Government Response to Coronavirus 4: The Reality Show From Hell

[GreyhoundFan]

This is insane. A repug state rep in Idaho comparing stay at home orders to Nazi Germany:

 

I agree with Steve Schmidt's take:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Evan McMullin is so right:

 

[clueliss]

What is wrong with this photo?  (Local reporter covering protests in Jefferson City MO and on MSNBC - but that's not what my issue is).

Spoiler

the dumbass is so worried about being on a big platform that he pulled his mask under his chin.  All the big network reporters are standing in places like NYC or DC with a mask on - but his doofus pulls his down.

 

[Cartmann99]

From the 'about' section of Patrick's website:

Quote

Lt. Governor Patrick passed the sonogram bill and has championed numerous other measures to support and protect every life in Texas.

Under the' Awards' heading on that same page we find:

Quote

Pro Life Champion Award

From the first page of said website:

Quote

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick is a principled conservative who stands up for the people of Texas.

Unwavering in his fight for life and liberty, Lieutenant Governor Patrick has presided over what has been called the most conservative and productive sessions of the State Senate in Texas history. Under his leadership, the Texas Senate has dramatically increased funding for border security, ended sanctuary cities, enhanced pro-life protections, and protected religious freedoms.

Lt. Governor Patrick brought home solid conservative victories for the State of Texas during the 86th Legislature, including the first real property tax reform legislation in 40 years.

A preeminent voice for conservative principles both in Texas and across the nation, Lieutenant Governor Patrick does not back down in the face of liberal opposition. Dan Patrick is committed to continuing the fight for the people of Texas. He won re-election in 2018.

 If this is fighting for us, I shudder to think what he'd do if he turned against us.

[GreyhoundFan]

37 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

If this is fighting for us, I shudder to think what he'd do if he turned against us.

To him, life begins at conception and ends at birth. I'm so sick of these holier than thou assholes

[Audrey2]

Watching all these people protesting the stay-at-home, I am so glad that they were not the predominant generation during World War II in the United States. When I think of these idiots, I can see them suing and creating a big stink about the blackouts that were expected in the United States during World War II (dark curtains on the windows so no air attack could see populated areas, or at least that's what the theory was), and the strict rationing that also went on during World War II.

My how we have fallen since my grandparents' generation.

[K'Z'K]

In not-everyone-is-horrible news, my city's mayor and board of health granted permission for restaurants to sell groceries for pickup/delivery. They are using their supply chains (which are separate from supermarket supply chains), giving them a new line of business and customers an alternative to the grocery store. I'll be picking up a box of vegetables from a bar on Saturday.

[GreyhoundFan]

8 minutes ago, K'Z'K said:

In not-everyone-is-horrible news, my city's mayor and board of health granted permission for restaurants to sell groceries for pickup/delivery. They are using their supply chains (which are separate from supermarket supply chains), giving them a new line of business and customers an alternative to the grocery store. I'll be picking up a box of vegetables from a bar on Saturday.

Several restaurants in my area are also doing the same thing. Many of them are selling paper and cleaning products as well as grocery items and prepared food. It's been quite popular.

[Ozlsn]

2 hours ago, Audrey2 said:

Watching all these people protesting the stay-at-home, I am so glad that they were not the predominant generation during World War II in the United States. When I think of these idiots, I can see them suing and creating a big stink about the blackouts that were expected in the United States during World War II (dark curtains on the windows so no air attack could see populated areas, or at least that's what the theory was), and the strict rationing that also went on during World War II.

My how we have fallen since my grandparents' generation.

In some respects though I see why people are reacting differently. The Nazis (and the Mongols, etc) are a tangible, visible threat that is much easier to understand and quantify. Invisible particles, being sick without knowing or feeling it - in general we're much worse at assessing those kind of threats and reacting to them. Put next to the very assessable fears of unemployment, homelessness, and food insecurity I can see why some people are protesting - they're reacting to the familiar threats. (And being led by the Idiot-In-Chief who should be addressing and working towards alleviating the familiar fears but is instead focusing on twittering and his ratings.) 

[thoughtful]

1 hour ago, Audrey2 said:

Watching all these people protesting the stay-at-home, I am so glad that they were not the predominant generation during World War II in the United States. When I think of these idiots, I can see them suing and creating a big stink about the blackouts that were expected in the United States during World War II (dark curtains on the windows so no air attack could see populated areas, or at least that's what the theory was), and the strict rationing that also went on during World War II.

My how we have fallen since my grandparents' generation.

Oh, they were around back then, and probably in about the same proportion, because humans. And their presence was noted, even in the films of the time.

The film Since You Went Away, which is very much of its time, sentimental, patriotic and not remotely subtle, includes a hoarding, snobbish character who refuses to give up her comforts and cheats to get them (played by Agnes Moorehead). In fact, her first scene starts with a montage of other whiners, disapprovers, hoarders and clueless folks:

Spoiler

 

Church, and the fact that her friend's husband is MIA doesn't put a dent in her selfishness:

Spoiler

 

It's satisfying when she gets told off, but it's also a moment of truth for the main character, who realizes she has not done as much as she could:

Spoiler

 

And The Best Years of Our Lives, which is a more mature film, features a scene with another kind of unsupportive person. Here's the scene as filmed:

And here is some further information (Sherwood was the writer, Wyler the director, and Breen the head of the censor's office):

Spoiler

There are also clueless people who expect the vets to just cheer up and move on, a wife who has been unfaithful while her husband fought, and people above and below the main characters in work situations, who only wanted to take advantage of the war to make a buck.

