Corona Virus: It's a Marathon, Not a Sprint

[Zaxxon]

Similar thoughts here. People suck.

[Jag]

I've never been so angry in my life. These people should have been preparing for this 2 months ago.

This is what I struggle with every day of my life. The overwhelming rage at just how incompetent this Administration is at everything. How vindictive they are at every perceived slight. And how so many people continue to support it. I just can't take it some days. The number of people that I've had to just write out of my life because they've shown themselves to be awful human beings, at their core.

Getting in front of a microphone and telling the nation that you will kill people in certain states, if they aren't nice to you and show sufficient appreciation...that this person wasn't apprehended and removed from office before the end of that press conference is mind-boggling to me.

Had Obama publicly announced that he was going to ignore NJ during the Hurricane Sandy disaster, because Gov. Christie (R) was mean to him. My head explodes as the consequences of that. And instead, we all just sit here like this is somehow okay.

The problem is the 30-60 million people who are ok with it and will vote for him again in November. They are not going to change their mind at this point in Trump's term.

[Kraken]

Had Obama publicly announced that he was going to ignore NJ during the Hurricane Sandy disaster, because Gov. Christie (R) was mean to him. My head explodes as the consequences of that. And instead, we all just sit here like this is somehow okay.

We've known for some time that he isn't our "president." He's the red president. He doesn't even pretend otherwise. A good leader would use this crisis to unify. An evil one uses it to whip his followers into fear and rage against everyone else. He's not just incompetent or stupid. He's a true enemy of more than half the people and a clear and present danger to the country.

Even though his approval rating is at 60% for the Covid crisis, his overall rating is still stuck below 50%. Whereas most presidents enjoy at least a +10 rally-round-the-flag bump during an emergency, this clown only got +3. There's much worse news coming, and I hope enough Americans will see his performance for what it really is.

[RunningMn9]

I’ve lost all faith in most Americans.


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[Zaxxon]

I’ve lost all faith in most Americans.

I wouldn't go that f...

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Ah yeah, me, too.

[YellowKing]

I wish I was making this up, but Trump is actually tweeting about his coronavirus briefings ratings as compared to The Bachelor. In the middle of arguably the worst American crisis of my lifetime, the president is bragging about his ratings compared to a reality show.

[Zaxxon]

I wish I was making this up, but Trump is actually tweeting about his coronavirus briefings ratings as compared to The Bachelor. In the middle of arguably the worst American crisis of my lifetime, the president is bragging about his ratings compared to a reality show.

And the base will eat it up, as they are winning. Something. Against... someone...

[malchior]

I wish I was making this up, but Trump is actually tweeting about his coronavirus briefings ratings as compared to The Bachelor. In the middle of arguably the worst American crisis of my lifetime, the president is bragging about his ratings compared to a reality show.

And the base will eat it up, as they are winning. Something. Against... someone...

I'm seeing it already. "He is trolling and I love it" was a comment I saw. This is only getting worse. Hopefully the elections put an end to this but it is hard to think the threads of civilization here are not fraying badly. Fauci said he could see 6 figure death totals in the US. And this sociopath is reveling in ratings. He is beyond broken. And to be honest generally *WE* are broken.

[Skinypupy]

I'm seeing it already. "He is trolling and I love it" was a comment I saw.

More and more, this has become the default response any time Trump says something so irredeemably stupid or asinine that there's simply no way to justify it.

Being a moron to trigger the libs!

[Smoove_B]

Honestly, when we get to the point of refrigerated trucks holding bodies at hospitals - if that doesn't snap the MAGAts out of it, nothing will. Shit is going to get real for America over the next 7-10 days.

[Daehawk]

I dont think they'd care then.

[LawBeefaroni]

Honestly, when we get to the point of refrigerated trucks holding bodies at hospitals - if that doesn't snap the MAGAts out of it, nothing will. Shit is going to get real for America over the next 7-10 days.

Why would it? It's been over 3 years of, "well this will surely snap them out of it..." and every time they've just dug in further. It will be blamed on left coast liberal elites or blue governors or something.

[Zaxxon]

Also, we are there already. The refrigeration units went in days ago in some areas.

[RunningMn9]

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Ah yeah, me, too.

Did I miss something while I was gone?

[Zaxxon]

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Ah yeah, me, too.

Did I miss something while I was gone?

Tapatalk sigs are the devil.

[RunningMn9]

It was accidental, I swear!

[Zaxxon]

It was accidental, I swear!

Figured you did not intend it.

