Incompetence may have spread the virus

[Bob Juch]

Um, yeah, that's sorta what any prez has to do.

Here are Trump's metrics:

We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.

And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.

It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.

Speed dial line 2

Steve Schmidt: Trump’s ‘ignorance has turned deadly’ for Americans

https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/steve ... 1908293892

[Bob Juch]

Republicans have a message for Trump: Shut. Up.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/4 ... =emaildkre

Donald Trump may think his coronavirus briefings are going swimmingly, but Republican lawmakers who could very well pay a price for Trump's dreadful incompetence on the pandemic are clearly desperate to muzzle him. So they did what everyone does when they can't get Trump's attention privately, they went to the press in hopes that he might get the hint.

Here's what several GOP lawmakers told The New York Times:

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, up in 2020, encouraged Trump to turn the briefings into "a once-a-week show" (i.e. less is more)
West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, up in 2020, said the briefings were "going off the rails a little bit" and recommended that Trump "let the health professionals guide where we’re going to go”

Indiana Rep. Susan Brooks, who isn't seeking reelection, was even more blunt: “they’re going on too long”
Even the Wall Street Journal editorial board is desperate for Trump to take a seat. "The President’s outbursts against his political critics are also notably off key at this moment. This isn’t impeachment, and COVID-19 isn’t shifty Schiff. It’s a once-a-century threat to American life and livelihood," the board wrote Thursday.

GOP lawmakers and aides alike are encouraging Trump to move away from his lie-laden coronavirus briefings that sometimes drag on for two hours and start focusing on the country's looming economic recession. Trump's internal campaign polling has shown exactly what public polling is showing: he's losing the PR battle and his tragically self-involved briefings are clearly a part of the problem.

But Republicans pushing Trump to focus on the economy should be careful what they wish for. There's an entire conservative brigade at Fox News and within Trump’s own White House that is clamoring for Trump to reopen for business as soon as possible, regardless of what the scientists are saying. And what the scientists are saying at the departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services about reopening too soon is very bad, according to new projections obtained by the Times. Lifting social distancing and stay-at-home orders after just 30 days will “lead to a dramatic infection spike this summer and death tolls that would rival doing nothing.”

Replacing a daily coronavirus briefing with a daily recession briefing isn't likely to go any better, especially if Trump’s impatience to jumpstart the economy comes at the price of a major resurgence of the virus. The only real solution to avoiding the electoral liabilities of being led by an incoherent narcissist in a moment when competence means the difference between life and death is to muzzle him completely. Good luck with that. Trump’s too desperate for the attention to cede the stage, even when he’s creating an epic disaster.

[Bob Juch]

Republicans have a message for Trump: Shut. Up.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/4 ... =emaildkre

Donald Trump may think his coronavirus briefings are going swimmingly, but Republican lawmakers who could very well pay a price for Trump's dreadful incompetence on the pandemic are clearly desperate to muzzle him. So they did what everyone does when they can't get Trump's attention privately, they went to the press in hopes that he might get the hint.

Here's what several GOP lawmakers told The New York Times:

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, up in 2020, encouraged Trump to turn the briefings into "a once-a-week show" (i.e. less is more)
West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, up in 2020, said the briefings were "going off the rails a little bit" and recommended that Trump "let the health professionals guide where we’re going to go”

Indiana Rep. Susan Brooks, who isn't seeking reelection, was even more blunt: “they’re going on too long”
Even the Wall Street Journal editorial board is desperate for Trump to take a seat. "The President’s outbursts against his political critics are also notably off key at this moment. This isn’t impeachment, and COVID-19 isn’t shifty Schiff. It’s a once-a-century threat to American life and livelihood," the board wrote Thursday.

GOP lawmakers and aides alike are encouraging Trump to move away from his lie-laden coronavirus briefings that sometimes drag on for two hours and start focusing on the country's looming economic recession. Trump's internal campaign polling has shown exactly what public polling is showing: he's losing the PR battle and his tragically self-involved briefings are clearly a part of the problem.

