Government Response to Coronavirus 2: It's Not A Hoax

[fraurosena]

Sweet Rufus. Doesn't he understand that it won't only be the poor non-whites without healthcare who die, but that his own loved ones could be amongst those 11 million? 

GOP senator suggests it’s no big deal if coronavirus kills 11 million Americans

Quote

On Wednesday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel highlighted a quote from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) in a new interview, in which he appeared to suggest that it wouldn’t be worth shutting down the economy over the risk of 11 million Americans dying.

“I’m not denying what a nasty disease COVID-19 can be, and how it’s obviously devastating to somewhere between 1 and 3.4 percent of the population,” said Johnson. “But that means 97 to 99 percent will get through this and develop immunities and will be able to move beyond this. But we don’t shut down our economy because tens of thousands of people die on the highways. It’s a risk we accept so we can move about. We don’t shut down our economies because tens of thousands of people die from the common flu.”

When pressed by reporter Craig Gilbert, Johnson acknowledged coronavirus is much more dangerous than the seasonal flu, but added that “getting coronavirus is not a death sentence except for maybe no more than 3.4 percent of our population [and] I think probably far less.”

The United States is estimated to have around 327 million people. Doing the math, if Johnson was correct, that would still mean COVID-19 could kill 11 million Americans if the entire population was infected. By contrast, fewer than 34,000 people died in motor vehicle accidents in 2018.

 

[HerNameIsBuffy]

I'm watching his streaming presser...can someone tell Trump that "immediate use" =/= "as soon as we can get it."

FFS he's been speaking English for almost a century, how is this complicated?

22 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Oh wow. I'm flabbergasted. You still have to do this in person? Over here you can apply for unemployment benefits online.

In my state regular unemployment is applied for online, there is a phone interview, then everything else (check ins, etc.) are online.

They do have physical locations and phone options for those without internet access.  Each state has it's own procedures.

[GreyhoundFan]

15 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Sweet Rufus. Doesn't he understand that it won't only be the poor non-whites without healthcare who die, but that his own loved ones could be amongst those 11 million? 

You're assuming he has loved ones.

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[fraurosena]

Some updates:

• We've had 409 new cases today and 18 deaths-- that's in a single day 
• Prince Albert of Monaco has tested positive for the virus
• The Formula One race in Zandvoort has been postponed
• Turkey has cancelled all sporting events
• Amsterdam has granted free parking in the city for all healthcare workers
• Belgium and the UK have postponed all (competitive) soccer matches
• The Spanish Olympics Commission has asked to postpone the Olympics
• Dutch Banks have postponed all loan payments for six months for small to medium sized businesses
• Kim Jong Un has admitted there is a humanitarian disaster happening in his country 

[fraurosena]

Shocker! Trump gets caught in a lie!

/s

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Kushner coronavirus team sparks confusion, plaudits inside White House response efforts"

Spoiler

Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and a senior adviser, has created his own team of government allies and private industry representatives to work alongside the administration’s official coronavirus task force, adding another layer of confusion and conflicting signals within the White House’s disjointed response to the crisis.

Kushner, who joined the administration’s coronavirus efforts last week, is primarily focused on attempting to set up drive-through testing sites with the help of technology and retail executives, as well as experts in health-care delivery. The goal, officials familiar with the work said, is to have limited testing in a handful of cities running by Friday and to expand the project from there.

But Kushner’s team is causing confusion among many officials involved in the response, who say they are unsure who is in charge given Kushner’s dual role as senior adviser and Trump family member. Some have privately dubbed his team a “shadow task force” whose requests they interpret as orders they must balance with regular response efforts.

Some members of Kushner’s team are working out of offices on the seventh floor of Health and Human Services headquarters — one floor above the office of HHS secretary Alex Azar — while others are working out of an office in the West Wing of the White House, officials said.

They include representatives of companies such as UPS, FedEx and Flatiron Health, as well as Kushner allies inside the government such as Brad Smith, director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation.

Two senior officials said some government officials have become increasingly confused as they have received emails from private industry employees on Kushner’s team and have been on conference calls with them, unsure what their exact role is in the government response. Several people involved in the response said the involvement of outside advisers — who are emailing large groups of government employees from private email addresses — also raises legitimate security concerns about whether these advisers are following proper government protocols.

“We don’t know who these people are,” one senior official said. “Who is this? We’re all getting these emails.”

Kushner defended his role in an interview, saying his team’s goal was to bring “an entrepreneurial approach” to the crisis.

“We’re getting things done in record speeds and are doing everything possible to avoid damage and mitigate the negative impacts,” Kushner said. “In America, some of our best resources are in our private sector. The federal government is not designed to solve all our problems; a lot of the muscle is in the private sector and there’s also a lot of smart people.”

This account of Kushner’s involvement in the administration’s coronavirus response effort is based on interviews with 10 senior administration officials and people familiar with the effort, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal dynamics and speak candidly.

Katie Miller, a spokeswoman for Vice President Pence, who is heading the official task force, dismissed concerns over Kushner’s growing role.

“For those who are involved in the effort, they aren’t confused,” Miller said. “For those who deal with this day-to-day, the structure is quite clear.”

Kushner said he is “closely collaborating” with Pence, whom he talks to “ten times a day.”

Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, also praised Kushner’s ability to enlist companies and individuals outside government to help in the response.

“The White House recognizes many solutions we will need today and tomorrow to combat this virus reside in the private sector and Jared has been essential in bringing those insights to critical discussions,” she wrote in an email.

But Kushner operates from a nearly untouchable perch within the White House hierarchy, which has worried some officials. Some aides say that regardless of the official organization chart, they know that Kushner can walk into the Oval Office when he wants or call the president late at night, allowing him a final private word after the routine meetings have ended.

The president has grown frustrated with him at times — including over his widely criticized Oval Office address last week, which Kushner helped write — but he remains family and so far has outlasted and outmaneuvered internal rivals.

Kushner — who already has an overly large portfolio, which had become the subject of mockery by his critics — did not become involved in the virus response until last week, at the request of Pence’s chief of staff. Kushner had previously counseled the president that the media and some in the administration were overreacting to the threat of the virus.

Kushner helped write Trump’s widely panned prime-time Oval Office address last week that sent markets into a free fall, pushed Trump to ban travel from Europe and orchestrated a Rose Garden news conference last Friday where Trump announced a ramped-up testing effort that turned out to be in only the early stages of development.

Trump announced that Google was developing a website where Americans could provide their symptoms, find out whether they needed to be tested and then be directed to a testing site near their homes that retailers including Target, CVS and Walgreens would help set up. But several of the companies quickly distanced themselves from the claims, and little has come of the efforts so far.

Two officials said Kushner was the one who called the various company executives and convinced them to come to Washington to meet and discuss the initiative. While the announcement was premature, they said getting the president to hold the news conference helped focus attention on the issue.

Kushner’s team is primarily focused on getting the testing project launched by the end of this week in “hot spot” areas with large outbreaks, such as Seattle, the San Francisco Bay area and New York City, officials said. The team is also focused on procurement issues, particularly related to the nasal swabs needed to conduct the diagnostic tests, which officials have warned could face shortages as the number of tests expands.

“The government is designed to do certain things in certain ways, but this is not a usual circumstance,” Kushner said. “I’m just trying to establish a faster decision cadence, so we can empower them to isolate the problems, agree on the proposed solutions and then empower the proper government department to move quickly.”

The team includes Kushner allies such as Smith and Adam Boehler, chief executive of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, as well as a host of private industry representatives who Kushner believes can more quickly solve the testing issue than the government officials who have been overseeing it for the past two months.

Nat Turner, chief executive of Flatiron Health, a health-care technology company focused on cancer research, as well as some of his employees are key members of Kushner’s team and are working out of HHS, officials said. Flatiron Health confirmed it was working on an HHS project. Kushner also brought in employees from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to embed with his team at HHS, and has called UPS and FedEx to help work on logistics issues, while still working with retail executives who are key to the testing initiative, two administration officials said.

Walmart is one of the retailers that plan to participate in providing coronavirus testing, a representative said Wednesday, “working with the federal, state and local officials to finalize operational details of our first pilot sites.”

There have been growing pains within the West Wing and agencies as Kushner largely oversees testing and Pence’s team runs broader aspects of the response, including public relations, public-health guidelines to mitigate the spread of the virus and emergency preparedness to ensure states have the resources they need.

Some officials involved in the coronavirus efforts said they do not know who is in charge and whether Pence’s team has been sidelined. Three senior officials involved in the response said Kushner was generally letting the task force know what he was doing, but that they did not know precisely what he was working on. Kushner regularly briefs the president separately from the rest of the task force, one official said.

One potential conflict for Kushner is the fact that Oscar, a health insurance company co-founded by Kushner’s younger brother, Joshua, last week launched its own digital portal that helps direct people to virus testing centers and assess their own risk of becoming infected. A spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment, including about whether Oscar plans to seek a government contract.

Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota and the former chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, said one key consideration of involving the private sector in any virus response is ensuring that government officials who own any stock in the companies recuse themselves from decision-making.

 “The first concern is to make sure no government officials are participating in those discussions that own stock in any of those companies, because if they do or their spouse do, there’s going to be a lot of trouble,” Painter said.

 But, he added, as long as “you clear out the conflicts, then yes, this is something that’s going to happen. This is going to be necessary. On any kind of emergency, we do use the private sector, especially in wartime.”

 

[Alisamer]

17 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Some updates:

• The Spanish Olympics Commission has asked to postpone the Olympics
• Dutch Banks have postponed all loan payments for six months for small to medium sized businesses
• Kim Jong Un has admitted there is a humanitarian disaster happening in his country 

1 - I'd forgotten about the Olympics until just yesterday. I really think there's going to be no choice but to postpone.

2 - If they would do that here, the stress level for my boss and everyone here would go down by a TON. Our production manager had a stroke on Tuesday - and I don't doubt that the stress of this had to have at least contributed somewhat. (He's doing OK. Will be out of work for a bit, but then so might we all at this point.)

3 - When Kim Jong Un admits there's a problem...

 

As for unemployment, it's been ages since I applied. At that point it was in person, but I think now it's mostly by phone or online depending on the state. But people are on hold for literal hours - like 6+ hours - trying to get through. 

 

Maybe the fairy garden thing was in a gardening thread? 

