Dow down 1900 in two days; Corona virus prediction?

[armand]

I may be cherry picking.  But you;re Monday morning quarterbacking.  You say Trump made the right call about stopping flights from China a month ago.  But he screwed up on test kits.  Well, my understanding is that our CDC screwed up the tests and found many of the ones they prepared to be not working.  Was Trump supposed to know that?  So now CDC apparently has gotten up to speed.  In any case, no one would want to overblow the situation.  He did stop travel from China long before anyone even thought of that or recommended it.  Now he's stopped travel from Europe because of too many ill over there.  I'm waiting for your post complaining about that somehow. The fact is he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

Nope, just in your mind. Again, I didn't mention specifically Trump in all those decisions. I said the decision to close the border was the right one, and I seriously doubt it he did that on his own mind without any recommendations; same for the delay in taking actions after. You can't claim he is responsible for the positives but it's somebody's else fault if it's bad. They are in this together.

...  I'm waiting for your post complaining about that somehow. ...

You should keep up:

...
In other order Trump suspended all flights from Europe. I think it's probably the right call but I'm afraid it's too late.

That is until I found out UK is not part of Europe according the that decision. I know Brexit gave some of them wings but geography is a bitch.

Maybe I'm wrong and this administration including Trump is the best possible and everything will be well. While I have my doubts about the last sentence I will be glad to be wrong (for once).

[Alan Klein]

Nope, just in your mind. Again, I didn't mention specifically Trump in all those decisions. I said the decision to close the border was the right one, and I seriously doubt it he did that on his own mind without any recommendations; same for the delay in taking actions after. You can't claim he is responsible for the positives but it's somebody's else fault if it's bad. They are in this together.

You should keep up:
That is until I found out UK is not part of Europe according the that decision. I know Brexit gave some of them wings but geography is a bitch.

Maybe I'm wrong and this administration including Trump is the best possible and everything will be well. While I have my doubts about the last sentence I will be glad to be wrong (for once).

You can't micromanage someone else's decisions like you're doing.  Especially after the fact.  I shoot film.  I make decisions about exposure that cannot be verified until after the film is developed.  Sometimes I bracket.  But I miss a lot anyway.  I'm not a fortune teller.  I don't know the future.  No one does.

Trump got the wheel moving a month ago and kicked it into high gear recently, mainly because of the political pressure of the election, frankly.  That pressure may be causing us to shoot ourselves in the foot.  I understand we may want to overshoot our reaction.  At 75, it's a dangerous infection for me. .  But, if we destroy our economy, children missing school, etc., just for the sake of irrational fear and a presidential election when the statistics don;t point to such a calamity, we're not helping the world either.  After all, Democrats own 401k plans too. 

[armand]

I get it, the fear to overshoot might have been the main driver to take it slow; and undershot we did. Thing is if we alternate between undershoot to overshoot it's probably even worse. People can be wrong but you have to be flexible and try not to be wrong for a very long time. I get the feeling that being wrong it's the worst sin for this administration and it wastes way too many opportunities trying to prove they are not wrong. Nobody's perfect, move on.

Those articles on what's happening in Italy are very concerning and I believe they are the real thing. We cannot handle that level of disaster.

[chez]

So Trump was smart enough to stop flights from China long before anyone else was talking about this virus in the middle of his impeachment when he had other things to think about.  But somehow he doesn;t know or isn't smart enough to know what he's talking about and is lying.  Yet you don't' really have an opinion on Trump or care that he's involved.

Try going 5 minutes without mentioning TRUMP...enough already for F's sake.

[Robert Roaldi]

This violin playing tweet might have been a little insensitive https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/donald-trump-nero-meme_n_5e658685c5b68d61645632c2?ri18n=true. It's hard to know what to think of this kind of post. What's the upside? What was the purpose?

[armand]

Italy’s Health Care System Groans Under Coronavirus — a Warning to the World https://nyti.ms/3cQroLw

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Try going 5 minutes without mentioning TRUMP...enough already for F's sake.

And exactly who can't spend 5 minutes without mentioning him!? You guys keep doing it. Like armand who points out he didn't mention him, but then in the next sentence uses "Supreme Leader."

[Paulo Bizarro]

I get it, the fear to overshoot might have been the main driver to take it slow; and undershot we did. Thing is if we alternate between undershoot to overshoot it's probably even worse. People can be wrong but you have to be flexible and try not to be wrong for a very long time. I get the feeling that being wrong it's the worst sin for this administration and it wastes way too many opportunities trying to prove they are not wrong. Nobody's perfect, move on.

Those articles on what's happening in Italy are very concerning and I believe they are the real thing. We cannot handle that level of disaster.

Other European countries, including my own, Portugal, are trying to be proactive, instead of reactive. Even from 2 days ago, health authorities were reluctant in closing public schools (private ones have closed for a week now, including some universities). The plan was to close schools and public establishments on a basis of "if there is a confirmed case, we close it then".

The problem is, by the time a case is confirmed, at least 3 or 4 people have been infected already - from there, the spreading is impossible to contain. Thankfully, the CEDC in Europe yesterday recommended exactly to close down all schools, from all ages, plus bars, pubs, discos, and many restrictions in restaurants and supermarkets, restricting the number of people per area.

Many case are being found of people that were already hospitalized due to respiratory infections, and are now found to have Covid19 - who knows who they have talked or interacted with, including medical personnel who are much needed now to curtail this crisis.

