PLAYPEN: Covid-19 Everything Political

[faberryman]

Meanwhile, I ate home pizza that I picked up curbside.

Wow. Congratulations. That is terrific. Let us all celebrate Alan's extraordinary good fortune. Five months into the pandemic and he's already picking up pizza curbside. No other country has achieved this. It must be due to federalism.

[Robert Roaldi]

I saw this minor but interesting news item, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/pro-trump-youth-group-tpusa-deleted-a-tweet-mocking-protective-masks-after-its-co-founder-died-with-the-coronavirus/ar-BB17mMq9. The group, described as a pro-Trump youth group, had posted a tweet mocking mask usage but then deleted it when one of their leaders died from Covid.

I thought to myself, how typically and pathetically human. I guess things only matter when they happen to you? How far we have come. It's easy to downplay or even ignore the suffering of others, even to the point of taking political/moral positions that affect others, but then change your outlook when someone you know personally is affected in a direct way by the policy. I find this kind of personalization quite depressing. I thought we would be past that by now but apparently not. Might be a demonstration how much actual thought people put into the beliefs they hold. I mean, it's not difficult imagining other people dying, is it? I don't think it demands too great a leap of imagination.

[Robert Roaldi]

Here's an uncomplimentary opinion piece about the Trump show, https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/510205-juan-williams-the-trump-show-grows-tired.

[faberryman]

It's easy to downplay or even ignore the suffering of others, even to the point of taking political/moral positions that affect others, but then change your outlook when someone you know personally is affected in a direct way by the policy. I find this kind of personalization quite depressing. I thought we would be past that by now but apparently not. Might be a demonstration how much actual thought people put into the beliefs they hold. I mean, it's not difficult imagining other people dying, is it? I don't think it demands too great a leap of imagination.

Pretty soon that six degrees of separation thing will kick in and everyone will know someone who has died from the virus. I am not sanguine that it will change people's outlook. I think we are beyond a come to Jesus moment. Not wearing a mask is too important.

[Robert Roaldi]

Pretty soon that six degrees of separation thing will kick in and everyone will know someone who has died from the virus. I am not sanguine that it will change people's outlook. I think we are beyond a come to Jesus moment. Not wearing a mask is just too important.

That's a sad indictment of a culture.

[faberryman]

That's a sad indictment of a culture.

On the bright side, it was an ordinary virus that prevented the Martians from conquering the Earth in H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, so there's one less thing to have to worry about.

[hogloff]

Pretty soon that six degrees of separation thing will kick in and everyone will know someone who has died from the virus. I am not sanguine that it will change people's outlook. I think we are beyond a come to Jesus moment. Not wearing a mask is too important.

Yep, it's like the people that go through lung cancer and it's horrendous treatment that finally get that ahha nmooment that smoking is not good for you.

[hogloff]

That's a sad indictment of a culture.

Contrast to cultures that wear masks so they don't spread their germs ( virus ) onto others. Then contrast how well those different cultures are doing against this virus.

People are looking for that silver bullet in somekind of drug when in reality the silver bullet is right in front of them...they just are too ignorant to separate the bullet from stupid political alignments.

[Paulo Bizarro]

Contrast to cultures that wear masks so they don't spread their germs ( virus ) onto others. Then contrast how well those different cultures are doing against this virus.

People are looking for that silver bullet in somekind of drug when in reality the silver bullet is right in front of them...they just are too ignorant to separate the bullet from stupid political alignments.

All these discussions about masks and other simple mitigation measures. They work, it takes time, but they work. Here in greater Lisbon area of Portugal it took about 2 months of slightly stricter "recommendations" to bring down the number of cases. Today we had 106 new cases, 62% of them in Lisbon. 2 months ago we were at 400 and 90% respectively.

Quite simply, 2 months ago the authorities were a too lax with deconfinement ina an area where population density is 7x the country average, where many working families live in small flats where it is not possible to isolate positive cases from the rest of the family; where tracing contacts is difficult due to 60+ nationalities. But it can be done, and it takes time.

Of course this "semi crisis"came in the middle of the tourist season, and Portugal suffered a lot with the restrictions from the UK. Well, spain was very happy by that, not so now...Spain is a mess, with all the regions implementing their own measures, and central government hanging to power by a string and no authority.

But really is quite simple - follow the 3Cs plus mask use, and it prevents exponential spreading.

[Jeremy Roussak]

.

Jeremy

[Alan Klein]

I've always worried what the food preparers do behind those closed kitchen doors.  Thanks for reminding me. 

[faberryman]

On Sunday, USA showed 467 deaths vs Canada's 4. In case of infections, it was 49,038 vs 285 cases. The enormous discrepancy must be due to the excessive testing in USA.

It is not that we are testing too much, we are testing the wrong people. If we tested more people that don’t have it, we could keep our testing numbers up and our case numbers down. It is an elegant solution.