But Republicans pushing Trump to focus on the economy should be careful what they wish for. There's an entire conservative brigade at Fox News and within Trump’s own White House that is clamoring for Trump to reopen for business as soon as possible, regardless of what the scientists are saying. And what the scientists are saying at the departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services about reopening too soon is very bad, according to new projections obtained by the Times. Lifting social distancing and stay-at-home orders after just 30 days will “lead to a dramatic infection spike this summer and death tolls that would rival doing nothing.”

Replacing a daily coronavirus briefing with a daily recession briefing isn't likely to go any better, especially if Trump’s impatience to jumpstart the economy comes at the price of a major resurgence of the virus. The only real solution to avoiding the electoral liabilities of being led by an incoherent narcissist in a moment when competence means the difference between life and death is to muzzle him completely. Good luck with that. Trump’s too desperate for the attention to cede the stage, even when he’s creating an epic disaster.

[Beebs52]

Dailykos. Heeheehee

[Bob Juch]

Dailykos. Heeheehee

They didn't make up the quotes. Suck it.

[Bob Juch]

Trump failed to heed early COVID-19 warnings due to his ‘Deep State’ skepticism and White House chaos: NYT

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/04/trump- ... chaos-nyt/

On Saturday, The New York Times reported that President Donald Trump blocked out multiple early warnings of the coronavirus pandemic — in part because he believed it was part of a “Deep State” plot to ruin his presidency.

“A week after the first coronavirus case had been identified in the United States, and six long weeks before President Trump finally took aggressive action to confront the danger the nation was facing — a pandemic that is now forecast to take tens of thousands of American lives — Dr. Mecher was urging the upper ranks of the nation’s public health bureaucracy to wake up and prepare for the possibility of far more drastic action,” wrote Eric Lipton, David E. Sanger, Maggie Haberman, Michael D. Shear, Mark Mazzetti, and Julian E. Barnes.

“His was hardly a lone voice. Throughout January, as Mr. Trump repeatedly played down the seriousness of the virus and focused on other issues, an array of figures inside his government — from top White House advisers to experts deep in the cabinet departments and intelligence agencies — identified the threat, sounded alarms and made clear the need for aggressive action,” the report continued, noting that the officials trying to warn Trump included HHS Secretary Alex Azar and his disaster response chief Dr. Robert Kadlec.

“The president, though, was slow to absorb the scale of the risk and to act accordingly, focusing instead on controlling the message, protecting gains in the economy and batting away warnings from senior officials,” said the report. “Even after Mr. Trump took his first concrete action at the end of January — limiting travel from China — public health often had to compete with economic and political considerations in internal debates, slowing the path toward belated decisions to seek more money from Congress, obtain necessary supplies, address shortfalls in testing and ultimately move to keep much of the nation at home.”

“Unfolding as it did in the wake of his impeachment by the House and in the midst of his Senate trial, Mr. Trump’s response was colored by his suspicion of and disdain for what he viewed as the “Deep State” — the very people in his government whose expertise and long experience might have guided him more quickly toward steps that would slow the virus, and likely save lives,” said the report.

Trump was also slow to react because he was trying to hammer out a trade agreement with China, and was worried decisive action against the virus could involve actions that would antagonize Beijing.

You can read more here.

[Beebs52]

Dailykos. Heeheehee

They didn't make up the quotes. Suck it.

Hmm. Fuck you and whatever gelded horse you rode in on.

[Bob78164]

Dailykos. Heeheehee

They didn't make up the quotes. Suck it.

Bob,

I really don't care that much about what politicians are saying about what Donny's saying. In fact, I really don't care very much about what Donny's saying, except that what he says does influence the behavior of others -- I blame (in part) Donny's failure to exert strong leadership for the refusal, until recently, of the Governors of Georgia and Florida to impose stay-at-home orders, and for the failure of the remaining hold-out states to impose stay-at-home orders. I would appreciate you keeping this thread focused on what Donny and other officials are and aren't doing in response to the pandemic, rather than what people are saying. --Bob

[silverscreenselect]

"I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously, no one is going to deny that. But what goes into those decisions is complicated. But you're right, I mean, obviously, if we had right from the very beginning shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different. But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then.

