Government Response to Coronavirus: With Pence in Charge, We're Doomed

[JMarie]

4 hours ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

Nobody is safe, you may not die but you may very well suffer a lot.

Amen.  Amen a thousand times.  This is what truly bugs me about antivaxxers.  They'll go on about how VPDs aren't deadly. Show me the statistics, they'll say.  But measles can cause blindness.  Mumps can cause sterility in men.  Who knows, Coronavirus (though not a VPD) might cause lasting pulmonary damage.  Illnesses are serious.

[HerNameIsBuffy]

Governor Pritzker declared a public state of emergency for Illinois last night after 4 more cases.  Nothing concrete is being done, but it's in preparation of ratcheting up resources.  

[clueliss]

On the Jim Bakker front - AG for Missouri files charges.

 

[smittykins]

21 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Even though there's nothing funny about COVID-19, this made me laugh:

 

In my head right now, I’m hearing Ernest Angley:  “Heal!  HEAL!  HEEEEEEEEEALLLLL!”

[Alisamer]

2 hours ago, Dandruff said:

 It's a big store, and wasn't very crowded, but a few people coughed for whatever reason.  Don't think I was within 6 feet of any of them, and I moved the hell away quickly, and didn't touch my face, but wtf.  Hey morons - keep your dumb asses at home if you're sneezing or coughing, especially now, when at a minimum you're scaring the crap out of people nearby. 

 

2 hours ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

I get that you're scared, I am too.  But keep in mind that people do sneeze and cough for a variety of reasons (allergies, asthma, sinus infections, etc.)  I'm not saying don't take precautions, just saying that people who know they have stuff going on that isn't the virus have to get through life, too.

I don't think any of you are near me, but I'm going to apologize now for myself and the others like me. 

I sneeze in bright light. Especially sunlight, but it can be anything. I inherited it from my grandfather. It has nothing to do with illness or even allergies, it's just bright light that triggers it.

I get being scared. A guy at a store I was just at coughed - just once, and it didn't sound bad at all - but the thought did run through my mind... but it's spring. Things have been blooming for a few weeks already here, and I'm parked under a blooming tree (pear, I think) shedding blossoms everywhere. I wake up slightly stuffy on a good day, and now with the pollen?

I apologize if you're near me and I cough or sneeze. I promise if I ever suspect I have coronavirus I won't be out infecting others!

[HerNameIsBuffy]

4 minutes ago, Alisamer said:

I apologize if you're near me and I cough or sneeze. I promise if I ever suspect I have coronavirus I won't be out infecting others!

I'm with you - I've had a cough, ear infection, and sinus fuckery since before Christmas and I feel like I have to give everyone who hears me a timeline to prove it's not coronavirus.  

I find the sunlight thing fascinating, also those who sneeze after eating dark chocolate.  The human body is weird.

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[fraurosena]

36 minutes ago, Alisamer said:

I sneeze in bright light. Especially sunlight, but it can be anything.

I have that too! Although it's mostly sunlight that does it for me. DH, on the other hand, can get sneezing fits if he eats a peppermint. Really weird.

[Xan]

1 hour ago, smittykins said:

In my head right now, I’m hearing Ernest Angley:  “Heal!  HEAL!  HEEEEEEEEEALLLLL!”

Ernest Angley!  That takes me back.  The first time Mr. Xan and I saw Ernest on television, we thought it was some comedy parody of a preacher.  And those toupees!  

[clueliss]

It's that time of day in the US - the daily counts are rolling in.

Mass. has 51 new cases.

King County WAshington - 74 new cases

And this broke my heart.

And in Kentucky - a patient had traveled (multiple times - I read the article) through the Louisville Airport.

Spoiler

 

And apparently Goetz tested negative for Corona.

[fraurosena]

 

[clueliss]

Because I know someone mentioned trips and cancelling

 

[nokidsmom]

On 3/6/2020 at 6:33 PM, WiseGirl said:

I hereby confess to stocking up on hard seltzer and toilet paper.