Assholes and bigots, and those willing to sacrifice others while they talk big, have always been with us, and always will be. I'm just glad there are people around (like us!) to challenge them.

 

[Audrey2]

Thank you for mentioning one of my favorite movies! I love The Best Years of our Lives.

[Ozlsn]

Foyle's War also has episodes that go into some of the people who felt themselves to be above restrictions like rationing (particularly petrol rationing) and/or who used the blackout and bombings as an excuse to plunder. Also covers people who were pro-pro-Nazi and wanted the UK to join with Germany. It's an interesting series.

[Cartmann99]

 Since we are talking about World War II movies, my mind naturally goes to Mrs. Miniver, and the scene in the church:

 

1 hour ago, Ozlsn said:

Foyle's War also has episodes that go into some of the people who felt themselves to be above restrictions like rationing (particularly petrol rationing) and/or who used the blackout and bombings as an excuse to plunder. Also covers people who were pro-pro-Nazi and wanted the UK to join with Germany. It's an interesting series.

I was so sad when we watched the final episode of this show, I didn't want it to end.

Edited April 22, 2020 by Cartmann99

[Ozlsn]

2 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

I was so sad when we watched the final episode of this show

I was and wasn't - I was really, really annoyed at what they did with Hilda Pierce's character in the end. She was heavily based on Vera Atkins, who was involved in the training and deployment of spies through SOE - and after VE day was declared she put on her uniform, commandeered a car and driver and went through Nazi prisons conducting interrogations trying to find out what had happened to the men and women she had sent out, frequently to their deaths.  To quote wikipedia:

"As well as tracing 117 of the 118 missing F Section agents, Atkins established the circumstances of the deaths of all 14 of the women, twelve of whom had perished in concentration camps".

I wanted Hilda Pierce's character to reflect her, and the other women like her who served, and had nightmares, but kept going.

[fraurosena]

9 hours ago, thoughtful said:

Assholes and bigots, and those willing to sacrifice others while they talk big, have always been with us, and always will be. 

So true. The only thing that is different in our information era is that they can now be loud and vociferous to a much larger public -- and therefore they seem to be a much larger group than they actually are. 

The scary part we currently face is that the most obnoxious, bigly talker of them all has a position and a platform that broadcasts all over the world to an avidly listening public -- and he has the power to do devastating damage to the country and to the world.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

WTAF? "Las Vegas mayor: Reopen casinos, let the ones with the most infections then close"

Spoiler

Standing in front of an empty storefront along Main Street, Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman (I) was beaming with hopeful optimism, believing that businesses would make it through the coronavirus pandemic.

“We’re all together in this and we are going to come out with a bang,” she said earlier this month.

On Tuesday, it became apparent what the independent mayor might have had in mind. She said she wants to open up the casinos, assuming that 100 percent of the population are carriers of the novel coronavirus.

Let them, and visitors, gather and gamble, smoke in confined spaces, touch slot machines all day — and let the chips, and apparently the infections, fall where they may.

“Assume everybody is a carrier," the mayor said to MSNBC on Tuesday. "And then you start from an even slate. And tell the people what to do. And let the businesses open and competition will destroy that business if, in fact, they become evident that they have disease, they’re closed down. It’s that simple.”

The perspective left MSNBC host Katy Tur visibly dumbfounded. While Goodman said she took direction from Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading expert on infectious diseases, the mayor’s plan, described by Tur as “a modern-day survival of the fittest,” was in fact the exact opposite of what he advises.

Goodman, who has criticized Nevada’s lockdown as “total insanity,” cited lesser outbreaks of infectious diseases to prove that Las Vegas, which faces a deficit of nearly $150 million in the next 18 months, had shown the kind of resiliency necessary for it to reopen.

“We’ve survived the West Nile and SARS, bird flu, E. coli, swine flu, the Zika virus,” the governor told MSNBC.

She was cut off by Tur, who reminded the mayor that those viruses did not come close to the level of the coronavirus pandemic, with more than 800,000 confirmed cases and 45,000 deaths in the United States as of early Wednesday.

“Those were not as contagious,” Tur said of the diseases the mayor rattled off. “They were not as contagious and they did not spread as far as this disease has already done.”

“Well, we’ll find out the facts afterward,” Goodman replied. “Unfortunately, we all do better in hindsight.”

“But those are the facts," Tur replied, looking baffled. "We have a death toll that proves it. We have cases around the country that prove that,” Tur said. “Those are the facts.”

As The Washington Post reported, several states, including South Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Tennessee and Florida, have announced limited easing of business and recreational closures, starting between this week and the end of the month. This has gone on while small groups of protesters throughout the United States, encouraged by President Trump, have gathered to demand their governors reopen the American economy.

Nevada ranks 22nd among the states and the District of Columbia in cases per 100,000 people, with about 4,000 cases and 163 deaths from the virus. It has been under a mandatory state-imposed lockdown of all nonessential businesses. Goodman has voiced disdain for the lockdown order from Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak (D).