...As I have said many times, we look at it from a pure health standpoint. We make a recommendation. Often, the recommendation is taken. Sometimes it's not. But we -- it is what it is. We are where we are right now.

An administration official separately confirmed to CNN that the government's top public health experts agreed in the third week of February on the need to begin moving away from a containment strategy and toward a mitigation strategy that would involve strong social distancing measures. The agreement among the health officials came after they held a tabletop exercise to game out the potential for a full-blown pandemic. According to the Times report, Dr. Robert Kadlec, the top disaster response official at the Department of Health and Human Services, convened the White House coronavirus task force on February 21. During his meeting, the group conducted a mock-up exercise of the pandemic that predicted 110 million infections, 7.7 million hospitalizations and 586,000 deaths. The group "concluded they would soon need to move toward aggressive social distancing, even at the risk of severe disruption to the nation's economy and the daily lives of millions of Americans," but it took more than three weeks for Trump to enact such guidelines on March 16.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/12/politics ... index.html

I read an interesting article about a week ago about what would have happened if Hillary had been president now (I can't remember the link). The gist of it was that we would probably still be in big trouble for different reasons. Hillary would have had the same foreign intelligence and wouldn't have disbanded the pandemic units Trump did. She would have tried to act on that earlier, but she would have gotten a lot more resistance from the Republicans in Congress (who would presumably still control the Senate and probably the House as well), who would claim that (1) this was wasteful spending and (2) that this was an attempt to distract the public from whatever manufactured scandal they were investigating about Hillary at the time. I'm not all that sure the article wasn't wrong and that Hillary would largely have had her hands tied for quite a while as well.

[Beebs52]

"I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously, no one is going to deny that. But what goes into those decisions is complicated. But you're right, I mean, obviously, if we had right from the very beginning shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different. But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then.

...As I have said many times, we look at it from a pure health standpoint. We make a recommendation. Often, the recommendation is taken. Sometimes it's not. But we -- it is what it is. We are where we are right now.

An administration official separately confirmed to CNN that the government's top public health experts agreed in the third week of February on the need to begin moving away from a containment strategy and toward a mitigation strategy that would involve strong social distancing measures. The agreement among the health officials came after they held a tabletop exercise to game out the potential for a full-blown pandemic. According to the Times report, Dr. Robert Kadlec, the top disaster response official at the Department of Health and Human Services, convened the White House coronavirus task force on February 21. During his meeting, the group conducted a mock-up exercise of the pandemic that predicted 110 million infections, 7.7 million hospitalizations and 586,000 deaths. The group "concluded they would soon need to move toward aggressive social distancing, even at the risk of severe disruption to the nation's economy and the daily lives of millions of Americans," but it took more than three weeks for Trump to enact such guidelines on March 16.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/12/politics ... index.html

I read an interesting article about a week ago about what would have happened if Hillary had been president now (I can't remember the link). The gist of it was that we would probably still be in big trouble for different reasons. Hillary would have had the same foreign intelligence and wouldn't have disbanded the pandemic units Trump did. She would have tried to act on that earlier, but she would have gotten a lot more resistance from the Republicans in Congress (who would presumably still control the Senate and probably the House as well), who would claim that (1) this was wasteful spending and (2) that this was an attempt to distract the public from whatever manufactured scandal they were investigating about Hillary at the time. I'm not all that sure the article wasn't wrong and that Hillary would largely have had her hands tied for quite a while as well.

I am sorta amazed. Only because this is conjecture but it's all conjecture. Which I'm impressed that you presented it.

