> [Speaking of Trump] Saying it’s fake, by saying this is a Democratic hoax.
False. Trump referred to "politicizing" of the coronavirus by Democrats as "their new hoax." He did not refer to the coronavirus itself as a hoax or call it fake. You can criticize that he did not take it seriously enough to shut down the economy sooner, and that'd be fair, but he did shut down air travel from China on Jan 31, for which he was shat on at the time, as usual. Had he not done that, we'd be dealing with 10x the number of cases now.
Semantics are crazy here. This is their new hoax to me means “Democrats are taking this and blowing it out of proportion.” How long did Fox News spin this as a conspiracy and just like the flu and all is well before things got very bad? Where are the test kits? Why was South Korea able to recognize and respond with massive testing early but the US is not? And regarding his China shutdown he was shat on because it was too little too late not because it was considered too extreme. How many weeks or months were people unable to get tested unless they met too strict criteria? How many people came through us customs from Italy during its outbreak without an eyebrow raised or basic questioning? If we want to play Monday morning quarterback had he ordered screening early enough we’d be 10 times better than we are and maybe we could have contained it.
There's no point in trying to discuss policy with a Trump supporter: they are a cult member and will rationalize away whatever doesn't fit their narrative.
Carl Sagan warned us about this decades ago so we should be too surprised (but I sadly am).
You are technically correct, the worst sort of correct.
Until very recently, Trump and his administration and his state press (Fox) have promoted the idea that COVID-19 was "very mild. They’ll get better very rapidly. They don’t even see a doctor. They don’t even call a doctor. You never hear about those people" (March 4)
His advice was "If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better, just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work, some of them go to work, but they get better"
That's just two examples from one interview.
The man has been lying and obfuscating and gaslighting about this since he was first asked about it.
Let me ask you a question. Has _anybody_ in the House or the Senate done anything to prevent this in January? Trump closed the flights at least, over the objections of both the (Chinese-funded) WHO and the Congress. Maybe he was hoping it'd be enough - we barely had any cases back then. Meanwhile everybody else was preoccupied with such "important" matters as impeachment, and tearing up the State of the Union address on TV.
Mike Tyson said "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth", but to me it seems like the only person who had _any_ kind of plan for this at the end of January was Trump. That plan, in retrospect, was inadequate, but nobody else did anything at all until almost the end of February.
This argument is like arguing which poop smells less.
They are all incompetent cowards worried about their image first. None of them would do anything to tarnish their chance for re-election, all of the 'drastic' measures are taken after public is OK with it (i.e. too late to be drastic measures).
So maybe both sides can acknowledge the fact that they tried to defend their own little piles of poop and move on.
> to me it seems like the only person who had _any_ kind of plan for this at the end of January was Trump.
Honestly, I think this might the dumbest thing I've heard anyone say about on this topic. There was a chorus of experts telling us exactly what we needed to do in order to prepare for this. And we already had a model to follow in China.
The US and South Korea confirmed their first cases at the same time -- January 20. South Korea's government did what the experts told them to do, and they fairly quickly had their situation under control.
Our president spent the next month and a half downplaying the disease and vilifying the media for reporting it, and making it clear that the most important thing to him is "his" stock market numbers.
Yes he restricted travel to China, good job. Yes some pundits and politicians criticized him. Welcome to being president. Obama could do almost literally nothing without being called a "communist muslim". Trump told us he was "tough" -- a strong decisive leader who would make bold decisions whenever needed. His complacence, dishonesty, incompetence, and constant ass-covering in this crisis should show you who he really is.
Trump kept telling us that there was no shortage of tests, which was a complete lie. And he kept telling us there were few cases and things were under control, when you can't tell that without a huge number of tests, which we did not have.
As far as treating the pandemic as serious, he dismissed it as minor, until his speech a week ago. He has been a lot better since then. But if he had done things right from the beginning, we would be in a much better situation now, and we might have been able to contain it.
I don't see a place to put commas that would help. "The Doctor, Who Helped Defeat Smallpox, Explains..." would refer to a subject already introduced, and there's no other way to separate "Doctor" and "Who" that I can see.
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[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 33.0 ms ] threadThis is definitely worth reading and sharing.
False. Trump referred to "politicizing" of the coronavirus by Democrats as "their new hoax." He did not refer to the coronavirus itself as a hoax or call it fake. You can criticize that he did not take it seriously enough to shut down the economy sooner, and that'd be fair, but he did shut down air travel from China on Jan 31, for which he was shat on at the time, as usual. Had he not done that, we'd be dealing with 10x the number of cases now.
Carl Sagan warned us about this decades ago so we should be too surprised (but I sadly am).
Until very recently, Trump and his administration and his state press (Fox) have promoted the idea that COVID-19 was "very mild. They’ll get better very rapidly. They don’t even see a doctor. They don’t even call a doctor. You never hear about those people" (March 4)
His advice was "If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better, just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work, some of them go to work, but they get better"
That's just two examples from one interview.
The man has been lying and obfuscating and gaslighting about this since he was first asked about it.
Mike Tyson said "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth", but to me it seems like the only person who had _any_ kind of plan for this at the end of January was Trump. That plan, in retrospect, was inadequate, but nobody else did anything at all until almost the end of February.
They are all incompetent cowards worried about their image first. None of them would do anything to tarnish their chance for re-election, all of the 'drastic' measures are taken after public is OK with it (i.e. too late to be drastic measures).
So maybe both sides can acknowledge the fact that they tried to defend their own little piles of poop and move on.
Honestly, I think this might the dumbest thing I've heard anyone say about on this topic. There was a chorus of experts telling us exactly what we needed to do in order to prepare for this. And we already had a model to follow in China.
The US and South Korea confirmed their first cases at the same time -- January 20. South Korea's government did what the experts told them to do, and they fairly quickly had their situation under control.
Our president spent the next month and a half downplaying the disease and vilifying the media for reporting it, and making it clear that the most important thing to him is "his" stock market numbers.
Yes he restricted travel to China, good job. Yes some pundits and politicians criticized him. Welcome to being president. Obama could do almost literally nothing without being called a "communist muslim". Trump told us he was "tough" -- a strong decisive leader who would make bold decisions whenever needed. His complacence, dishonesty, incompetence, and constant ass-covering in this crisis should show you who he really is.
As far as treating the pandemic as serious, he dismissed it as minor, until his speech a week ago. He has been a lot better since then. But if he had done things right from the beginning, we would be in a much better situation now, and we might have been able to contain it.
CNN calls out gashlighting and untruths that makes employees stoop to becoming puppets in order to work effectively around the person:
http://www.edition.cnn.com/2020/03/19/politics/donald-trump-...
Media is experiencing what it's like to be the target of gaslighting (yeah, sounds funny, but really really isn't).
Hopefully this will raise awareness how detrimental and destructive such toxic behaviour is.