Though Trump noted over the weekend how Sisolak’s order resulted in “a big hotel” of his being shut down, he said he was “okay” with the governor’s lockdown. “But you could call that one either way,” he said at his Sunday coronavirus press briefing. Las Vegas is projected to receive as much as $160 million in stimulus funding, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Goodman’s perspective was not shared by Stephen Cloobeck, the former chairman and CEO of Diamond Resorts International.

“She has nothing to do with the strip, and we’re sick and tired of hearing this,” Cloobeck told MSNBC.

Goodman’s office did not return a request for comment late Tuesday.

In the MSNBC interview, Goodman said that “assuming” Tur was correct on the severity of the coronavirus data, the city’s ability to handle large crowds was reason enough for it to reopen.

“We do deal in crowds and we have lived through all of these viruses, highly contagious diseases, and yet we have managed to continue to have wonderful conventions come up here,” she said.

Again, Tur had to interject.

“Mayor Goodman, there is no assuming that I’m correct,” she said. “Those are the numbers that are released by the federal government.”

When Goodman cited Nevada’s relatively moderate case and death numbers compared to some parts of the country, Tur asked whether that was due to social distancing and no one being in the casinos and restaurants along the Las Vegas Strip. The mayor answered the question with another question.

“Do we keep absolutely everyone out of work and destroy the lives of people and our children and the next generation because we have a fight on our hands with the virus?” she asked. “I’m making the assumption that everybody is a carrier, so let’s go forward, open up the city, open up whoever wants to open up, but do it in a very responsible, cautious way.”

 

[AmazonGrace]

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.16.20065920v1.full.pdf

Quote

CONCLUSIONS:In this study, we found no evidence that use of hydroxychloroquine, either with or without azithromycin, reduced the risk of mechanical ventilation in patients hospitalized with Covid-19. An association of increased overall mortality was identified in patients treated with hydroxychloroquine alone. These findings highlight theimportance of awaiting theresults of ongoing prospective, randomized, controlled studies before widespread adoption of these drugs

 

[Audrey2]

Just an observation- all those marches and protests that demand but the country and individual states reopen don't seem to mention the schools reopening. I think that tells us all we need to know (as if we didn't know it already from their scathing comments or letters to the editor anytime schools are mentioned).

They need to add MAS to the back of their hats- (Make America Stupid).

[fraurosena]

Not surprising, really. But it's a good thing the effect Hannity's spouting abject nonsense has been researched. They should do Trump next.

A disturbing new study suggests Sean Hannity helped spread the coronavirus

Quote

Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, media critics have warned that the decision from leading Fox News hosts to downplay the outbreak could cost lives. A new study provides statistical evidence that, in the case of Sean Hannity, that’s exactly what happened.

The paper — from economists Leonardo Bursztyn, Aakaash Rao, Christopher Roth, and David Yanagizawa-Drott — focused on Fox news programming in February and early March. 

At the time, Hannity’s show was downplaying or ignoring the virus, while fellow Fox host Tucker Carlson was warning viewers about the disease’s risks.

Using both a poll of Fox News viewers over age 55 and publicly available data on television-watching patterns, they calculate that Fox viewers who watched Hannity rather than Carlson were less likely to adhere to social distancing rules, and that areas where more people watched Hannity relative to Carlson had higher local rates of infection and death. 

“Greater exposure to Hannity relative to Tucker Carlson Tonight leads to a greater number of COVID-19 cases and deaths,” they write. “A one-standard deviation increase in relative viewership of Hannity relative to Carlson is associated with approximately 30 percent more COVID-19 cases on March 14, and 21 percent more COVID-19 deaths on March 28.”

This is a working paper; it hasn’t been peer reviewed or accepted for publication at a journal. However, it’s consistent with a wide body of research finding that media consumption in general, and Fox News viewership in particular, can have a pretty powerful effect on individual behavior. 

Some of this research has found, for example, that TV consumption can affect decisions as intimate as whether or not to have children. It makes sense that an older American’s favorite TV host telling them they don’t need to worry about the coronavirus would cause them to ignore stay-at-home orders and care less about thoroughly washing their hands.

What’s more, the research design on this particular study seems quite rigorous, according to those scholars who have taken early looks.

“It’s a good paper; they took pains to control for many alternative explanations,” writes Zeynep Tufecki, a professor at the University of North Carolina who studies technology and research methods. 

“This really looks like a causal effect of misinformation [leading] to deaths.”

How the study worked

The paper is technically quite complex, but it (more or less) breaks down into three parts.

First, the authors provide evidence that there was a difference in how Hannity and Carlson covered the coronavirus outbreak in February and early March. Second, they present data from their poll showing that Hannity viewers were less likely to follow social distancing rules than Carlson viewers. Third, they used data on television viewership and the coronavirus to show that higher rates of Hannity viewership relative to Carlson viewership were correlated with higher rates of local infection and death.

It’s pretty clear, from the first section, that Carlson took this way more seriously than Hannity. On February 25, Carlson warned that the virus could kill as many as a million Americans. On February 27, Hannity said it was less dangerous than car crashes or the common flu. 

