COVID-19 (f/k/a "the Coronavirus")

[GooooMarquette]

Teal?

Maybe if you include his "executive time." 😴

[Lennys Tap]

What is your opinion of him tweeting all day yesterday about the FBI and Obama? 

My opinion of what Comey, McCabe, Strok, et al did under the guise of "law enforcement" is very, very low. So is my opinion of a media that insists on carrying their water. The dishonest hit job that Chuck Todd pulled Sunday on "Meet the Press" re Attorney General Barr should disgust every American. Trump should shut his mouth, though, and let Durham finish his investigation. The docs we've seen are troubling and evidently there is a lot more to come.

[pbiflyer]

Sign that you might have lost your mind while sheltering-in-place: you tweet or retweet 125 times in the span of 16 hours.

[Hards Alumni]

My opinion of what Comey, McCabe, Strok, et al did under the guise of "law enforcement" is very, very low. So is my opinion of a media that insists on carrying their water. The dishonest hit job that Chuck Todd pulled Sunday on "Meet the Press" re Attorney General Barr should disgust every American. Trump should shut his mouth, though, and let Durham finish his investigation. The docs we've seen are troubling and evidently there is a lot more to come.

Side stepped one question and ignored the other.  You should run for mayor of Naples!

BTW great presser today.  But I guess the highlights weren't on Fox News so you probably missed the coward in chief run away from questions that are too hard for him to answer.

[MU82]

You commend tower for suggesting that everyine tone down the politics, and then go off on one of your unhinged political rants again in LITERALLY THE SAME POST.   

You're 60 years old.  Grow up.

I answered the question that Lenny directly asked me. And I treated him with respect in my comment, which is more than you do to most Scoopers most of the time. Get over yourself.

[TSmith34, Inc.]

Another study, this time by the CDC, that indicates that we are undercounting COVID deaths.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/pdfs/mm6919e5-H.pdf

[Pakuni]

Everyone here is wearing masks and we re-closed our beaches when the non social distancing Democrats from the Miami area invaded last weekend. So we're good, right?

Were you checking beach-goers' voter records or were there some other distinctive characteristics that led you to conclude your community's guests from Miami are Democrats?

[GooooMarquette]

BTW great presser today.  But I guess the highlights weren't on Fox News so you probably missed the coward in chief run away from questions that are too hard for him to answer.

The running away part was odd, but the part that is truly frightening was his circular rhetoric about "Obamagate."

REPORTER: ONE OF YOUR MOTHER'S DAY TWEETS YOU APPEARED TO ACCUSE PRESIDENT OBAMA OF ONE OF -- OF THE BIGGEST POLITICAL CRIME IN AMERICAN HISTORY BY FAR. THOSE WERE YOUR WORDS. WHAT ARE YOU ACCUSING PRESIDENT OBAMA OF COMMITTING AND YOU BELIEVE THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SHOULD PERSECUTE HIM?

TRUMP: OBAMAGATE. IT'S BEEN GOING ON A LONG TIME, FROM BEFORE I EVEN GOT ELECTED, AND IT IS A DISGRACE THAT IT HAPPENED. IF YOU LOOK AT WHAT HAS GONE ON AND ALL OF THIS INFORMATION THAT IS BEING RELEASED -- FROM WHAT I UNDERSTAND, IT IS ONLY THE BEGINNING. SOME TERRIBLE THINGS HAPPENED, AND IT SHOULD NEVER BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN IN OUR COUNTRY AGAIN. YOU WILL BE SEEING WHAT GOES ON OVER THE COMING WEEKS AND I WISH YOU WOULD WRITE HONESTLY ABOUT IT, BUT YOU CHOOSE NOT TO DO SO.

REPORTER: WHAT IS THE CRIME EXACTLY THAT YOU ARE ACCUSING HIM OF?

TRUMP: YOU KNOW WHAT THE CRIME IS. THE CRIME IS OBVIOUS TO EVERYBODY. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS READ THE NEWSPAPERS

Ummmm, ok.