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, Alisamer said:

Maybe the fairy garden thing was in a gardening thread? 

Yes!

The last post is dated February 7, 2017, but we can revive it— although strictly speaking my stuff is mostly for indoors (with fairy lights inside).  I’ll post some pics there later, and hope you (and others!) will post there too.

[GreyhoundFan]

"The one undoubtable positive to come of the coronavirus: A new appreciation of teachers"

Spoiler

It is not yet lunchtime, and I have already explained climate change to a 7-year-old, made a homemade book with a 5-year-old and turned my kitchen table into a glittery mess.

I can do this, I think.

My God, how long will I have to do this? I also think.

If I had to home-school my children under different circumstances, it might be fun, energizing even. But quarantine-forced home schooling is not some planned adventure. It is the parenting equivalent of that “Naked and Afraid” show, in which people are suddenly dropped into the wild, exposed from their necks to their toes, and expected to survive using only their wits and creativity.

One major difference (besides pants), though, is that at least the participants on that show enter the unknown with a definitive exit date. They know they only have to live that way for 21 days. Right now, parents across the country are trying to work from home while also teaching their children math, science, reading, writing, geography, art and whatever else they were already studying in school, not knowing if they will have to do that for weeks or months.

The result: Many of us can’t wait for this reality show to end.

The other result: Many of us have thought more about our children’s teachers in the past three days than we have in the past three months.

On Wednesday, Ivanka Trump posted on Twitter, “I thought that my respect for our Nation’s teachers couldn’t get any higher … but after this past week it’s definitely at peak level!”

She isn’t the only one feeling that way.

So much remains unknown about how the novel coronavirus is going to affect our health, our economy and our way of life in this country. But amid all that uncertainty, one undoubtable positive that will emerge with many of us from our homes when it finally feels safe again for crowds to gather and for schools to open is this: a new appreciation of educators.

I’m not talking about the kind of appreciation that comes from remembering a favorite teacher. The acknowledgment that some extraordinary, standout people work in that profession has always existed.

The appreciation that is spreading right now faster than the coronavirus that caused schools to close — and will hopefully remain once that virus is no longer a threat — is the kind that comes from peeling glue off your fingers. It’s the kind that comes from feeling your heart jump at finding stashed-away Popsicle sticks in a drawer because you now have a lesson plan.

It is the kind that took us all experiencing firsthand how much patience, multitasking and energy it takes to teach at all. (And most of us are only handling our own kids, not 20-plus).

“I am completely in awe of what they do,” Julia Young, a mother of three in Arlington, said of her children’s elementary school teachers at the end of her first day of home schooling.

One of her children is eligible to receive special education, but Young doesn’t have any training in that area. She, like many parents-suddenly-turned-educators, doesn’t have any early education training at all.

The first day of home school, Young said, started with the family sorting through school supplies, trying to get on a website the teachers at her children’s school recommended and searching “through a tremendous and overwhelming number of websites” for home schooling resources.

It ended, she said, with her family “mostly giving up, taking a walk in the woods, and then succumbing to screens.”

Her family was not alone in that surrender. Far from it.

Other parents I spoke to confessed frustration, exhaustion and a thankfulness that “Frozen 2” is now on Disney Plus.

A picture that appeared this week on the Instagram page of District MotherHued, a D.C.-area organization that brings together moms of color, showed a 3-year-old boy sitting at a toy work station. In the comments, some people asked where they could buy that setup.

Others looked at that boy, focusing on a workbook, holding a crayon in his hand, and thought about how their own home schooling experience did not look like that.

“Meanwhile, it’s only day 1 and I cant even get mine to sit still for 5 minutes,” one person wrote.

“Meanwhile my almost 3-year-old is in here running circles around me,” another person wrote, “and his word of the week is ‘no’ (I thought i knew what i was doing).”

Kia Woods, whose son Gabriel is the boy in that photo, said her husband is a first responder who is on the front lines of trying to prevent covid-19 from spreading. That means his days are long and he is often gone. When she learned that Prince William County was closing its schools, she said, she knew she had to prepare because “my resources would be limited and no one was going to help me.”

She researched home schooling activities for preschoolers, ordered a curriculum book and created a workspace away from her son’s toys to minimize distractions.

“Before I knew it, I was a de facto preschool teacher,” she said.

Make that a de facto preschool teacher with another full-time job. She also works for a gun violence prevention organization and said her team has been empathetic and considerate of her situation.

“I don’t have the option of not being present for my son, but I am equally as passionate about my career and the work that I produce, so it’s all a balancing act,” she said. “The juggle is real.”

Each family’s situation is, of course, different. Some employers aren’t understanding. Some parents don’t get to work from home, or if they do, they don’t have electronic tablets they can spare for math lessons or shelves filled with books they can dust off for an at-home reading class.

To help families in need of books, the Alexandria-based organization Alice’s Kids decided this week to make an exception to how it normally receives requests for help. It is now allowing parents to make direct requests for books they need, and the organization will then mail that reading material to them.

In my home, we are fortunate. My husband and I both have jobs that allow us to work mostly from home, and we have agreed to split the teaching so that we each have time to get work done during the day (and then again after our children’s bedtime).