[Appa23]

Here's one Republican governor (Mike DeWine of Ohio) who got it right early. I was in the process of deciding whether I was going to go through with my plans to attend the Nationals in Columbus -- discussing the issue with my bridge partner -- when Gov. DeWine made the decision for me. Which decision, incidentally, saved ACBL an awful lot of money by allowing it to exercise its force majeure clause to get out of the event without paying a financial penalty to the host hotels.

Here's another Republican governor, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, who still hasn't gotten it right. In the case of Brian Kemp of Georgia, it was (supposedly) because he had no idea that the disease could be spread by asymptomatic carriers until earlier this week. In the case of Ron deSantis of Florida, it was supposedly because he had no idea the disease could kill people younger than 25 (it can and has). I wonder why Governor Ricketts still hasn't imposed a statewide shelter-in-place order. --Bob

Wonder no more. Nebraska has not issued a mandatory shelter-in-place order because the voluntary one has been successful, it appears. Around here, we tend to do the right thing, which is why schools closed a month ago, even while we had one of the lowest reporting rates per capita. Moreover, those individuals who are not staying at home, per the bogus numbers shown in the attached Times article, likely still would be traveling great distances with an order, as they are essential workers who are unable to telework. (Douglas County received an A or B+ rating for the percentage of decrease in traveling outside the home in another survey of cell traffic, IIRC.)

In short, we are good right now. Gov Ricketts is being advised by the staff of one of the (if not the) leading epidemiology hospital(s) in the nation. As our peak approaches, I do expect an order to come. Fortunately, all indications are that we have sufficient beds and are better off than other states on ventilators. Time will tell. However, one size does not fit all with everything Covid.

That's the problem. You won't know for two or three weeks whether you're good right now. And once you do know, it will be too late to change course.

Exponentials are frightening things to those who understand them. Particularly when combined with a latency period. --Bob

If you need help understanding the application of various exponential curves to various locales, just let me know, Bob. I have seen during this pandemic that some people have struggled with it.

We are about 4 weeks into the voluntary application of various "social distancing" applications, which have adapted during that time to case/death curves. We still are around 48th in case rate and death rate per capita, about 2 months since the first case here.

Maybe Gov. Ricketts should have offered to help Gov. Cuomo with some advice. (I won't pick on Gov. Newsom, as I think that we has done a good job in California.)

[Bob78164]

We are about 4 weeks into the voluntary application of various "social distancing" applications, which have adapted during that time to case/death curves. We still are around 48th in case rate and death rate per capita, about 2 months since the first case here.

Maybe Gov. Ricketts should have offered to help Gov. Cuomo with some advice. (I won't pick on Gov. Newsom, as I think that we has done a good job in California.)

If you're relying on case rate, then unless you have a lot more tests available than does most of the country, you're making a mistake. The problem with death rate is that it reflects the state of the world about three weeks prior. Your first warning sign will be hospitalization rate, which has only about a week lag time. --Bob

[silverscreenselect]

Maybe Gov. Ricketts should have offered to help Gov. Cuomo with some advice. (I won't pick on Gov. Newsom, as I think that we has done a good job in California.)

Out of curiosity, I looked up the official Nebraska website on the virus. As of now, there are a little over 800 reported cases in Nebraska and 17 deaths. They break down the reported cases by county, and it appears that over half the counties in the state still don't have a single case reported. The county with the largest number of cases is the one where Omaha is located, which isn't surprising, but what surprised me is that the second-highest number of cases is in the county where Grand Island is located. That's got three times the number of reported cases that Lincoln's county has.

Any idea why there might be so many there?

[silverscreenselect]

After Chris Wallace (son of Mike Wallace) suggested on Fox News Sunday that US deaths might have been lower if Trump had acted earlier:

Just watched Mike Wallace wannabe, Chris Wallace, on @FoxNews. I am now convinced that he is even worse than Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd of Meet the Press(please!), or the people over at Deface the Nation. What the hell is happening to @FoxNews. It’s a whole new ballgame over there!