I confess to stocking up on wine.   And bought a big bottle of Irish Cream at Costco.  

 

[HerNameIsBuffy]

1 minute ago, nokidsmom said:

I confess to stocking up on wine.   And bought a big bottle of Irish Cream at Costco.  

 

I may or may not have enough edibles to see me through a couple of months.  That way if I run out of anything else I won't care as much

[mamallama]

41 minutes ago, nokidsmom said:

I confess to stocking up on wine.   And bought a big bottle of Irish Cream at Costco.  

 

Good thinking.  I'll concentrate on stockpiling wine while all the others are chasing toilet paper.

[formergothardite]

I haven't stockpiled, but now I'm wondering if I should 

[EmmieJ]

7 hours ago, Alisamer said:

Diamond and Silk are two of Trump's "token minorities". You know full well that he only deigns to be seen with them because of the "optics".

I really need to go to the grocery store. I think I'm going to either do a pickup order or have groceries delivered. I hate going grocery shopping anyway, so this is a good excuse not to, I suppose. 

For my last two grocery visits, I did the e-cart ( order online and have it brought to my car).  I'm going to keep that up for now.  I'm approaching 60 and had a very bad experience with the flu two years ago.  So I'm assuming I'd have a severe case if I catch this virus.  I'm still working but I'm going to tell my employer I won't be doing errands, like going to the post office, the court, the bank. .Most of that can be done by mail.  Yes, I'm paranoid.

[Ticklish]

I had to go into the office today for a couple of meetings. People are very worried there. 2 people coughed in a meeting I was in and it was very hard not to think "oh God, I hope that's just a normal cough" I think it was (one is a smoker who coughs normally anyway which helped once I remembered that). I would love to quarantine this week, but we have parent teacher conferences and our tax appointment so no such luck. My daughter's teacher told us they spent at least 10 minutes talking about it as a class yesterday because she had a 6 year old come in sobbing because her mother told her everyone is going to die. Luckily my child's teacher is very level headed and addressed it with the class calmly and rationally.

Everyone is either very fearful (I include myself here) or they're completely aggressively unconcerned and have disdain for anyone who shows even mild concern. There is no in between which seems par for the country right now. 

We have enough to last us a while, aside from perishable foods. If we need anything going forward, we're using grocery pick up or Amazon. 

I just want all this to be over. 

[SassyPants]

My daughter’s conference has been changed to remote. The hours will be odd, so she still wants us to come. Today my husband’s 0600 flight was cancelled. The airline called our home @ 0200. Never a good time to receive a call. As of now, we are still traveling on Saturday. We are on the exact same flight that was cancelled today. Will be interesting to see what happens in the next few days. 

[fraurosena]

50 minutes ago, Ticklish said:

she had a 6 year old come in sobbing because her mother told her everyone is going to die.

What kind of idiot mother says that to their child? ?
 

[Dandruff]

6 hours ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

I get that you're scared, I am too.  But keep in mind that people do sneeze and cough for a variety of reasons (allergies, asthma, sinus infections, etc.)  I'm not saying don't take precautions, just saying that people who know they have stuff going on that isn't the virus have to get through life, too.

Thanks - I know people sneeze and cough for various reasons, but these folks didn't seem willing to cover their mouths or move away from clumps of people before they coughed.  Maybe they couldn't move away in time but the coughs didn't sound like the equivalent of a sudden sneeze to me.  I have asthma and pretty bad allergies, and do my fair share of coughing and sneezing, but if I'm in public - even under the best of circumstances (a lot better than COVID-19) - I try to at least turn or cover whatever I'm doing.  I usually have at least a moment to try to protect other people from contagion or the fear of it.  I also think most other people do the same, but not the ones I encountered today.  I'm not worried I'm going to die from this but I'm generally scared and was tired and pretty annoyed.  Maybe I should have rested before I posted or at least been clearer.