[malchior]

This piece of garbage just accused the states of lying about their medical stockpiles. A Mussolini style street dragging is too good for this sociopath. He also accused health care workers of stealing medical supplies. His reasoning? He doesn't understand how NY's mask usage has gone up so much. Someone needs to remove him from power. He has mushy brains. There is little other explanation for this disconnected nonsense.

https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1244384895444627456

[Skinypupy]

Honestly, when we get to the point of refrigerated trucks holding bodies at hospitals - if that doesn't snap the MAGAts out of it, nothing will. Shit is going to get real for America over the next 7-10 days.

Why would it? It's been over 3 years of, "well this will surely snap them out of it..." and every time they've just dug in further. It will be blamed on left coast liberal elites or blue governors or something.

It’s way easier than that, and I’m already seeing this narrative getting being pushed quite a bit.

Obamacare weakened our medical infrastructure so badly that we were unable to prepare for this.

They always completely neglect to give any specifics as to how (of course), but are firmly convinced that if it weren’t for Obamacare gutting our healthcare system, we’d be completely on top of this. Trump’s hands were tied by the horrible system he inherited, and he’s doing the best he can.

[Daehawk]

Honestly, when we get to the point of refrigerated trucks holding bodies at hospitals - if that doesn't snap the MAGAts out of it, nothing will. Shit is going to get real for America over the next 7-10 days.

Why would it? It's been over 3 years of, "well this will surely snap them out of it..." and every time they've just dug in further. It will be blamed on left coast liberal elites or blue governors or something.

It’s way easier than that, and I’m already seeing this narrative getting being pushed quite a bit.

Obamacare weakened our medical infrastructure so badly that we were unable to prepare for this.

They always completely neglect to give any specifics as to how (of course), but are firmly convinced that if it weren’t for Obamacare gutting our healthcare system, we’d be completely on top of this. Trump’s hands were tied by the horrible system he inherited, and he’s doing the best he can.

News just said his approval has actually gone up most likely due to his 'handling' of the virus scare. Said surprisingly its up to like 48% and its from non voters who see him doing a great job. I hate living with so many morons around me.

[Smoove_B]

Honestly, when we get to the point of refrigerated trucks holding bodies at hospitals - if that doesn't snap the MAGAts out of it, nothing will. Shit is going to get real for America over the next 7-10 days.

Why would it? It's been over 3 years of, "well this will surely snap them out of it..." and every time they've just dug in further. It will be blamed on left coast liberal elites or blue governors or something.

It’s way easier than that, and I’m already seeing this narrative getting being pushed quite a bit.

Obamacare weakened our medical infrastructure so badly that we were unable to prepare for this.

They always completely neglect to give any specifics as to how (of course), but are firmly convinced that if it weren’t for Obamacare gutting our healthcare system, we’d be completely on top of this. Trump’s hands were tied by the horrible system he inherited, and he’s doing the best he can.

Maybe it'll be a self-correcting problem? I feel like shit for even thinking it, but here we are.

https://twitter.com/HoarseWisperer/stat ... 1276182528

Branch Covidians packing into a Florida church today.

[malchior]

FWIW I think the WH press corps is over with treating him with respect. They are straight up going after him. It won't matter but the time for asking him normal questions is well past over. And again straight up racism on display. He told Yamiche Alcindor not to be threatening.

“Why can’t you people act… why don’t you act in a little more positive… it’s always trying to getcha.. getcha, getcha. It’s why nobody trusts the media anymore. That’s why you used to work for the Times and now you work for somebody else.”

Continuing to cut off Alcindor’s questioning, which was concerning the number of ventilators needed in New York, Trump said, “Be nice. Don’t be threatening. Be nice.”

[Daehawk]

Saw that church story. If they want to die they should just drink the kool-aid. but what they're doing can kill many many more. Lock the doors behind them and leave them in there.

Trump...ugh...that guy couldn't find brains in a cemetery with both hands and a backhoe.

[YellowKing]

Said surprisingly its up to like 48% and its from non voters who see him doing a great job. I hate living with so many morons around me.

As long as they continue non-voting I don't care what they think of him.

[Smoove_B]

https://twitter.com/AdamSerwer/status/1 ... 8127063043

The president is trying to set expectations high enough so that, if need be, he can spin American deaths in the six figures as a success.

[milo]

So, sure, I shot a man on 5th Avenue. But did you consider all the people I didn't shoot? Because I could have shot quite a few more, I'm just saying.

[Skinypupy]

Trump is currently on Twitter touting the ratings of his coronavirus briefings to The Bachelor and Monday Night Football. I only wish I were joking.

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/sta ... 0315018240

President Trump is a ratings hit. Since reviving the daily White House briefing Mr. Trump and his coronavirus updates have attracted an average audience of 8.5 million on cable news, roughly the viewership of the season finale of ‘The Bachelor.’ Numbers are continuing to rise...

