One of Rachel Maddow's guests tonight was the Commanding Officer of the US Army Corps of Engineers. Watch it! He knows what his troops need to do and they are preparing for immediate mobilization. All he needs is the Word from the White House to move and directions of what needs to be done.
I expect Trump will take action very quickly - to remove this person from his post.
To everyone: Ignoring the Trump razzing, you should read DWise1's above post because it lists some important parts of the federal role in this disaster that aren't receiving enough attention.
Trump is using the daily coronavirus briefings and his other opportunities for airtime to campaign. He's the only one campaigning right now. "Equal time" opportunities should be given to the Democrats after each of his appearances.
quote:SportsBettingDime.com has posted Over/Under numbers on the words and phrases the president regularly uses in his daily coronavirus pandemic media briefings. ... Now, for President Trump’s daily news briefings, the highest number for SportsBettingDime is 24.5, the number of times the words fantastic, incredible, amazing, and tremendous will be said as a group. Separate them, and oddsmakers think fantastic will be said the most, as it’s solo Over/Under is 8.5.
The lowest totals are for the phrases not our fault, working very hard, and we’re doing a great job, each is 2.5 by itself. You can’t bet them in combination, however.
Trump continues to express his wish to open the country up and get back to work against the advice of almost all relevant health experts and just as we've achieved the highest level of coronavirus infections in the world. All news organizations are reporting this, one article is https://www.cnbc.com/...ekend-on-plan-to-reopen-economy.html.
Read it and weep. The graph's tooltip says the most recent data point is from two days ago, but the 84,000 number is about what I heard last night, so I think the latest data point is actually from yesterday:
This is a fairly ideal exponential curve, and where it's going can be projected fairly accurately. I project US infection numbers will be these in the coming days:
Date
Number Infections by Evening
3/27/2020
109,000
3/28/2020
144,000
3/29/2020
193,000
3/30/2020
262,000
3/31/2020
359,000
4/1/2020
495,000
4/2/2020
685,000
4/3/2020
951,000
4/4/2020
1,323,000
So I project that on Saturday, April 4, 2020, the number of US coronavirus infections will surpass a million by a substantial margin. That's only a little over a week away.
If 6% require a ventilator that is 80,000 ventilators, but patients probably won't all need them at the same time, so that helps a little. The country began with about 160,000 ventilators and 13,000 in the national stockpile. I've heard that a large percentage of our ventilators, nearly half, are neonatal ventilators, and I'm not sure if the figures I've cited include those ventilators or not. Neonatal ventilators are not appropriate for adults. Also, I've seen it mentioned that a number of ventilators are older outmoded models probably not appropriate for severe cases.
The shortage of ventilators will first become apparent in New York, which I estimate has around 15,000 ventilators now. Given where the numbers are going to be in a week, and given that a high percentage of all cases will still be in New York, their estimate of needing 40,000 ventilators sounds about right, even though Trump was on Hannity last night saying that he didn't believe the number would be that high. Trump is a ding dong who know little or nothing about almost everything, so it's pretty safe to assume he's wrong, especially since it goes against expert estimates and advice.
I keep harping on the mask issue. The article repeats the advice that people who aren't sick and who aren't caring for someone sick don't need masks, but it equivocates a bit about crowded places like grocery stores. I feel like I've finally seen some reasonable advice about masks. I don't wear a mask to take a walk or play tennis, but I do wear a mask at the grocery store, the pet store, and the pharmacy. The few N95 masks we have won't last forever, and then we'll start wearing my wife's homemade masks.
The article has a lot of advice about what to do at home. They recommend wiping down certain frequently used surfaces to keep them free of virus, but we're not doing any of that stuff because if we go somewhere like the grocery store then when we get home all the clothes go in the wash, we wash our hands with soap and water (our kitchen faucet turns on/off by motion sensing), then take a shower.
We had pizza for dinner last night. We ordered online and I picked it up. I called from outside and asked if they could bring the pizza to the door, which they were happy to do. I put the pizza in the back seat, then brought it into the house and slipped it into a preheated 300° oven for 20 minutes - the cardboard is fine at that temperature. Since 15 minutes at 130 degrees is supposed to render the virus uninfective this seemed more than sufficient. I wiped down the back seat with isopropyl alcohol, and the front seat and steering wheel and miscellaneous things I'd touched just on general principle.
I'll be doing the grocery shopping today after tennis (it's another nice day, high of maybe 60) and I'll be wearing an N95 mask.
It was probably on Hannity, but yesterday Trump said that the US had perfomed more CV tests than any other country. This is true, but the US is by far the largest country where CV is a current problem. We've performed 600,000 tests, but that only earns us 18th place on the country list of number of tests per 100,000 population.
We're at around 170 tests per 100,000 people, though New York State is way up there at around 630 tests per 100,000. South Korea is at 710 tests per 100,000, and Italy at 600. We've got a ways to go.
Uh, what "razzing"? I was just stating factual observations. It is a solid fact that Trump has screwed the pooch royally, so how does pointing that out amount to "razzing"?
Sorry. I just thought your post was so strongly factual and well argued that it didn't need the couple swipes at Trump to distract from it, not that they weren't true.
Trump *is* an idiot. He accused New York of not needing the ventilators on the grounds that they currently have enough, apparently not understanding that the apex of need lies in the future a few weeks away. Cuomo tried to explain this, but when someone doesn't understand something intuitively obvious, like "two plus two equals four" and really and truly doesn't get it, how do you explain it to them?
I don't understand how 55% of Americans could think Trump is doing a good job managing the epidemic. I think maybe too much of America is sucked in by reality TV.
quote:What I’ve gotten back is that vendors with whom we’ve procured contracts they’re being told not to send stuff to Michigan...It’s really concerning. I reached out to the White House last night and asked for a phone call with the president, ironically at the time this stuff was going on.