[fraurosena]

This seems contrary.

Christian megachurch cancels ‘faith healing’ service in response to coronavirus outbreak

Quote

Members of this prominent northern California church believe they can heal the sick and raise the dead through prayer. Even so, the church is encouraging followers to wash their hands and is urging anyone who falls ill to stay home.

Bethel church is even canceling missionary trips and imploring its faith healers to stay away from local hospitals, The Sacramento Bee reports.

Leaders at the Redding-based church are keeping in contact with health officials but have yet to cancel services for the 6,300 faithful who attend each week in one of the largest gatherings in northern California.

“Through email communications, signage, and church announcements, we are actively encouraging health practices and precautions to our whole community,” said church spokesman Aaron Tesauro in an email. “We believe that wisdom, modern medicine, and faith are meant to work together, and express the value for each in the pursuit of continued health and healing.”

A 50-year-old man in Shasta County (where Redding is located) has tested positive for COVID-19, health officials said on Saturday. Last week, two people, including one person who was potentially exposed to coronavirus on a cruise ship, tested negative. Tesauro added that no church members are believed to have the virus.

The church is perhaps most known for its response to the death of two-year-old Olive Heiligenthal last year when hundreds of members gathered and tried to raise her from the dead. Thousands of church members posted the hashtag #WakeUpOlive on Instagram.

As could be expected, the church has its skeptics.

“It’s clear that when it comes to something really serious like coronavirus, their actions speak louder than their words,” said Michael Shermer, who’s the editor of Skeptic Magazine and a professor at Chapman University in Southern California. “So God is omniscient and omnipotent and can cure diseases if he wants but just in case — wash your hands!”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s critics aren’t ‘politicizing the coronavirus.’ Trump is."

Spoiler

A week before he was replaced as acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney said the media was overblowing coronavirus coverage because “they think this will bring down the president.” The same day, President Trump accused Democrats of “politicizing the coronavirus,” describing it as “their new hoax.” On Saturday, conservative commentator Erick Erickson tweeted that media coverage is helping Americans view the outbreak “through partisan framing instead of as a health situation.” By Monday night, Fox Business’s Trish Regan had taken it over the top, railing that Democrats’ criticisms of Trump’s coronavirus response were “another attempt to impeach the president,” while blaming “the liberal media” for using the coronavirus to try to “demonize and destroy the president.”

Nonsense.

As Harvard Medical School’s Maia Majumder tweeted Saturday, the coronavirus crisis is inherently political because “an administration’s priorities can absolutely impact the trajectory of a pandemic.” It’s political because every government is — and should be — measured by its ability to protect its citizens to the best of its ability from the ancient threats of disease, violence and starvation.

For any national leader, this is the job: protecting the public, not flinging Twitter insults or goosing the stock market. To complain about politicization, as Trump and his supporters have done, is to say that the president should be above criticism from the people whose welfare he has sworn to protect. And by deflecting the criticism that’s being — rightly — directed at him for his bizarre and contradictory statements about the coronavirus outbreak, for his self-proclaimed faith in his own uninformed “hunch” about the severity of the crisis, and for his defensiveness about his administration’s flailing response, it is Trump and his supporters who are politicizing the coronavirus threat, and not the other way around.

Presidential leadership requires putting ego aside, seeking expert advice and absorbing bad news without attacking the messengers, to generate effective policy. In a public health crisis, it means making life-or-death decisions that approach the same level of urgency a president faces in wartime: allocation of scarce resources, calling for shared sacrifice and making tough calls that might result in saving some lives at the expense of others. It requires selflessness and a steady hand, neither of which Trump possesses.

Compare all of that to the narcissistic approach Trump has taken, which has distracted and sometimes paralyzed the response of experts and policymakers who must work together to protect the nation. Politics, not public safety, suffuses everything.

He handed oversight of the government’s response to Vice President Pence, a convenient solution to insulate himself from blame if the situation worsens, but to preserve credit if the situation improves.

