michelangelosmonkey

Do you know how big organizations work? There is $3 billion funding within the CDC specifically for preparing "Protecting Americans from Infectious Diseases at Home & Abroad". I'm sure within that $3 billion they had a special pandemic preparation team that was set up during the Swine flu epidemic and has just lingered around. When they reallocated resources within that budget that doesn't mean they fired all those people and burned all the plans...it just means they didn't meet every Tuesday for three hours. * In late February there were 68 cases in the US. Would you have closed down the country at that point? Was it unreasonable to tell people to be calm at that point? * I'm not sure what you mean by peddling snake oil sales..hydrochloroquine in conjunction with zinc and asythromyacine still could be useful...but your omniscience seems to know a cheap, readily available solution is not even worth looking at. * Back in February the demand was to ramp up production of ventilators and he did that but now that's not the narrative because it doesn't fit into your idea. Shift the goal posts. * Really? President Trump today announces Illinois won't be getting masks because NYC needs them more...Illinois residents respond...well we're cool with that. * He got crap because he wasn't going to force the states to close...so he said he was going to and then he got crap for that. In a time when no president has ever done anything like this. But sure...you're criticism is fair and balanced. * The CDC is a hammer and they see every problem as a nail. They have one goal and that is to make every citizen 100% safe from every disease. I have friends that started businesses in the last year that are just wiped out because of the shut down...lost everything...to protect the old and inform (90% of the deaths are people that are over 65 and/or have comorbidity). We cannot afford to shut down forever even if the CDC wants to...want to see their funding levels when we have no federal taxes? So yes, as I have said, the president made mistakes, as would President Obama or Lincoln or Jefferson. It's hard dealing with the unknown and it aggravating to have the peanut gallery shouting insults at every misstep. Can't wait for President Biden to save the world.

Oh the president is incredibly arrogant and smug. I just don't want to play the way the president plays.

I told my students January 27th..."well that's it, the end of the world has arrived...don't worry about your homework now". I mean really, when China closed down all traffic in and out of a region covering 40 million people because a few thousand had a new flu? There was something terrible that we didn't know about. That they knowingly allowed hundreds of thousands to leave the area the days before the shut down and travel all over the world was negligently launching the missile? Everything that happened after that was just waiting. I was right but not proud of it (and thankfully this thing is not as deadly as initially thought).

You know "I am right and you are wrong, I'm gonna sing the 'I was right song'" is not really an argument. It is arrogant smugness. But still have a nice day.

And you realize that's how politics work...you ask for a 10% raise, I offer a 10% cut and we settle somewhere in the middle. In the end the president signs every budget and it becomes his budget. To not only not give him credit for his budget when it doesn't suit your argument but to say he was forced to swallow the bitter pill of increase CDC spending just seems silly. And even if there was a little cut...$2.5 billion of the total CDC budget is specifically for the preparation of the country for Pandemics...and that has been the amount for a decade...so how did that $25 billion in government spending pay off when the monster was out of the cage/

A few days??? They announced to the WHO on December 31st about it. On January 6th a doctor and 13 nurses working on patients came down with it. On January 20th HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of residents of Wuhan left the city for the new years festive and traveled all over the world...including one of their favorite overseas destinations...Italy. Then January 23rd they closed up Wuhan. And you say we dithered about people coming in from Italy in February? Come on Balta that is just partisan hate...and yes hindsight. On February 18th there were THREE cases in Italy. By the end of February there were only 1,000 cases in a country of 60 million people. But a week and a half later we shut down travel from Europe. That is lightening speed. Please tell me the day that you, with perfect hindsight, shuts down Europe. Because its nonsense.

Fired the pandemic team is such a lazy argument. CDC funding in the last year under Obama was $7 billion...it was higher in every year of the Trump presidency. I showed the timeline...I'm not sure a reasonable president would have acted much differently. But yeah partisanship!! Go your team!

Sure I'm happy to go with a narrative of "The CDC REALLY botched this". The smartest scientists and it's their sole job to protect us from this sort of thing and they completely let us down. That is way more interesting a narrative that the president did nothing and that's why we are where we are. I'm also happy with a discussion about the virus and why the Chinese lied and lied and lied (and continue to lie today) and that led to tens of thousands of Americans dead. Interesting. The cure that biotech company in California said they found...interesting. The possibly early introduction into the US...maybe as early as mid-December in California...interesting. But comment after comment after comment slamming the president is lazy and boring.

If your argument is...President Trump is an asshole. I'm fine with supporting that. Go start a discussion page with that as a title and let free the vitriol. But the rest is utter nonsense. China announced the Virus on December 31st...and by the 3rd of January we were offering experts to Wuhan to help combat it. By January 6th the CDC issued a travel advisory against going to Wuhan. By the 11th they issued a level 1 health advisory against going to Wuhan. By the 20th the NIH began working on a vaccine. Also on the 20th the FIRST American came down with it...an American that had come from Wuhan. The administration declared the Corona virus a national health emergency on January 31st...and started travel restrictions...at that point there were SIX cases in the US. I guess it was when we hit the 7th case that we should have shut down the country??? Study what is happen...the virus is very interesting...but please leave the idiotic hindsight someplace else.

