Government Response to Coronavirus 5: We're On Our Own

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump will lie about the death toll. Kamala Harris wants to stop him."

Spoiler

The signs are everywhere: President Trump’s endgame will be to lie about the coronavirus death toll, in a last-ditch effort to prevent it from overwhelming his reelection hopes.

Is there anything we can do to be prepared for this?

A group of Democratic senators, led by Kamala Harris (Calif.), is set to launch a new effort to try to block it from happening. They are putting the administration on notice about any future efforts at death deflation, and calling on officials to work with outside experts to establish a methodology from which it will not diverge, before Trump inevitably begins concertedly low-balling the death count.

This new push amounts to more than an effort to block Trump’s coming disinformation campaign. Getting the death count right is critical to holding the administration accountable for the true human cost of its failures, and to establishing a firm understanding of facts on the ground as we reopen society, a process Trump is already corrupting to its core.

The senators are sending a letter to the administration’s top health officials, calling on them to establish a protocol that will “ensure an accurate and transparent death toll and consistent Covid-19 statistics.”

We know Trump is preparing to concertedly deflate the death toll. He has publicly accused New York City of inflating its death totals. And he has privately begun questioning the overall death count, according to officials.

Meanwhile, Axios reports that a senior official expects Trump to “publicly begin questioning the death toll” once it exceeds his previously stated expectations and “damages him politically.” And the White House is reportedly prodding health officials to revise its methodology in a way that will depress death counts.

Here in the real world, experts agree that it’s highly likely that official U.S. death tallies — currently at more than 80,000 — are an undercount, as Anthony S. Fauci, the leading member of Trump’s coronavirus task force, has acknowledged.

In their letter — which is addressed to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Peter T. Gaynor — the Democratic senators write that they are “gravely concerned” that Trump and some officials are “attempting to deflate the number of deaths.”

Harris’s letter is also signed by Sens. Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Edward J. Markey and Mazie Hirono (Hawaii). Others are expected to join before it is sent on Friday.

Last month, Harris sent another letter to the administration, highlighting numerous problems in how deaths are currently counted — such as inconsistencies in methods used by states and insufficient testing, which could be producing undercounts.

That letter urged the administration to work with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to develop “clear, temporary, federal guidelines” in counting deaths. In the new letter, the Democrats note that they haven’t heard anything back from the administration.

Yet, perversely enough, in that very same interim, signs have been mounting that Trump and some officials are moving toward undercounting deaths based on dubious methods.

If anything, we’re undercounting deaths

Indeed, other officials in Trump’s own administration worry about this. The Daily Beast recently reported that the White House is pushing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to exclude from the death count those without confirmed positive lab results and those who had the virus but might have died of something else.

But CDC officials pushed back, because they worry it could “falsely skew the mortality rate at a time when state and local governments are already struggling to ensure that every person who dies as a result of the coronavirus is counted,” the Daily Beast reported.

In fact, an overcount is the last thing we need to worry about. As a New York Times investigation showed, overall deaths are far higher than normal where coronavirus has hit hardest, and are far outpacing reported coronavirus deaths, which suggests it’s “probably killing more people than the reported statistics capture.”

And so, the Democrats demand in their new letter that the administration work with outside experts to “establish interim guidelines specifically for this pandemic and put an end to inconsistent data and messaging.”

Trump’s inclination, of course, will be to throw this letter in the trash. But, by making these objections public, senators are highlighting the administration’s refusal to establish clearer protocols, allowing us to view any future downgrading of death counts with more skepticism. Democrats can keep hammering this point, making it harder for Trump to get away with his efforts to deceive the public.

The Puerto Rico precedent

There’s also a precedent here that’s terrible to contemplate. As the Democrats note in their letter:

The misinformation surrounding the Covid-19 death count is not a new tactic from President Trump. This is the exact behavior that led to an extreme undercount in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.