I really worry about our safety as a nation when - in the middle of the biggest crisis in a century - our president creates (and even names) some unspecified crime, won't answer a single question about it, but claims it is "obvious to everybody." He seems like a very desperate man who can't keep his eye on the crisis at hand, but instead focuses on some unnamed offenses from the past.

[Lennys Tap]

Well, the one person quoted in what I posted is the co-founder of ReOpenNC, a group backed by billionaire conservatives and right-wing PACs. (You've heard of Koch and DeVos, I'm sure.) This is another Trump-loving, MAGA-hat-wearing, gun-toting, Confederate-flag-waving protest group that wants a state to re-open even if that state hasn't come close to reaching the benchmarks that Trump set. They don't wear masks, they scream in opponents' faces, they threaten to breathe and spit on people who don't agree with them, etc. They fly in the face of numerous national polls that show 2/3 of Americans, and even nearly 50% of Republicans, disagree with them.

The co-founder of the group actually quit a couple weeks ago because she felt it was deviating from the original mission.

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article242380006.html

"This movement has taken a turn that we were not in agreement with," Cochran wrote in the post. "Ashley acted on her own yesterday with nearly inciting a riot. I have said from the beginning, we are a peaceful action group and I have carried myself that way and protected our group with every fiber of my being."

Again, that was the co-founder of the group, a person who obviously very much wants to see the economy re-open.

As tower said, we can disagree on how we get where we all want to go, Lenny, but I like to think you agree with me that many (if not most) of these well-funded, non-grassroots protest groups are way over the top.

I'll ignore your flip line at the end of your comment because I know you're just frustrated with the situation the economy is in, as all of us are. In fact, I know that you are good people.

Mike, with all due respect how "well funded" does a group have to be to buy a few MAGA hats and a Confederate flag or two? I put as much faith in your Koch brothers conspiracy as I do the George Soros ones cooked up on the right.

To claim that the few protesters carrying Confederate flags (I've seen none, but hundreds carrying American flags) are part of some large, influential group makes for a good rant. Doesn't make it so.

[GooooMarquette]

Someone who isn't afraid to speak honestly about the science:

Fauci will issue a stark warning on the risks of reopening too soon.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/11/us/coronavirus-updates.html#link-6f63d836

"The major message that I wish to convey to the Senate HLP committee tomorrow is the danger of trying to open the country prematurely," he wrote. "If we skip over the checkpoints in the guidelines to: 'Open America Again,' then we risk the danger of multiple outbreaks throughout the country. This will not only result in needless suffering and death, but would actually set us back on our quest to return to normal."

Dr. Fauci was referring to a three-phase White House plan, Opening Up America Again, that lays out guidelines for state officials considering reopening their economies. Among its recommendations: States should have a "downward trajectory of positive tests" or a "downward trajectory of documented cases" of coronavirus over two weeks, while conducting robust contact tracing and "sentinel surveillance" testing of asymptomatic people in vulnerable populations, such as nursing homes.

[Lennys Tap]

Were you checking beach-goers' voter records or were there some other distinctive characteristics that led you to conclude your community's guests from Miami are Democrats?

65% of we mask wearing Collier County folks are Rs. The same % of the massless invaders from Miami-Dade are Ds.
Math.

(It was a joke)

[Lennys Tap]

Side stepped one question and ignored the other.  You should run for mayor of Naples!

BTW great presser today.  But I guess the highlights weren't on Fox News so you probably missed the coward in chief run away from questions that are too hard for him to answer.

The entire, unedited pressers are on Fox.

The edited "highlights" are found elsewhere.

In your opinion, which would be most likely to fall prey to bias?

[Lennys Tap]

WHAT ARE YOU ACCUSING PRESIDENT OBAMA OF COMMITTING AND YOU BELIEVE THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SHOULD PERSECUTE HIM?

PERSECUTE? LOL.