[Bob Juch]

After Chris Wallace (son of Mike Wallace) suggested on Fox News Sunday that US deaths might have been lower if Trump had acted earlier:

Just watched Mike Wallace wannabe, Chris Wallace, on @FoxNews. I am now convinced that he is even worse than Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd of Meet the Press(please!), or the people over at Deface the Nation. What the hell is happening to @FoxNews. It’s a whole new ballgame over there!

Aww.

[Bob78164]

In contrast, the Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana acknowledged on camera that he was wrong and the Mayor of New Orleans was right when he had earlier criticized her for cancelling several large conventions. He even apologized for his earlier criticisms. It's nice to see there are still some elected Republicans who are willing to acknowledge facts. --Bob

[silverscreenselect]

It's nice to see there are still some elected Republicans who are willing to acknowledge facts. --Bob

That reminds me; where's Flock?

[Bob78164]

It's nice to see there are still some elected Republicans who are willing to acknowledge facts. --Bob

That reminds me; where's Flock?

Did he get elected to something? --Bob

[silverscreenselect]

Donald Trump's Committee to Reopen America

Ivanka Trump
Jared Kushner
Mark Meadows
Wilbur Ross
Larry Kudlow
Steven Mnuchin
Robert Lighthizer (I had to look him up; he's the US Trade Representative)

I feel so much better knowing that our economic future is in their hands.

[Bob78164]

Donald Trump's Committee to Reopen America

Ivanka Trump
Jared Kushner
Mark Meadows
Wilbur Ross
Larry Kudlow
Steven Mnuchin
Robert Lighthizer (I had to look him up; he's the US Trade Representative)

I feel so much better knowing that our economic future is in their hands.

How in the name of all that's holy do you name such a committee without including a single public health expert? --Bob

[Bob Juch]

Donald Trump's Committee to Reopen America

Ivanka Trump
Jared Kushner
Mark Meadows
Wilbur Ross
Larry Kudlow
Steven Mnuchin
Robert Lighthizer (I had to look him up; he's the US Trade Representative)

I feel so much better knowing that our economic future is in their hands.

How in the name of all that's holy do you name such a committee without including a single public health expert? --Bob

You forget Trump is one.

[Bob Juch]

PSM posted this on FB:

[silverscreenselect]

When somebody is President of the United States, the authority is total, and that's the way it's got to be.

And, plus ca change, plus ca meme chose:

I don't take responsibility at all.

Everything we did was right.

[wbtravis007]

PSM posted this on FB:

PSM!

Haven't thought about her in a long time. I miss her here.

[Bob Juch]

George Conway: Trump simply doesn’t understand his job

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... elong-him/

Among Donald Trump’s many flaws as president is one that’s as fundamental as any: He simply doesn’t understand his job. When he ran a private company, one he owned, Trump could command all its constituent parts to do his bidding and make the rules himself. You’d think by his fourth year in the White House, he would have learned that the presidency doesn’t work that way. But obviously he hasn’t.

Trump made this clear during his briefing Monday, with an extraordinary series of statements about presidential power — well, perhaps extraordinary for anyone but him. Referring to restrictions that states have imposed to fight covid-19, Trump claimed: “The authority of the president of the United States having to do with the subject we’re talking about, the authority is total, and that’s the way it’s got to be. … It’s total. The governors know that.”

In other words, he claims the power to force the entire country to back to work, regardless of what state or local officials say. “They can’t do anything without the approval of the president of the United States,” Trump asserted. “I have the ultimate authority,” he said.

“Who told you that?” a reporter asked; Trump wouldn’t say. And no doubt, couldn’t: No competent presidential adviser would tell him that. Certainly no lawyer.

It’s no excuse for Trump that he’s not a lawyer, and that, as conservative commentator Andrew C. McCarthy put it, Trump “frequently gets out over his skis when he discusses constitutional law” — that, indeed, he “mangles” it. Trump took a solemn oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. After his years in the job, he ought to know something about that document.

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