Considering the fact that most War time presidents in US do not lose elections, what impact do you think the current health crisis will have on Trump's re-election?
Pretty good. Each of Biden, Sanders and Trump will get unlimited amounts of the best health care in the world. They are pretty old, and this is a nasty virus for some people, but top of the top of the shelf health care is a wondrous thing.
To another reply: you're correct, this is a big point that few people are thinking about.
Considering the fact that a US President has never had to deal with a war on US soil since Lincoln, with an invisible enemy that can’t be negotiated with, I would say the answer is unknown.
The conference that just ended was a big win for him and the market is responding well so far.
He didn't necessarily take responsibility of anything, but he managed to suppress his usual behavior well enough for the people behind him to assure people
I sincerely and absolutely hope that he manages to pull himself together to see America through this storm. I doubt it, but I sincerely hope it happens.
Kind of hard to unpack such a vague/terse comment...
If you’re trying to say “who cares about money when lives are on the line”... in this case a strong, life-saving, response begets a positive market response.
People drying en-masse is not good for the economy, or anyone really. Also, recessions are generally not good for people’s health.
I’m saying that using a leading indicator like the stock market is no metric for declaring that things are getting better.
Trump going up there and making a bunch of positive statements means zero right now. The public and private sectors have no reason to trust the federal government during this situation.
> I’m saying that using a leading indicator like the stock market is no metric for declaring that things are getting better.
Literally no one but yourself has implied the stock market going well means Coronavirus is going away.
That’s so absurd I gave you the benefit of the doubt and assumed something was lost in your wording...
The comment chain is about the effect of the virus on electability of an incumbent.
The stock market’s performance is very much tied to that and while not the only indicator of an election's outcome, is a pretty strong motivator of political change.
On that note... since his speech a ton of bad news has come out, some his claims were proven false, the fed hit the nuclear options, and futures hit a circuit breaker Sunday night which is a terrible indicator for this morning’s market.
So it’s still a strong factor in his electability, just not in the direction it was Friday evening.
I don't know if there's value in arguing the semantics, but there was the War on Poverty (President Lyndon B. Johnson) and the War on Drugs (President Richard Nixon), neither of which sets a precedent which bodes well for our current situation, imo.
This war is different, in that it will assuredly be declared at an end, as soon as the fatality rate declines below the rate typical for seasonal influenza. Whether it will have been "won" will be a subjective judgement informed by the body count, and the judger's political biases.
"never had to deal with a war on US soil since Lincoln"
That should have a footnote. Pancho Villa's División del Norte invaded the US in a raid on Columbus, NM in 1916. The Japanese Army occupied the small and remote Aleutian islands of Attu and Kiska during WWII. These are both minor incidents, hence a footnote.
If we expand "US soil" beyond the U.S. continent (or the 50 states), then the Japanese occupations of the Philippines, Guam and Wake Island should also count.
The Commonwealth of the Philippines was not fully independent from the US. Guam is an organized territory of the US, and Wake Island is an unorganized, unincorporated territory of the US. (I'm not sure about their exact territorial status in WWII though.)
has never had to deal with a war on US soil since Lincoln
There were agents of both the Central Powers and Axis Powers active on US soil, and in WW2 Japan attacked Hawai'i and occupied many US territories (Alaska, Philippines, Guam, Wake).
I assume you think so because it looks like 'standard' influenza which has a hard time surviving in spring. It's understandable to think that, problem is it's completely not known whether this virus also behaves like that.
SARS was highly invective several days after first symptoms.
SARS stooped because people who had it could be contained.
There is no evidence that warmer months helped in any way. It's one of these modern myths or however we call them.
> influenza which has a hard time surviving in spring
The problem is than when we will reach summer, half of the planet will start the winter. A interesting question is if the coronavirus will be able to hide in the southern hemisphere or not. That would start and endless migration cycle from now on.
This is absolutely what we don't want to happen. If this is over in 2 months, there will be a lot of dead people. We want to stretch this out. We need to not overwhelm our healthcare system. Social distancing does not prevent the spread of the disease, it merely slows it until either we gain herd immunity or we develop a vaccine.
It might come back in October, and Trump declared emergency probably too late. I think we've reached the point where we will see a LOT of infections and deaths. There was /is a chart that showed how it behaves and how counties were just a week or two behind an Italian scenario. States are reporting that thousands and thousands have been infected and those will infect many more https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/nyc-limits-crowds-prep...
It might not go away. And he did declare the emergency too late. And even after declaring the emergency, the federal government is still not doing enough, and it's especially not doing it fast enough.
I think we are at the point where we will see a lot of infections. I think we will see a lot of death from this as well, but it will be at the lower end of the case fatality rate range as long as we can do the things we need to in order to not overwhelm our healthcare system. If however I am wrong, and we do overwhelm the healthcare system like they did in Italy, yea, there is going to be a lot more death.
Taking the exponential growth into account, we're somewhere around 11 days behind Italy. Unless something drastic changes in the next few days, whatever Italy is going through now, is what we will be going through in only 11 days.
Well I've been WFH since last week and my kids schools have shut down through the end of April. Our family vacation in April is also likely not going to happen. We are doing better than Italy, worst than other countries. I think you are underestimating the work of our State and Local governments despite the fact that the Federal government has bumbled this.
I hear what you're saying. The steps we have already taken are good.
Here is why I don't think they are enough.
1) Isolation is not uniform across the country. Some people are working from home. Others aren't. Some schools are closed. Some aren't. Some trips are cancelled. Some planes are still flying with some people. There are still large areas of the country where it's spreading with little or no isolation. The cases there will grow, and walk across state borders.
2) It's not enough, yet. We have some isolation in some spots. But there's not yet even one single spot with measures as drastic as are needed to stop this.
Italy has had stricter measures than the US in place for a little while, and the number of new people seeking hospital care per day is still growing.
The places which have successfully turned this thing around have put measures in place much more drastic than the US, and on a consistent national basis.
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I guess we disagree about the US being more isolated than Italy or not. I think Italy has more isolation in place. Please let me know in what ways things here are more isolated than Italy.
I don't think that's a helpful way of looking at things. Presidents who go to war generally don't lose elections because Presidents generally don't choose to get into unpopular wars. But there are exceptions - that's how we got Nixon, Obama campaigned against McCain's Iraq support.
I think it will be far more important how Trump deals with this than the simple fact of it happening.
Everyone who is going to has already made their mind about Trump. Nothing that happens in the next few months is going to change that after the last 3 years. If he botches the coronavirus response his detractors will yell about it and his defenders will blame someone else.
Since the best the democrats have to offer is a washed up 78 year old, Trump will probably win by a wide margin. It's like 2016. The opposition isn't even showing up.
Trump didn't win a wide margin in 2016, he won by 70k votes in 3 states. Biden is curretnly overperforming in every demographic that Clinton lost in 2016. Democratic turnout is up in these primary's. The POTUS is historically disliked especially by suburban white women who went for Trump in 2016. Arizona has a very popular Democratic challenger for the Senate. Arizona, Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina are being added to the traditional battleground states.
Biden might be washed up, but it might not matter. Bloomberg is about to drop $2 Billion in advertising and infrastructure in support of the Democratic party.
I'm not saying Trump is going to lose, but if he wins, it's going to be by a narrow margin in which he loses the popular vote by more than 6 million.