I hope at least some countries can still implement measures on time to reduce the number of casualties. Even if the mortality rate ends up around 1%, that is still 10x higher than normal flu. Also, no health service in the world is prepared to assist a peak of pneumonia patients - which hospital can treat simultaneously say 100 cases per day? We know how to treat serious pneumonia for decades, but it is a matter of frequency and peaking.

[Robert Roaldi]

I've made no secret of my disdain for Trump. I think he is the scion and now leader of an organized crime family, that he suffers from at least one serious mental illness that endangers all of us (narcissistic personality disorder) that he is a buffoon, he cheats at golf, and has bad taste. But I don't think he's totally to blame for the mishandling of the Covid-19 epidemic. No President can really run the US government, although Trump has clearly proven that one really bad President can damage it. Trump has obviously been poorly supported by the medical establishment. Epidemiologists should have been screaming to the media instead of mumbling about it in papers and conferences, ever since it first began to spread in China. I'm an avid consumer of the media (an ex-reporter) and I really didn't hear much from those guys until a month or so ago. The head of Health and Human Services, who knew how bad this was going to get back in early January, first delegated his chief of staff to inform somebody on the National Security Council about it -- in other words, dump it into the bureaucracy where it takes weeks for anything to trickle out. He then waited even longer before he even talked to Trump directly (all part of a WAPO story.) The guy should have been screaming in Trump's ear the next day, after he learned about the China problem, and other advisors should have pushed Trump hard to get out in front of it. Instead, they appeared to think they only had a political problem, and let the real problem, the disease itself, boil up from underneath. If Trump in mid-Janary had gone out front and said, "We may have a problem not of our devising, but a problem nevertheless, and we have to do everything we can to protect ourselves, and I'm appointing the VP to manage the problem day by day," then everybody now would think he was actually doing a great job. Instead, he got a lot of bad advice and has spent the last two months stepping on his own dick, and it's almost like he's being blamed for the disease, rather than just being blamed for being his usual self (an inept bumbling fool.) What he and his advisors have blown here is the possibility that he might look like a true leader in a crisis that everybody could understand that he couldn't prevent. But he's *still* insisting that it's not going to be that bad, and he's exacerbating the inept bumbling fool judgment. To say it in a few words: he has been badly served by his underlings. Some of us thought that might happen in a true crisis, and now it has.

I saw this, https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/12/trump-officials-coronavirus-127742, which addresses some of your points. I have no idea how complete a picture it represents.

[armand]

And exactly who can't spend 5 minutes without mentioning him!? You guys keep doing it. Like armand who points out he didn't mention him, but then in the next sentence uses "Supreme Leader."

Fair point about the supreme leader, it's my jab to the fact that nobody can say anything even remotely contradictory to him, in his administration or elsewhere (such as here) before being shut down or jumped upon. Just take a look a your motto with the thinking.
But I'm done, I shall mention the one whose name won't be said no more in this topic, at least for a while.

[Alan Klein]

Fair point about the supreme leader, it's my jab to the fact that nobody can say anything even remotely contradictory to him, in his administration or elsewhere (such as here) before being shut down or jumped upon. Just take a look a your motto with the thinking.
But I'm done, I shall mention the one whose name won't be said no more in this topic, at least for a while.

So you had to have a parting shot, one more last jab.  And then you ask why we have to keep defending Trump.  Well, collusion with Russians, paying off bimbos, taxes, obstruction of justice, emoluments, and even impeachment hasn't gotten him.  But maybe coronavirus will.  Gotta admit, you keep trying.

[chez]

So you had to have a parting shot, one more last jab.  And then you ask why we have to keep defending Trump.  Well, collusion with Russians, paying off bimbos, taxes, obstruction of justice, emoluments, and even impeachment hasn't gotten him.  But maybe coronavirus will.  Gotta admit, you keep trying.

That’s one resume any leader would be proud of.

[Alan Klein]

That’s one resume any leader would be proud of.

He's like the Eveready bunny or that watch:  Takes a lickin' but keeps on tickin'.  I don;t think Biden could stand up to the pressure. 

[chez]

He's like the Eveready bunny or that watch:  Takes a lickin' but keeps on tickin'.  I don;t think Biden could stand up to the pressure.

Maybe Biden does not have to payoff bimbos.

[Alan Klein]

Maybe Biden does not have to payoff bimbos.

Well, he got his son's Burisma Ukraine fiasco to deal with and explain. 

[chez]

Well, he got his son's Burisma Ukraine fiasco to deal with and explain.

Fake news...

[faberryman]

Fake news...

Who knows. However, everything seems to have gone silent on the subject since Trump's acquittal. I did read that the Senate GOP head of some committee or another decided not to subpoena Hunter Biden. Maybe he is just deferring doing so until after the conventions.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

In the light of the current toilet paper craze across the world:

"Softness without borders"

"It does support migrants"

[armand]

So you had to have a parting shot, one more last jab.  And then you ask why we have to keep defending Trump.  Well, collusion with Russians, paying off bimbos, taxes, obstruction of justice, emoluments, and even impeachment hasn't gotten him.  But maybe coronavirus will.  Gotta admit, you keep trying.

You are delusional. Unfortunately not uncommon, if you are not with us then you are against us. With this approach no wonder common ground is a rare sight.

[Alan Klein]

You are delusional. Unfortunately not uncommon, if you are not with us then you are against us. With this approach no wonder common ground is a rare sight.

I just heard Nancy Pelosi telling the press.  "It's all about test kits. Test kits. Test kits."  It's all about politics.  This is election season. Meanwhile, Trump on the other side is going to declare a national state of emergency to show his presidential strength asking the hidden question: Do you want a strong president, who's tough and gruff and still has it or "Sleepy Joe" who's taking a nap?