Thursday, March 26, 2020

Trump Keeps on Lying and Trumpanzees Keep Sucking It Up

At almost every one of his daily pressers since the COVID-19 virus took hold, Trump says some variant of this line:
“Nobody knew there would be a pandemic or epidemic of this proportion. So there’s never been anything like this in history. There’s never been. And nobody’s ever seen anything like this.”
That is a bald-faced lie. Everyone who paid attention to such things knew that there could be a bad pandemic. That's why both Presidents G.W. Bush and Obama had planning staffs to come up with plans for a pandemic and watch out for one. That's why, before Trump took office, the Obama administration ran a pandemic planning exercise for Trump and his staff. The Trump team was bored shitless.

As has been reported ad nauseum, Trump disbanded the pandemic planning staffs. Trump gutted the U.S. staff in China who would have looked for signs of a pandemic.

So everyone who knew anything about pandemics well understood that another one would happen one day. But not Trump, nosiree.

And, as far as his claim that there has never been anything like this in history, that's just laughable. Anyone who buys that is a certified Trumpanzee Kool-Aid Drinker.



10 comments:

  1. Looks more and more everyday like an outright case of waging biological warfare on the American people, that this "pandemic" is no different than Christians handing out smallpox laced blankets to the natives. The Trump Virus because Trump brought it here and turned it loose to kill off a bunch of us. Don't be afraid to state the obvious.

    This goes beyond providing aid and comfort ...

    ReplyDelete
  2. The 'R naught'

    Scientists also assess the so-called R naught of the disease, a mathematical equation that shows how many people will get sick from each infected person. Just like the mortality rate, the R naught will fluctuate over time as scientists gather more data, and it can vary depending on where someone lives.

    Estimates of the R naught for COVID-19 have ranged from 1.4 to about 5. The WHO has estimated the R naught of COVID-19 to be around 1.95 and other estimates from researchers following the outbreak put it around 2.2, meaning about two people will catch the virus from every person who already has it.

    The R naught can also be heavily reduced, depending on what a nation does to contain the virus, which is why state and local officials are scrambling across the U.S. to close businesses and keep people indoors. China last week reported its first day with zero new cases after placing much of the nation under lockdown for nearly two months. The R naught can also dramatically increase if a country does nothing.

    "If the R naught is higher than 1, it will spread and it will be contagious," Yanzhong Huang, a public health researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations and director of the Center for Global Health Studies at Seton Hall University, said in a phone interview with CNBC last month. "Without any containment measures, technically it can spread to the whole population."

    The number of CV-19 cases and deaths changes by the hour. Some scientists predict half the world's population will eventually get it.

    Here's how COVID-19 stacks up against other pandemics and serious outbreaks. (The R naught and mortality rates figures are from a March 9 report on deadly outbreaks by financial research firm Morningstar unless otherwise noted.)

    Seasonal flu

    R naught: 1.3
    Mortality rate: 0.1%
    GS: Woman receives a flu shot 180122
    A woman receives a flu shot at a Walgreens pharmacy in San Francisco.
    Getty Images
    Many have compared the COVID-19 outbreak to influenza, also known as the common flu, another respiratory illness that has symptoms similar to CV-19.

    So far, COVID-19 is proving to be more infectious with an R naught of around 2 than the seasonal flu, which has an R naught of 1.3 and infects up to 49 million Americans each year. Based on the WHO's most recent mortality rate of 3.4%, the COVID-19 outbreak is shaping up to be at least 34 times deadlier than the flu, which has a mortality rate of about 0.1% and kills 290,000 to 650,000 people per year across the globe. If the current mortality for CV-19 rate holds at 4.5%, it would make this coronavirus 45 times deadlier than the flu.

    https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/03/26/coronavirus-may-be-deadlier-than-1918-flu-heres-how-it-stacks-up-to-other-pandemics.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. Here's the thing: We don't know how widespread COVID-19 is, because we can't test people. We are at the point in many places where they are only testing people with symptoms bad enough for hospitalization, along with medical staff and first responders.