Delaying the response by a month is going to look terrible when the dust settles. That there have not been harsh partisan articles loudly airing this dirty laundry is, I think, more a function of the media having more substantive things to focus at this time.
Sure, everything is relative and up for debate in our post-truth environment. But Republicans that reluctantly voted for him were already weary of his warmongering around Christmas. And many of those that did listen to his ignorant bullshit for the past month are likely to end up knowing someone who dies from this.
He's gonna win. A viral outbreak like this has no precedent for anyone still alive. So it's hard to criticize the government based on personal experience. If they demonstrate leadership and decisive action that should be enough for a reelection. Any candidate simply cannot compete with the media exposure the president gets during times of a national crisis.
> So it's hard to criticize the government based on personal experience
No it's not. You had every expert in the world talking about the potential dangers for months, while Trump kept talking about how it was just a flu that would magically go away on its own, and that there wasn't anything to be concerned with. The US's preparation has been incredibly bad and late in comparison to certain other countries. On top of Trump firing the Pandemic Response Team in 2018.
The optics are going to start looking increasingly bad for him as the US death rate starts to climb.
I don't claim to predict the outcome of the election, but you can't claim that it's "hard to criticize the government" based off of this, or that any future "decisive action" is going to be enough once the death rate hits tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands.
I was trying to emphasize the "based on personal experience" part. Of course you can still criticize the government. But elections have time and time again shown that the opinion of experts matters much less to the electorate than their personal experience. That's one of the reasons why the state of the economy is so important for the reelection of a president. That being said, if the US economy really does tank that could make his reelection more difficult but I think he can easily blame that on the virus.
> You had every expert in the world talking about the potential dangers for months?
Experts have been also talking about dangers of climate change for years, yet Trump manages to win election while calling climate change a hoax. So not sure his base cares about expert advice.
>while Trump kept talking about how it was just a flu that would magically go away on its own, and that there wasn't anything to be concerned with.
You should read trump's tweets, there is a shockingly large number of people agreeing with him on this like everything.
As long as trump can manage to limit the damage to the US, he will have strong arguments for a re-election.
>On top of Trump firing the Pandemic Response Team in 2018.
Ah yes, yet another person who looked at the Snopes piece's headline and nothing else. One would think reading it, and the Twitter thread it is based on, that to save money (or because the Trump administration hates science, or something) the entire "US Pandemic Response Team" agency was cut to save money, causing everyone in a large DC office building to lose their jobs.
COVID19 was not a surprise; that is, it was known to exist in China some time before the first cases appeared in the US. It is not unreasonable for a government to assemble a team to respond to something like a pandemic as needed, as opposed to having people dedicated solely to the purpose and nothing else. And that's exactly what the US did, implementing the ban on non-American travelers who'd been to China in late January, among other things.
You may or may not agree with this. But please don't claim that this is somehow prima facie proof of the Trump administration's malfeasance/evilness.
Are you joking? This is the worst response to this crisis imaginable. It's impossible not to criticize the government for completely fucking everything up (already listed the top things in another post so I won't rehash). Nothing has been done. We've had a good six or more weeks and still nothing. It's a total disaster. That said, I think you're right about the election. People are too stupid to even be informed. but if we have a few hundred thousand or million deaths, who knows? I still doubt the fox news crowd will change their mind.
This is the opposite to a standard war (young adults die and elder survive). People killed by coronavirus will not vote again for him, thats for sure. If republicans depend more on elder voters, any "positive" impact of the "war", would be counteracted with losing more voters in their (I assume) main demographic pool.
The comparison between how the different countries will care for their population is unavoidable, and the results in China will be proudly stellar in that time (They had reasons to be proud).
And this can't be solved with more fake news. Death values can be faked and anybody could start a badmouth campaign against South Korea to hide that they will have the lowest mortality rate (due to the korean strategy of extensive testing of the population) but in the end, death people will not vote you (neither their widows, friends and family?).
So It depends also of how people will feel about replacing Obamacare by Trumpcare. Images from the past like "Trump throwing rolls of toilet paper to puerto ricans with contempt" will not help by comparison. He always had problems showing real empathy in public.
Despite the pres making this disaster worse in every way possible (cutting cdc funding, still not testing, still no quarantine, still no real action other than declaring this, way way way too fucking late with everything, hiding info, preventing states from testing, etc.) through the worst leadership one could imagine in such a situation, his idiot supporters are still likely to vote for him. And considering he'll likely run against Biden, a male Hillary, that increases his chances even more. The stupidity in this country is astounding.
I'm guessing trying to face away from people's faces probably helps somewhat, too? If someone breathes, sneezes, or coughs viroids in your general direction, I would naively guess it's riskier if it's in the direction of their face to your face. If it touches your back and neck, I'd imagine you're still at risk, but not to the same degree.
Can anyone verify if this logic makes sense? Or does it not really make a difference because it'll just float through the air and reach your face anyway?
If you're young (18-40) then you should consider offering to pick up supplies for your elderly (or at risk) friends/family/neighbours so that they can more effectively self-isolate.
That works as far as it goes. The problem that we're starting to see is empty shelves. While at the store recently, I saw one of the store shoppers looking at an empty shelf muttering "I don't even know what to substitute here..."
It depends on your age and general health condition.
If you are not a boomer and healthy, you don't actually need to do anything except maybe get that hour earlier to bed in the evening and eat extra healthy to help your immune system.
This virus really only concerns particular "risk groups" which is why I DON'T understand why the onus is on younger, healthy people who are actually working to pay the price instead of telling at-risk groups who are mostly pensioners to isolate themselves until a vaccine or antidote is developed. Also, not to forget, those boomers are the ones who contributed 90 percent of the climate change with their consumption patterns and then told us "why would I care about climate change, I will be dead when it arrives."
Get 30-60 days of food and any prescription drugs you require, and get home and stay there: no in-and-outs, including children. Don't have visitors, don't go anywhere not absolutely necessary for survival. Keep yourself and your family healthy.
Tell your friends to do the same.
Note: 60 days of food is probably much larger than any grocery trip you have ever done. Don't just go to the store and get a week's worth of food, like many are doing. In a week, grocery shopping will be impossible/dangerous. Two weeks, moreso. The doubling time on this thing is about a week and it's going to get worse for six weeks before it gets better.
Also, avoid doing any activities that might cause any sort of accident requiring hospitalization. Hospitals are going to be hard no-go zones starting in about two weeks, for 6-8 weeks. Use the railing, be careful getting in and out of the shower, clean up spills, don't use power tools, et c.
If you're having trouble getting groceries locally, Amazon still (for the moment! don't expect it to last) has 12-ct cases of Soylent in stock for about $40 in a lot of places for same or next-day delivery. (Figure 5 400kcal bottles per person-day for emergency rations if you can't get any local groceries. Even if you don't like it, it will keep you and your family alive while you can't go to the supermarket for a few weeks.) TIP YOUR DELIVERY DRIVER. When it arrives, pull the bottles out wearing gloves, and dispose of the boxes carefully, and WASH YOUR HANDS.
EDIT: Reply to SketchySeaBeast below (I am throttled and cannot post new replies):
Going to the grocery store is unnecessary contact/exposure that you can avoid by stocking up for the duration in advance. Grocery stores are chokepoints. It's better to shop once now than four times over the next 2 months.
