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

[Brittain33]

Does anyone else suspect we are probably overall improving now, but we'll regress now that restrictions are easing?

That’s what it feels like. We don’t have the right conditions to reopen successfully, but we’ll do it anyway to give it a try, and then a month later some states and cities will be back where New York was seven weeks ago.

[Brittain33]

The busboys and waiters and cooks at Ruth's Chris are going to appreciate getting paid, and hopefully having a job in a few months.

The reason for a separate program for small businesses with dedicated funding is because corporations and large businesses like Ruth’s Chris have ready access to capital which is not available to small businesses, and small businesses have a unique role to play in sustaining employment so the federal government feels uniquely qualified to fill that gap. If large businesses and corporations dip into the small business funding, they’re drinking the small businesses’ only milkshake, and they drink it quickly because of their size.

[Brittain33]

Biggest overreaction ever.

I can think of another.

[Brittain33]

It’s not a good analogy at all. Increased security didn’t exactly shut down the economy.

The shoe bomber didn't kill 45,000 Americans and thousands more each day and cause lasting damage to thousands more, not even if he'd been successful.

Stupid analogy, actually.

Now that hurts my feelings, Donald Trump's Toupe.

[Brittain33]

Even if it turns out that total shutdown was an overreaction--and it's not clear that it was, because New York was still pushed past its point of medical capacity--until we'd gone through this once, no one knew how bad it could reasonably get. We just didn't have info. Planning for the almost worst (because we could have done better) was the right thing to do because the downside would have been tragic and catastrophic. As it is, we're seeing death take a large number of people.

[Brittain33]

Ok, fine, I'll put you on ignore.

[Brittain33]

It was a huge mistake to not give direct stimulus money to every American person monthly for the next few months. All the moves to support corporate debt, bailouts, and small business loans have been wrongheaded or bungled and disorganized. Small businesses are very important because they employ majority of Americans but every small business owner is an individual and the program rollout has been a disaster. The money should have gone to individuals first and businesses second.

 As part of future disaster preparation we also need a way to instantly disperse money to every American individual or a targeted group of individuals. This should be done through the Treasury and not the the IRS. The IRS is an organization that is a politcal piñata and is often starved of resources so as to be purposely be inefficient.

 

I don’t know. I have a job, I’m likely to keep it unless things completely collapse, I made more than the stimulus threshold and I don’t need any money from the government right now.

[Brittain33]

When I first saw Trump's allies in the media saying "Fake news, he never said 'inject yourself with bleach!'" I first wrote it off as the usual lying and gaslighting they do. But I thought more about it, and I realized this was their way of protecting their lives of their viewers, who uncritically follow Trump's advice... their was no ideologically approved space for them to contradict the President or allege he could possibly be wrong, but they knew people would die if they said nothing, so pinning it on the media was their way of helping their viewers without appearing to disrespect Trump.

[Brittain33]

How about he literally never told people to inject themselves with bleach - Why isn't that enough?  He said injecting with disinfectant was something doctors should look into.  It was a confused statement from him but he wasn't instructing people to do something dangerous.

It's almost as if some people want to spread the idea that Trump told people to drink bleach in hopes that some Trump fan will actually do it and it will make Trump look bad.

Let me make clearer what I meant, because I think it's confusing:

The media reported what he said, which is that we should investigate injecting people disinfectant or getting UV rays under the skin somehow, to clean out the virus.

Comedians, pundits, partisans reframed it as that he was telling people to inject disinfectant into their bodies, which isn't literally what he said, and makes it a level worse than what it already was.

BUT, the surgeon general, various governors and poison control centers, and the makers of Clorox and Lysol came out with statements actively discouraging people from injecting or ingesting disinfectants, because they knew it would cause illness or death. They did this because they knew some people would respond to Trump's musings by taking chances with what they found in their home. The Maryland poison control center reported a lot of people calling to ask advice, which thank God they did but you know that means others don't think to ask first.

So when the Trump-friendly media or his spokeswoman attack the news media for misrepresenting Trump's claims, they're being dishonest, because the news media reported it accurately, as it reports most things Trump called fake news. It was partisans, comedians, and lazy people who made the claim Trump recommended people do this. But note that people whose jobs involve saving lives believed that at least some of Trump's followers would follow his suggestion to the next possible step, and they needed to get out ahead of it.

[Brittain33]

We really need to deliberately infect 1000 volunteers in an isolated facility with this virus just to see how dangerous it really is. I seriously doubt the claims of a 0.1-0.3 mortality rate, but it would be good to have more information on the true severity of the disease.

This is why hospitals and laboratories keep ethicists on staff.

[Brittain33]

We really need to deliberately infect 1000 volunteers in an isolated facility with this virus just to see how dangerous it really is. I seriously doubt the claims of a 0.1-0.3 mortality rate, but it would be good to have more information on the true severity of the disease.

This is why hospitals and laboratories keep ethicists on staff.

Forumlurker was here.

Note the word, Volunteer.