So far, we have managed each day to get through all the main subjects and keep our two sons engaged. On Monday, they giggled as they made edible slime for “science class.” On Tuesday, they took a “field trip” to a nearby pond and then enthusiastically worked on research projects about what they saw.

And on Wednesday, I woke up exhausted, thinking a lot about their teachers.

I pondered if my 5-year-old’s kindergarten teacher would prefer I spell out words for him when he asks for help or instruct him to spell them the way they sound to him.

I questioned whether my 7-year-old’s second-grade teacher would approve of the math problems we were giving him each day (and that he seemed to be enjoying) because our way of instructing him to solve them is different than what he has spent years learning.

Mostly, though, I wondered when those incredibly patient, hard-working teachers might finally take my children back.

 

[fraurosena]

 

[smittykins]

On 3/18/2020 at 2:07 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

 

[SethMeyers]”Why, Lindsay Beauregard Graham, you watch your tongue!”[/SethMeyers]

[hoipolloi]

Another reason to appreciate Rep Katie Porter:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is his MO; deflect and assign blame: "Under fire for his handling of the deadly virus outbreak, Trump targets the media"

Spoiler

President Trump on Thursday held the latest in a series of daily news briefings focused on the spread of the new coronavirus across the country, with more than 10,000 people infected. In the briefing on Monday, when the total number of confirmed infections was half as large, Trump for the first time seemed to fully seek to convey the threat the virus poses to the country — a message that had been common in news coverage for several weeks.

“I think a lot of the media actually has been very fair,” Trump said at that point. “I think people are pulling together on this. I really think the media has been very fair.”

This was not his position on Thursday. Over the course of the lengthy briefing, Trump repeatedly impugned media coverage and disparaged the reporters who had been covering the White House response.

Trump is always looking for an enemy to present to his base of supporters. In recent days, amid criticism of his handling of the virus, Trump had seemed to settle on China as the focus of his blame. At Thursday’s briefing, though, he redirected that effort to mainstream news outlets, disparaging them far more than the Chinese government.

Given efforts to limit the spread of the virus by person-to-person contact, the number of reporters in the small briefing center at the White House had been reduced. Trump noted the smaller attendance with appreciation at the outset of the briefing.

“I have to say,” he said, “I think with social distancing that the media has been much nicer. I don’t know what it is. All these empty, these in-between chairs. We probably shouldn’t have anybody sitting behind you, either. I should probably go back, but I love it. It’s so much nicer.”

That was tame.

“You did say a few days ago, though, that you did have a sense that this was a pandemic that was coming,” a reporter asked at one point. “So why was the United States not prepared with more testing and supplies.”

“We were very prepared,” Trump insisted. “The only thing we weren’t prepared for was the media. The media has not treated it fairly.” He claimed that the reporter’s network had called him “racist” for calling for limits on travel from China during that country’s initial outbreak of the virus.

“So when you say that I wasn’t prepared, I was the first one to do the ban,” Trump said. “Now other countries are following what I did. But the media doesn’t acknowledge that. They know it’s true. They know it’s true. But they don’t want to write about it.”

Here’s an article explaining how Trump came to call for those limits.

More broadly, he expressed frustration at the idea that sufficient supplies were lacking.

“You don’t know what we’ve done,” he said. “… You don’t know what’s been ordered, what’s not been ordered. I can only tell you — I can only tell you that, as an example, masks. Nobody ever heard of the number of masks that’s been ordered. They’re being made now, and many are available now. But people, I think, in the media probably don’t know that.”

The Post has spoken with medical experts who have expressed repeated concern about the unavailability of protective gear. The New York Times noted that doctors are requesting gear over social media. Vice President Pence even expressed appreciation during the hearing for construction companies stepping forward and donating masks that could be used — the sort of private-sector support that would seem not to be necessary were the government prepared. Ordering masks now is important — but ordering them a month ago, as the threat to the country was becoming more obvious, would have been more useful.

Trump’s frustration with the media came out in often unexpected moments. He explained that he could speak to the virus testing regimen because he’d been tested for it — but only because “you people were driving everybody crazy” asking whether he’d been tested.

Asked about two members of Congress testing positive, he wondered whether they’d been observing “social distancing,” maintaining a safe distance. He then revisited the seating in the briefing room.

“You’re actually sitting too close,” he said. “You should really, we should probably get rid of about another 75, 80 percent of you. Have just two or three that I like in this room. I think that’s a great way of doing it. We just figured a new way of doing it.”

One of the reporters he likes, Chanel Rion of the sharply pro-Trump cable network One America News, asked a question a bit later. (“OAN. Very good,” Trump said when she began speaking. “Thank you very much. You treat me very nicely.”)

Rion, who partnered on several obsequious reports about Ukraine with Trump personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, first asked Trump whether he thought the expression “Chinese food” was racist. It was an obvious effort to bolster Trump’s recent focus on linking China to the virus and condemnation of his referring to it as a “Chinese virus.” Trump, predictably, did not think the term was racist.

Rion continued.

“Major left-wing news media, even in this room, have teamed up with Chinese Communist Party narratives and they’re claiming you’re a racist for making these claims about Chinese virus,” she said. “Is it alarming that major media players, just to oppose you, are consistently siding with foreign-state propaganda, Islamic radicals and Latin gangs and cartels — and they work right here at the White House with direct access to you and your team?”

