. Please tell me there is some backlog there and that's not all new cases

Nope...  It's been out of control since about a day or two before the election.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1321051933654863872

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

HUD Secretary Ben Carson tests positive for coronavirus; aide says he’s in ‘good spirits’

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson has tested positive for the coronavirus. Carson is the first member of President Trump’s Cabinet known to have tested positive.

The department’s deputy chief of staff, Coalter Baker, said Monday that Carson was “in good spirits and feels fortunate to have access to effective therapeutics which aid and markedly speed his recovery.”

The 69-year-old Carson was among several top Trump administration officials who attended last week’s election night party at the White House.