    As for the rest of us, suck it up, buttercup.

    China may be lying by commission about how many cases they've had, how many people have died. I've seen almost no data about whether or not the virus is in their Uighur concentration camps.

    We, on the other hand, are lying by omission, because we aren't testing people. You generally won't find shit if you're not looking for it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This “pandemic” will have a very interesting life as it is investigated afterwards...probably for a decade or more. The truth will come out, and if the Chinese government is covering up to the extent suspected, that will come out. In the majority of the world, COVID-19 antibodies will probably become a standard check during a blood test of any sort. In about two or three years we will have a much better picture of what happened, but the when will take s9me serious computer analysis to back fit cases and locations with potential spread vectors.

    Predictions: Chinese cover-up will have serious repercussions worldwide, impacting Chinese international relations. The fragmented response in the U.S., Italy and Spain will become case studies in how not to respond. There will be interesting developments in developing surge capacity within the medical systems of the world, probably focused upon establishing an ability to share or repurpose equipment, with a slight to moderate reduction is safety/efficiency, in crisis situations.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Who are you calling buttercup, CM? I certainly have never had any brief for the butchers of Beijing.

    ReplyDelete
  6. We all know Donny boy is not a curious person, and he doesn't read either. I'd have to say he is downright ignorant despite the value paid for his supposed education.
    What I think he is saying is "He's" never heard of such a thing. Of course not. He would have to have paid attention in school to know of things like the Black Plague, or the so-called Spanish Flu. Maybe even read the news, but no, that's not our Donny. I wonder if he is aware of the stock market crash of the roaring 20s'?
    He may just be totally ignorant of that too.
    We see him fail and flail more every day.
    A "post turtle"` at work.
    w3ski

    ReplyDelete
  7. The thing about that ad is that Fergus' campaign has sent "cease and desist" letters to TV stations airing it and threatened them with litigation.
    That, of course, caused the Streisand effect to kick in and as of yesterday it had been viewed more than 6.5 million times online.

    Perhaps the whole Mar-a-Lago crowd should read Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death", or if they don't read real good, watch the movie online.

    -Doug in Sugar Pine

    ReplyDelete
  8. For the conspiracy folk...
    IF you live in the american prairie and you hear hoof beats
    the likelihood is horses, buffalo, maybe cattle. If you put
    up Zebras, your likely at a zoo, not the prairie. Your answer
    is invalid.

    One of the most disappointing in my search for information is
    not the number of tests, its the damn results! I expect a high
    positive number for that as screened people are getting the tests.
    That makes the result useless for anything other than potential
    and not actual death rate for the infected as then we lack age
    and other information.

    We are also getting people tested for the FLU, the negative
    results are important. Especially so if they go on to more
    complex respiratory disease.

    The other information is anything regarding a antibody test
    even for limited population. Is this CV19 likely to convey
    resistance or self immunization? Also without a widespread
    test at the antibody level we can determine if people had
    it and mostly shrugged it off.

    Biggest issue other than its apparently easier to catch than
    childhood bugs and the flu is we don't know a lot.

    Also COVID-19 is not the fucking flu and calling it so is
    conflating gazelles with goats.

    Eck!

    ReplyDelete
  9. DA

    The buttercups are the general public that cannot get a test or
    know their status. It (the collective we) may include you but
    you already know that your out there and flailing in the wind.

    We (again collective) are stuck with doing our best to not
    contract this shit, if not consider who you might pass it to.

    Either that or I get to sing a few bars of Tom Lehrers,
    "I got from Agnes". AS that's how infectious diseases
    are passed.

    AS to the antvaxers, may they have a place in hell.


    Eck!

    ReplyDelete
  10. There is a test for antibodies, and supposedly it's got a faster turnaround than the tests already in use.
    A county in Colorado is planning to administer the antibody test to its entire population, isolate the positives, and retest in 14 days, like that town in Italy did.

    -Doug in Sugar Pine

    ReplyDelete

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