[GooooMarquette]

PERSECUTE? LOL.

It was just what I cut and pasted from C-SPAN's version of the transcript. Guess they need better editors.

Then again, with Trump in charge, maybe he really did mean persecute...

[wadesworld]

The running away part was odd, but the part that is truly frightening was his circular rhetoric about "Obamagate."

REPORTER: ONE OF YOUR MOTHER'S DAY TWEETS YOU APPEARED TO ACCUSE PRESIDENT OBAMA OF ONE OF -- OF THE BIGGEST POLITICAL CRIME IN AMERICAN HISTORY BY FAR. THOSE WERE YOUR WORDS. WHAT ARE YOU ACCUSING PRESIDENT OBAMA OF COMMITTING AND YOU BELIEVE THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SHOULD PERSECUTE HIM?

TRUMP: OBAMAGATE. IT'S BEEN GOING ON A LONG TIME, FROM BEFORE I EVEN GOT ELECTED, AND IT IS A DISGRACE THAT IT HAPPENED. IF YOU LOOK AT WHAT HAS GONE ON AND ALL OF THIS INFORMATION THAT IS BEING RELEASED -- FROM WHAT I UNDERSTAND, IT IS ONLY THE BEGINNING. SOME TERRIBLE THINGS HAPPENED, AND IT SHOULD NEVER BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN IN OUR COUNTRY AGAIN. YOU WILL BE SEEING WHAT GOES ON OVER THE COMING WEEKS AND I WISH YOU WOULD WRITE HONESTLY ABOUT IT, BUT YOU CHOOSE NOT TO DO SO.

REPORTER: WHAT IS THE CRIME EXACTLY THAT YOU ARE ACCUSING HIM OF?

TRUMP: YOU KNOW WHAT THE CRIME IS. THE CRIME IS OBVIOUS TO EVERYBODY. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS READ THE NEWSPAPERS

Ummmm, ok.

I really worry about our safety as a nation when - in the middle of the biggest crisis in a century - our president creates (and even names) some unspecified crime, won't answer a single question about it, but claims it is "obvious to everybody." He seems like a very desperate man who can't keep his eye on the crisis at hand, but instead focuses on some unnamed offenses from the past.

He's been doing stuff like this since the day he announced he was running. It's what cracks me up when conservatives get all worked up about the mental stability of "sleepy Joe" when he stumbles to answer a question once a month but completely turn a blind eye to the guy who makes things up like a three year old.

[Uncle Rico]

He's been doing stuff like this since the day he announced he was running. It's what cracks me up when conservatives get all worked up about the mental stability of "sleepy Joe" when he stumbles to answer a question once a month but completely turn a blind eye to the guy who makes things up like a three year old.

When you snort adderall all day, it's hard not to act like an unhinged lunatic

[Pakuni]

65% of we mask wearing Collier County folks are Rs. The same % of the massless invaders from Miami-Dade are Ds.
Math.

(It was a joke)

Ah, my bad.
Jokes usually feature some element of humor, so that's what threw me off. 

[mu03eng]

Another study, this time by the CDC, that indicates that we are undercounting COVID deaths.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/pdfs/mm6919e5-H.pdf

When this is all said and done I'll be curious to see the statistical analysis of causes of death this year versus previous years. I have no doubt that in real time we are not counting some deaths that are attributed to Covid. I also think we are counting deaths to Covid that are really attributed to other causes or were somehow inevitable anyone (someone on hospice with two weeks to live then contracts the virus and dies, etc).

Not clear on how prevalent and of this is, but it is clear that as a society we have a long way to go to improve our data literacy.

[Frenns Liquor Depot]

When this is all said and done I'll be curious to see the statistical analysis of causes of death this year versus previous years. I have no doubt that in real time we are not counting some deaths that are attributed to Covid. I also think we are counting deaths to Covid that are really attributed to other causes or were somehow inevitable anyone (someone on hospice with two weeks to live then contracts the virus and dies, etc).