These are not cherry-picked examples. The authors, using both a data analysis of transcripts and a review of these transcripts by five paid staff, find systematic differences in how much the shows covered the coronavirus and how seriously they told their audiences to take it.

“Both anchors first discussed the coronavirus in late January when the first US case was reported, but Carlson continued to discuss the subject extensively throughout February while Hannity did not again mention it on his show until the end of the month,” they write. “While Hannity discussed the coronavirus as frequently as Carlson during early March, he downplayed its seriousness and accused Democrats of using it as a partisan tool to undermine the administration.”

These differences persist until mid-March, when Trump banned travel from Europe and declared a state of emergency. Around that time, Hannity started to sound a lot more like Carlson (though Hannity didn’t stay responsible all that long, while Carlson inveighed against social distancing in April and praised anti-distancing protestors).

Next, the researchers investigated if this difference in tone actually affected the way viewers of the two programs thought about coronavirus. To do so, they conducted a nationally representative survey of 1,045 Republicans aged 55 and up who reported watching Fox News at least once a week. They chose to study this demographic specifically because older Republicans were more likely to watch Fox and because older people in general are more vulnerable to the coronavirus.

In the survey, they ask viewers which shows they watched and how much they watched them. They also asked when, if it all, they started changing their behavior in response to the outbreak — things like canceling their vacation plans, doing social distancing, and washing their hands with increased frequency.

They then ran a regression analysis to see if behavior changes correlated with any viewership patterns. It turned out that, when compared to viewers of other Fox News shows, both Hannity and Carlson fans were distinct and statistically significant outliers.

“Viewers of Hannity changed their behavior five days later than viewers of other shows,” they write. “Viewers of Tucker Carlson Tonight changed their behavior three days earlier than viewers of other shows.”

The final part of the paper uses two different regression models to show that, in fact, there is good reason to believe that Hannity viewership did increase coronavirus deaths relative to Carlson viewership.

In the first model, they compare data on the two shows’ ratings in different areas to county-level data on coronavirus infections and deaths. Specifically, they compare Hannity viewership to coronavirus rates two weeks later — the time it would take for the virus to start presenting in virtually all infected, symptomatic individuals. 

After controlling for a number of confounding variables, ranging from overall television viewership rates to demographic factors like race, they find a clear relationship: Areas with greater Hannity viewership had more cases and more deaths. This relationship weakened after Hannity changes his show’s tune in mid-March, suggesting that it is in fact the programming driving the changes. 

“A one standard deviation greater viewership difference is associated with approximately 2 percent more cases on March 7, 5 percent more cases on March 14, and 11 percent more cases on March 21,” they write. “Deaths follow a similar trajectory on a two-week lag.”

To be clear, this doesn’t show that Hannity viewers are necessarily the ones getting sick and dying. It could be that they’re asymptomatic carriers, simply spreading the disease to others without suffering themselves. All this regression shows is that higher Hannity viewership in a particular area is correlated with higher coronavirus infection rates and deaths in that area.

It’s possible that there’s some hidden variable they couldn’t control for driving this effect, rather than the programming itself. Maybe there’s something about people who choose to watch Hannity rather than Carlson that makes them less likely to take social distancing seriously.

That’s where the second regression model comes in. It exploits a pattern the authors identified in television viewership: It tends to be highest 2.5 hours after the sun sets, regardless of what’s on the air. This makes sense: People like to be outside or doing other stuff during daylight hours, settle in at home to watch TV for a bit after the sun sets, and then tend to go to bed within a couple of hours.

Around the country, Carlson’s show is broadcast in the hour before Hannity’s. This sets up a random experiment: In counties where the sun sets earlier, Carlson viewership will be higher (and vice-versa when the sun sets later). This isn’t because people prefer Carlson to Hannity for any particular reason, but simply because they want to watch something on Fox and Carlson’s show happens to be on.

Studying this random pattern allows them to remove the possibility that it’s something about the kind of people who watch the shows, rather than the programing itself, that’s driving the results. 

In a second regression incorporating the sunset data, focusing on media markets where Fox is popular while once again controlling for confounders, the relationship holds: Places where Hannity viewership is randomly higher than Carlson viewership tend to have higher rates of infection and deaths. 

“Greater exposure to Hannity relative to Tucker Carlson Tonight increased the number of total cases and deaths in the initial stages of the coronavirus pandemic,” the authors conclude. “Our findings indicate that provision of misinformation in the early stages of a pandemic can have important consequences for health outcomes.”

Why the finding that Sean Hannity killed people is disturbingly plausible

It’s important to be cautious about drawing sweeping conclusions from this paper, for two broad reasons.

First, the authors caution that their findings are limited to the comparison between Hannity and Carlson. All they claim to show is that watching the former made people more likely to get sick and die than watching the latter, not any kind of more generalizable statement. They haven’t proved that watching Hannity rather than (say) MSNBC or a scripted drama would make a random person more likely to get sick, nor that watching Carlson instead of those sources would make them more likely to stay healthy. 

Because the study only looked at Fox viewers, it’s difficult to draw conclusions about the network’s effect more broadly. In theory, mainstream media’s more serious tone in February should mean that switching between it and Carlson would have little effect on a news consumer’s behavior and health — but choosing to watch Hannity rather than a mainstream source would have a large one. That’s really just a guess, though; there’s no direct evidence for this in the paper itself.

