COVID-19 Megathread 4: Grandma Got Run Over by the Dow Jones

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Am I the only one who was genuinely horrified by that press conference? JFC.

My capacity for horror is nearing exhaustion. I'm mostly down to just disgust at the orange waste of humanity, and anger at his enablers.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Per capita, April 3 end of day:

Number of cases:
60% Blue: 10 - 15 per 100k
40% Blue: 15 - 20 per 100k
30% Blue: 20 - 30 per 100k
30% Red: 30 - 40 per 100k
40% Red: 40 - 50 per 100k
50% Red: 50 - 75 per 100K
60% Red: 75 - 100 per 100k
80% Red: 100 - 250 per 100k
90% Red: 250+ per 100k

Per capita, April 2 end of day:

Number of cases:
60% Blue: 10 - 15 per 100k
40% Blue: 15 - 20 per 100k
30% Blue: 20 - 30 per 100k
30% Red: 30 - 40 per 100k
40% Red: 40 - 50 per 100k
50% Red: 50 - 75 per 100K
60% Red: 75 - 100 per 100k
80% Red: 100 - 250 per 100k
90% Red: 250+ per 100k

I appreciate what you're doing, but we need to keep in mind that these numbers are controlled by testing (because it's all we have), and that testing isn't being done rigorously or in sufficient volume. Eventually death counts will probably be a better proxy, but even those are obfuscated in various ways.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/WSJ/status/1246102085428486144


How do the Republicans think they're going to re-establish "medicine should be a source of profit for investors" after this?

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Five Weeks ago:

Trump Accuses Media and Democrats of Exaggerating Coronavirus Threat

Mr. Trump said that news outlets like CNN were “doing everything they can to instill fear in people,” while some Democrats were “trying to gain political favor by saying a lot of untruths.” His acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, went even further, telling conservative activists that journalists were hyping the coronavirus because “they think this will bring down the president; that’s what this is all about.”

At a campaign rally on Friday evening in South Carolina, the president denounced Democrats, describing the concerns they have expressed about the virus as “their new hoax” after the Russia investigation and then impeachment. “Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus,” he said. “We did one of the great jobs. You say, ‘How’s President Trump doing?’ They go, ‘Oh, not good, not good.’ They have no clue. They don’t have any clue. They cannot even count the votes in Iowa.”

Of the three officials, Mr. Azar went the furthest in suggesting that the United States might face a difficult next phase of the coronavirus, if it spreads. Mr. Trump has repeatedly told advisers he is concerned that Mr. Azar and others in the administration are presenting an “alarmist” view.

Following the president’s lead, Mr. Mulvaney also minimized concerns over the virus. “The flu kills people,” he said. “This is not Ebola. It’s not SARS, it’s not MERS. It’s not a death sentence; it’s not the same as the Ebola cris

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/voxdotcom/status/1246173155934306304

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/04/02/nation/kraft-family-used-patriots-team-plane-shuttle-protective-masks-china-boston-wsj-reports/

The news, which broke early Thursday, resembled a plot pulled straight out of a summer blockbuster: The Kraft family had deployed a New England Patriots team plane to China to deliver about one million desperately needed N95 respirator masks to health care workers in Massachusetts.

Yet the story is as alarming as it is heartwarming, underscoring a harsh reality as the coronavirus pandemic spreads ever faster around the United States. Governor Charlie Baker and his counterparts throughout the country are forced to go to extraordinary lengths to secure life-saving medical equipment in the absence of a coordinated federal response.

“This is not how it is supposed to work,” said Representative Katherine Clark of Melrose, a member of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership team. She described herself as “very grateful” for the Kraft family’s generosity and help getting the critical gear, but said “what we need is a coordinated federal system."

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/MarkLevineNYC/status/1246499789359001600

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1246538228267712514

Truly, Mr. Trump and his Republicans have made America First!

(And he's Number One on Facebook, too!)

(Narrator: He was not number one on Facebook.)

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/IlvesToomas/status/1246640465262178304

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/stevesilberman/status/1246897032368775169

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

The idea that investments to stop pandemics are seen as unprofitable spending towards public health is a major reason why we are in this mess

The damning thing is, this isn't unique to health care. It happens with everything that the vampire capitalists can sink their fangs into. Modern capitalism (as practiced in the United States) is all about cutting things to maximize profit at the expense of anything and everything else, and trying to do so in fashion that won't leave the profiteer holding the bag when the real costs need to be paid.  (Or buying "insurance" in the form of connections to the levers of power so that they can socialize their losses the same way they socialize their costs whenever possible. It's just the profits that get to stay in private hands.)