This question, regurgitating common rhetoric from conservative social media and repackaging it in a truly bizarre way, was odd enough that even Trump mostly ignored it. (How does one “team up” with a “narrative”?) He did use it, though, to tee off on media coverage that annoyed him.

“It amazes me when I read the things that I read,” he said. "It amazes me when I read the Wall Street Journal, which is always so negative. It amazes me when I read— the New York Times is not even— I barely read it. You know, we don’t distribute it in the White House anymore, and the same thing with The Washington Post.

“Because you see, I know the truth,” he continued. “And people out there in the world, they really don’t know the truth. They don’t know what it is. They use different slogans and different concepts for me almost every week trying to catch something. Last week, it was, oh, chaos. You see me, there’s no chaos. No chaos. I’m the one telling everybody to be calm. There’s no chaos at the White House. We have unbelievable professionals. It’s really — I mean, I think I came up with the term, I hope I came up with the term, but it is fake news. It’s more than fake news, it’s corrupt news.”

He complained generally about not being called by news outlets writing stories, focusing on one Wall Street Journal article in particular (which may have been the spur for the day’s frustration with the media overall). By way of full disclosure, he went on to say that The Post had been “going wild lately” and that we are very dishonest.

“This administration has done a great job, but the press is very dishonest,” he concluded.

Rion jumped in again.

“More than dishonest, they’re siding with state propaganda,” she said without any apparent irony.

“I think they do,” Trump replied. “They are siding with China. They are doing things that they shouldn’t be doing. They’re siding with many others; China is the least of it. So why are they doing this? You’ll have to ask them. But if we had an honest media in this country, our country would be an even greater place.”

With that question from Rion, who recently promoted a conspiracy theory that the coronavirus originated in a lab in the U.S. — a claim boosted by the Chinese state — Trump was done taking questions from the press for the day. Should the White House trim the number of reporters allowed to ask questions of the president, it’s safe to say that the One America News Network or Rion will still earn an invitation.

 

[elliha]

Italy has more deaths than China now. While i am doubtful of the Chinese numbers that is still heartbreaking. I for real want to cry now and then you see all the statistics for the rest of Europe. Yes, there is a way out of this, we must believe that, but we are going to leave people on the other side. The same is true for the rest of the world but right now the situation in Europe is enough for me to handle. 

Today has been a hard day, I had trouble sleeping last night and I have PMS and all of the shit going on in the world. My whole existence cries "Enough!".

[HerNameIsBuffy]

11 minutes ago, elliha said:

I for real want to cry now and then you see all the statistics for the rest of Europe.

It's terrifying.  There is a nursing home near me that as of last night had 22 confirmed cases ...today 47 confirmed cases.

More than doubled in less than 24 hours.  It's horrific how fast it spreads once it gets a foothold.

[clueliss]

Nursing homes are such a close environment.  I think all but 3 or 4 residents of Life Care in Kirkswood tested positive.  and 2 or 3 of those were inconclusive.  

[zeebaneighba]

20 hours ago, Kailash said:

People in Wichita, KS are apparently going to have to have it spelled out for them in order to self quarantine or even distance. Driving to the pharmacy and there were people in groups all over the park I went past. ? Idiots.

Great.  I have to go to the PO and Walgreens tomorrow.  Guess I will wear gloves and try not to breathe?

[clueliss]

Quote

Two more Coronavirus cases confirmed in Greene County, new timeline offered on potential exposure in Ozark, Mo.

By KY3 Staff | 

Posted: Thu 11:18 AM, Mar 19, 2020  | 

Updated: Thu 11:32 AM, Mar 19, 2020

    

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- The Springfield-Greene County Health Department announced Thursday that the fifth and sixth cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in Greene County.

Health officials did not provide an age range or gender for either of the new patients.

The county's fifth case is a known household contact of the third case. The sixth case had a domestic travel history to an impacted area.

Health officials say both had been voluntarily self-quarantining and were not a risk to general community spread.

Officials are working with public health system partners to determine any close contacts of individuals who were possibly exposed. The health department will notify people who have had close contact with the patients and should be in quarantine.

Additionally, after two cases were confirmed in Christian County on Wednesday, Christian County and Greene County officials updated the timeline of potential COVID-19 exposure to reflect that the travelers visited Lamberts Café in Ozark.

On Thursday, March 5, the international travelers and our fourth case had lunch in the upstairs area of Bruno’s Italian Restaurant. They then shopped at Branson Landing and had dinner at Lamberts Café in Ozark.

On Friday, March 6, the international travelers had breakfast at Hemingway’s and shopped at Bass Pro.

On Thursday, March 12, our case had a dinner meeting in a private room at Ocean Zen.

On Friday, March 13, our case had lunch at Big Biscuit on South Campbell.

People who were at these locations on these dates are at low risk for contracting COVID-19, but should monitor for symptoms. There is no need to self-quarantine or isolate unless symptoms develop, per health officials.

https://www.ky3.com/content/news/Two-more-cases-of-Coronavirus-confirmed-in-Greene-County-now-6-total-568930461.html

The above was an 'interesting' read.  It sounds like people not from Missouri/the area were down in the Springfield/Branson area (Christian County is immediately south of it) and wandered seemingly everywhere before testing positive.  It gives a list and dates.  

