COVID-19/Coronavirus thread

[Moan4Yoan]

2 hours ago, mqr said:

Not that I don’t believe the number is fudged, but I thought I read the Chinese were just cremating everyone that died of anything at one point. Which would explain the 24/7 thing. 

Most likely, and knowing China, the pile of ashes also contains plenty of uninfected undesireables.

Edited April 4, 2020 by Moan4Yoan

[SoxAce]

 

[caulfield12]

24 minutes ago, Moan4Yoan said:

Most likely, and knowing China, the pile of ashes likely also contains uninfected undesireables.

Yes, they’re bringing massive amounts of Muslims here to Wuhan to bury them in mass graves but only after removing all the organs first...just like we don’t have any contingency plans to help any illegal immigrants who have been doing the work Americans refuse to do at below minimum wage.  That’s the way things have been for at least forty years in this country...because the corporations and politicians benefit, as they work as nannies, or do most of the shitty work at casinos, hotels and golf courses.  The politicians act like when these immigrants who often pay taxes at a higher rate than the 1% get sick, when the homeless get sick, when refugees at the border get sick, that it will all just miraculously go away.

The irony here is that the Trump administration and China have pretty similar policies on Muslims and immigrants.

That’s why there is almost no daylight between the two.  When has he ever criticized Xi Jinping OR Vladimir Putin?   I’ll hang up and listen to the answer.

And if the United States doesn’t start acting like a world leader sometime soon, it will be a scary world we’re leaving for our children and grandchildren.  A world where everyone is left on their own, a world without empathy/care or compassion...where what we’re essentially left with is simply survival of the fittest.

Two months from now, we’ll look closer to a Purge movie than a shining city on a hill.   We’ll look at the way we’ve been treating the least among us, and understand where it all went wrong.  And the people who held their nose to vote because they thought it would benefit their stock portfolios will also have nobody to blame but themselves.

 

Edited April 4, 2020 by caulfield12

[Moan4Yoan]

36 minutes ago, caulfield12 said:

Yes, they’re bringing massive amounts of Muslims here to Wuhan to bury them in mass graves but only after removing all the organs first...just like we don’t have any contingency plans to help any illegal immigrants who have been doing the work Americans refuse to do at below minimum wage.  That’s the way things have been for at least forty years in this country...because the corporations and politicians benefit, as they work as nannies, or do most of the shitty work at casinos, hotels and golf courses.  The politicians act like when these immigrants who often pay taxes at a higher rate than the 1% get sick, when the homeless get sick, when refugees at the border get sick, that it will all just miraculously go away.

The irony here is that the Trump administration and China have pretty similar policies on Muslims and immigrants.

That’s why there is almost no daylight between the two.  When has he ever criticized Xi Jinping OR Vladimir Putin?   I’ll hang up and listen to the answer.

And if the United States doesn’t start acting like a world leader sometime soon, it will be a scary world we’re leaving for our children and grandchildren.  A world where everyone is left on their own, a world without empathy/care or compassion...where what we’re essentially left with is simply survival of the fittest.

Two months from now, we’ll look closer to a Purge movie than a shining city on a hill.   We’ll look at the way we’ve been treating the least among us, and understand where it all went wrong.  And the people who held their nose to vote because they thought it would benefit their stock portfolios will also have nobody to blame but themselves.

 

You just compared a government removing organs from innocent people who are hated due to their religion to not coming up with contingency plans for people who ILLEGALLY (yes, that means breaking the law) enter another country for work.  Amazing comparison.  ?

And I will throw your absolutely ridiculous comparison out the window and still consider your overall statement -- why in the hell is any person who ILLEGALLY entered this country entitled to the government giving them something better (a.k.a. a free handout), as opposed to worrying about legitimate U.S. citizens?  They are here ILLEGALLY which means they shouldn't even be here in the first place.  I blame the corrupt business owners that are employing these ILLEGAL immigrants, not the U.S. government.  But apparently, the U.S. government should give better jobs and free healthcare to people who shouldn't even be in this country in the first place?  Makes a lot of sense...