Trump demands appreciation from governors (cued up to the right point):
quote:All I want them to do, very simple, I want them to be appreciative. I don't want them to say things that aren't true. I want them to be appreciative. We've done a great job. And I'm not talking about me, I'm talking about Mike Pence...I say Mike, don't call the governor of Washington, you're wasting your time with him. Don't call the woman in Michigan...You know what I say? If they don't treat you right, I don't call them.
It's the same old Trump formula that we see over and over again. If he's not getting what he wants politically, usually capitulation to his demands and unconditional praise, he invents a grievance and badmouths you in the press.
I have discovered that disinfecting with isopropyl alcohol is very harsh on the skin and dries out your hands. I recommend against its use for that purpose. Wash with soap and water whenever possible, and when soap and water aren't available then use hand sanitizers that contain at least 60% isopropyl alcohol because they contain other agents that counteract the harshness.
We can find no hand sanitizer yet, despite that we're not that far from a huge Budweiser plant that is supposedly churning out hand sanitizer, so when I'm out and about and don't have access to soap and water I now sanitize my hands with isopropyl alcohol and then apply hand moisturizer.
I've read that the online instructions for creating hand sanitizer at home from isopropyl alcohol and aloe and other things is an iffy way to go and should be avoided unless you know you have a valid set of instructions and you're good at measuring and mixing.
quote:I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. You go into major hospitals sometimes, and they’ll have two ventilators. And now, all of a sudden, they’re saying, Can we order 30,000 ventilators?
Trump one day ago in a White House statement:
quote:Today, I signed a Presidential Memorandum directing the Secretary of Health and Human Services to use any and all authority available under the Defense Production Act to require General Motors to accept, perform, and prioritize Federal contracts for ventilators. Our negotiations with GM regarding its ability to supply ventilators have been productive, but our fight against the virus is too urgent to allow the give-and-take of the contracting process to continue to run its normal course. GM was wasting time. Today’s action will help ensure the quick production of ventilators that will save American lives.
Note the Trump signature moves. He reverses himself in a single day while blaming others for delays.
In case anyone was wondering why Trump has singled out General Motors for special attention instead of Ford or General Electric or any other manufacturer, it's because about a week ago GM entered into a partnership with Ventec Life Systems to produce additional ventilators. While I can't find anything specific, my guess is that GM has no intention of retooling any of its active auto plants to produce ventilators, which never made any sense. I think their contribution to the partnership must be manpower and resources to help Ventec expand its current manufacturing capabilities.
quote:Rhode Island plans to send the National Guard out to knock door-to-door in an attempt to hunt down anyone who has arrived in the tiny state from New York City during the coronavirus pandemic. State police, meanwhile, have begun pulling over cars with New York state plates.
Gov. Gina Raimondo said anyone traveling there from New York will be ordered to undergo a 14-day quarantine and could face fines or even jail time if they’re found to not comply.
Here in New Hampshire we're gearing up for an influx of refugee New Yorkers who will be stealing clothes off clotheslines so they can fit in with the locals (there's no plaid flannel in New York City) and hiding out in tool sheds.
quote:On March 12 I got a fever that didn’t go away.
It hovered around 101 or 102 degrees for the next week...I saw a doctor via video who said it was probably the flu possibly the coronavirus, he added, but tests were unavailable and the prescription, rest and fluids, would be the same regardless. ... Then, about a week in, I began to cough. Taking deep breaths felt as if fire were shooting through my lungs...New York State set up a coronavirus testing site an hour from my home. When I called for an appointment, I waited on hold for 80 minutes, after which someone took my information and said someone else would call me back. No one did.
Eight days after the fever first manifested, I could barely move. My wife took me to an urgent care clinic, where I received a chest X-ray and confirmation that I had pneumonia. They swabbed me for the coronavirus but their lab was overwhelmed, and they didn’t know when they would receive any results. I’ve still not heard from them.
I returned home in terrible shape, chest burning and wracked with chills, unable to do anything other than shudder under a blanket. My primary doctor urged my wife to take me to the E.R., which she did. There, they gave me a coronavirus test and another chest X-ray, but blood tests suggested that my oxygen and white blood cell levels were decent. They sent me home but insisted that should I feel worse, I should call them back immediately.
The next day, my temperature spiked to 103.5 degrees. We called the E.R., and they told us to come back. That night I was admitted to Northern Dutchess Hospital in Rhinebeck, N.Y. ... On the second day I was more lucid but still felt horrendous, and a friendly doctor came in with two bits of news: The coronavirus test I took in the E.R. had come back positive and the latest X-ray wasn’t good. He showed me the earlier X-ray from the E.R.: Each lung had a cloudy patch near the bottom but was otherwise clear. Then he showed me the new X-ray. It looked liked some demented handyman had sprayed my lungs with insulation.
That's a lengthy excerpt, so let me summarize: It took twelve days after his initial symptoms for test results to confirm he had CV, and by that time he was very, very sick.
I can't keep all this in my head when I hear it on the radio so that's the best I can do at the moment.
Who were you listening to on the radio?
I didn't get her name...etc...
Again, no reference.
You are preternaturally attracted to unreliable sources. Since you've provided not a single reference there's no reason to waste any time checking out what you say.
But this is just part of your effort to justify calling it the China virus or Wuhan virus and to blame China for the pandemic. Instead of playing along with Trump's accuse and blame game why don't you do something constructive. Report on how things are going in Nevada or something. Besides, as I mentioned yesterday, Trump has flip-flopped again and is now cooperating with China. But wait a day and he'll flip-flop again.
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