Jeremy Konyndyk, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, agrees that the comparison to Puerto Rico is an unsettling one.

“This whole response has just been like Puerto Rico on steroids,” Konyndyk said. “It’s the federal government refusing to take responsibility, and the president refusing to admit any errors, and by doing so, compounding the errors he’s making.”

This dispute is far from an academic one. If we undercount deaths, it will create the impression that the coronavirus is less dangerous than it really is, leading to an overly rapid reopening by state governments and less care taken by all of us as individuals.

“There has been a lot of motivated reasoning from people trying to underplay the danger of this,” Konyndyk told me. “If the death toll is lowered, or can be construed as lowered, then less needs to be done to stop it.”

“The potential for this disease to kill large numbers of people is greater than any public health threat we’ve seen in our lifetimes,” Konyndyk continued. “If people underestimate the dangers, then fail to take sufficient measures, more people are going to die.”

Konyndyk concluded: “The disease doesn’t care how deadly you think it is.”

No, it doesn’t. It also doesn’t care how deadly Trump thinks it is. But the rest of us should.

 

[Ozlsn]

7 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The senators are sending a letter to the administration’s top health officials, calling on them to establish a protocol that will “ensure an accurate and transparent death toll and consistent Covid-19 statistics.”

I think unfortunately that states are going to have to agree to a defined protocol because this WH will actively obstruct all federal efforts.

[JMarie]

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/498093-gop-lawmaker-cites-herd-immunity-when-asked-why-hes-without-face-mask

Quote

Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) was spotted at the Capitol without a face mask on Friday, telling CNN there's "just no need."

According to CNN's Manu Raju, Yoho was seen without a mask around the Capitol and on the House floor ahead of a vote on Democrats' most recent coronavirus stimulus package. 

When asked by Raju why he chose to go without a face mask, Yoho responded that there's "no need" and also cited "herd immunity."

“Viruses do what viruses do,” Yoho said. “I think the only way you’re going to get it is to get exposed.” 

 

[47of74]

Fuck Head is still on his fake news kick

Quote

President Trump shared a video of a local TV reporter being confronted by anti-shutdown protesters in Long Island who called him "fake news" and "the enemy of the people," prompting journalists to come to the reporter's defense on Friday night.

"Fake news is not essential," the president wrote, retweeting the videos from News 12 Long Island reporter Kevin Vesey.

The viral videos, which have been viewed more than 9.8 million times, were recorded by Vesey while he was covering a rally on Thursday against stay-at-home orders during the coronavirus pandemic.

Vesey said demonstrators in the town of Commack were confronting him over his profession and were "repeatedly invading my personal space." Many of the protesters were not wearing face masks or practicing social distancing.

Here in Iowa we have 708.3A - Assaults On Persons Engaged In Certain Occupations.  It has some penalties for people commit assaults on people working in certain occupations, such as law enforcement, health care, firefighters, and other government departments (DHS, revenue).  I had my way tomorrow it would be expanded to include some journalists as well. 

Edited May 16, 2020 by 47of74

[GreyhoundFan]

 

The American people never figure in repug priorities.

[GreyhoundFan]

Every single person engaged by this sham administration is corrupt. Every.single.person.

 

[Cartmann99]

20 hours ago, 47of74 said:

Speaking as a 2020 graduate,  fuck you Kimmy

Hadn't been for your fucking hero Kimmy the class of 2020 graduates at all levels would have been able to have our final rites of passage.  If your hero had done his goddamn fucking job we wouldn't be in this situation now.

Perhaps one of the older college graduates will challenge her in 2022?

[47of74]

2 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

Perhaps one of the older college graduates will challenge her in 2022?

Hopefully if we can get the Koch brothers driftwood out of the Iowa Legislature this November we can make it so miserable for her that she won't want to run in 2022.  Especially if her kindred spirit Joni has to go back to castrating pigs on the family farm.  I might not be a resident of Iowa by the time that rolls around.  We'll just have to see.