[Cartmann99]

7 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"American pigs and fried rattlesnakes: What John Cornyn ignores when he blames Chinese culture for epidemics"

  Hide contents

While defending President Trump’s use of “the Chinese virus” to describe the novel coronavirus, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) blamed China on Wednesday for the disease and several other viral epidemics from the last two decades.

“China is to blame because the culture where people eat bats and snakes and dogs and things like that,” Cornyn told reporters. “These viruses are transmitted from the animal to the people, and that’s why China has been the source of a lot of these viruses like SARS, like MERS, the swine flu, and now the coronavirus.”

The senator’s comment was immediately panned as racist by Democrats and critics on social media. The Texas Democratic Party said Cornyn was “dog whistling” and urged him to focus on preventing the spread of covid-19. Cornyn did not immediately return a request for comment late Wednesday.

In addition to the offensive language, much in the Texas senator’s comment is either wrong or leaves out important context.

The first human infections involving the novel coronavirus did originate in China, as did the strain of coronavirus that caused the 2003 SARS epidemic.

But neither the 2012 MERS outbreak nor the 2009 swine flu epidemics started there.

MERS, short for “Middle East respiratory syndrome,” reflects that the first human cases of the disease were first identified in Saudi Arabia in 2012, according to the World Health Organization. The largest outbreaks of MERS occurred in Saudi Arabia — where 80 percent of human MERS infections have occurred — as well as the United Arab Emirates and South Korea.

When it comes to the 2009 swine flu pandemic, it started off, as its name suggests, infecting pigs in Mexico and the U.S. The H1N1 virus jumped from North American pig herds to infect humans in the spring of 2009, with the first cases being recorded in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Cornyn also appeared to be off-base about the specific animals that pass other viral infections to people. None of the diseases he mentioned are linked to dogs and snakes, according to the CDC. Bats do carry coronaviruses, but another animal usually catches the virus from a bat before passing it on to a human.

Scientists believe contact with civet cats, which had likely been infected with a coronavirus by bats at a live-animal market, caused the 2003 SARS outbreak in China, according to the CDC. And contact with camels is the likely reason for the MERS outbreak in Saudi Arabia, the WHO said.

Experts don’t know the animal source of the virus that causes covid-19, yet, but there is some evidence it is also linked to a Chinese “wet” market.

Cornyn’s comment appears to capitalize on American taboos against eating certain animals, but the science does not support the suggestion that eating Chinese dishes that include bat, snake or dog meat have contributed directly to the spread of coronavirus, SARS, MERS or swine flu.

And you don’t have to travel as far as China to eat snake meat. In Cornyn’s home state of Texas, several towns host annual festivals where residents milk rattlesnakes for antivenin and fry up filets of snake flesh as a novelty snack.

Cornyn, who published a column last year on his Senate website titled, “The Texas Snake Man: Jackie Bibby and His Rattlesnake Roundups,” has recognized that some people in Texas chow down on snakes.

“Festivals and roundups all across the state showcase daredevil handlers performing bold and dangerous acts, demonstrations of milking the venomous snakes to produce the antidote, and fryers filled with fresh rattlesnake meat, seasoned with garlic and lemon for taste,” the column reads.

Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.), who chairs the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, condemned Cornyn’s comment, calling it “disgusting.”

“Disparaging an entire ethnic group and culture like this is bigotry, plain and simple,” she said in a statement Wednesday. “Over the past few days, Trump has repeatedly labeled this pandemic as the ‘Chinese virus,’ and his loyal Republican followers have come to his defense in increasingly hateful terms. Their words are inciting racism and violence against Asian Americans in the United States.”

The Texas senator is hardly alone in placing blame on China. Trump has repeatedly done so at news conferences and online in recent weeks.

Early on, Trump dismissed concerns about the impending pandemic. He said the risk in the U.S. was limited to “one person coming in from China.”

“We have it under control,” he said on CNBC in January. “It’s going to be just fine.”

On Monday, the president’s tone changed. He acknowledged that covid-19 is a “real pandemic” and urged Americans to avoid gatherings of more than 10 people.

As the president has adopted a more serious tone to discuss the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S., he has also increasingly turned to calling it “the Chinese virus.”

He stopped using the words coronavirus or covid-19 on his Twitter account on Sunday. Since then, he’s exclusively referred to coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” in his tweets.

“It’s not racist at all,” Trump told reporters Wednesday. “Not at all. It comes from China. That’s why. I want to be accurate.”

Several GOP lawmakers, including Cornyn, have followed suit, even after the CDC and WHO rejected the label earlier this month and asked officials to use either “novel coronavirus” or “covid-19” to describe the disease.

Some have argued that the use of the term is a way to shift attention away from the Trump administration’s failures in addressing the covid-19 outbreak early on. Other critics have said blaming China fans anti-Asian American hate, reignites old racist tropes and increases the risk of hate crimes and xenophobic attacks.

“The president’s view that the virus was a Chinese problem contributed to his failure to understand the importance of testing people domestically for the virus and of having enough medical equipment to deal with the outbreak,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) wrote Wednesday in an op-ed for The Washington Post. “I wish the president could set aside his xenophobia for the moment while we try to keep Americans from dying.”