...On Monday, nearly 12.2 million people watched Mr. Trump’s briefing on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, according to Nielsen — ‘Monday Night Football’ numbers. Millions more are watching on ABC, CBS, NBC and online streaming sites, and the audience is expanding. On Monday, Fox News...

...alone attracted 6.2 million viewers for the president’s briefing — an astounding number for a 6 p.m. cable broadcast, more akin to the viewership for a popular prime-time sitcom...

...The CBS News poll said 13 percent of Republicans trusted the news media for information about the virus.” Michael M. Grynbaum @NYTimes

There are honestly no words.

[Smoove_B]

In case you were wondering about how Trump came to his current position:

According to the Washington Post, “Conservatives close to Trump and numerous administration officials have been circulating an article by Richard A. Epstein of the Hoover Institution, titled ‘Coronavirus Perspective,’ that plays down the extent of the spread and the threat.”

...

Epstein, a professor at New York University School of Law, published the article on the Web site of the Hoover Institution, on March 16th. In it, he questioned the World Health Organization’s decision to declare the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, said that “public officials have gone overboard,” and suggested that about five hundred people would die from COVID-19 in the U.S. Epstein later updated his estimate to five thousand, saying that the previous number had been an error. So far, there have been more than two thousand coronavirus-related fatalities in America; epidemiologists’ projections of the total deaths range widely, depending on the success of social distancing and the availability of medical resources, but they tend to be much higher than Epstein’s.

...

Epstein has long been one of the most cited legal scholars in the country, and is known for his libertarian-minded reading of the Constitution, which envisions a restrained federal government that respects private property. He has also been known to engage with controversial subjects; last fall, he published an article on the Hoover Institution Web site that argued, “The professional skeptics are right: there is today no compelling evidence of an impending climate emergency.”

And if you were wondering about his public health and epidemiological research background:

Epstein attended Columbia University as an undergraduate student in the early 1960s. He had wide-ranging academic interests and did not wish to select a traditional single major, and obtained special permission from the university to pursue a self-selected program of study across the three areas of sociology, philosophy, and mathematics. He graduated with a B.A. summa cum laude in 1964. Epstein's undergraduate performance earned him a Kellett Fellowship, an award at Columbia that pays for two of each year's top graduates to spend two years in England studying at either Cambridge University or Oxford University. Epstein chose to attend Oxford, where he was a member of Oriel College and earned a first-class honours B.A. in jurisprudence in 1966. He then returned to the United States to attend the Yale Law School, graduating with an LL.B. cum laude in 1968.

[Zaxxon]

<MK>Fatality.</MK>

[Daehawk]

How can anyone be so struck on themselves? He seems more of a narcissist than Narcissus himself.

[GungHo]

So, sure, I shot a man on 5th Avenue. But did you consider all the people I didn't shoot? Because I could have shot quite a few more, I'm just saying.

Only thing he's never not lied about. That and his quote in like 1988 where he said if he ran for president, he'd run as a Republican bc they were dumb enough to believe anything.

[malchior]

Interview with COVID-19 theory writer that influenced the Conservative movement and WH.

Spoiler:

He gets very, very Trumpy when his basic errors get pointed out. For instance, he said at most 500 would die and within days of writing his article it was surpassed. He didn't react well when that was pointed out.

He has the perfect modern Conservative trait of thinking with great fervor that his niche economic theories apply to subjects that aren't his expertise. He also has the toddler-like thin skin that doesn't allow him to process that there are basic errors. It is a microcosm of a lot of the breakdown of intellectualism on the right.

[malchior]

Well done my hellhole of a state. Behold this mess; complete with Murphy bullshitting us. To paraphrase, 19th in testing in the country? Bah I put us up there with best of class...testing the already very sick. Fun note. NJ has the HQs or US HQs for several huge pharma companies.

Headline: Coronavirus testing in N.J. has been a mess from the start. Here’s what went wrong.

Despite the opening of testing sites across the state, New Jersey residents say there has been a confounding lack of coronavirus testing in hospitals, doctors’ offices, urgent care centers and Federal Emergency Management Agency sites. Even when people exhibited clear symptoms of COVID-19, they still were denied tests, more than a half-dozen people told NJ Advance Media.

Their stories offer a snapshot of how the state failed to make testing accessible for many in the month since the novel virus invaded New Jersey.

And with hundreds of symptomatic people being turned away, many fear the lack of testing has hindered — and possibly undermined — the state’s ability to comprehend the full scope of the epidemic.