Second, drawing sweeping conclusions from one paper is always a bad idea. The social sciences in particular are notoriously difficult, dealing with complex phenomenon using imperfect data. The fact that this study hasn’t been formally peer reviewed means that, despite its impressive design and positive reviews from scholars who have read it so far, you should be especially cautious.

These caveats aside, there are several reasons to think that the conclusion in this paper is at least close to the truth.

First, we know that the response to the coronavirus has been deeply affected by partisan attitudes. Polls and regression analyses consistently find that Republicans are considerably less likely than Democrats to embrace social distancing measures, seemingly as a result of the overall partisan debate over the issues. 

Given Fox News’ overwhelming popularity among Republicans, it’s at least plausible that some of this effect comes from Hannity and other coronavirus skeptics on the network (Carlson’s early programming was an outlier). 

Second, we know that Fox News in general has powerful effects on American political behavior. 

A 2007 study on Fox News’ initial rollout found that areas where the channel was available showed much better results for Republicans in both the 2000 presidential and Senate elections. The effect was significant enough to have swung the entire presidential election given the razor-thin margin separating Bush and Gore.

A 2017 study used data on the 2000, 2004, and 2008 presidential elections to show that the expansion of Fox News’ availability and viewership had significantly increased the advantage the network offered Republicans. Fox shifted the the 2000 results in their direction by about 0.46 percentage points nationally in 2000, 3.59 in 2004, and 6.34 in 2008. 

If Fox News can affect the way Americans vote, it’s at least plausible to say that it might affect the way they approach a novel and confusing pandemic.

Third, television in general appears to affect the way people make decisions about their health. One particularly interesting study looked at the popularity of Brazilian soap operas (novelas) on fertility. These shows tended to feature women with one child or none at all; the study’s authors found that, as these shows became more popular, the fertility rate of Brazilian women tended to fall. This does not appear to be an accident.

“Decreases in fertility were stronger in years immediately following novelas that portrayed messages of upward social mobility,” the authors write. “The effect ... in any given year was stronger for women whose age was closer to that of the main female characters portrayed that year.”

It seems that people really do see media as a guide to some of their most intimate life choices. Given how much a certain segment of older, white, conservative Americans trust Fox, it seems very plausible that they took cues from their favorite anchors on how to handle the coronavirus outbreak.

For some Americans, that choice may well have been a fatal one.

From the article:

Quote

It seems that people really do see media as a guide to some of their most intimate life choices. 

Personally I don't think people see media as a guide per se, but that they see it as an example. That may be a subtle difference, but an important one. If media is used as a guide, it means that what the media says is followed.  If media is seen as an example, it is something that is emulated. The first is done more out of a feeling that you have to do/be like what the media shows, the latter is done out of a feeling that you want to do/be like what the media shows.

[Becky]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

WTAF? "Las Vegas mayor: Reopen casinos, let the ones with the most infections then close"

  Reveal hidden contents

Standing in front of an empty storefront along Main Street, Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman (I) was beaming with hopeful optimism, believing that businesses would make it through the coronavirus pandemic.

“We’re all together in this and we are going to come out with a bang,” she said earlier this month.

On Tuesday, it became apparent what the independent mayor might have had in mind. She said she wants to open up the casinos, assuming that 100 percent of the population are carriers of the novel coronavirus.

Let them, and visitors, gather and gamble, smoke in confined spaces, touch slot machines all day — and let the chips, and apparently the infections, fall where they may.

“Assume everybody is a carrier," the mayor said to MSNBC on Tuesday. "And then you start from an even slate. And tell the people what to do. And let the businesses open and competition will destroy that business if, in fact, they become evident that they have disease, they’re closed down. It’s that simple.”

The perspective left MSNBC host Katy Tur visibly dumbfounded. While Goodman said she took direction from Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading expert on infectious diseases, the mayor’s plan, described by Tur as “a modern-day survival of the fittest,” was in fact the exact opposite of what he advises.

Goodman, who has criticized Nevada’s lockdown as “total insanity,” cited lesser outbreaks of infectious diseases to prove that Las Vegas, which faces a deficit of nearly $150 million in the next 18 months, had shown the kind of resiliency necessary for it to reopen.

“We’ve survived the West Nile and SARS, bird flu, E. coli, swine flu, the Zika virus,” the governor told MSNBC.

She was cut off by Tur, who reminded the mayor that those viruses did not come close to the level of the coronavirus pandemic, with more than 800,000 confirmed cases and 45,000 deaths in the United States as of early Wednesday.

“Those were not as contagious,” Tur said of the diseases the mayor rattled off. “They were not as contagious and they did not spread as far as this disease has already done.”

“Well, we’ll find out the facts afterward,” Goodman replied. “Unfortunately, we all do better in hindsight.”

“But those are the facts," Tur replied, looking baffled. "We have a death toll that proves it. We have cases around the country that prove that,” Tur said. “Those are the facts.”

As The Washington Post reported, several states, including South Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Tennessee and Florida, have announced limited easing of business and recreational closures, starting between this week and the end of the month. This has gone on while small groups of protesters throughout the United States, encouraged by President Trump, have gathered to demand their governors reopen the American economy.