Sure. But I think an ethicist would weigh the threat posed by coronavirus and still find it unethical to conduct this kind of experiment, even if people volunteered for it. As with organ donation for money, there are some requests which are considered unacceptable to make even if someone is willing. Either they're under duress of needing the money or they don't fully understand the risk or, even if they pass all those tests, medical professionals would consider it a violation of their oath.

[Brittain33]

(Reuters) - Oklahoma's governor has called on U.S. President Donald Trump to declare the coronavirus pandemic an "act of God," a step to help oil-producing states contend with a crude glut that caused futures prices to close below $0 last week for the first time.

Source.

We gonna pray on this one y’all. Praise be to Christ.

Imagine Trump having to acknowledge that God sent a plague to the U.S. because we elected Trump.

[Brittain33]

Whitmer's pallor suggests a lack of sun exposure.

[Brittain33]

I am going to decide I will just relax about the easing of restrictions.

[Brittain33]

Constitutionality allows for public health measures, always has.

[Brittain33]

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

Why is that hard to imagine? There were numerous upon numerous days where it was 2,000-2,500, and I think we had one day where it was 2,700 or 2,800 in the last 2 weeks

Yesterday was 1,154. It was the fifth day in a row when it dropped.

NJ’s data these last two days has been partial—like less than 100–because of a reporting issue. It’s the #1 state for deaths so expect a commensurate bump when they fix it.

[Brittain33]

I read that New York reported 1,600 deaths in nursing homes that were previously unreported. I wonder if that accounts for today's jump.

[Brittain33]

Until we get a vaccine or a very strong treatment that will reduce the risk of mortality to a very low level socially distancing in masks in public are going to be a thing. This is kind of why I'm hoping that the Oxford vaccine ends up working because it works so we can get a vaccine by September life can start to go back to normal around election time and for the holidays.

but until either one of those two things happen we just have to accept we're going to live in a new reality

See, I don't really buy this just because the risk of mortality is already so low that vaccination or improved antiviral remedies just aren't going to be massive game-changers.  The basic math of COVID-19 creates a huge barrier for success; already, more than 99% of people with the virus survive.  An unimaginably successful therapy that has a massive 50% reduction in death will therefore only deliver 0.5% absolute risk reduction.

And it seems like there's been a fundamental recharacterization of "social distancing" since the beginning of this crisis.  Social distancing will not lower the IFR.  Even with strict social distancing, the number of cases will likely be the same after two years as a world with no social distancing.  If the number of cases is the same then the number of people who cumulatively die will not likely change either.

I’m not sure why death/survival is the only metric here. A much larger number of people get hospitalized than die, and many of them have long-term damage to their health. They benefit from a vaccine, too, as well as those people who don’t suffer long-term damage but have a miserable experience of illness.

[Brittain33]

More assaults by people who love freedom. Two teenage employees of McDonald’s were shot by people upset the restaurant was take-out only.

https://www.koco.com/article/suspects-in-custody-after-2-employees-shot-at-mcdonalds-in-southwest-okc-police-say/32395365#

The Founding Fathers would be so proud of this use of the Second Amendment.

[Brittain33]

How is opening a school either any more risky or any less essential than opening a pork processing plant?

The pork processing plant shouldn't be essential, but in any case, the difference is that every child goes to school while there are a small number of massive pork processing plants.

[Brittain33]

Shouldn't New Zealand also be bathed in blue? 

Low count.

[Brittain33]

It now seems pretty apparent that for children, covid-19 is less lethal than chickenpox.  The CDC reports that 8 children age 1-14 have died from covid (out of the first ~60,000 US deaths), compared to 50-100 children who died every year from chickenpox prior to the adoption of a vaccine (and thousands who were hospitalized).  

And yet, parents deliberately exposed their children to chickenpox for generations because they wanted them to acquire immunity and we knew that it was much more dangerous to get it as an adult.  Isn’t the exact same thing true of covid, and to an even greater extent given that covid is actually much more lethal to adults than chickenpox?

While COVID-19 is very rarely lethal to children, the news this week is that a non-trivial number of children suffer something like Kawasaki syndrome weeks after infection, and this is cause for concern.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/15/coronavirus-children-

More to the point, it's hubris to think we know so much about the disease now in month 5 that we can start to recommend people get infected. We simply don't know what the long-term consequences of this illness are for people because it's too early.

[Brittain33]

The last time Jeremy was called upon to denounce Piers, he refused.

Out of curiosity, has Jeremy ever denounced anything he was called upon to denounce? I know he eventually got around to saying something meaningful about anti-Semitism after several years of "all bigotry matters."

[Brittain33]

From that article on Wisconsin, it looks like Dane County and Waukesha County are doing relatively better than others on cases given their large population. Combination of students staying home and white collar workers able to work remotely?

    4,759 in Milwaukee County
    2,070 in Brown County
    1,004 in Racine County
    820 in Kenosha County
    519 in Dane County 
    467 in Waukesha County
    422 in Rock County

[Brittain33]

It should be obvious that including the flag on U.S. military uniforms is not a violation of the flag code.