“How is the government planning on getting the proper numbers if they’re not testing people with symptoms?” said Lambert, who lives in Sparta. “How do they know who has it?”

...

Positive coronavirus cases in New Jersey surged to 13,386 Sunday, the second-highest total of any state in the country, with 161 deaths. Restricted by kit availability and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention criteria, the number of tests being administered each day is climbing, but failing to keep up with demand, residents and health experts say.


It has prevented officials from viewing the full picture of the outbreak.

“We were not prepared for this,” Lightfoot said. “We are way behind, and we’re playing catch up.”

...

Laboratories have administered at least 29,822 coronavirus tests since the outbreak started, with a positive rate of 35%, Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli said Saturday.

Persichilli and Gov. Phil Murphy have acknowledged the need for expanded testing. But they also said the state must continue to prioritize tests for the sickest or highest-risk individuals.

New Jersey ranks 19th in the country in per capita testing, but Murphy dismissed the metric, saying the state has been one of the most diligent in the U.S. for COVID-19 testing.

“I’ll put our aggressive testing of symptomatic individuals up against any other place in the country, if not this world,” Murphy said Friday during a media briefing in Trenton.

[Defiant]

That and his quote in like 1988 where he said if he ran for president, he'd run as a Republican bc they were dumb enough to believe anything.

That quote is false

[stessier]

That and his quote in like 1988 where he said if he ran for president, he'd run as a Republican bc they were dumb enough to believe anything.

That quote is false

The statement does not accurately portray what was said, but there is truth in it.

[El Guapo]

That and his quote in like 1988 where he said if he ran for president, he'd run as a Republican bc they were dumb enough to believe anything.

That quote is false

The statement does not accurately portray what was said, but there is truth in it.

The truth being that Republican voters are dumb? Not specifically attributed to Trump, the quote becomes fairly meaningless pablum.

[LawBeefaroni]

Chicago.

When Mayor Lori Lightfoot this week announced the city will pay five hotels about $175 a night for thousands of guest rooms to house COVID-19 patients, the arrangements sounded pretty comfy.

...

But, once they check-in, the hotel guests cannot leave until the city gives them a clean bill of health, the spokesman confirmed. On-duty Chicago police officers and private guards will be securing the hotels, the [city] spokesperson said.

Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) staff members will “try to convince” people who change their minds about staying at the hotel to remain at the facility, according to a source with knowledge of the hotel operations plan. But if those efforts fail, cops will be asked to step in.
Asked directly if CPD officers might be called upon to physically prevent “guests” from leaving the hotels, the spokesperson simply said, “yes.”

“Ideally, individuals will comply following a warning as well as a conversation meant to educate individuals about the ramifications of breaking quarantine,” the spokesperson said.

[Zaxxon]

That and his quote in like 1988 where he said if he ran for president, he'd run as a Republican bc they were dumb enough to believe anything.

That quote is false

The statement does not accurately portray what was said, but there is truth in it.

stessier steppin' in to more politely say what I was about to.

[Smoove_B]

The social distancing culture war has begun via the Atlantic:

This dynamic is playing out in small ways across the country. Bret, a sales representative from Plano, Texas, who asked that I not use his last name, proudly told me how unfazed he and his conservative neighbors were by the threat of an outbreak. In his view, the recent wave of government-mandated lockdowns was a product of panic-mongering in the mainstream media, and he welcomed Trump’s call for businesses to reopen by Easter.

When I asked whether the virus had interfered with his lifestyle, Bret laughed. “Oh, I’m going to the shooting range tomorrow,” he replied.

Was he worried that his friends might disapprove if they found out?

“No,” he told me, “around here, I get much more of people saying, ‘Why don’t you go Saturday so I can go, too?’”

Terry Trahan, a manager at a cutlery store in Lubbock, Texas, acknowledged that a certain “toxic tribalism” was informing people’s attitudes toward the pandemic. “If someone’s a Democrat, they’re gonna say it’s worse,” he told me, “and if someone’s a Republican, they’re gonna say it’s bad, but it’s getting better.”

What's amazing to me is that there's some type of belief that a virus somehow respects party lines or that policy makers are somehow crafting a response designed to specifically target voters in a certain demographic. I'm having a hard time getting into that mindset and not seeing this as a human being problem, but I also acknowledge it's not possible for me to be unbiased in review of information.

[LawBeefaroni]

The social distancing culture war has begun via the Atlantic:

In his view, the recent wave of government-mandated lockdowns was a product of panic-mongering in the mainstream media, and he welcomed Trump’s call for businesses to reopen by Easter.

Wonder how he's going to cognitively absorb Trump's pivot to April 30?