Shelf-stable food that you will eat anyway is not a huge cost, and limiting your exposure is valuable as this thing ramps up. Every passing week for the foreseeable future doubles the risk that you will encounter someone who has the virus, as it seems pretty plausible (due to the testing strategy) that the US, at least based on current information, will be doing very little that will be effective to stop the spread.
It's probably just going to run its course unimpeded through society in the US, as it did in Italy prior to the lockdown. Would you want to be going to the grocery store in Italy right now? I don't want to be going to the grocery store in the US in 2-3 weeks.
Remember: when China had as many cases as we do now, a 60M province was already in total lockdown.
Do you have any sources suggesting we buy food thinking about that amount of isolation? I get stocking up for a quarantine amount of time (two weeks or so), but 60 days is a lot dried food, and grocery stores seem to be still functioning even in Italy.
This is crazy FUD that will only make the situation worse. Stockpiling rarely, if ever, helps, and overwhelmingly hurts the poor and disabled. The absolute worst of "fuck you got mine" mentality on display here. Please do not do this, and please do not advocate for this kind of panic. You are actively contributing to a terrible situation.
To repeat: there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to stockpile rations, food stuffs, common goods, etc. In no country as of yet has this been necessary, even in the most hard hit areas. Do not do this. Going to the grocery store once vs four times is not going to make the difference between you getting the virus or not, and it's absurd that people would even consider this. The virus has been in and around our communities for months now, engaging in prepper fetishes now is closing the barn door after the horses have left. Stockpiling goods is completely ineffective anyway. The majority of our supply chains are JIT, and suppliers are already rationing and metering out goods. Stockpiling is pointless, you're just going to look like an idiot in the check out line.
Limit large social engagements. Keep up mild exercise, get plenty of sleep, and eat healthily. And for the love of God wash your hands. If you have frequent contact with immunocompromised people or the elderly be more vigilant about hygiene, wear a mask, disinfect any surfaces the both of you touch frequently. Consider doing their errands for them as well.
Everyone will eventually get the virus. It's almost certain. The goal here is just to prevent a thundering herd problem with medical resources.
That's exactly how I feel about stuff like that. I had only heard a quarantine's amount, but given the amount of made up stuff going around, I was hoping there'd be some sort of expert explaining the logic, and for it not to be just prepper fever.
I am deeply saddened to see the most basic of simple preparedness being mocked so emotionally.
> This is crazy FUD
There's no fear, uncertainty, or doubt in my message, nor am I being crazy, simply calm and rational: it's simple, normal preparedness for the recommended protocol of avoiding unnecessary close physical contact with others. Having 6-8 weeks of food in one's house isn't stockpiling, nor is it panic. It is everyday preparedness, and is good advice in all times, even outside of pandemics.
The LDS church, for example, recommends and encourages all mormons to have a year of food for their family in their home, and has done so for decades. I am not LDS, but this is not bad advice in general.
> Going to the grocery store once vs four times is not going to make the difference between you getting the virus or not
If you and your family are in full isolation at home during the worst of this, not going out in public at all during the peak of the pandemic (zero contact with anyone infected or potentially infected) versus going out four times into public places (grocery stores) absolutely makes a difference, both in your own potential exposure, as well as in the ability to spread it to others should you be exposed.
Right now most cities in the US only have a few hundred cases walking around (calculated from comparing the curve to other countries who actually are testing). That's not going to be the case in 30 days: the risk and spread is going up in a predictable, exponential fashion, just as we have seen in several other places already.
> engaging in prepper fetishes
Your alarming personal attacks do not contribute to the discussion. I'm not suggesting you build a bunker, hoard masks or TP, or anything else like that: simply have enough food to be able to stay home uninterrupted for a month or two. Mocking doomsday preppers when they're preparing for unknown, low-risk imagined threats is one thing. Preparing to simply have enough to eat while you and your family stay home during a global pandemic and presently-declared national emergency is about as non-prepper as it gets: preppers would claim it's way past the time you should have started.
Millions of Americans buy in bulk at stores like Sam's Club and Costco, this is no different. If the supply lines are as stable as you claim and will remain so as you claim, then they won't be harmed in any way by a few people buying a little bit extra.
> Everyone will eventually get the virus. It's almost certain.
This is also not true. Many people will avoid getting sick by avoiding public places and physical contact, which also has the added public benefit of not spreading it further. Additionally there will likely be a vaccine before the year is out. Avoiding contact with the public absolutely can and will prevent many people from getting sick. Please do not engage in such fatalistic fear-spreading; it's just a false statement. (It's also a terrible thing to say to high-risk groups, most of whom can avoid contracting it with precautions such as I describe.)
> The goal here is just to prevent a thundering herd problem with medical resources.
The single best way to do that is to avoid contracting the virus at all. The single best way to do that is to avoid coming into contact with anyone who is infected or might be infected: get home and stay home.
It is our responsibility to ourselves, our families, our neighbors, and our communities to avoid contracting this virus and to avoid spreading this virus.
> Going to the grocery store once vs four times is not going to make the difference between you getting the virus or not
Not sure if I'd agree with this. In my neighborhood, there are already multiple confirmed cases (some a few blocks away).
The only way to minimize my (and therefore my family's) exposure to the virus is to avoid any external contact. Encountering 10 people for one grocery trip versus 40 people over 4 separate trips. Statistically, I'd take the one-trip option.
Please think this through. You're not completing a 6 week grocery trip in the same period of time as a single week grocery trip. You're going to be touching the same amount of items, you're going to be breathing in the grocery store air for the same amount of time.
Even if there was a marginal benefit to yourself it would be still be incredibly selfish to stockpile to the detriment of the vulnerable. The scarcity mentality is very dangerous, please do not perpetuate it.
Exposure to “grocery store air” this week is 4x less risky than exposure in two weeks. 16x less risky than exposure a month from now. 64x less risky than six weeks from now.
It has nothing to do with scarcity and everything to do with limiting social contact. Every day, being out in public is more dangerous.
As you pointed out, there is no scarcity issue, nor is there likely to be.
It is not about food no longer being available, it is about not having to go out and get it for a longer period of time. Limiting contacts does help in limiting spread so the more people limit contacts, the longer it will take for the virus to spread.
> Everyone will eventually get the virus. It's almost certain. The goal here is just to prevent a thundering herd problem with medical resources.
Yes, eventually everyone will be exposed. The point here is to flatten the curve of exposure to a level which does not overwhelm critical care facilities. This can be achieved - or at least an attempt can be made - by limiting exposure. Those who have enough food at home to refrain from having to go out shopping for a month can limit their exposure more than those who have to go out every week.
> Going to the grocery store once vs four times is not going to make the difference between you getting the virus or not, and it's absurd that people would even consider this.
But that is not the point as you later state yourself: "The goal here is just to prevent a thundering herd problem with medical resources". Right, and the way to achieve that is by limiting exposure, for instance by only having to go out shopping once instead of four times.
I honestly don't get the attitude against a certain level of preparedness. What is wrong with stocking more non-perishable food stuffs at home if those are the things you'd normally buy anyway? You don't need to fill your basements with MREs, just get more of the usual non-perishables than you'd normally do - pasta, wheat flour, oats, etc. Get some yeast to bake bread as well while you're at it. Get butter, put it in the freezer. Dried beans last forever - I had some around which I took with me when I moved from the Netherlands to Sweden about 20 years ago, made a chilli with them, tasted 'like new' - and can make a good meal with a few odds and ends. Get 'canned' (i.e. packaged) tomatoes, frozen vegetables (the power will stay on during this crisis), etc. This is not doomsday prepping, it is common sense.
