Covid-19

[JL25and3]

Re: Covid-19

Suggestion: Maybe keep politics out of this thread. There are plenty of threads to discuss the politics that go along with this issue.

It’s a little hard to talk about it in the United States without talking about politics.

[ojo]

Re: Covid-19

All the major bars in Fells Point, Maryland are shutting down until further notice.

[hardrain]

Re: Covid-19

only a matter of days before inter-state travel is banned, I bet.

[BRenninger]

Re: Covid-19

It's just a matter of time before Covid-19 infiltrates all of our armed forces if it hasn't already. When it happens the DOD hopefully has a plan and about 3 back-up plans ready to go.

[Sixty one]

Re: Covid-19

I just heard the first American sailor tested positive. This sadly may be the beginning of many from our military.

[jlw1980]

Re: Covid-19

Our governor just closed schools for two weeks, and one of those weeks (this one) is spring break for most schools. That almost certainly won't be long enough.

[jlw1980]

Re: Covid-19

MGM is closing all of its Vegas properties.

[HelloNewman]

Re: Covid-19

Not sure if this was posted earlier, but Yankee minor leaguer has tested positive:


https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/y...for-two-weeks/

[PettittesPrincess]

Re: Covid-19

Schools closing for 2 weeks, though I imagine it will be longer than that.

[Yankee Tripper]

Re: Covid-19

I just hope we don’t have a US patient become the equivalent of South Korean patient 31.

[Casey at the Bat]

Re: Covid-19

Our governor just closed schools for two weeks, and one of those weeks (this one) is spring break for most schools. That almost certainly won't be long enough.

My school district is closed until April 10. I still have to go to work though as an “emergency worker.” Not sure why though.

[JL25and3]

Yep....that is my point...

If you’re talking about TV news, OK. But if you’re relying on TV news for your information, that’s always going to be a problem. If you’re reading the Times or the Post, their coverage of this has been excellent.

[JL25and3]

Re: Covid-19

I was saying that it ultimately doesn't matter what one person, even a President, does. In this situation, it's much more dependent on the entire human population to stop the spread of the virus. You then said you thought the United States government botched the response more than most countries, which seemed to imply that the United States was one of the main causes of this issue. Sorry if I misinterpreted somewhere.

Also, we're on page 19 (at least in my settings) of the COVID-19 thread. Just wanted to point that out. As I'm typing this, I'm starting to realize that it's not particularly interesting.... but oh well. Going for it anyway!!

Sorry, just got a few responses in a row and it's tough to respond to every single thing. I guess I ultimately believe that there's no response anyone could have had to make things different than they are right now. Similar things have happened before, and they have a way of working themselves out. Was Trump urging that it was like a flu ignorant? Obviously, in retrospect, it was. But who knows? If it hadn't become a pandemic, and things got better on their own (which no one can control), could it have been a great way of reassuring the public and quelling fear? Sorry, this is probably getting too philosophical rather than factual.

This just isn’t true. It seems as if there's nothing the government can do now, that it’s just up to the human population, but we got to this place through massive, deliberate incompetence and blundering, and not just over the last two months.

DHS and the NSA both had teams specifically devoted to disease security, monitoring outbreaks worldwide, coordinating information from other agencies so there could be early, coherent responses. Trump fired both teams two years ago. The CDC's global disease budget was slashed, severely reducing its scope. Basically, the whole structure that was supposed to provide reliable, early information was dismantled.

But then, Trump doesn’t believe in actual information provided by experts. He believes that facts are political, so whatever suits his political needs has to be true. He has no credibility, because he’s been blatantly making stuff up for three years.

In this case, Trump spent weeks pretending that this wasn’t a real problem for the US. Because the stock market crashed, he treated the whole thing as a political attack on him, so he needed to minimize it. He started out lying about it on a daily basis, and he’s still doing it. One thing that means is that the public isn’t getting clear, reliable information, which leads to panicked people buying all the toilet paper available.

All those "human population" things we're being told to do now, we should have been told to do weeks ago, but that would have required Trump to take the disease seriously, judge information accurately, and deliver that information credibly. That’s one thing a leader can do.

And then there’s the testing. If the government's response teams had been left intact, we might have gotten a testing program ramped up much earlier (as other countries did). That would have helped us know the true scope of the disease, identify sick people, quarantine them or at least enable them to get early treatment, and generally respond realistically. But Trump wanted there to be only 15 cases, so he didn’t want expanded testing.

He continues to spread all sorts of lies. Testing is available to anyone who wants! Only symptomatic people can spread the disease! Our response is perfect! His denial of facts that do not favor him is putting our lives at risk. Thank goodness for Anthony Fauci, because no one believes a word Trump says.

[YankeePride1967]

Re: Covid-19

If you’re talking about TV news, OK. But if you’re relying on TV news for your information, that’s always going to be a problem. If you’re reading the Times or the Post, their coverage of this has been excellent.

This is the problem with lumping the media into one big ball and label it “the enemy”. Cable “news” is anything but. It is entertainment aimed largely at partisan audiences. This is also why we t is important to support print media.

[YankeePride1967]

Re: Covid-19

South Korea has averaged 10,000 peopld tested PER DAY. As of yesterday, we have tested a TOTAL of 28,000. Pathetic.