Oso planning to go pro
The problem is that everyone’s definition of what it means to be let out of this is so different.
Yes...but taking responsibility for both the good and the bad would be a reasonable place to start. If he would simply admit his mistakes, and then stick with the three-phase plan he announced last week, it would go a LONG way toward quelling some of the critics. I will be the first to give him credit if he takes this approach. Not as good as putting CDC in charge, but it would be a reasonable back-up plan that I would support.The problem is that he announced the three-phase plan one day, and then encouraged protests against it the next....
The Atlantic nails it.
Every morning in the endless month of March, Americans woke up to find themselves citizens of a failed state. With no national plan—no coherent instructions at all—families, schools, and offices were left to decide on their own whether to shut down and take shelter. When test kits, masks, gowns, and ventilators were found to be in desperately short supply, governors pleaded for them from the White House, which stalled, then called on private enterprise, which couldn’t deliver. States and cities were forced into bidding wars that left them prey to price gouging and corporate profiteering. Civilians took out their sewing machines to try to keep ill-equipped hospital workers healthy and their patients alive. Russia, Taiwan, and the United Nations sent humanitarian aid to the world’s richest power—a beggar nation in utter chaos."
The Atlantic nails it.https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/underlying-conditions/610261/?utm_source=twitter&utm_content=edit-promo&utm_medium=social&utm_term=2020-04-20T11%253A00%253A55&utm_campaign=the-atlanticWe Are Living in a Failed StateThe coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken."When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills—a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public—had gone untreated for years. We had learned to live, uncomfortably, with the symptoms. It took the scale and intimacy of a pandemic to expose their severity—to shock Americans with the recognition that we are in the high-risk category.The crisis demanded a response that was swift, rational, and collective. The United States reacted instead like Pakistan or Belarus—like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering. The administration squandered two irretrievable months to prepare. From the president came willful blindness, scapegoating, boasts, and lies. From his mouthpieces, conspiracy theories and miracle cures. A few senators and corporate executives acted quickly—not to prevent the coming disaster, but to profit from it. When a government doctor tried to warn the public of the danger, the White House took the mic and politicized the message.Every morning in the endless month of March, Americans woke up to find themselves citizens of a failed state. With no national plan—no coherent instructions at all—families, schools, and offices were left to decide on their own whether to shut down and take shelter. When test kits, masks, gowns, and ventilators were found to be in desperately short supply, governors pleaded for them from the White House, which stalled, then called on private enterprise, which couldn’t deliver. States and cities were forced into bidding wars that left them prey to price gouging and corporate profiteering. Civilians took out their sewing machines to try to keep ill-equipped hospital workers healthy and their patients alive. Russia, Taiwan, and the United Nations sent humanitarian aid to the world’s richest power—a beggar nation in utter chaos."
Sad but true. This country has had issues for years. Then we elected a President who wasn't built to deal with a crisis. And we all are suffering as a result.And before the Trump defenders blast this as partisan, I give you Bush. He was far from a perfect President, but I viewed his initial response to 9/11 as confident, unifying, and just what we needed in a moment of crisis. Trump, on the other hand, used this crisis as just one more reason to divide the country into blue and red.
Agreed about Bush re 9/11... Katrina not so much.
Nearly 1 in 4 Covid 19 deaths worldwide has come in the USA.We have handled this perfectly. There’s clearly no need for more social distancing. Open this country back up.
This isnt a defense of the handling, but thats a misleading clickbait statistic. The US is the 3rd most populous country in the world. The most populous is clearly lying and under-reporting their deaths and the second lacks the testing to provide accurate numbers. So naturally the US is going to have a high proportion of all deaths. When looking per capita, the US (122 per 1MM) is well behind France (305 per) and Italy (350 per) and Spain (~300 per), significantly behind the UK (225 per), and also behind places like Sweden (155 per).
I wouldn't trust any numbers from Russia either. Sounds like they are getting hit hard now.
I don't think China's numbers are right, or Russia's numbers are right, or Iran's numbers either for that matter. I also don't think our numbers are right, or Italy's, or anywhere else's for that matter, though not for the reason the first group of country's are wrong.Simple statistics seem to indicate that we are undercounting COVID deaths by roughly 50%. Not maliciously, but because we haven't tested enough and there is little time or desire to test someone after they have died. I spoke to a nurse the night before last and she said 10 people dies during her shift but none were included in the official COVID stats.Here is the repost of the article comparing prior year deaths in various locations around the world vs. this year, and comparing those to official COVID deaths:https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/more-on-excess-mortality-and-covid19s-hidden-toll
Exactly. Yes China’s numbers are misleading. So are the USA’s. Despite our fearless leader’s statement that anyone who wants a test can get a test, that’s not close to the case.
I had no idea about this individual. An American on the front lines at the WHO. What a quote. “This is the first pandemic in history that we will be able to control. We've seen this. It's going to be difficult. Stick with us, stick with the science and be patient with your governments and your leaders about the next steps, because the public health measures that are put in place, these lockdowns that are put in place are difficult,” she said. “We're all going to get through this. We're all going to be OK, and we will try to save as many lives as we can.” https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/493714-exclusive-meet-the-top-american-fighting-covid-19-at-who
Interesting...and pretty damning for the CDC that it was embedded and involved from the beginning, and yet messed up its test development efforts so badly. If CDC had developed and rolled out a test in late January or early February (when other countries were already successfully testing for the virus), we would be in a very different place than we are right now.I don’t know if was just CDC‘s screwups, or if the Trump administration‘s very public anti-science stance also played a role in disempowering them, but something is severely wrong there...
Doesn't help that they put a person in charge of testing who was fired from his previous job for over promising and under delivering in efforts to promote himself. https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/20/politics/brett-giroir-coronavirus-vaccine/index.html