> I honestly don't get the attitude against a certain level of preparedness. What is wrong with stocking more non-perishable food stuffs at home if those are the things you'd normally buy anyway? You don't need to fill your basements with MREs, just get more of the usual non-perishables than you'd normally do - pasta, wheat flour, oats, etc. Get some yeast to bake bread as well while you're at it. Get butter, put it in the freezer. Dried beans last forever - I had some around which I took with me when I moved from the Netherlands to Sweden about 20 years ago, made a chilli with them, tasted 'like new' - and can make a good meal with a few odds and ends. Get 'canned' (i.e. packaged) tomatoes, frozen vegetables (the power will stay on during this crisis), etc. This is not doomsday prepping, it is common sense.
I have no problem with this, but that's clearly not what GP is advocating for. I doubt most in this thread even comprehend how much food is required for a 30 day supply of your average household. Buying double the amount of perishables doesn't seem unreasonable, stocking up for a month+ is absurd.
The Department of Health and Human Services has recommended that intelligence community personnel have at least three months’ worth of food on hand in the event of an uncontrolled pandemic.
Jeepers, grocery shopping is going to become impossible/dangerous? Where do you get this?
Many countries have been or are in much worse shape and society hasn't broken down. This isn't Mad Max. If anything having the entire population simultaneously buy two months of food is going to cause far more problems than it'll ever solve.
Grocery shopping means you need to get out and expose yourself. While this is not 'dangerous' it does means you might get infected which in turn might mean you need to get medical care which in turn means you end up increasing the case load at a moment when the health care system is already straining or overloaded. Not having to go out shopping means you don't run that risk.
That is where he gets this: basic common sense. Limit exposure, limit spread, flatten the infection curve to such a level that the peak 10-15% which will need hospitalisation does not exceed the available capacity.
Didn't watch him talk (it's nauseating). What in particular goosed the market so much? This virus is still going to be awful. Honest question folks. Looking for a particular policy or something that he announced.
I'm guessing the Robinhood "infinite money cheat" had a big impact here. Even if only a few thousand people built up crazily leveraged positions it could cause a tumble like this. The pattern makes sense to me, robinhood recalculates margin every night and liquidates in the morning, and the big drops have all been first thing in the morning pre-market.
The infinite money cheat was leveraged by selling both calls and puts and underlying stock. Forced liquidation would trigger massive selling to unwind these positions
The markets have long historically grown at 7% annually. With 250 trading days per year, anytime the market moves more than 0.03 percent a day, it's an overreaction or an overcorrection.
He paraded the CEO's of Walmart, CVS, Walgreens and Target out like prized mules and everyone talked heavily of the new Public/Private partnership that was needed to solve this issue.... I wish I was kidding.
Nothing IMO. Parading out 15 Executives to give them each 30 seconds at the podium in order to praise dear leader on the other hand looks pathetic though.
Nothing, but I didn't tune into the President announcing a National Emergency to have him call up the CEO's of these companies, SHAKE ALL THEIR HANDS and let them speak like an infomercial. I was hoping there would be talk about how they would be protecting the vulnerable and what people should be doing.
I mean, technically, since usually a pandemic isn't the instigating factor, but maybe your statement would carry more weight if you actually described the contrast you're implying.
When did Denmark, Sweden or Britain have their bloody revolutions?
I agree that has been the case in economically disadvantaged countries but do you think America is closer to Cuba, Venezuela or Tzarist Russia... or closer to Britain.
What? Socialization would see the government forcibly taking control of these corporations. This is nothing like socialism.
This is legitimately the kind of stimulus that the economy has needed for decades. A true cause for the American powerhouse to rally behind, if there's anything left of it. Yeah the administration has been less than ideal in handling this but you people need to give credit where it is due.
This will be a true test of the viability of the declining American Empire.
If that's the case then the word socialism has lost any consistent meaning.
We are literally turning toward capitalist corporations to manufacture and sell products to solve a crisis. This is not socialism. Workers are not taking control of factories. The government is not commandeering private resources.
>Look, either socialism includes Bernie Sander's Democratic Socialism or it doesn't
You also don't seem to understand how many different flavors of socialism exist - feel free to point out how what's going on now fits under any definition. Also what does any of this have to do with Sanders?
I bring it up because Sanders' Democratic Socialism has been repeatedly called out as Stalinist and made to be a boogeyman. And I agree, the word socialism is losing meaning because right wing media has been trying to equate democratic socialism with Stalin for years now - I think now is an opportune time to clarify that this is the level of socialism being advocated for, a public/private partnership where the government intervenes in one segment of the market to help guide the others.
>And I agree, the word socialism is losing meaning because right wing media has been trying to equate democratic socialism with Stalin
The fact that you agree with what you read does not mean that it isn't propaganda. The man had his homeymoon in the USSR and is on video talking fondly of bread lines. I'm not saying he's Stalin 2.0 but right wing media isn't entirely stretching when they point out how far removed his policies are from American politics.
Note, that's not a value judgement. I'm just saying you're wrong to blame the shift in meaning on the particular media that you don't agree with.
Hello? The entire country just recognized the folly of outsourcing literally everything to a single third world country.
If Trump isn't a total idiot (though I know many of you believe he is) this is his opportunity to return manufacturing jobs to the US, possibly under subsidy, at the very least as a national security concern.
This rampant tribalism is insane. Literally nothing the administration does now will see any credit from it's opponents. Take off the partisan blinders. Even shitty leaders can make good decisions, and deserve credit for doing so.
When Trump does good things I have given and will continue to give him credit. He's burned all the good will in existence though so let's see if he actually does help fund manufacturing before giving him any credit.
So far he's been moving in the opposite direction though with an emphasis on overall company welfare at the expense of employees - there have been no proposals around preventing people from losing their jobs due to needing to self-isolate and no effort to make treatment federally subsidized (testing is probably free if you're not one of the millions of people without insurance, but even here the details are hazy).
>an emphasis on overall company welfare at the expense of employees - there have been no proposals around preventing people from losing their jobs due to
Do you think these companies will continue to exist if they fire all the employees who get sick from the virus? Do you think these employees will survive without their paychecks?
Do you believe that anything benefiting "corporations" goes directly into the pocket of evil 1% CEOs and confers no benefit to employees? You probably work for a corporation. Corporate well-being is employee wellbeing because corporations are staffed by people.
What did he do that will bring back manufacturing? Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania are in a manufacturing recession. It turns out that tariffs don't work to protect our manufacturing jobs when we look at the aggregate.
Also, the US manufactures more stuff than any other time in its history, it just does it with less labor than it needed in the 80's. Even if manufacturing came back, it would not be some job boon. Products would become more expensive for the same quality that we get from China. The people employed would be higher skilled and likely need to come in on visa's because we already have a skilled labor shortage in America. Hell, our U3 unemployment rate is like 3.8% the last time I checked*.
America's problem is our intransigence to help one another move to where jobs are, and to get educated in the skills needed to fill those jobs. And I'm not talking about programming jobs here.