Edited April 4, 2020 by Moan4Yoan

[Chisoxfn]

2 hours ago, StrangeSox said:

It's Obama's fault we didn't have good testing for this virus that came into existence a few months ago.

 

But don't you dare criticize the ongoing failures of this administration and their indifference to Americans dying

 

I don't defend one dumbass thing the president says. He is awful.  That wasn't my point in this.  I never voted for the guy because of how poor of a leader and for the specific scenario we are seeing now (a real crisis).  

[caulfield12]

"I blame the corrupt business owners that are employing these ILLEGAL immigrants, not the U.S. government."

 

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will be a very lonely place if you do that.  But just ignoring or wishing these people away in the face of the biggest healh care crisis in a century isn't going to solve the problem, because it's about science and flattening the curve, not politics.  We are only as strong as the weakest and most vulnerable among us. 

[Soxbadger]

1 hour ago, Moan4Yoan said:

You just compared a government removing organs from innocent people who are hated due to their religion to not coming up with contingency plans for people who ILLEGALLY (yes, that means breaking the law) enter another country for work.  Amazing comparison.  ?

And I will throw your absolutely ridiculous comparison out the window and still consider your overall statement -- why in the hell is any person who ILLEGALLY entered this country entitled to the government giving them something better (a.k.a. a free handout), as opposed to worrying about legitimate U.S. citizens?  They are here ILLEGALLY which means they shouldn't even be here in the first place.  I blame the corrupt business owners that are employing these ILLEGAL immigrants, not the U.S. government.  But apparently, the U.S. government should give better jobs and free healthcare to people who shouldn't even be in this country in the first place?  Makes a lot of sense...

If a law is not just the people who break it should not be punished.

Immigration laws are unjust, they are no different than slavery, laws against interracial marriage, segregation and apartheid. They are born from the same beliefs.

The future will judge those who made them and supported them with the same disdain. We do not have a monopoly on freedom or opportunity.

This country is everyones, and the quicker we kill your ideas the faster we will recover. This whole us and them bullshit got us into this mess.

 

[caulfield12]

38 minutes ago, Soxbadger said:

If a law is not just the people who break it should not be punished.

Immigration laws are unjust, they are no different than slavery, laws against interracial marriage, segregation and apartheid. They are born from the same beliefs.

The future will judge those who made them and supported them with the same disdain. We do not have a monopoly on freedom or opportunity.

This country is everyones, and the quicker we kill your ideas the faster we will recover. This whole us and them bullshit got us into this mess.

 

This reminds me of the press conference the other day.

Classic bait and switch about drug interdiction and the border wall when the American people want facts and guidance about what to do.

As long as the administration is successful at distracting attention away from the most important issues, refusing to take any responsibility and taking credit for a constantly moving goalpost (100-240,000 lives lost now considered a victory like no other in the history of pandemics), we’ll continue to get the government we deserve.

If it takes blaming others for the situation in order to feel better about ourselves, well then there will always be people like that...just as there always have been.  All I know from living through this firsthand is it takes a monumental amount of shared sacrifice and a common goal to defeat this virus, and the US isn’t there, not yet.

Wuhan declared victory by clapping for medical workers, honking horns, sirens going off for 3 minutes at 10:00 a.m., but, even now, it doesn’t feel close to being over.

 

[whitesoxfan99]

And Trump used the cover of the corona virus and fires the inspector general who passed on the whistleblower complaint on a Friday night.  

[Jose Abreu]

Asylum-seekers aren't illegal and making something bold doesn't make it true

[Jose Abreu]

1 hour ago, caulfield12 said:

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will be a very lonely place if you do that. 

I don't know if it's the circumstances of the pandemic making me easier to please or if I misjudged your comedic traits in the past, but your humorous retorts have truly been a pleasure to read lately

[black jack]

This board has become unreadable. 

 

shame... 

[Jerksticks]

What’s the one giant elephant in the room the open border people are always forgetting.  Strip away the morality argument for a sec and you are left with what giant fact that makes it such an impossible issue?  Why can’t you give 10-20 million illegals currently living here asylum?  When people get self righteous and say things like “stop the us vs them crap already!”  What is that person ignoring?