 

Do you have any idea how much it pains me to admit that Ted Cruz is behaving like semi-reasonable person compared to the senior jackass senator of Texas?!?

 

 

 

[thoughtful]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

This is his MO; deflect and assign blame: "Under fire for his handling of the deadly virus outbreak, Trump targets the media"

  Reveal hidden contents

President Trump on Thursday held the latest in a series of daily news briefings focused on the spread of the new coronavirus across the country, with more than 10,000 people infected. In the briefing on Monday, when the total number of confirmed infections was half as large, Trump for the first time seemed to fully seek to convey the threat the virus poses to the country — a message that had been common in news coverage for several weeks.

“I think a lot of the media actually has been very fair,” Trump said at that point. “I think people are pulling together on this. I really think the media has been very fair.”

This was not his position on Thursday. Over the course of the lengthy briefing, Trump repeatedly impugned media coverage and disparaged the reporters who had been covering the White House response.

Trump is always looking for an enemy to present to his base of supporters. In recent days, amid criticism of his handling of the virus, Trump had seemed to settle on China as the focus of his blame. At Thursday’s briefing, though, he redirected that effort to mainstream news outlets, disparaging them far more than the Chinese government.

Given efforts to limit the spread of the virus by person-to-person contact, the number of reporters in the small briefing center at the White House had been reduced. Trump noted the smaller attendance with appreciation at the outset of the briefing.

“I have to say,” he said, “I think with social distancing that the media has been much nicer. I don’t know what it is. All these empty, these in-between chairs. We probably shouldn’t have anybody sitting behind you, either. I should probably go back, but I love it. It’s so much nicer.”

That was tame.

“You did say a few days ago, though, that you did have a sense that this was a pandemic that was coming,” a reporter asked at one point. “So why was the United States not prepared with more testing and supplies.”

“We were very prepared,” Trump insisted. “The only thing we weren’t prepared for was the media. The media has not treated it fairly.” He claimed that the reporter’s network had called him “racist” for calling for limits on travel from China during that country’s initial outbreak of the virus.

“So when you say that I wasn’t prepared, I was the first one to do the ban,” Trump said. “Now other countries are following what I did. But the media doesn’t acknowledge that. They know it’s true. They know it’s true. But they don’t want to write about it.”

Here’s an article explaining how Trump came to call for those limits.

More broadly, he expressed frustration at the idea that sufficient supplies were lacking.

“You don’t know what we’ve done,” he said. “… You don’t know what’s been ordered, what’s not been ordered. I can only tell you — I can only tell you that, as an example, masks. Nobody ever heard of the number of masks that’s been ordered. They’re being made now, and many are available now. But people, I think, in the media probably don’t know that.”

The Post has spoken with medical experts who have expressed repeated concern about the unavailability of protective gear. The New York Times noted that doctors are requesting gear over social media. Vice President Pence even expressed appreciation during the hearing for construction companies stepping forward and donating masks that could be used — the sort of private-sector support that would seem not to be necessary were the government prepared. Ordering masks now is important — but ordering them a month ago, as the threat to the country was becoming more obvious, would have been more useful.

Trump’s frustration with the media came out in often unexpected moments. He explained that he could speak to the virus testing regimen because he’d been tested for it — but only because “you people were driving everybody crazy” asking whether he’d been tested.

Asked about two members of Congress testing positive, he wondered whether they’d been observing “social distancing,” maintaining a safe distance. He then revisited the seating in the briefing room.

“You’re actually sitting too close,” he said. “You should really, we should probably get rid of about another 75, 80 percent of you. Have just two or three that I like in this room. I think that’s a great way of doing it. We just figured a new way of doing it.”

One of the reporters he likes, Chanel Rion of the sharply pro-Trump cable network One America News, asked a question a bit later. (“OAN. Very good,” Trump said when she began speaking. “Thank you very much. You treat me very nicely.”)

Rion, who partnered on several obsequious reports about Ukraine with Trump personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, first asked Trump whether he thought the expression “Chinese food” was racist. It was an obvious effort to bolster Trump’s recent focus on linking China to the virus and condemnation of his referring to it as a “Chinese virus.” Trump, predictably, did not think the term was racist.

Rion continued.

“Major left-wing news media, even in this room, have teamed up with Chinese Communist Party narratives and they’re claiming you’re a racist for making these claims about Chinese virus,” she said. “Is it alarming that major media players, just to oppose you, are consistently siding with foreign-state propaganda, Islamic radicals and Latin gangs and cartels — and they work right here at the White House with direct access to you and your team?”

This question, regurgitating common rhetoric from conservative social media and repackaging it in a truly bizarre way, was odd enough that even Trump mostly ignored it. (How does one “team up” with a “narrative”?) He did use it, though, to tee off on media coverage that annoyed him.

“It amazes me when I read the things that I read,” he said. "It amazes me when I read the Wall Street Journal, which is always so negative. It amazes me when I read— the New York Times is not even— I barely read it. You know, we don’t distribute it in the White House anymore, and the same thing with The Washington Post.

“Because you see, I know the truth,” he continued. “And people out there in the world, they really don’t know the truth. They don’t know what it is. They use different slogans and different concepts for me almost every week trying to catch something. Last week, it was, oh, chaos. You see me, there’s no chaos. No chaos. I’m the one telling everybody to be calm. There’s no chaos at the White House. We have unbelievable professionals. It’s really — I mean, I think I came up with the term, I hope I came up with the term, but it is fake news. It’s more than fake news, it’s corrupt news.”