>What did he do that will bring back manufacturing? Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania are in a manufacturing recession.
Please remove your Orange Man Bad blinders for a minute and listen to what I'm saying. I'm not saying he's done anything for manufacturing to date. I'm saying that this coronavirus now has exposed the weakness of offshoring a substantial proportion of critical manufacturing and it's an excellent opportunity to bring back much of the capacity that is still disrupted in China.
That's also why I said under subsidy. Because manufacturing here is more expensive but it looks like a national security problem if during calamity or war we have to depend on a nation on the other side of the world for things like semiconductors, medical equipment, and medicine. Based on the way the word is being thrown around recently, think of it as "socialism."
No it hasn't. China is already returning to work. America is just starting to deal with COVID19. We would literally be shutting down manufacturing right now. The fact that we have these worldwide supply chains makes us more resilient to these pandemic like shocks because they take time to spread across the globe.
Do you really think it's a good idea to concentrate almost all of your medical and semiconductor manufacturing on the shores of one of your biggest geopolitical rivals? Particularly when they've been saber rattling in the Pacific and are already making threats about withholding manufacturing?
>China is already returning to work
Don't be so sure. This is an authoritarian regime which went to great lengths to cover up the outbreak for the first month. And they claimed return to capacity weeks ago when pollution maps still showed little to no productivity. The world isn't all rainbows and sunshine - nation states are still competitive and do not always work in each other's best interest.
None of this even begins to go into all of the IP fuckery and socialization of US companies going on in China.
He managed to look and sound somewhat like an adult and it finally looks like the federal government is going to act competently. Also Google is going to be running the website and they are partnering with LabCorp and Quest to offer drive up testing.
> it finally looks like the federal government is going to act competently
Testing only those with symptoms (the virus has a 4-6 day contagious incubation period) will do little to nothing to stop the spread. There are thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people walking around asymptomatic and contagious right now, in pretty much every state in the country (as well as pretty much every country in the world). In a week it will be 2x that number. In two weeks it will be 4x that number.
Imagine if you needed AIDS symptoms to get an HIV test.
You're preaching to the choir. I think that this Administration is a complete disaster at every level and especially with regards to its response to COVID19. I've been preaching about the dangers of COVID19 since the first case was discovered in America.
I'm just trying to see it from people's point of view that don't live in my reality.
* Only those with symptoms (which?) are going to be "allowed" to be tested. This means you can't stop the spread.
* Testing is going to "come online" within weeks, but cases are already accelerating. We have tripled cases in the last 4 days. Its an exponential curve
* I fully expect them to fudge the numbers on deaths at this point. We will start to see a large uptick within the next week.
>This means you can't stop the spread.
This was certain since many weeks.
Stopping was probably never possible anyway. But certainly there is no scenario where the whole world gets it but USA doesn't. And even places like Wuhan where it seems stooped it's highly questionable what happens if they go back to normal. Chances are high it will just start again. The 80k immune there are nowhere near enough to stop a second wave. Herd immunity needs probably around 60-80%.
It's also been declared in Spain (state of alarm, the mildest of the three options available under Spanish law), nationwide measures are not known yet
Regions are declaring they own measures in the meantime, in Madrid, schools and universities classes have stopped, all shops must stay closed, only pharmacies and supermarkets are allowed to be open, also most business where people gather, such as gyms, stay closed.
This is only for four cities of Barcelona, not the entire area. Like the 1% of the population. Is an unprecedented measure in any case. Lots of social experiments this days.
Torra has asked for it, but that doesn’t mean it has taken effect. With the mistrust between the Catalan and central government, let’s see what happens.
I've heard mention previously on HN that FDA regulations hampered the availability of test kits within the US due to archaic laws. Given that these regulations are about to be loosened or entirely done away with temporarily, what exactly would this imply?
If the kits themselves have an accuracy rate of ~60% as I've heard mentioned here and elsewhere, wouldn't faster testing (ex. 3 hour, 1 hour) reduce accuracy even more and create "diagnostic theater" as an analogy to the security theater already witnessed at airports?
Would love to hear more about this from an epidemiological standpoint.
Ah yes, yet another person who looked at the Snopes piece's headline and nothing else. One would think reading it, and the Twitter thread it is based on, that to save money (or because the Trump administration hates science, or something) the entire "US Pandemic Response Team" agency was eliminated to save money and everyone in a large DC office building was fired.
Actually reading the contemporary NBC News https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/tom-bossert-t... and Washington Posthttps://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/0... articles it cites, they seem to have been a handful of people in one team in the National Security Council hierarchy, that the new National Security Advisor reassigned to related agencies, as part of a desire to have his own hierarchical structure. Ziemer resigned because he wanted to keep his team the way it was.
COVID19 was not a surprise; that is, it was known to exist in China some time before the first cases appeared in the US. It is not unreasonable for a government to assemble a team to respond to something like a pandemic as needed, as opposed to having people dedicated solely to the purpose and nothing else. And that's exactly what the US did, implementing the ban on non-American travelers who'd been to China in late January, among other things.
You may or may not agree with this. But please don't claim that this is somehow prima facie proof of the Trump administration's malfeasance/evilness.
One gets tired of having to respond over and over to people who read a Snopes headline (not even the entire article; as I said, it relies on a Twitter thread (!) to mark the claim "true", but at least Snopes does cite two contemporaneous news accounts that say otherwise) and mindlessly repeat it without actually looking into the claim.
And further, my sarcasm was based on reality. Are you denying that the connotation of claims like "Trump fired the Pandemic Response Team" and "Trump cut the CDC budget" are not akin to what I described in my first paragraph?
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 90.6 ms ] threadTo another reply: you're correct, this is a big point that few people are thinking about.
He didn't necessarily take responsibility of anything, but he managed to suppress his usual behavior well enough for the people behind him to assure people
If you’re trying to say “who cares about money when lives are on the line”... in this case a strong, life-saving, response begets a positive market response.
People drying en-masse is not good for the economy, or anyone really. Also, recessions are generally not good for people’s health.
Trump going up there and making a bunch of positive statements means zero right now. The public and private sectors have no reason to trust the federal government during this situation.
Literally no one but yourself has implied the stock market going well means Coronavirus is going away.
That’s so absurd I gave you the benefit of the doubt and assumed something was lost in your wording...
The comment chain is about the effect of the virus on electability of an incumbent.
The stock market’s performance is very much tied to that and while not the only indicator of an election's outcome, is a pretty strong motivator of political change.
On that note... since his speech a ton of bad news has come out, some his claims were proven false, the fed hit the nuclear options, and futures hit a circuit breaker Sunday night which is a terrible indicator for this morning’s market.
So it’s still a strong factor in his electability, just not in the direction it was Friday evening.
On the other hand, it's much easier to rally people when your villain has an actual human face.
That should have a footnote. Pancho Villa's División del Norte invaded the US in a raid on Columbus, NM in 1916. The Japanese Army occupied the small and remote Aleutian islands of Attu and Kiska during WWII. These are both minor incidents, hence a footnote.
If we expand "US soil" beyond the U.S. continent (or the 50 states), then the Japanese occupations of the Philippines, Guam and Wake Island should also count.
The Commonwealth of the Philippines was not fully independent from the US. Guam is an organized territory of the US, and Wake Island is an unorganized, unincorporated territory of the US. (I'm not sure about their exact territorial status in WWII though.)