Edited April 4, 2020 by Jerksticks

[YoYoIsMyHero]

55 minutes ago, black jack said:

This board has become unreadable. 

 

shame... 

Okay.

[caulfield12]

26 minutes ago, Jerksticks said:

What’s the one giant elephant in the room the open border people are always forgetting.  Strip away the morality argument for a sec and you are left with what giant fact that makes it such an impossible issue?  Why can’t you give 10-20 million illegals currently living here asylum?  When people get self righteous and say things like “stop the us vs them crap already!”  What is that person ignoring?

Not even Obama wanted that.  He was a pragmatist, and realized there was a lot more sympathy for those kids under 18 brought up in the US, or at least raised with no language or culture than English/American.  The DACA kids.  How quickly it has been forgotten thst he sent back more immigrants by far, compared to Trump.   Yet there’s roughly the same percentage of Americans in favor of protecting them (DACA) as there are women who think that abortion should always be legal, or that there should be limits on assault weapons.

The Group of 8 was clearly working on a compromise, until it became politically untenable to be a Republican and look for a reasonable solution or you would get primaried by someone even more extreme, like a Sheriff Joe or Judge Roy Moore.

Certainly the left has its extremists as well, but they’re not pushing for anything so extreme as open borders or fully amnesty except as an opening position.   In fact, the GOP side has only gotten more entrenched, about E-Verify for example.  You have to give something to get something.

The difference is that there is not one iota of give on the other side.  When Trump was willing to compromise, he quickly caved under pressure and reneged on his commitments.

 

And there’s an issue of fairness when illegal immigrants have tax ID numbers and are paying a lot more in taxes than many Americans who are receiving checks from the government but slickly manage to avoid any tax liability through loopholes carved out for the rich.  Any UI or UBI study will demonstrate that the working poor always plug that money right back into the economy.

Edited April 4, 2020 by caulfield12

[ron883]

2 hours ago, Soxbadger said:

If a law is not just the people who break it should not be punished.

Immigration laws are unjust, they are no different than slavery, laws against interracial marriage, segregation and apartheid. They are born from the same beliefs.

The future will judge those who made them and supported them with the same disdain. We do not have a monopoly on freedom or opportunity.

This country is everyones, and the quicker we kill your ideas the faster we will recover. This whole us and them bullshit got us into this mess.

 

It sounds like you're completely for an open borders policy. Do you think we should give immigrants free healthcare as well?

[YoYoIsMyHero]

19 minutes ago, Yearnin' for Yermin said:

It sounds like you're completely for an open borders policy. Do you think we should give immigrants free healthcare as well?

I believe human beings have a right to healthcare.

[YoYoIsMyHero]

Meanwhile, a state govt official has to do a Fast and Furious cosplay with a $3.6 million dollar check to obtain 1.5 million N95 masks from a China supplier.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/coronavirus/2020/4/3/21207488/coronavirus-illinois-medical-supplies-wild-west

[Soxbadger]

9 minutes ago, Yearnin' for Yermin said:

It sounds like you're completely for an open borders policy. Do you think we should give immigrants free healthcare as well?

I think that anyone who wants to become a citizen of the United States should be given the opportunity, just like my family was when they immigrated here. I think that anyone who immigrates here should have the same responsibilities, rights and benefits as any other American citizen.

Nothing is free. I think that we need to ascertain the economic costs of paying for uninsured going to hospitals and receiving treatment versus the benefit of them having some sort of coverage. Im not sure I have an answer to it, but there is definitely a better system then the one that currently exists. 

[caulfield12]

6 hours ago, YoYoIsMyHero said:

Meanwhile, a state govt official has to do a Fast and Furious cosplay with a $3.6 million dollar check to obtain 1.5 million N95 masks from a China supplier.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/coronavirus/2020/4/3/21207488/coronavirus-illinois-medical-supplies-wild-west

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3078427/coronavirus-chinas-new-export-restrictions-medical-supplies

Some are going to look at this as “bad China.”  Others, at securing the quality of their supply chains/vendors with a couple high profile equipment failures in Europe this past week.    Perhaps the third point is a market opportunity for competitors, as demand is spiking world-wide.   That said, the respirators they are working in now are going to be too late for NYC, same with the GM and Ford conversions.