He complained generally about not being called by news outlets writing stories, focusing on one Wall Street Journal article in particular (which may have been the spur for the day’s frustration with the media overall). By way of full disclosure, he went on to say that The Post had been “going wild lately” and that we are very dishonest.

“This administration has done a great job, but the press is very dishonest,” he concluded.

Rion jumped in again.

“More than dishonest, they’re siding with state propaganda,” she said without any apparent irony.

“I think they do,” Trump replied. “They are siding with China. They are doing things that they shouldn’t be doing. They’re siding with many others; China is the least of it. So why are they doing this? You’ll have to ask them. But if we had an honest media in this country, our country would be an even greater place.”

With that question from Rion, who recently promoted a conspiracy theory that the coronavirus originated in a lab in the U.S. — a claim boosted by the Chinese state — Trump was done taking questions from the press for the day. Should the White House trim the number of reporters allowed to ask questions of the president, it’s safe to say that the One America News Network or Rion will still earn an invitation.

 

His ability to focus only on his selfish desires is absolutely mind-blowing. How can a real, live person be such a cartoon?

I really think that, if someone told Trump that everyone in the world was about to die except him, his only concern would be the lack of a staff to serve him and take the fall for his stupidity.

 

[Cartmann99]

Quote

Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday took sweeping action to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus across Texas, closing restaurants and schools, among other things.

During a news conference at the state Capitol, Abbott announced an executive order that will limit social gatherings to 10 people, prohibit eating and drinking at restaurants and bars while still allowing takeout, close gyms, ban people from visiting nursing homes except for critical care and temporarily close schools. The executive order is effective midnight Friday through midnight April 3, Abbott said.

https://www.texastribune.org/2020/03/19/texas-restaurants-bars-closed-greg-abbott/

Prediction:  Abbot's going to have a challenger in the next election who will promise not to infringe on the rights of Texans to eat nachos and drink Shiner Bock at their favorite restaurant during a pandemic. The people currently frothing about our mayor taking measures to help slow the spread of the virus will volunteer for his or her campaign.

In other news, my newspaper had an article about how gun and ammo sales are booming in our area.

Edited March 19, 2020 by Cartmann99

[Ozlsn]

13 hours ago, Smee said:

You might have to understand the ducked up funding model of the Aus education system for this to make sense, but: our prime minister has threatened to withdraw funding to private schools/the catholic school system if they independently make the decision to close. Heaps of people have pulled their kids out anyway, especially in the most affected or population-dense area, so some made the decision to close in spite of the official government decision for schools to remain open.

I laughed because it was that or cry, seriously. Somehow I missed that story in the media - maybe the private schools could claim a religious exemption? State schools are continuing but 20% of the kids at my son's school have been pulled out. 

6 hours ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

 

Maybe we could look at actually paying them better. Also add in the teachers, the truckers transporting the food, the farmers growing the food, the railway staff operating the trains etc. You can't eat shares or hedge funds.

Meanwhile we had our first confirmed staff case at my (very large) employer yesterday. Not in my building, but most of the team I work with were there on Wed for a seminar. I was running late so watched via Zoom. We're now trying to get specifics about where this confirmed case actually was located (large building), but half the team are working from home tomorrow. 

All tutorials at University of Melbourne are online from Monday, and I think lectures too (Not confirmed). Not sure what is happening with pracs, but suspect they will announce today they are effectively shutting from Monday.

[Kailash]

1 hour ago, zeebaneighba said:

Great.  I have to go to the PO and Walgreens tomorrow.  Guess I will wear gloves and try not to breathe?

Definitely! The PO is not taking any precautions with their workers as far as taking temps, wearing masks etc. The person I know who works there said one of their coworkers died yesterday, after leaving work early. They are waiting to hear cause of death. Please stay safe!

[Ozlsn]

Public transport is extraordinarily quiet again. They are making announcements about sneezing/coughing into your elbow, or into a tissue (ha! Like we can get tissues) and using a hand sanitizer with 60% alcohol (ditto previous bracket).  The announcement continues "if you think you have coronavirus.." 

Me: get off the damn train!!

It actually tells you to ring a hotline.

A friend who owns a restaurant business has paired with an app designer friend to start work/home deliveries of food and coffee to regular customers who are working from home - she's trying to keep her regular staff employed, so the waiting staff will still be doing that, just a bit further out so to speak. She lives in a smaller city so it's feasible - a lot of her customers are within a 5km radius. If I didn't live several hundred km away I would be a regular coffee order at minimum - her coffee is good.

Centrelink (our national unemployment office) is likely to be overwhelmed as staff lose hours from small business and musicians, actors and others have no work. I wish Morrison would preemptively employ staff to man phones and assist people navigating the system - but he wasn't going to do that even before this crisis, and frankly the current staff are also trying to navigate the social distancing/work-from-home/What do we do if everyone gets sick thing we're all planning around at the moment so it's likely to get worse. And the website is... frustrating to navigate, at least if you're me, and the phones were up to 90 minutes on hold the last time I tried. So yay?