[JMarie]

Trump visited PA on Thursday.  He didn't wear a mask, but everyone else did.  Check out the second pic in the gallery.

https://www.inquirer.com/photo/president-donald-trump-visits-lehigh-valley-medical-equipment-distributor-20200514.html

 

[47of74]

Thoughts and prayers 

Quote

A year ago, Kelly Craft was serving as Washington’s frequently absent ambassador to Canada, soon to be en route to the United Nations. Her spouse, the coal baron Joseph Craft III, was knee-deep in a Trump administration assault on federal rules aimed at safeguarding the environment, slowing climate change and protecting miners and other breathing Americans from the illnesses, injuries and deaths linked to the burning of coal.

The Crafts were reaping the rewards after showering Trump and numerous other Republican political candidates with millions in campaign contributions during the 2016 election cycle. The good times were rolling because Joseph Craft’s work eliminating those regulations was driving up coal sales and the value of the coal under his control as the chairman, president and chief executive officer of mining giant Alliance Resource Partners.

On May 14, 2019, Alliance Resource Partners stock was trading at $18.53 a share. The Crafts’ estimated net worth at the time, amounting to more than a billion dollars, mostly in energy stocks, was so vast that Kelly Craft was barred by a federal ethics agreement from participating in climate change matters when she became U.N. ambassador last September.

Fast forward to May 13, 2020, just months after the pandemic struck, and a share was selling at $2.89—about 84 percent of its value having evaporated.

This Craft fuck stick lost about $300 million.  Now he wants government help and is greasing the wheels in the fuck face administration. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Just when we think repugs can't be more disgusting... "Alaska lawmaker says Hitler was not white supremacist after comparing coronavirus measures to Nazi rule"

Spoiler

The uproar began when an Alaska lawmaker emailed all 39 of his statehouse colleagues to compare health-screening stickers to the badges that singled out Jews during the Holocaust.

“If my sticker falls off, do I get a new one or do I get public shaming too?” Rep. Ben Carpenter (R) wrote Friday, sharing his dismay at a new requirement for legislators returning to the Alaska Capitol amid the novel coronavirus pandemic. “Are the stickers available as a yellow Star of David?”

The backlash was swift: “Ben, this is disgusting,” one Jewish representative wrote back in emails first posted by the Alaska Landmine. “I don’t think a tag that we’re cleared to enter the building is akin to being shipped to a concentration camp,” responded another. The leader of the state House’s Republican delegation said Carpenter should apologize.

But Carpenter dug in.

“Can you or I — can we even say it is totally out of the realm of possibility that covid-19 patients will be rounded up and taken somewhere?” he said later in an interview with the Anchorage Daily News, arguing that officials are overreacting to the virus with limits on people’s liberty. “People want to say Hitler was a white supremacist. No. He was fearful of the Jewish nation, and that drove him into some unfathomable atrocities.”

That provoked a new round of denunciations from fellow lawmakers, one of whom said he’s seen similar arguments making the rounds online. The comments echo comparisons made by some protesters opposed to stay-at-home orders who argue that strict public health measures are akin to slavery and genocidal dictatorships — governors have been likened to Nazis — in rhetoric that many view as inappropriate in a national debate about measures to curb the coronavirus.

Anti-Semitic symbols and Confederate flags have also popped up at protests, causing offense and getting entangled in resistance to lockdowns.

“If people want to have a dialogue about how this is infringing on our Constitution, I’m happy to have that conversation,” said Rep. Grier Hopkins (D), the Jewish representative who wrote the email calling Carpenter’s initial message disgusting.

“But I hope he understands that this is not the Holocaust, and how that massacred 6 million Jews, and how genocide is not health mandates,” he told The Washington Post on Saturday.