Nevada ranks 22nd among the states and the District of Columbia in cases per 100,000 people, with about 4,000 cases and 163 deaths from the virus. It has been under a mandatory state-imposed lockdown of all nonessential businesses. Goodman has voiced disdain for the lockdown order from Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak (D).

Though Trump noted over the weekend how Sisolak’s order resulted in “a big hotel” of his being shut down, he said he was “okay” with the governor’s lockdown. “But you could call that one either way,” he said at his Sunday coronavirus press briefing. Las Vegas is projected to receive as much as $160 million in stimulus funding, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Goodman’s perspective was not shared by Stephen Cloobeck, the former chairman and CEO of Diamond Resorts International.

“She has nothing to do with the strip, and we’re sick and tired of hearing this,” Cloobeck told MSNBC.

Goodman’s office did not return a request for comment late Tuesday.

In the MSNBC interview, Goodman said that “assuming” Tur was correct on the severity of the coronavirus data, the city’s ability to handle large crowds was reason enough for it to reopen.

“We do deal in crowds and we have lived through all of these viruses, highly contagious diseases, and yet we have managed to continue to have wonderful conventions come up here,” she said.

Again, Tur had to interject.

“Mayor Goodman, there is no assuming that I’m correct,” she said. “Those are the numbers that are released by the federal government.”

When Goodman cited Nevada’s relatively moderate case and death numbers compared to some parts of the country, Tur asked whether that was due to social distancing and no one being in the casinos and restaurants along the Las Vegas Strip. The mayor answered the question with another question.

“Do we keep absolutely everyone out of work and destroy the lives of people and our children and the next generation because we have a fight on our hands with the virus?” she asked. “I’m making the assumption that everybody is a carrier, so let’s go forward, open up the city, open up whoever wants to open up, but do it in a very responsible, cautious way.”

 

Speechless. There simply are no words for this level of dumbassery. 

[CTRLZero]

From the Las Vegas mayor article:

Quote

“I’m making the assumption that everybody is a carrier, so let’s go forward, open up the city, open up whoever wants to open up, but do it in a very responsible, cautious way.”

I also make the assumption that everybody is a carrier, including myself, so I am doing my best to not risk exposure nor expose others.  I enjoy the occasional visit to Las Vegas or the honky tonks of Nashville, but don't plan to return to partying with large crowds until this virus is gone or a vaccine is made available.  Covidiot mayor.

PS:  I see @Becky said it better! 

[fraurosena]

You can bet Stephen Miller's racist little paws are all over this.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is disgusting:

 

[fraurosena]

Only the best people...

Health Chief’s Early Missteps Set Back Coronavirus Response

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On Jan. 29, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told President Trump the coronavirus epidemic was under control.

The U.S. government had never mounted a better interagency response to a crisis, Mr. Azar told the president in a meeting held eight days after the U.S. announced its first case, according to administration officials. At the time, the administration’s focus was on containing the virus.

When other officials asked about diagnostic testing, Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, began to answer. Mr. Azar cut him off, telling the president it was “the fastest we’ve ever created a test,” the officials recalled, and that more than one million tests would be available within weeks.

That didn’t happen. The CDC began shipping tests the following week, only to discover a flaw that forced it to recall the test from state public-health laboratories. When White House advisers later in February criticized Mr. Azar for the delays caused by the recall, he lashed out at Dr. Redfield, accusing the CDC director of misleading him on the timing of a fix. “Did you lie to me?” one of the officials recalled him yelling.

Six weeks after that Jan. 29 meeting, the federal government declared a national emergency and issued guidelines that effectively closed down the country. Mr. Azar, who had been at the center of the decision-making from the outset, was eventually sidelined. 

Many factors muddled the administration’s early response to the coronavirus as officials debated the severity of the threat, including comments from Mr. Trump that minimized the risk. But interviews with more than two dozen administration officials and others involved in the government’s coronavirus effort show that Mr. Azar waited for weeks to brief the president on the threat, oversold his agency’s progress in the early days and didn’t coordinate effectively across the health-care divisions under his purview. 

The ramp-up of the nation’s diagnostic testing for the disease caused by coronavirus, which many health experts regard as critical for limiting new infections and safely reopening the economy, has been slower than promised and hampered by obstacles. As of Wednesday, more than four million government and private-lab tests had been administered. The president now says states bear the primary responsibility for testing, and that the federal government plays only a supporting role. 

Among other functions, Mr. Azar’s agency has oversight of serology tests that would determine whether Americans have antibodies potentially making them temporarily immune to reinfection—tests that could be essential as the U.S. looks to send people back to work.

It also oversees the distribution of $100 billion in stimulus funding to the health-care system. Many hospitals, doctors and health systems said the agency hasn’t released the funds quickly enough or prioritized the hardest-hit hospitals. An HHS spokeswoman said the secretary was following best practices and soliciting input.

In a recent interview about the coronavirus response, Mr. Azar said he and the administration “were on this from day one,” and that he had alerted the National Security Council early on to the risk. He conceded the federal government’s testing system wasn’t equipped initially to handle the disease, but, he said, “we have adapted.” He said although the administration had run into problems creating a coronavirus test, it had produced one in record time.