The COVID-19 pandemic is nature slapping our civilization across the face. We can either learn and improve (to the detriment of wealth-extracting parasites) or we can keep marking time until we get hit so hard our civilization dies. (From a pandemic, from global warming, from something hitting us from space, from a massive geologic event, or just from too many things breaking at the wrong time because we've pared everything down too far in the name of 'shareholder value'.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://mobile.twitter.com/kenvogel/status/1247341470450962432

Investing heavily in gallows and guillotine futures looks better every day.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://mobile.twitter.com/kenvogel/status/1247341470450962432

Novartis to donate malaria drug in fight against coronavirus

Novartis will donate enough doses of malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to treat several million patients in the fight against the coronavirus, if it wins approval, the Swiss company said on Friday.

There are no vaccines or treatments approved for the disease, but there is currently a 1,500-person trial, led by the University of Minnesota, to see whether hydroxychloroquine can prevent or reduce the severity of COVID-19. Two other trials are studying blood pressure drug losartan as a possible treatment.

Novartis makes the malaria drug, which is also used to treat lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, at its Sandoz unit in the United States. It plans to donate 130 million doses of the drug and is in talks with U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulators over expanding its use for coronavirus.

Not mentioned in the article, nor at any of the appearances of Doctor Don's Medicine Show:

Former Novartis CEO Explains Why His Company Paid Trump Lawyer Michael Cohen $1.2 Million (May 16, 2018)

Obviously, just because a major manufacturer of hydroxychloroquine is promoting the drug as a remedy for COVID-19 patients, and previously paid the Presiden't (now imprisoned) lawyer for $1.2 million doesn't mean that their efforts to help cannot be sincere. But neither does it mean there's no corruption going on.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1247732044903350272

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1247677350130495493

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Federal Support Ends For Coronavirus Testing Sites As Pandemic Peak Nears

Some local officials are disappointed the federal government will end funding for coronavirus testing sites this Friday. In a few places those sites will close as a result. This as criticism continues that not enough testing is available.

In the Philadelphia suburbs, Montgomery County has a drive-through site that has tested 250 people a day since March 21.

"It has been a very successful site. We are hoping by the time it closes Friday afternoon that we will have tested a little over 5,000 individuals," says Dr. Valerie Arkoosh, who chairs the commission in the county of more than 825,000 people.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/1246146713523453957

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

WSJ Opinion:  Virus mortality crashes as economic misery skyrockets.

WSJ should be embarrassed for publishing this dog crap and paying this moron. A journalist and "economist" with zero medical credentials belittling the advice of medical experts and accusing them of a waging a "war" on the economy? Get the fkcu out of here with that. I think COVID-19 will be a crystallizing moment for the country, when it finally realizes its had just about enough of the right wing's war on expertise and knowledge.

The WSJ is just highbrow FoxNews. Like everything else Murdoch (and most things Republicans), it's the civilizational equivalent of radioactive waste.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1248374630399672321

Mass graves... just one more day in Donald Trump's Great Republican America.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/GerryConnolly/status/1248334335658336256
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1238590988593086464

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/LucasFoxNews/status/1247931506250723328

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Trump is dumb, I've been saying this. It's pretty amazing how the dumb label hasn't stuck to Trump.

He hides it behind a stinking cloud of ignorance, mental illness, and generally being an awful human being.

There's a quote from the late sf author Douglas Adams that Mr. Trump has reminded me of:

“One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn’t understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so—but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence, the act. He preferred people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous.”

Mostly minus the amazingly clever part. Trump is about as sharp as a sack of nerf balls. but he does have a unique talent for appealing to the lowest of his fellow human beings.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/slpng_giants/status/1248671688709017601

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/ASlavitt/status/1249004396278616065

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Why is the administration so obsessed with hydrochloroquine when there are several other possible drugs out there that seem to have shown more promise with fewer side effects?

Does Trump have any personal financial stake in those other drugs?  

Maybe the manufacturers of those other drugs could pay Michael CohenRudy Giuliani $1.2 million?