Of course the president made missteps. I guess on a sports talk site where "I can't believe he threw the curve ball with runners on second and third and a pitch to waste" is de rigueur. I also think when the loudest and most energetic voices that come here are Democrats, non-stop criticism about the president crowds out other voices. Still this section was supposed to be about the virus and as I said...it started off interesting but the streams of hurled accusations followed by "I can't believe HE made this political" is "not compelling". As for the government scaling things up...again perfect hindsight. The government should have just taken the government factories and started producing testing immediately. In fact it's amazing that we didn't have an enormous stock pile of tests for this never-before-seen virus in government warehouses someplace. And imagine our incompetence that 60 days after this never-before-seen virus started invading our country that we were not 100% prepared. If you start with the end point..."The President is an idiot" then you fill in the evidence to make it work and throw out evidence that doesn't fit the narrative and then shout it from the rooftops and have it echoed by people that think exactly as you do it may seem as if you have the truth. It just doesn't seem convincing to me. I think the president is an egomaniac and I hate his NYC aggressive style...it offends my Midwest sensibilities. I thought President Obama was one of the most decent men to ever be president...but to say he would have done better is farcical. President Trump is not trying to kill off his voters. He and his advisors are trying to make heroes of themselves...which is exactly what I want my leader to do in a crisis.

Interesting...so you are saying you trade your 6 WAR SS because you have a kid a AAA who will be a 3 WAR and in return you get a 4 WAR outfielder to replace your 0 WAR outfielder? The net result being 7 WAR for your team? Still it seems you could trade your 3 WAR AAA player and get a 3 WAR outfielder and your team is much better. I'm not sure how trading 6 WAR for 4 WAR is ever a good idea even in your scenario because it ignores opportunity costs.

I think that is already been proven about NYC virus coming from two spots. But California is the main entrepot for people coming from China. I think we may find out that it has been circulating in California for six weeks before anyone else. If someone died of flu like symptoms in California mid-December to mid-January no one would even have thought to look if it was Coronavirus. And again...the president did cut off travel from Europe pretty quickly. With perfect hindsight we know that it should have been sooner...but honestly condemning a leader for lacking hindsight on something that has never happened before? I can't recall the US ever quarantining other countries.

Honestly Australia is not like America, it's 8% of the population of US...it is 91% White....three cities have 50% of the population...equivalent to NYC, LA and Chicago each having 50+ million people. It is not a business, tourist or education hub.

US population in 1957 was 1/3 of what it is today....and we were MUCH less mobile. A person in Springfield, Ill in 1957 was unlikely to go to NYC much less Milan or Wuhan. We were also much more rural. I think the 1957 virus is going to be very similar to that one...maybe a bit worse. But we won't know for a while and certainty is a casualty of chaos.

Hydroxycholoquine has been used for a hundred years on patients. It's side effects are well known, it's cheap and easily produced. It would have been great if it was helpful and maybe it is...but it needs to be tested together with Zinc and Arythromyacine and there are still promising results. And really...you don't believe the President says..."ok...stop all fronts...we are going to only devote our time and energy to Hyrdo..."? This thing is coming at us from a hundred directions and we are pushing back in a hundred ways...and to say...Look...he recommended that and it didn't work...he's an idiot....just makes you a partisan with perfect hindsight. There is no country like the US...we have the #1 economy in the world so we have more business travelers coming here from overseas than anywhere else, we are top tourist destination, we are #1 destination for international students our citizens are rich and mobile and travel frequently all over the world. We have unfettered domestic travel...with hundreds of possible destinations for overseas people to come visit...we have massive urban and rural places. We are the oddest country in the world. To think that US wouldn't be the hardest hit is a misunderstanding of what America is. Doing worse than Iran and China? There are no way those are true numbers. Doing worse than India...that is SO weird. Why is California been so lightly hit versus NYC? So many weird things about what is going on with the Virus...making this a political screed is not one of them.

Sigh...so a single British newspaper reports, using a single unnamed source, that the presidents son-in-law said that it could spook the stock market...and you conflate that into conclusive evidence that Trump downplayed this to protect the stock market???? Listen...believe what you want to believe. But please aim for a little self awareness. Your hatred of the president is making YOU turn this into a political thing.

We don't know anything. We think we know things. The data is evolving at light speed. There are a thousand variables. The 1957 and 1968 viruses killed millions...and President Trump acted WAY more aggressively than Eisenhower or Nixon. He hasn't been perfect but to use this as a not stop smear campaign just seems like you are pointing a finger at someone for not being able to know what no one else knows.