[hogloff]

It is not that we are testing too much, we are testing the wrong people. If we tested more people that don’t have it, we could keep our testing numbers up and our case numbers down. It is an elegant solution.

Shhh...Trump might be reading these posts...after all what else does he have to do...he's long ago done a victory lap regarding the success dealing with the virus.

[James Clark]

It is not that we are testing too much, we are testing the wrong people. If we tested more people that don’t have it, we could keep our testing numbers up and our case numbers down. It is an elegant solution.

 

[Robert Roaldi]

There was quite a damning article in The Atlantic about the USA's response to Covid, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/09/coronavirus-american-failure/614191/?fbclid=IwAR0szpR_VCyS3GbxNZznfetNIZ0T00E8rOVmOPE4MhoIusZN5K11WW1vQmo. It's long and makes for depressing reading when all the wrongs are listed in one place. More than anything, it's extremely sad.

[LesPalenik]

Thanks for posting that link, Robert
It is a sad reading, indeed. I pulled out just a few short paragraphs, there is a lot more there to depress you.

Despite ample warning, the U.S. squandered every possible opportunity to control the coronavirus. And despite its considerable advantages—immense resources, biomedical might, scientific expertise—it floundered. While countries as different as South Korea, Thailand, Iceland, Slovakia, and Australia acted decisively to bend the curve of infections downward, the U.S. achieved merely a plateau in the spring, which changed to an appalling upward slope in the summer. “The U.S. fundamentally failed in ways that were worse than I ever could have imagined,” Julia Marcus, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, told me.

A sluggish response by a government denuded of expertise allowed the coronavirus to gain a foothold. Chronic underfunding of public health neutered the nation’s ability to prevent the pathogen’s spread. A bloated, inefficient health-care system left hospitals ill-prepared for the ensuing wave of sickness.

The indoor spaces in which Americans spend 87 percent of their time became staging grounds for super-spreading events. One study showed that the odds of catching the virus from an infected person are roughly 19 times higher indoors than in open air. Shielded from the elements and among crowds clustered in prolonged proximity, the coronavirus ran rampant in the conference rooms of a Boston hotel, the cabins of the Diamond Princess cruise ship, and a church hall in Washington State where a choir practiced for just a few hours.

Today, the U.S. spends just 2.5 percent of its gigantic health-care budget on public health. Underfunded health departments were already struggling to deal with opioid addiction, climbing obesity rates, contaminated water, and easily preventable diseases. Last year saw the most measles cases since 1992. In 2018, the U.S. had 115,000 cases of syphilis and 580,000 cases of gonorrhea—numbers not seen in almost three decades. It has 1.7 million cases of chlamydia, the highest number ever recorded.

[Peter McLennan]

Add my thanks, Robert.

Required reading, regardless of preconceptions and political affiliations.

[faberryman]

Add my thanks, Robert.

Required reading, regardless of preconceptions and political affiliations.

It is a tough read. I am deeply embarrassed to live in a country with such a pathetic response. Fortunately, Jared Kushner has gone back in his hole and is no longer claiming that our effort is the greatest achievement since the dawn of civilization, and Trump is patting his back less frequently at the lectern. Given his recent rather remarkable change in demeanor, I actually believe he has some inkling that he royally screwed the pooch on this one, is certainly going to lose the election, and will be going down in history as the greatest failure of our generation. He has been looking shaky since his disastrous political rally at Tulsa, and his complete mental breakdown is not out of the question. There is no indication that we have any of this under control: quite the opposite. Fortunately both of my children can work from home and so are still supporting themselves. My son's employer does not anticipate having anyone back to the office before next July, you know, a year from now. My daughter's employer is taking it month by month. A  significant portion of the population is jobless and unsure when they can begin looking for work, or even what work to look for. Our elected representatives are now quibbling over how many hundreds of dollars the government will be sending out for relief to the citizens of this once great nation so they can feed themselves and their families. And the ill-advised return to school is one giant clusterfuck. Ask any teacher preparing to go back in the classroom in the coming weeks, and you will hear the unvarnished truth. I can only watch from the relative safety of my home as this train wreck unfolds. Life will never be the same, nor should it be. As a country, we have some growing up to do.

[Alan Klein]

The Atlantic and it's editor are anti-Trump. They endorse Democrats including Hillary Clinton.  It's not the place to look if you want balance, especially before an election.   

[Robert Roaldi]

The Atlantic and it's editor are anti-Trump. They endorse Democrats including Hillary Clinton.  It's not the place to look if you want balance, especially before an election.

One of the editors at The Atlantic is David Frum, long-time conservative Republican and G.W. Bush speechwriter. If he's anti-Trump, shouldn't you be open-minded enough to listen to what people like him have to say. Being anti-Trump does not make them wrong. His latest pronouncements are spectacularly unhinged.