“We’re obviously going to learn lessons,” he said. “This is unprecedented.”

From the start, he said, Mr. Trump has treated the pandemic with “prescient gravity.” At the Jan. 29 meeting, he said, he had interrupted Dr. Redfield because he knew the CDC director was modest, and he wanted to brag about his work in front of the president. He denied yelling at Dr. Redfield later, saying, “That’s not my style.”

Mr. Azar’s defenders say he is being unfairly blamed by White House officials eager to cover up their own missteps.

White House spokesman Judd Deere said that HHS under Mr. Azar was “leading on a number of the president’s priorities,” including the coronavirus response. Vice President Mike Pence’s press secretary, Katie Miller, praised Mr. Azar’s “partnership and collaboration” with the vice president, who took over control of the federal response from Mr. Azar in late February and heads the White House coronavirus task force.

Mr. Trump, who says he has responded to the virus aggressively, tweeted on April 12 that Mr. Azar “told me nothing until later.” He didn’t offer details on what he meant, and a White House spokesman said the president feels Mr. Azar “provided him with the most accurate and factual information we had at that time.” White House officials say there is no plan to replace Mr. Azar during a pandemic.

Still, the president last week installed a former campaign aide, Michael Caputo, to serve as assistant secretary for public affairs at HHS. The White House also appointed policy adviser Emily Newman as a liaison to HHS who will oversee the agency’s political hires. Mr. Azar has largely been sidelined over the past several weeks from discussions with the president and with the White House task force, administration officials said. He hasn’t attended the daily briefing since April 3.

Meanwhile, some in the administration view Mr. Azar as having marginalized the CDC, which hasn’t held a briefing in a month. A CDC spokesman said the agency is communicating its efforts in other ways. 

In recent weeks, some administration officials have become so concerned about the lack of agency coordination that the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council began convening his own meetings with agency leaders at HHS, including from the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS.

Mr. Azar, 52 years old, served as HHS general counsel and later deputy secretary under George W. Bush, then worked as the top lobbyist for Eli Lilly & Co., an Indianapolis-based pharmaceutical company. He was nominated to be HHS secretary by Mr. Trump and began serving in January 2018.

The CDC’s Dr. Redfield alerted Mr. Azar to the coronavirus threat on Jan. 3. Mr. Azar asked the National Security Council to monitor what was happening in China, but waited two weeks to brief the president on the potential severity, calling him to assure him the agency was ready to handle any cases in the U.S.

Mr. Trump dismissed coronavirus concerns as alarmist, according to those briefed on the call, and berated Mr. Azar for his handling of a ban on flavored e-cigarettes. Mr. Azar had been on thin ice with the president over that issue and his work on drug pricing, administration officials said.

Mr. Azar said in the interview that the president had never been dismissive, and Mr. Deere, the White House spokesman, said Mr. Trump took “early and unprecedented action.”

FDA chief Stephen Hahn asked HHS in January if he could start contacting diagnostic and pharmaceutical companies about possible shortages of personal protective gear and other equipment, administration officials said. He was told no. An FDA official said the agency was already conducting outreach to companies.

Mr. Azar told associates such calls would alarm the industry and make the administration look unprepared, people familiar with the matter said. HHS officials waited weeks to contact manufacturers about possible shortages of medical supplies, the people said.

In the interview, Mr. Azar said he pushed the FDA to get involved in supply-chain issues in January, and that HHS had started addressing the need for more personal protective gear around the same time. Today, governors and health-care officials say shortages persist for protective gear for patients and medical workers.

On Jan. 28, Mr. Azar told reporters that for the individual American, the virus “should not be an impact on their day-to-day life,” adding that the administration was taking “aggressive action.” The next day, the White House announced that Mr. Azar would lead the task force responding to coronavirus. In the task force meeting that day, he assured the president that everything was under control.

In an Oval Office meeting days later, Mr. Azar urged the president to restrict travel from China, where the virus had at that point infected nearly 12,000 people. The president agreed, and Mr. Azar announced the restrictions on Jan. 31, the same day he declared a public-health emergency.

For weeks, Mr. Azar made nearly every major administration announcement about the epidemic. He assured lawmakers all was going well and that the virus was contained.

Administration officials said they were alarmed by the absence on the task force of the FDA’s Dr. Hahn, which they said hampered coordination between the FDA and commercial labs on testing, and CMS administrator Seema Verma.

Mr. Azar dismissed those concerns, administration officials said. In the interview, Mr. Azar said the White House determined who would join the task force, and that he met with agency leaders.

In a written statement, Dr. Hahn said the FDA worked “hand-in-hand” with HHS and at no point was excluded.

Mr. Azar relied heavily on his chief of staff, Brian Harrison, who worked in the office of the deputy HHS secretary in the George W. Bush administration. Before returning to the agency in 2018, Mr. Harrison ran businesses in Texas building homes and breeding labradoodles. “I am proud of my time working in family businesses before I was recruited back to government,” Mr. Harrison said.

Mr. Azar was reluctant for weeks to involve the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which typically oversees disaster-response operations, telling associates he wanted to keep control of the response and that including FEMA would further complicate the administration’s efforts. In the interview, Mr. Azar said he invited FEMA’s participation in early February.