Not clear on how prevalent and of this is, but it is clear that as a society we have a long way to go to improve our data literacy.

Anecdotally it all makes sense That we misattribute and miss deaths. 

I think everyone needs to take a step back and try to remember why we count in the first place.  We are trying to understand the magnitude of the problem, whether or not we have it in control and to allocate resources.   

Personally, I think we are close enough for those purposes and that's validated through the excess death research.  So I don't know what the fuss is about. 

[tower912]

A nursing home in my district sent 3 to the hospital yesterday with multiple COVID symptoms.   All in their 80s, all in the last lap of their life.   All death is inevitable.  But if any of those die in the coming days, I think it fair to call it COVID related.  Whether it was from the virus itself or from it wearing out their already frail be bodies.

[TSmith34, Inc.]

I really worry about our safety as a nation when - in the middle of the biggest crisis in a century - our president creates (and even names) some unspecified crime, won't answer a single question about it, but claims it is "obvious to everybody." He seems like a very desperate man who can't keep his eye on the crisis at hand, but instead focuses on some unnamed offenses from the past.

What is there to worry about? Honest Bill Barr is on the case. I'm sure he'll release a 5 page summary soon.

[MU82]

Mike, with all due respect how "well funded" does a group have to be to buy a few MAGA hats and a Confederate flag or two? I put as much faith in your Koch brothers conspiracy as I do the George Soros ones cooked up on the right.

To claim that the few protesters carrying Confederate flags (I've seen none, but hundreds carrying American flags) are part of some large, influential group makes for a good rant. Doesn't make it so.

We will agree to disagree on much of this, Lenny. Have a nice day.

[MU Fan in Connecticut]

My opinion of what Comey, McCabe, Strok, et al did under the guise of "law enforcement" is very, very low. So is my opinion of a media that insists on carrying their water. The dishonest hit job that Chuck Todd pulled Sunday on "Meet the Press" re Attorney General Barr should disgust every American. Trump should shut his mouth, though, and let Durham finish his investigation. The docs we've seen are troubling and evidently there is a lot more to come.

Yeahhhhh, OK.

I'm not even going to touch this one, but it's backwards as the things Barr has done should disgust every American.

End of any further response.

[MU82]

OBAMAGATE. IT'S BEEN GOING ON A LONG TIME, FROM BEFORE I EVEN GOT ELECTED, AND IT IS A DISGRACE THAT IT HAPPENED. IF YOU LOOK AT WHAT HAS GONE ON AND ALL OF THIS INFORMATION THAT IS BEING RELEASED -- FROM WHAT I UNDERSTAND, IT IS ONLY THE BEGINNING. SOME TERRIBLE THINGS HAPPENED, AND IT SHOULD NEVER BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN IN OUR COUNTRY AGAIN. YOU WILL BE SEEING WHAT GOES ON OVER THE COMING WEEKS AND I WISH YOU WOULD WRITE HONESTLY ABOUT IT, BUT YOU CHOOSE NOT TO DO SO.

YOU KNOW WHAT THE CRIME IS. THE CRIME IS OBVIOUS TO EVERYBODY. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS READ THE NEWSPAPERS[/i]

This is scary stuff. Stalinist stuff. Putinish stuff. Name a murderous despot, and this is the kind of stuff he pulled.

I guess President Pandemic has little choice but to charge his predecessor with unnamed crimes now, though. He is one of the most disapproved-of presidents since approval polls were born 70+ years ago, and his inaction and lies contributed to a crisis that will result in the deaths of 100K+ Americans.

He spent 8 years trying (and failing) to prove that his predecessor was a Kenyan Muslim, so he might as well take another crack at him here.

As he liked to say before pushing a deadly, unvetted drug on COVID-19 patients (but a drug he no longer mentions because somebody finally was able to convince him that it was deadly and unvetted): What does he have to lose?

[Lennys Tap]

We will agree to disagree on much of this, Lenny. Have a nice day.

You too, Mike.