Instead of objectively weighing the pros and cons of allowing potentially exposed cruise ship passengers to come ashore, Trump said he’d prefer that they stay aboard the ship because “I like the numbers where they are,” emphasizing the optics of the domestic coronavirus case count over the health of American travelers.

Instead of leveling with the public about the need to increase covid-19 testing capacity nationwide, Trump confusingly stated that “everyone who wants to be tested can get a test,” contradicting earlier statements by his advisers. Bafflingly, Trump compared the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “perfect” testing capability to his ongoing personal obsession with his “perfect” phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Meanwhile, Trump has corrupted the flow of information to the news media and the public by encouraging a culture of presidential glorification instead of expert candidness. Addressing the media Friday while standing next to the president, CDC Director Robert Redfield thanked Trump, for paying a visit to CDC headquarters, “for your decisive leadership in helping us,” and “sort of encouraging and bringing energy to the men and women that you see that work every day to try to keep America safe,” adding — incredibly — “I think that’s the most important thing I want to say, sir.” Two days later, Surgeon General Jerome Adams, a fit man in his 40s, rhapsodized on national television in terms you’d expect from a North Korean official about how our 70-something, overweight president is “healthier” than he, a point that served no purpose other than to speak to the audience of one in the White House.

When government officials must engage in these inane rituals, it erodes our trust in their professionalism, and it requires us to believe, by sheer force of will, that our national health experts are doing the right thing in private, no matter what absurd statements they are forced to say in public. It is not “politicizing” to say this out loud.

Public policy does not happen by accident. Scientists and government experts cannot tackle this problem alone. The public consistently misunderstands this, because ordinary citizens often think of policymakers and experts as the same group. But while an epidemiologist can tell you how a virus spreads, it is policymakers and their staff who work to turn all that science into guidance, money and requirements for government institutions. This doesn’t happen because the president dons a campaign hat and engages in cheery bloviation in front of television cameras.

In 2014, Trump trashed then-President Barack Obama for golfing during the Ebola crisis, a disease threat that was further removed from most Americans than the coronavirus is today. For once, Trump had a point, demanding that Obama put the nation, not recreation, first. Now, it is Trump hitting the links, and we should hold him to the same standard. I certainly do: I’m nearly 60 years old and dread the ordinary flu, much less the novel coronavirus. My daughter is a student in a public school. My stepdaughter just welcomed a new baby. My beloved in-laws are elderly. We’re all reliant on government acting honestly and competently.

As a nation, we require a caliber of leadership that Trump simply can’t muster. And if pointing this out is politicization, then so be it.

 

[clueliss]

Like Coachella, Stagecoach is also Postponed

 

[SilverBeach]

On 3/9/2020 at 4:06 PM, Dandruff said:

I'm going to go out and take a walk today, because the weather is beautiful and I enjoy it, but I'm continuing to stay away from crowds and am not going into stores. 

That's sensible, and I have always avoided crowds because I don't like them.  I have to go into stores though. I wear protective gloves and go during off-peak times, but this was my practice before all of this broke out. I wear gloves to open mail now too. 

On 3/9/2020 at 4:06 PM, Dandruff said:

I appreciate your efforts to put things in perspective and calm us, but I'm a lot more worried about COVID-19 than the flu.  I (as well as many others) had a flu shot, which is likely to provide at least partial immunity, and the mortality rate from COVID-19 appears to be much higher than from the flu. 

I had a flu shot, but the flu is at present more deadly than coronavirus to older folks like me. I haven't seen reports about this higher mortality rate,I've actually seen that most cases are mild, and deaths have ben in people with an average age of 80.  Flu and pneumonia kill the elderly at a much higher rate also.

I liken this outbreak to the bird flu and swine flu. The media is known for making things sound much woorse than they are (seven cases in an area with four million people is not an epidemic). Things are disorganized now, but the public health response will improve with the influx of federal money about to happen.