A SAR-CoV-2 Primer

This is a pretty good primer on the virus.

There is an indication that there are other coronaviruses out there that also would have the ability to trigger another pandemic. As the article explains, the common cold coronaviruses attack the upper respiratory tract. SARS (SARS-Cov) and MERS attack the lungs. SARS-CoV-2 attacks both places.

This is all why Trump's dismantling of the pandemic response planning teams, which were created by the two previous administrations, is so insidious. When Trump says "nobody could have known that there would a pandemic", the truth of the matter is that you'd have to search far and wide to find an infectious disease scientist, or, for that matter, anyone who had spent an afternoon looking into the subject, who would agree with Trump. In Trump's feeble mind, if he doesn't know a fact, nobody knows it. Remember, this is the guy who didn't realize that "the party of Lincoln" referred to Abraham Lincoln.[1]

Trump's aggressive ignorance is why we're going to have a hundred thousand or more people die from this shit.

Republicans are going to follow Trump right off the cliff. None of them seem to have an ounce of integrity.
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[1] He probably thinks that "the party of Lincoln" means that they have a sponsorship deal with the Ford Motor Co.