Sandy Hook wasn't real, climate change isn't real, the pandemic isn't real. They're all just liberal plots.
When are conservatives going to tire of this mindless formula and start basing their thinking on facts. The answer is never. Facts don't convince most people. Most people's minds don't work that way unless the facts smack them right in the face. Emotions and social pressures are a huge component of how people form opinions. One's social group plays a large role.
quote:Then Mark Frilot 45 years old, never, ever sick came home with a fever.
In the haze of days that followed, Ms. Frilot, a 43-year-old oil-and-gas analyst, occupied one world, the rest of her community in Kenner, La., another. She saw her friends making jokes on social media about the coronavirus eye-roll emojis, Fox News talking points, Rush Limbaugh quotes writing off the threat. And then one person asked if anyone really had this thing.
Ms. Frilot had an answer to that.
I have been seeing a lot of posts about people taking this virus lightly and joking about it, she began in a Facebook post. Mark has tested positive for the coronavirus. ... Today, Ms. Frilot’s husband of 12 years remains quarantined in the ICU, hooked up to a ventilator, one of the 280-plus cases in Louisiana of the novel coronavirus rapidly spreading across the United States. ... It was a revelation for the conservative suburbs of New Orleans, where many had written off the pandemic as liberal fear-mongering. ... The language they used was the language politicians and media figures were also using. On March 8, when Mr. Frilot first went to urgent care, President Trump retweeted a joke from his White House social media director about Nero fiddling as Rome burned. The next night, Sean Hannity said on his prime time Fox News show that the virus was the media’s attempt to bludgeon Mr. Trump with this new hoax. ... Ms. Pitfield lives in Metairie, about 10 minutes from Kenner. Like many in the area, which is represented in Congress by House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, she is a supporter of President Trump. She, and many of her friends, she said, believed that the coronavirus was a political stunt and media-induced hysteria.
And then finally light bulbs go on in ways like this:
quote:Ms. DeLaup had mixed emotions at first about the virus. On the one hand, her fellow Trump supporters were insistent that it was being blown out of proportion, that the flu was far deadlier, that everyone was being ridiculous. On the other hand, she thought, It’s not just us: Everyone around the world is reacting like this. Would everyone be throwing things out of proportion? Just to try and hurt the president?
Many people see reality through a glass darkly filtered by the opinions and attitudes of those around them. Conservatives in this country have been conditioned by three years of Trump to distrust the media, and it wouldn't be surprising to learn, after this is all over, that conservatives were affected more than liberals.
Studies of coronavirus transmission say that though it can survive long periods ranging from 30 minutes to 72 hours in the air and on various surfaces, it rapidly loses virulence. Despite this it is somehow very contagious, so I think they’re missing something. I plan to take extreme precautions.
Later today I will be playing tennis (outside because the indoor clubs have all closed). We'll keep our distance from each other, and especially with this partner because he works with a vulnerable population. Before starting we will rinse our hands in 70% alcohol because we'll be touching the balls, and because the balls also give off bursts of nap particles when struck or when they bounce.
Afterward I'll be doing the grocery shopping and I'll be wearing a bandana. I'd wear a mask if I could find one. When I return home the grocery bags will sit in the garage for 48 hours. Bags of groceries requiring refrigeration will be placed in the garage fridge (cold doesn't affect the virus). My clothes will be thrown in the washer and I'll take a shower.
I advise everyone, conservative and liberal and everyone, to take a similar level of caution. Infection risks serious illness hooked up to a ventilator for weeks. And ask yourself for how much longer will sufficient ventilators be available? No one should have to lie on a hospital gurney listening to doctors in a triage debate about whether you or someone else deserves the last available ventilator. The vaccine will likely not be available until summer next year at the earliest and hopefully we will all get our immunity from the vaccine and not from the virus itself.
The seriousness of the infection caused by the virus varies widely. Why is not yet understood. The latest estimate of mortality is 1.4% for the non-elderly (Lower death rate estimates for coronavirus provide glimmer of hope - STAT), and that is good news if it is true as prior estimates were 2%-3%, but it is still very high.
The mortality rate for the flu is less than a tenth as great, and that figure includes the vulnerable elderly population. But it also varies widely from year to year depending upon how accurately experts have guessed which strain of flu will prevail in any given winter. They're forced to guess considerably in advance because of the time it takes to gear up vaccine production. When they guess right the mortality rate is lower, when wrong it's considerably higher. According to the CDC (Disease Burden of Flu | CDC) annual deaths vary between 12,000 and 61,000 each year. Without the vaccine it would be much, much higher.
That's the situation we're in with the coronavirus. There is no vaccine. If we don't practice social distancing and use serious sanitizing practices to keep infection rates low then the number of deaths could reach into the millions.
The polarization of political opinion can lead us to believe that those whose views we share have a monopoly on morality, so it's important to make clear that that's not what we're saying. There's another reason why zero Democrats have been caught.
The Republicans were caught sending one message publicly (the coronavirus threat is a fiction) and another privately (the coronavirus threat is very serious). It was dishonorable of them to make public expressions that everything's fine while privately dumping stock.