Democratic colleague Rep. Andy Josephson told the Anchorage Daily News: “I don’t know there’s a whole lot more to say. I just think it’s pretty unfortunate.” Rep. Lance Pruitt (R), the House Minority Leader, called again for an apology and said in a statement Saturday night that Carpenter’s recent comments “were in poor taste."

Carpenter, who did not immediately respond to The Post’s inquiries Saturday, told the newspaper he didn’t intend to “rile somebody’ and has “no ill will toward the Jewish nation and the Jewish people in our country.”

Another representative on the mass email chain reviewed by The Post sympathized with Carpenter’s view, later telling the Daily News she wanted to “stay away from either condoning or condemning anything he said about [the Holocaust].” She said she agreed with his take on the virus response.

“We should all be concerned about the implications of being labeled as ‘non compliant’ or wearing a badge of ‘compliance,’ ” the representative, Sarah Vance (R), wrote in an email after Hopkins had written his rebuke.

Protesters and lawmakers around the country have raised questions about the value of continued coronavirus restrictions, though polling shows a majority of Americans are concerned about lifting stay-at-home orders too early. Shutdowns have devastated the economy, put millions out of work and placed sweeping new limits on Americans’ daily lives.

The requirement that sparked Carpenter’s email, though, was quite limited in scope: a rule that state legislators wear stickers indicating they’ve passed a health test when they head back to Juneau on Monday.

“We want to take necessary precautions because we have some of the most rural communities in the entire country, and they were decimated by the Spanish flu because people brought the disease back,” Hopkins said. “ ‘It is enough? Will it help to keep us all safe?’ [are] some of the bigger questions I’ve heard.”

Like most states, Alaska has been moving to reopen: Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R) let restaurants, retail stores and hair and nail salons start operating late last month, though with new social distancing requirements, such as capacity limits that many businesses find burdensome.

But Carpenter still said he sees coronavirus measures as a slippery slope. He argues that with 10 Alaskan coronavirus deaths, the fear of the pandemic is a bigger threat than the disease — a view shared by some national leaders including President Trump, who has tweeted that “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF.”

“We have a way of life that is being threatened right now because we have shut down our economy,” Carpenter told the Daily News.

He continued to defend his statements in text messages to the newspaper after its story with his Hitler comments published, saying: “The point was that it was fear that drove him. The attention of his fear was undesirables, including Jews. And the larger point is that PEOPLE FOLLOWED HIM.”

Asked about the assessment of Hitler, Hopkins evoked the 2017 neo-Nazi rally where people chanted “Jews will not replace us.” Attendees have described themselves as “white nationalists” who want a “homeland for white people.”

“If those people were not white supremacists,” he said in an interview, “well, I guess I don’t know what a white supremacist looks like.”

 

[47of74]

Awaiting the tweet storms from fuck head when he finds out about this

Quote

This week Twitter further updated its misinformation policy, making further changes to how they handle Coronavirus-related mis and disinformation. Twitter’s Head of Site Integrity, Yoel Roth, also confirmed that this new policy would apply to world leaders, superseding their standing world leaders policy.

In response to COVID-19 Twitter expanded its misinformation policy by broadening its definition of harm to include content that “goes directly against guidance from authoritative sources of global and local public health information.” This allowed the company more leeway to remove disinformation or add a warning label to content with mis or disinformation. Twitter also noted that harmful content from world leaders might also fall under this new policy.

Starting on Monday Twitter “may use these labels and warning messages to provide additional explanations or clarifications in situations where the risks of harm associated with a Tweet are less severe but where people may still be confused or misled by the content.” On Twitter, I asked Roth if this expanded policy would apply to world leaders, elected officials and/or Donald Trump. CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan amplified my tweet and also asked Twitter for comment. Roth responded in the affirmative saying “These labels will apply to anyone sharing misleading information that meets the requirements of our policy, including world leaders.”

 

[thoughtful]

On 5/16/2020 at 7:10 PM, JMarie said:

Trump visited PA on Thursday.  He didn't wear a mask, but everyone else did.  Check out the second pic in the gallery.