1) Almost everyone in the world who is susceptible has it, or had it.
2) We implemented a way to slow down the global growth rate, or it slowed down by itself.
One way or another, we will know in a just a few months.
If you want to check the math, skip to about 3:20 on this video from 3Blue1Brown, Exponential growth and epidemics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kas0tIxDvrg
The problem is than when we will reach summer, half of the planet will start the winter. A interesting question is if the coronavirus will be able to hide in the southern hemisphere or not. That would start and endless migration cycle from now on.
a lot of people died in Italy https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/
I think we are at the point where we will see a lot of infections. I think we will see a lot of death from this as well, but it will be at the lower end of the case fatality rate range as long as we can do the things we need to in order to not overwhelm our healthcare system. If however I am wrong, and we do overwhelm the healthcare system like they did in Italy, yea, there is going to be a lot more death.
See the chart in this article for details on the 11 day difference. https://www.econlib.org/the-answer-one-week/
Here is why I don't think they are enough.
1) Isolation is not uniform across the country. Some people are working from home. Others aren't. Some schools are closed. Some aren't. Some trips are cancelled. Some planes are still flying with some people. There are still large areas of the country where it's spreading with little or no isolation. The cases there will grow, and walk across state borders.
2) It's not enough, yet. We have some isolation in some spots. But there's not yet even one single spot with measures as drastic as are needed to stop this.
Italy has had stricter measures than the US in place for a little while, and the number of new people seeking hospital care per day is still growing.
The places which have successfully turned this thing around have put measures in place much more drastic than the US, and on a consistent national basis.
---
I guess we disagree about the US being more isolated than Italy or not. I think Italy has more isolation in place. Please let me know in what ways things here are more isolated than Italy.
I think it will be far more important how Trump deals with this than the simple fact of it happening.
Biden might be washed up, but it might not matter. Bloomberg is about to drop $2 Billion in advertising and infrastructure in support of the Democratic party.
I'm not saying Trump is going to lose, but if he wins, it's going to be by a narrow margin in which he loses the popular vote by more than 6 million.
Sure, everything is relative and up for debate in our post-truth environment. But Republicans that reluctantly voted for him were already weary of his warmongering around Christmas. And many of those that did listen to his ignorant bullshit for the past month are likely to end up knowing someone who dies from this.
No it's not. You had every expert in the world talking about the potential dangers for months, while Trump kept talking about how it was just a flu that would magically go away on its own, and that there wasn't anything to be concerned with. The US's preparation has been incredibly bad and late in comparison to certain other countries. On top of Trump firing the Pandemic Response Team in 2018.
The optics are going to start looking increasingly bad for him as the US death rate starts to climb.
I don't claim to predict the outcome of the election, but you can't claim that it's "hard to criticize the government" based off of this, or that any future "decisive action" is going to be enough once the death rate hits tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands.
Experts have been also talking about dangers of climate change for years, yet Trump manages to win election while calling climate change a hoax. So not sure his base cares about expert advice.
>while Trump kept talking about how it was just a flu that would magically go away on its own, and that there wasn't anything to be concerned with.
You should read trump's tweets, there is a shockingly large number of people agreeing with him on this like everything.
As long as trump can manage to limit the damage to the US, he will have strong arguments for a re-election.
Ah yes, yet another person who looked at the Snopes piece's headline and nothing else. One would think reading it, and the Twitter thread it is based on, that to save money (or because the Trump administration hates science, or something) the entire "US Pandemic Response Team" agency was cut to save money, causing everyone in a large DC office building to lose their jobs.
Actually reading the contemporary NBC News https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/tom-bossert-t... and Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/0... articles it cites, they seem to have been a handful of people in one team in the National Security Council hierarchy, that the new National Security Advisor reassigned to related agencies. Ziemer resigned because he wanted to keep his team the way it was.
COVID19 was not a surprise; that is, it was known to exist in China some time before the first cases appeared in the US. It is not unreasonable for a government to assemble a team to respond to something like a pandemic as needed, as opposed to having people dedicated solely to the purpose and nothing else. And that's exactly what the US did, implementing the ban on non-American travelers who'd been to China in late January, among other things.
You may or may not agree with this. But please don't claim that this is somehow prima facie proof of the Trump administration's malfeasance/evilness.
PS - No, Trump did not "cut the CDC budget!" either. https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104
The comparison between how the different countries will care for their population is unavoidable, and the results in China will be proudly stellar in that time (They had reasons to be proud).
And this can't be solved with more fake news. Death values can be faked and anybody could start a badmouth campaign against South Korea to hide that they will have the lowest mortality rate (due to the korean strategy of extensive testing of the population) but in the end, death people will not vote you (neither their widows, friends and family?).
So It depends also of how people will feel about replacing Obamacare by Trumpcare. Images from the past like "Trump throwing rolls of toilet paper to puerto ricans with contempt" will not help by comparison. He always had problems showing real empathy in public.
Wash your hands a lot.
Encourage other people to do the same things.
https://staythefuckhome.com/
Can anyone verify if this logic makes sense? Or does it not really make a difference because it'll just float through the air and reach your face anyway?
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/artic...
Instructions in English.
There are plenty of photos Italians queuing up two meters apart, so just maintain extra space like they do?
If you're old, self-isolation is the best thing.
If you are not a boomer and healthy, you don't actually need to do anything except maybe get that hour earlier to bed in the evening and eat extra healthy to help your immune system.
This virus really only concerns particular "risk groups" which is why I DON'T understand why the onus is on younger, healthy people who are actually working to pay the price instead of telling at-risk groups who are mostly pensioners to isolate themselves until a vaccine or antidote is developed. Also, not to forget, those boomers are the ones who contributed 90 percent of the climate change with their consumption patterns and then told us "why would I care about climate change, I will be dead when it arrives."
What the hell?
Tell your friends to do the same.
Note: 60 days of food is probably much larger than any grocery trip you have ever done. Don't just go to the store and get a week's worth of food, like many are doing. In a week, grocery shopping will be impossible/dangerous. Two weeks, moreso. The doubling time on this thing is about a week and it's going to get worse for six weeks before it gets better.
Also, avoid doing any activities that might cause any sort of accident requiring hospitalization. Hospitals are going to be hard no-go zones starting in about two weeks, for 6-8 weeks. Use the railing, be careful getting in and out of the shower, clean up spills, don't use power tools, et c.
If you're having trouble getting groceries locally, Amazon still (for the moment! don't expect it to last) has 12-ct cases of Soylent in stock for about $40 in a lot of places for same or next-day delivery. (Figure 5 400kcal bottles per person-day for emergency rations if you can't get any local groceries. Even if you don't like it, it will keep you and your family alive while you can't go to the supermarket for a few weeks.) TIP YOUR DELIVERY DRIVER. When it arrives, pull the bottles out wearing gloves, and dispose of the boxes carefully, and WASH YOUR HANDS.
EDIT: Reply to SketchySeaBeast below (I am throttled and cannot post new replies):
Going to the grocery store is unnecessary contact/exposure that you can avoid by stocking up for the duration in advance. Grocery stores are chokepoints. It's better to shop once now than four times over the next 2 months.