In contrast the Democrats had only one message, that the coronavirus represented a very serious public health threat. It would make perfect sense and be perfectly honorable for them to act on the convictions they publicly expressed by dumping stock.
While it's still very faint, more are adding their voices to the clamor that ruining the economy and people financially for years to come is the wrong answer. The amount of misery and death caused by economic depression, starvation, homelessness, homicide, suicide, child abuse, and so on may be greater than just letting the virus run its course. Here's my proposal for an alternative approach to the coronavirus:
Immediately begin mobilizing for the massive health crisis that is about to confront us, whatever that requires. I'm not a medical professional and won't attempt any detail.
Nationalize ventilator manufactures and rapidly ramp up production.
Use Navy hospital ships.
Turn cruise ships into floating hospitals.
Continue the lockdown for a couple more weeks, then reopen everything. Bars, restaurants, schools, businesses, travel, everything.
quote:I’m not hearing it, Trump said. We don’t want everybody to go out and get a test because there’s no reason for it.
Another reporter came back to the topic less than three minutes later in the news conference, and asked Fauci whether testing availability was meeting public demand.
I get the same calls that many of you get, Fauci said. Someone goes into a place who has a symptom and wants to get a test and for one reason or other, multiple logistic, technical, what have you they can’t get it. That is a reality that is happening now. Is it the same as it was a few weeks ago? Absolutely not, because as the secretary and others have said, right now that we have the private sector involved the availability not only just availability, but the implementation of the availability is getting better and better and better. Having said that, I understand and empathize with the people who rightfully are sayin, ‘I’m trying to get a test, and I can’t.'
quote:President Donald Trump’s directive for governors to buy their own medical supplies to fight the coronavirus has run into a big problem -- the federal government.
Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker told Trump during a video conference on Thursday that his state three times lost out to the federal government on purchases of critical supplies, creating an awkward moment during the made-for-TV event at Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Washington.
I’ve got a feeling that if someone has the chance to sell to you and to sell to me, I am going to lose on every one of those, a sheepish-sounding Baker told Trump, who chuckled at the remark.
The president replied he still wants governors to seek out their own medical equipment, like protective gear for doctors and nurses as well as respirators, but acknowledged the federal government has greater buying power than any state.
Prices are always a component of that also. And maybe that’s why you lost to the feds, OK, that’s probably why, Trump said.
You said something about wanting me to come to this thread, I havce no idea why.
As for your current post, what's your point? Governers simply have that responsibility, the federal government doesnt' and if there was a conflict in one case it needs a lot more spelling out than your quote is giving it. Anything about Trump is always skewed or out of context in some way.
I've heard a number of times in the last week that some states have had laws in place limiting how much medical equipment hospitals and other medical agencies are allowed to buy. Some kind of social engineering liberal madness. These laws are causing shortages in their states at this time of need that they seem to be trying to blame on the federal government. New York is one such state out of something like 36 that passed this idiotic law.
Trump has been remarkably organized and persistent in his dealings with this crisis but you call him "out of control?"
The Federal government has responsibility for nationwide problems. Trump just can't handle it.
Trump has been remarkably persistent in running from the issue. Organized, no the opposite is true.
None of what we've posted is out of context. Trump's so far out of his depth he's looking up at the Titanic.
The first coronavirus case appeared in South Korea and the US on the same day. Within days South Korea was testing 10,000 people PER DAY. The US has tested a TOTAL of 135,000 people. The number of cases in South Korea are declining. The number of cases in the US is growing exponentially.
To end this pandemic in the US all we need to do is stop testing and stop reporting.
And this would provide additional employment opportunities.
First, we would need additional backhoe operators. Then communities would need to stockpile lime like we now do with road salts. Finally, we could hire those with pickups and flatbed trucks to periodically canvas neighborhoods collecting bodies.
Re: Trump continues to lie and downplay the danger
Let's add the republican senators to the list of those responsible for US failure to properly attack the problem -- they had their chance to remove him and have someone else in charge.
Governors simply have that responsibility, the federal government doesn't and if there was a conflict in one case it needs a lot more spelling out than your quote is giving it. Anything about Trump is always skewed or out of context in some way.
The point of the article JonF cited that you're responding to (Trump Told Governors to Buy Own Virus Supplies, Then Outbid Them) is that Trump instructed states to make their own purchases of medical supplies to fight the coronavirus threat, then outbid them. In the article Trump admitted that this is true:
quote:Prices are always a component of that also. And maybe that’s why you lost to the feds, OK, that’s probably why.
Trump never says how the federal government is going to make the purchased supplies available to the states. Unless Trump plans to send those supplies out of the country, there is nowhere he could deploy those supplies that isn't in a state. Governors have a right to know where all the masks and gloves and ventilators are going. Are they going to the VA and military hospitals, or are going to be deployed to regular hospitals in the states, or some combination?
Medicare patients are not treated at the VA or at military hospitals but at non-governmental hospitals. If Federal bidding leaves these facilities bereft of the necessary supplies because the VA and the military has them all, then that's something they need to fix. I assume you do want the doctors and nurses in your nearby hospitals to have masks and gloves and ventilators?
This also follows the Trump pattern of refusing responsibility for anything he perceives isn't to his political advantage, such as national disasters like this. He's very consistent.
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