Also noteworthy is the Elon Musk equipment failure, at least to meet specs required.

Edited April 4, 2020 by caulfield12

[Kyyle23]

So, the federal government is giving the PPE and ventilators to the private sector to resell to the states, who are fighting against each other for the supplies?  Do I have that right?

[Dick Allen]

8 minutes ago, Kyyle23 said:

So, the federal government is giving the PPE and ventilators to the private sector to resell to the states, who are fighting against each other for the supplies?  Do I have that right?

It’s an episode of the Apprentice but for real. FEMA says it will have 3200 of the 100;000 ventilators it has on order ready for when this is expected to peak.

it seems the administration would rather spend its energy trying to deflect blame than actually at least admitting to themselves they were wrong and trying to save lives. If a couple hundred thousand New Yorkers die, blame Cuomo.

[caulfield12]

11. Rear Adm. John Polowczyk, who is helping to lead the effort to replenish supplies of personal protective equipment, admitted that the administration is delivering products it acquires to medical supply companies – rather than delivering them directly to the hospitals in need, per NBC’s Geoff Bennett. (Bottom line: The federal government is not taking over the supply chain.)

14. And as NBC News has reported, it wasn't until Thursday night that banks received their 31 pages of guidance from the Treasury Department on how to lend the money in the $350 billion small-business relief program — and some banks haven't even decided whether they can participate on the opening day.

Many of these failures — see the Top 4 on this list — can be traced directly to the president, but the rest have so many other fingerprints on them.

How many of those failures were due to poor leadership at the very top? How many were systemic? A combination of the two?

Americans 40 years and older have seen this country’s government do big things — go to the moon, expand civil rights, end the Cold War, help build the internet, combat AIDS.

But if you’re in your 20s or 30s, you’ve mostly seen the government fail again and again.

And the government’s response to the coronavirus – just two months into the crisis — is the biggest failure of all.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/governments-biggest-failures-coronavirus-response-130750197.html

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/china-wants-coronavirus-over-world-103022425.html

I’m skeptical of this doomsday scenario for a number of reasons.   One is the overall quality of exports (see all the PPE and test issues in Europe), and the fact that this diplomacy almost always has a price tag, loan amount or concession behind it (surrendering a port here, doing transactions in RMB instead of dollars there)...the Chinese manufacturing capacity might be ramping up, but there is still limited worldwide demand and a ton of overcapacity as well as growing skepticism over Belt & Road.

Obviously, a lot of these trends depend on what happens in November, just like a lot of diplomatic trends reversed in January, 2009.

That said, there has to be a serious and strategic thinking of the new world order...with Europe once again threatening to come apart at the seams over immigration and now economic/pandemic factors.  A return to neoliberalism/globalism would simply be the status quo from a decade ago, and a new reimagining needs to take place.  With Biden more a caretaker than a visionary, some serious thinkers need to emerge from both sides of the political spectrum (but especially the center left) to articulate a way for the country to move forward that balances the interests of the middle class and rich/corporations without resorting to class warfare and populism that further divides the country.  Right now, though, most are just looking for leadership wherever they can find it. 

[pcq]

Columbia researchers suggest the virus has been dormant in humans possibly for years. Viral shedding by asymptomatic humans is widespread.  

The White House press conferences are insane and should not be broadcast live. At least one religious leader is suggesting Fauci is trying to undermine Trump. 

[The Beast]

21 hours ago, mqr said:

Bernstein's opening statement this morning is a roooooooough listen

It was still what I needed to hear when Entercom ripped through the livelihoods of many. I was glad that Dan spoke the way he did, with emotion and strength. It’s truly a cruel working world sometimes and sports radio isn’t immune. I’d speak the same way when my partner and producer got canned and those making over $50,000 were severely neutered with their salary and 401(k) matches.