Shelf-stable food that you will eat anyway is not a huge cost, and limiting your exposure is valuable as this thing ramps up. Every passing week for the foreseeable future doubles the risk that you will encounter someone who has the virus, as it seems pretty plausible (due to the testing strategy) that the US, at least based on current information, will be doing very little that will be effective to stop the spread.
It's probably just going to run its course unimpeded through society in the US, as it did in Italy prior to the lockdown. Would you want to be going to the grocery store in Italy right now? I don't want to be going to the grocery store in the US in 2-3 weeks.
Remember: when China had as many cases as we do now, a 60M province was already in total lockdown.
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop...
This is crazy FUD that will only make the situation worse. Stockpiling rarely, if ever, helps, and overwhelmingly hurts the poor and disabled. The absolute worst of "fuck you got mine" mentality on display here. Please do not do this, and please do not advocate for this kind of panic. You are actively contributing to a terrible situation.
To repeat: there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to stockpile rations, food stuffs, common goods, etc. In no country as of yet has this been necessary, even in the most hard hit areas. Do not do this. Going to the grocery store once vs four times is not going to make the difference between you getting the virus or not, and it's absurd that people would even consider this. The virus has been in and around our communities for months now, engaging in prepper fetishes now is closing the barn door after the horses have left. Stockpiling goods is completely ineffective anyway. The majority of our supply chains are JIT, and suppliers are already rationing and metering out goods. Stockpiling is pointless, you're just going to look like an idiot in the check out line.
Limit large social engagements. Keep up mild exercise, get plenty of sleep, and eat healthily. And for the love of God wash your hands. If you have frequent contact with immunocompromised people or the elderly be more vigilant about hygiene, wear a mask, disinfect any surfaces the both of you touch frequently. Consider doing their errands for them as well.
Everyone will eventually get the virus. It's almost certain. The goal here is just to prevent a thundering herd problem with medical resources.
That's exactly how I feel about stuff like that. I had only heard a quarantine's amount, but given the amount of made up stuff going around, I was hoping there'd be some sort of expert explaining the logic, and for it not to be just prepper fever.
> This is crazy FUD
There's no fear, uncertainty, or doubt in my message, nor am I being crazy, simply calm and rational: it's simple, normal preparedness for the recommended protocol of avoiding unnecessary close physical contact with others. Having 6-8 weeks of food in one's house isn't stockpiling, nor is it panic. It is everyday preparedness, and is good advice in all times, even outside of pandemics.
The LDS church, for example, recommends and encourages all mormons to have a year of food for their family in their home, and has done so for decades. I am not LDS, but this is not bad advice in general.
> Going to the grocery store once vs four times is not going to make the difference between you getting the virus or not
If you and your family are in full isolation at home during the worst of this, not going out in public at all during the peak of the pandemic (zero contact with anyone infected or potentially infected) versus going out four times into public places (grocery stores) absolutely makes a difference, both in your own potential exposure, as well as in the ability to spread it to others should you be exposed.
Right now most cities in the US only have a few hundred cases walking around (calculated from comparing the curve to other countries who actually are testing). That's not going to be the case in 30 days: the risk and spread is going up in a predictable, exponential fashion, just as we have seen in several other places already.
> engaging in prepper fetishes
Your alarming personal attacks do not contribute to the discussion. I'm not suggesting you build a bunker, hoard masks or TP, or anything else like that: simply have enough food to be able to stay home uninterrupted for a month or two. Mocking doomsday preppers when they're preparing for unknown, low-risk imagined threats is one thing. Preparing to simply have enough to eat while you and your family stay home during a global pandemic and presently-declared national emergency is about as non-prepper as it gets: preppers would claim it's way past the time you should have started.
Millions of Americans buy in bulk at stores like Sam's Club and Costco, this is no different. If the supply lines are as stable as you claim and will remain so as you claim, then they won't be harmed in any way by a few people buying a little bit extra.
> Everyone will eventually get the virus. It's almost certain.
This is also not true. Many people will avoid getting sick by avoiding public places and physical contact, which also has the added public benefit of not spreading it further. Additionally there will likely be a vaccine before the year is out. Avoiding contact with the public absolutely can and will prevent many people from getting sick. Please do not engage in such fatalistic fear-spreading; it's just a false statement. (It's also a terrible thing to say to high-risk groups, most of whom can avoid contracting it with precautions such as I describe.)
> The goal here is just to prevent a thundering herd problem with medical resources.
The single best way to do that is to avoid contracting the virus at all. The single best way to do that is to avoid coming into contact with anyone who is infected or might be infected: get home and stay home.
https://staythefuckhome.com/
It is our responsibility to ourselves, our families, our neighbors, and our communities to avoid contracting this virus and to avoid spreading this virus.
Not sure if I'd agree with this. In my neighborhood, there are already multiple confirmed cases (some a few blocks away).
The only way to minimize my (and therefore my family's) exposure to the virus is to avoid any external contact. Encountering 10 people for one grocery trip versus 40 people over 4 separate trips. Statistically, I'd take the one-trip option.
Even if there was a marginal benefit to yourself it would be still be incredibly selfish to stockpile to the detriment of the vulnerable. The scarcity mentality is very dangerous, please do not perpetuate it.
It has nothing to do with scarcity and everything to do with limiting social contact. Every day, being out in public is more dangerous.
As you pointed out, there is no scarcity issue, nor is there likely to be.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/can-you-g...
> Everyone will eventually get the virus. It's almost certain. The goal here is just to prevent a thundering herd problem with medical resources.
Yes, eventually everyone will be exposed. The point here is to flatten the curve of exposure to a level which does not overwhelm critical care facilities. This can be achieved - or at least an attempt can be made - by limiting exposure. Those who have enough food at home to refrain from having to go out shopping for a month can limit their exposure more than those who have to go out every week.
> Going to the grocery store once vs four times is not going to make the difference between you getting the virus or not, and it's absurd that people would even consider this.
But that is not the point as you later state yourself: "The goal here is just to prevent a thundering herd problem with medical resources". Right, and the way to achieve that is by limiting exposure, for instance by only having to go out shopping once instead of four times.
I honestly don't get the attitude against a certain level of preparedness. What is wrong with stocking more non-perishable food stuffs at home if those are the things you'd normally buy anyway? You don't need to fill your basements with MREs, just get more of the usual non-perishables than you'd normally do - pasta, wheat flour, oats, etc. Get some yeast to bake bread as well while you're at it. Get butter, put it in the freezer. Dried beans last forever - I had some around which I took with me when I moved from the Netherlands to Sweden about 20 years ago, made a chilli with them, tasted 'like new' - and can make a good meal with a few odds and ends. Get 'canned' (i.e. packaged) tomatoes, frozen vegetables (the power will stay on during this crisis), etc. This is not doomsday prepping, it is common sense.
I have no problem with this, but that's clearly not what GP is advocating for. I doubt most in this thread even comprehend how much food is required for a 30 day supply of your average household. Buying double the amount of perishables doesn't seem unreasonable, stocking up for a month+ is absurd.
The Department of Health and Human Services has recommended that intelligence community personnel have at least three months’ worth of food on hand in the event of an uncontrolled pandemic.
Many countries have been or are in much worse shape and society hasn't broken down. This isn't Mad Max. If anything having the entire population simultaneously buy two months of food is going to cause far more problems than it'll ever solve.
That is where he gets this: basic common sense. Limit exposure, limit spread, flatten the infection curve to such a level that the peak 10-15% which will need hospitalisation does not exceed the available capacity.