FEMA Administrator Peter Gaynor told lawmakers on March 20 he wasn’t invited to join the White House task force until earlier that week, and that FEMA hadn’t held its first “interagency synchronization call” until that day.

“I believe in servant leadership,” Mr. Azar said in the interview. “It is core to my being to empower leaders.”

Mr. Azar’s declaration of a public-health emergency on Jan. 31 meant that any lab that wanted to develop a test had to first seek approval from the FDA. The FDA didn’t clear any labs to conduct testing until Feb. 29, nearly a month later. For weeks, HHS blocked efforts to allow other labs’ involvement because Mr. Azar wanted the CDC to make and distribute the nation’s diagnostic tests.

Mr. Azar told associates he favored the CDC making its own test, rather than importing ones distributed by the World Health Organization, because the WHO tests weren’t reliable, citing a study published in the Chinese Journal of Epidemiology. That study has since been retracted.

Developing a test proved more complicated than anticipated. Days after the CDC began shipping tests in the first week of February, labs began calling. The tests were giving invalid results.

Mr. Azar was incensed. An FDA official flew to CDC headquarters in Atlanta and visited the lab that had prepared the tests. The lab was a mess and it became clear the tests had likely been contaminated, said one person familiar with the matter. The CDC, which disputed that the lab was a mess, pulled back its tests, and HHS launched an investigation. The results aren’t yet available. An FDA official said the FDA expert who visited the lab determined there was a manufacturing issue.

In White House meetings, Mr. Azar gave no indication there was a problem with testing, administration officials said. Throughout February, Mr. Azar continued to assure the president and the rest of the task force that HHS had the situation under control, the officials said. Dr. Redfield never gave Mr. Azar a timeline for when the testing problem would be fixed, because he didn’t know what was causing the problem, one administration official said.

In the interview, Mr. Azar said the CDC typically develops tests for novel pathogens because commercial testing can take months to develop. A person close to Mr. Azar said he relied on agency leaders to give him accurate information.

Administration officials said they struggled to get information on how many tests were available and what had gone wrong with the initial test, and that Mr. Azar insisted on being involved in all conversations between the White House and the CDC.

In a briefing with senators on Feb. 5, Hawaii Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz challenged Mr. Azar on the lack of available compounds that would allow his state to complete its own testing kits. He offered to carry a test kit home in his own suitcase. Mr. Azar pushed back, according to Mr. Schatz and others in the room.

“He took it personally,” Mr. Schatz said in an interview. “Then I got irritated because you have the secretary of HHS and the leader of the task force deciding to be dismissive of what I’m reporting from the field.” 

Mr. Schatz said the two later had a more constructive conversation. An HHS official said Mr. Azar’s staff has since been in touch with Mr. Schatz’s office.

On March 6, during a visit to the CDC with Mr. Azar, the president said: “Anybody that wants a test can get a test.” That still isn’t the case. Today, the U.S. continues to lag behind other countries on tests conducted per capita.

On Feb. 25, Nancy Messonnier, a CDC official, said the agency was preparing for a potential pandemic and that community spread of the virus was likely. The stock market plunged.

At a media briefing later that day, Mr. Azar sought to quell concerns, saying the virus was “contained.”

But it was too late. A furious Mr. Trump, flying back to Washington from India, called Mr. Azar and threatened to oust Dr. Messonnier.

The next day, the president announced he was putting Vice President Pence in charge of the federal response—news Mr. Azar learned a few hours before the announcement.

Among the vice president’s first moves was to add Dr. Hahn and the CMS’s Ms. Verma to the task force. When Mr. Pence traveled to Washington state the next week to showcase the federal government’s support against the outbreak there, Mr. Azar wasn’t invited.

Since then, the president has shifted the center of the government’s response to FEMA, allowing it to access billions of dollars and mobilize personnel to aid the U.S. effort.

Mr. Azar has privately acknowledged his clipped wings. He recently snapped at a White House aide inquiring about a congressional briefing, telling the aide he was “not even really the secretary of HHS anymore,” and to ask someone else, according to administration officials. The person close to Mr. Azar said the comment would have been in the context of HHS now playing a supporting role to FEMA.

In task force meetings, Mr. Azar’s role has shrunk. Earlier this month, a handful of administration officials, including Ms. Verma and Dr. Hahn, briefed lawmakers. Mr. Azar wasn’t there.

 

[Ozlsn]

8 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

“Do we keep absolutely everyone out of work and destroy the lives of people and our children and the next generation because we have a fight on our hands with the virus?” she asked. “I’m making the assumption that everybody is a carrier, so let’s go forward, open up the city, open up whoever wants to open up, but do it in a very responsible, cautious way.”

So her idea is to assume everyone is carrying a potentially deadly virus, encourage them to mingle and then see how quickly they can overwhelm their health facilities and destroy their entire tourism industry? Because that's how I'm reading it.

8 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Goodman’s perspective was not shared by Stephen Cloobeck, the former chairman and CEO of Diamond Resorts International.

“She has nothing to do with the strip, and we’re sick and tired of hearing this,” Cloobeck told MSNBC.

Yeah I can imagine trying to deal with someone living in an alternate reality must be exhausting.