Or this one. Whoa. I don't think I needed to see the goggle-outline quite this close up.

Spoiler

 

[Ozlsn]

On 5/17/2020 at 9:10 AM, JMarie said:

Trump visited PA on Thursday.  He didn't wear a mask, but everyone else did.  Check out the second pic in the gallery.

https://www.inquirer.com/photo/president-donald-trump-visits-lehigh-valley-medical-equipment-distributor-20200514.html

 

It's just rude really. Everyone else is wearing a mask, as requested. They shouldn't have let him set foot in the facility.

[GreyhoundFan]

Awesome new Lincoln Project ad about what Twitler will do this week:

 

[JMarie]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/05/18/coronavirus-trump-says-hes-taking-hydroxychloroquine/5216400002/

Quote

President Donald Trump said Monday he is taking hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug that he's repeatedly touted as a treatment for coronavirus, despite warnings about its effectiveness. 

"I happen to be taking it," Trump said during a roundtable discussion with restaurant executives at the White House. "I hope to not be able to take it soon, you know, because I hope that they come up with some answer. But I think people should be allowed to." 

The Food and Drug Administration has cautioned against the use of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine for COVID-19 treatment outside of hospitals or clinical trials due to the risk of heart rhythm problems. 

"Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine have not been shown to be safe and effective for treating or preventing COVID-19," the FDA warned. Both can cause abnormal heart rhythms and a dangerously rapid heart rate, the statement said.

Trump, who said he has been taking the drug daily for about a week and a half, said that the White House physician "didn't recommend" the treatment but offered it to him. 

Two recent observational studies of coronavirus patients suggested the drug has little impact in treating the disease. The studies, while not the same as a clinical trial, suggested that the drug did not significantly reduce complications from the virus or death.

Trump told reporters along with taking the drug, he is being tested for COVID-19 every couple of days but so far has tested negative.

The president had touted the drug for weeks, frequently discussing anecdotal evidence of its impact from the podium during daily White House briefings. His administration stockpiled 29 million doses of the drug earlier in the pandemic. 

When asked why he's taking it, the president said he's "heard a lot of good stories." 

"And if it's not good...I'm not going to get hurt by it. It's been around for 40 years," he added. 

Hydroxychloroquine is FDA-approved to treat or prevent malaria as well as autoimmune conditions such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. 

The FDA has warned consumers not to buy the drug from online pharmacies without a prescription from a health care professional. 

Doctors, including director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci, have said it's impossible to know if hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine – another drug the president has pushed – is effective or safe to treat COVID-19. 

Several clinical trials to test the drugs on COVID-19 patients are under way. 

But what if he does "get hurt by it"? Then what?

[Smee]

Then you get Pence ?

[Ozlsn]

5 hours ago, JMarie said:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/05/18/coronavirus-trump-says-hes-taking-hydroxychloroquine/5216400002/

But what if he does "get hurt by it"? Then what?

Maybe he should try the bleach too.

4 hours ago, Smee said:

Then you get Pence ?

And Mother. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"By order of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp: The day after Thursday is now Sunday"

Quote

Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp needed a way to show that he hadn’t been rash to reopen restaurants, theaters, nail salons and the like in late April.

His administration came up with a creative solution. They doctored the statistics.

Last week, Georgia’s Department of Public Health released a graph showing a dramatic, steady decline in cases, deaths and hospitalizations in the state’s five most affected counties, from a peak on April 28, just before the state’s restrictions were eased, to near zero two weeks later.

But on closer inspection, the dates on the chart showed a curious ordering: April 30 was followed by May 4; May 5 was followed by May 2, which was followed by May 7 — which in turn was followed by April 26. The dates had been re-sorted to create the illusion of a decline. The five counties were likewise re-sorted on each day to enhance the illusion.