Maybe just accept new information and correct your weird conspiracy theory.
Nit, but he only shook a couple. Certainly, the majority did not receive handshakes
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqbHVBL-HCc
Of course, he'll never say it was socialism - just "strong action".
I agree that has been the case in economically disadvantaged countries but do you think America is closer to Cuba, Venezuela or Tzarist Russia... or closer to Britain.
This is legitimately the kind of stimulus that the economy has needed for decades. A true cause for the American powerhouse to rally behind, if there's anything left of it. Yeah the administration has been less than ideal in handling this but you people need to give credit where it is due.
This will be a true test of the viability of the declining American Empire.
If you think Bernie Sanders is a socialist then this is socialism, if you think this is good then you like Sanders' level of socialism.
We are literally turning toward capitalist corporations to manufacture and sell products to solve a crisis. This is not socialism. Workers are not taking control of factories. The government is not commandeering private resources.
>Look, either socialism includes Bernie Sander's Democratic Socialism or it doesn't
You also don't seem to understand how many different flavors of socialism exist - feel free to point out how what's going on now fits under any definition. Also what does any of this have to do with Sanders?
The fact that you agree with what you read does not mean that it isn't propaganda. The man had his homeymoon in the USSR and is on video talking fondly of bread lines. I'm not saying he's Stalin 2.0 but right wing media isn't entirely stretching when they point out how far removed his policies are from American politics.
Note, that's not a value judgement. I'm just saying you're wrong to blame the shift in meaning on the particular media that you don't agree with.
I'm only being slightly sarcastic.
That's not what Socialism is.
Isn't that the ultimate stimulus?
Is the potential of returned manufacturing jobs not a hugely good thing?
Or are we not allowed to give credit for anything because Trump?
I do not know where you got the idea that this is happening.
If Trump isn't a total idiot (though I know many of you believe he is) this is his opportunity to return manufacturing jobs to the US, possibly under subsidy, at the very least as a national security concern.
This rampant tribalism is insane. Literally nothing the administration does now will see any credit from it's opponents. Take off the partisan blinders. Even shitty leaders can make good decisions, and deserve credit for doing so.
So far he's been moving in the opposite direction though with an emphasis on overall company welfare at the expense of employees - there have been no proposals around preventing people from losing their jobs due to needing to self-isolate and no effort to make treatment federally subsidized (testing is probably free if you're not one of the millions of people without insurance, but even here the details are hazy).
Do you think these companies will continue to exist if they fire all the employees who get sick from the virus? Do you think these employees will survive without their paychecks?
Do you believe that anything benefiting "corporations" goes directly into the pocket of evil 1% CEOs and confers no benefit to employees? You probably work for a corporation. Corporate well-being is employee wellbeing because corporations are staffed by people.
Also, the US manufactures more stuff than any other time in its history, it just does it with less labor than it needed in the 80's. Even if manufacturing came back, it would not be some job boon. Products would become more expensive for the same quality that we get from China. The people employed would be higher skilled and likely need to come in on visa's because we already have a skilled labor shortage in America. Hell, our U3 unemployment rate is like 3.8% the last time I checked*.
America's problem is our intransigence to help one another move to where jobs are, and to get educated in the skills needed to fill those jobs. And I'm not talking about programming jobs here.
Please remove your Orange Man Bad blinders for a minute and listen to what I'm saying. I'm not saying he's done anything for manufacturing to date. I'm saying that this coronavirus now has exposed the weakness of offshoring a substantial proportion of critical manufacturing and it's an excellent opportunity to bring back much of the capacity that is still disrupted in China.
That's also why I said under subsidy. Because manufacturing here is more expensive but it looks like a national security problem if during calamity or war we have to depend on a nation on the other side of the world for things like semiconductors, medical equipment, and medicine. Based on the way the word is being thrown around recently, think of it as "socialism."
>China is already returning to work
Don't be so sure. This is an authoritarian regime which went to great lengths to cover up the outbreak for the first month. And they claimed return to capacity weeks ago when pollution maps still showed little to no productivity. The world isn't all rainbows and sunshine - nation states are still competitive and do not always work in each other's best interest.
None of this even begins to go into all of the IP fuckery and socialization of US companies going on in China.
He struggled to pronounce "coronavirus".
Testing only those with symptoms (the virus has a 4-6 day contagious incubation period) will do little to nothing to stop the spread. There are thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people walking around asymptomatic and contagious right now, in pretty much every state in the country (as well as pretty much every country in the world). In a week it will be 2x that number. In two weeks it will be 4x that number.
Imagine if you needed AIDS symptoms to get an HIV test.
Did you see how the 80s and 90s played out in the US?
I'm just trying to see it from people's point of view that don't live in my reality.
This critical period is elsewhere described as (incubation - latent):
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incubation_period
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/us/coronavirus-testing-ch...
* Only those with symptoms (which?) are going to be "allowed" to be tested. This means you can't stop the spread.
* Testing is going to "come online" within weeks, but cases are already accelerating. We have tripled cases in the last 4 days. Its an exponential curve
* I fully expect them to fudge the numbers on deaths at this point. We will start to see a large uptick within the next week.
Stopping was probably never possible anyway. But certainly there is no scenario where the whole world gets it but USA doesn't. And even places like Wuhan where it seems stooped it's highly questionable what happens if they go back to normal. Chances are high it will just start again. The 80k immune there are nowhere near enough to stop a second wave. Herd immunity needs probably around 60-80%.
Regions are declaring they own measures in the meantime, in Madrid, schools and universities classes have stopped, all shops must stay closed, only pharmacies and supermarkets are allowed to be open, also most business where people gather, such as gyms, stay closed.
In Catalonia no one can enter or exit.
This is only for four cities of Barcelona, not the entire area. Like the 1% of the population. Is an unprecedented measure in any case. Lots of social experiments this days.
If the kits themselves have an accuracy rate of ~60% as I've heard mentioned here and elsewhere, wouldn't faster testing (ex. 3 hour, 1 hour) reduce accuracy even more and create "diagnostic theater" as an analogy to the security theater already witnessed at airports?
Would love to hear more about this from an epidemiological standpoint.
JFC.
> I didn't do it. I have a whole group of people.
This president is unbelievable. I don't see how people even listen to this guy.
Actually reading the contemporary NBC News https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/tom-bossert-t... and Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/0... articles it cites, they seem to have been a handful of people in one team in the National Security Council hierarchy, that the new National Security Advisor reassigned to related agencies, as part of a desire to have his own hierarchical structure. Ziemer resigned because he wanted to keep his team the way it was.
COVID19 was not a surprise; that is, it was known to exist in China some time before the first cases appeared in the US. It is not unreasonable for a government to assemble a team to respond to something like a pandemic as needed, as opposed to having people dedicated solely to the purpose and nothing else. And that's exactly what the US did, implementing the ban on non-American travelers who'd been to China in late January, among other things.
You may or may not agree with this. But please don't claim that this is somehow prima facie proof of the Trump administration's malfeasance/evilness.
PS - No, Trump did not "cut the CDC budget" either. https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104
And further, my sarcasm was based on reality. Are you denying that the connotation of claims like "Trump fired the Pandemic Response Team" and "Trump cut the CDC budget" are not akin to what I described in my first paragraph?