I didn't say China flight ban. How could he stop US citizens from coming home? And again...WE DIDN'T KNOW how bad it was...we still don't. We are beginning to understand. Pushing for an easy cheap, readily available solution to the problem (hydroxocholorquine) that many doctors in the field were recommending and seemed to have positive results...was wrong? An he's an idiot for saying it? We also pushed hard at the beginning for ventilators and the country responded and now we have way more than we need...but not enough test kits...and that's the presidents fault. As for taking countries that are completely unlike the US, comparing them to the US in examples that help your argument, and then calling the President an asshole because some other experiments in different situations had more favorable outcomes? That is 100% political. At the beginning I liked to come to this sight because a lot of you were reading a lot about the virus, were synthesizing it down into good and bad news and offering interesting insight which was great...and now it has been taken over as a "Trump is a Monster and its all his fault" which is idiotic.

Can you sight your source material for where he said he ignored the virus because it would spook the stock market...or is this just you reading his mind? Again...we had NO IDEA about the seriousness of this thing (China lied and continues to lie). Need I remind you that the Swine Flu struck America when Obama was President and...HE DIDN'T SHUT DOWN THE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE DIED. He has blood on his hands!!! Please stop. This isn't political. This is an unknown virus and the president and the rest of us are doing the best that we can. I think sitting on the sidelines and shouting out criticisms every step a blind man takes is kind of nasty behavior. And the golf stuff is just stupid. This is supposed to be the virus page...go start a "Trump sucks page" and put the golf stuff there....I'd probably agree with you there.

Honestly Trump has spoken two hours every day about the virus for months. If you want to take out a few snippets here and there...you can weave a narrative to make it political...just understand what you are doing. As for you perpetuating the "hoax" story...https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/democratic-ad-twists-trumps-hoax-comment/. I know...now you will say factcheck.org is a Fox News puppet...whatever...this is what the world has become.

He made it that? You are a Democrat, fine...but also a mind reader? You know why he "ignored" the virus...which he didn't do...just acted in a way to an unprecedented situation which was guaranteed to be wrong in certain ways...as every other president would have done? I bring up the fact that the Virus is a non-political issue and your response is...Trump golfs too much? And all the problems are with the president?

I'm bothered by all the blaming. This is NOT Trump's fault...or the governors. This is nature that has come up with a new pitch that the batters haven't been able to figure out yet. Fernando Valenzuela's screwball in 1981. To listen to the president'S advice to "try to swing late" and shout WHAT AN ASSHOLE...then he says "go the other way with the pitch" and you shout "IDIOT...don't you know batting coaches agree that is the dumbest thing ever". Though really the batting coaches have no real answer either. I hate Trump's style but I'm also so sick of everything he does being criticized. 90% of all news stories since his inauguration?? A virus comes along and you guys with perfect hindsight says "we should have done this" or "we should have done that". But who knew that this wasn't SARS or MERS or Swine Flu? It was outrageous to put major travel restrictions on China in early February but that proved correct. His being positive in press conferences in a very scary situation for the simple folks is not a bad decision even if in retrospect some of the words sound stupid. Pushing things to the states...so we have 50 little labs trying to come up with a solution that balances outcomes makes some sense to me...I agree with Jerksticks that the economic ramifications for millions has to be considered. As for his defying the experts...you know for every expert telling the President...this is the worst thing to ever happen...there's another expert saying..."this is like the SARS scare. It will be gone in a month." And we still don't know. Ferguson's College of London model that showed 2.2 million US dead has now been discredited as bad math...but could we ignore that at the time? This clearly is a bad disease but we don't have an answer...we could wait for the vaccine just like we are waiting for the Cold vaccine. Everyone has an opinion no one has an answer. Just lots and lots of guesses. Honestly if there was a lottery system...everyone lines up and gets a ticket. You have a 1/1000 chance of instantly dying (330,000 dead in the US) but the other 999 get to go on with their normal lives and see Kopeck starting on Saturday...I would be first in line...especially given the other option...living under my bed with a 1/10,000 chance of dying...no baseball, no bars, no friends, no happiness?

She had a nice idea but she didn't follow through. Maybe it was too hard to follow through...I mean easy enough to find Lou Brock's 45 WAR after Cubs traded him or Bagwell's 80 WAR after Boston traded him. But what do you do when Tommy John who started with Cleveland, went to Sox for seven years and then other teams...If he had 24 WAR in those years but then was included in another trade...do you count the players the Sox got back in the second trade (residual John value)...and if there were multiple players in the trade you how much value is counted for John versus others. OK...it's impossible. Easy is best... at least it's baseball talk.

This is an idiotic and lazy way of calculating top trades by WAR. In a related note, Boston Braves have the greatest free agent signing by WAR of all time. Braves signed free agent Babe Ruth in 1935 and he put up a career 162.1 WAR (note...0.1 while playing with Braves).

Yes but what about the NBA players...a bunch got it back in February and now they are piling their corpses up like cord wood...oh wait. We are, right now at about 1 in 4,000 Americans dead from this...Italy during the plaque had 2,400 dead out of 4,000 and THEY didn't cancel baseball. I'm tired of hiding under my bed and I want to see Robert and Moncada and Jimenez hitting.