Only in Brian Kemp’s Georgia is the first Thursday in May followed immediately by the last Sunday in April. And only in President Trump’s America would we have the producers of such flimflam leading the reopening of our national economy.

The governor’s office apologized for what state Rep. Scott Holcomb, an Atlanta Democrat, properly called a “cuckoo” presentation of data. But as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution noted, it was the third such “error” in as many weeks involving sloppy counting of cases, deaths and other measures tracking covid-19. Another official state chart continues to show cases dropping dramatically over 14 days, with an asterisk explaining that “confirmed cases over the last 14 days may not be accounted for due to illnesses yet to be reported or test results may still be pending.”

Those who cheer the reopening, citing this sort of faulty data, call Georgia’s reopening a triumph and say those (like me) who raised cautions were dead wrong. The Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman said the “Georgia Model” is “an encouraging escape from lockdown” which he hopes “can inspire people to resume necessary activities.”

The conservative site “Newsbusters” went with this headline: “Milbank’s Bunk: Georgia Defies Liberal ‘#1 Death Destination’ Predictions.”

Take away Georgia’s deceptions and it appears the state has been on a plateau for the past few weeks. That’s better than an increase, but this is a reflection of the shutdown in April, not the reopening since then. The statistics are necessarily delayed by two weeks, or more: It takes up to 14 days to show symptoms, another delay before test results come back, another possible lag before hospitalization, a further lag until a victim dies and yet another delay until the death is reported. As the oft-disparaged public-health experts have said all along, the virus can spread undetected for some time after a relaxing of restrictions before explosive, exponential growth occurs.

But now much of the nation is following Georgia in reopening. Trump cheers the abandonment of restrictions, saying “This is going to go away without a vaccine.” His son Eric revives the idea that the virus is a Democratic hoax, saying the pandemic “will magically, all of a sudden, go away and disappear” after the election in November.

And the White House appears to be preparing mass-production of the sort of deception Georgia has attempted. It forced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to shelve guidelines for the reopening. And now, the Daily Beast reports, Trump, task force coordinator Deborah Birx and others are trying to force the CDC to revise downward its official death toll. Though the official count is almost certainly an undercount, the president seems to think that a lot of people who appear to die from coronavirus are actually “killed by other unnatural means, such as falling down a flight of stairs.”

Apparently Trump would have us believe the 2020 stair-falling season has been unusually severe.

We’d all be relieved and delighted if the scientists turned out to be wrong, and pandemic deaths decrease as workplaces reopen. Maybe warm summer weather will suppress some of the spread. But faking statistics won’t defeat the virus any more than taking hydroxychloroquine or ingesting Clorox.

As two Georgia Tech biologists wrote in Slate on Friday, Kemp justified reopening the state in late April with evidence that Georgia’s caseload was declining. But that turned out to be an artifact of the reporting lag: As more data came in, it turned out cases in Georgia were still rising. The lag continues to make current conditions look better than they are.

Kemp’s press secretary, apologizing for the doctored graph, said officials had thought it “would be helpful.” And it was, sort of: It helped to assure Georgians that everything is fine, while the state, followed by the whole country, flies blind.

 

[Ozlsn]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Last week, Georgia’s Department of Public Health released a graph showing a dramatic, steady decline in cases, deaths and hospitalizations in the state’s five most affected counties, from a peak on April 28, just before the state’s restrictions were eased, to near zero two weeks later.

But on closer inspection, the dates on the chart showed a curious ordering: April 30 was followed by May 4; May 5 was followed by May 2, which was followed by May 7 — which in turn was followed by April 26. The dates had been re-sorted to create the illusion of a decline. The five counties were likewise re-sorted on each day to enhance the illusion

How is that not fraud?

[GreyhoundFan]

The concept of irony is lost on anyone in this sham administration:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Why is every single thing in this administration either a crime, a coverup of a crime, or a distraction tactic?

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Sad that someone would get fired for refusing to lie:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I agree with Rick:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

WTAF?