I don't think you know what fake news is.

I don’t think you know what real news is.

More fake news to add to the pile. Good on them.

I thought the Democrats' problem with it is that it wasn't worker relief but a corporate bailout.

Workers often work for corporations.

Aren't Republicans also playing with people's livelihood to include provisions that are a Republican policy wishlist?

For instance?

I know, it's so selfish.

I wonder what things such as corporate diversity, airline emissions, cancelling the debt of the Postal Service, and election auditing have to do with the current crisis. Government bailout and megalomania.

Democrats have decided to shirk a Senate vote on worker relief so Nancy Pelosi could introduce a 1200-page Democratic policy wishlist. They’re playing with people’s livelihood to include provisions such as diversity hiring, aviation climate change studies, minimum wage, and other piffle.

Sorry again, but that guy really has no authority to speak on such matters.

Sorry, which article? I was interested in Frank’s opinion.

Do you think it is possible that a “second wave” may hit? that after all the huddling indoors, bailouts and lockdowns, that it may have been all for nothing?

Sick and evil stuff. But schadenfreude has been the going rate among this species of dogma for quite some time now, long before the pandemic began. We've come to the point that only a complete and utter disaster can make them feel better about being wrong and making false predictions all these years.

That's the way it goes.

First it was cheap labor, then as the labor gets more expensive, it has to be more productive and the industries change. Then it becomes a service economy. At start the clothing industry was mainly in the First World. Then the clothing industry migrated to Southeast Asia and China. From there it will migrate to Africa, if everything would go as earlier.

Hopefully higher living standards and reduction in poverty will go with it. I suspect that, if cheap labor ever runs out worldwide, it will become less centralized in this or that country.

As long as capitalism exists, this will never happen.

LOL.

As long as capitalism exists, this will never happen. It's been a race to the bottom to secure the cheapest labour and manufacturing costs, and the world will continue to rely on China no matter how much anyone pays lip-service to orienting the supply-chain domestically. The one way it could happen of course, is to devastate and immeserate local populations so that others can compete which China at the same level. Which, given what COVID is doing, just might happen.

It’s more a race to the top. Ever since China entered the WTO their manufacturing costs have been rising along with their wages and standard of living. There is still rampant poverty, but the rate at which it has been reduced is nothing short of a miracle. As such it gets more and more expensive to do business there. So we look for cheaper manufacturing costs in maybe Vietnam or Bangladesh. Eventually their wages and standard of living will rise as well.

One of the reasons Clinton fought hard to get China to be a part of the WTO was that he wanted them to be more like us, liberalized, on the path to freedom, democracy and human rights. As it turns out, such an arraignment is a two-way street. As statism, the suppression of the internet, and censorship become the norm, the arraignment seems to have also made us more like them.

So I think you're right. This pandemic has made apparent our reliance on Chinese manufacturing, even for the most basic of products, and hopefully altering the supply-chain to a better deal will begin shortly after.

I know someone of around that age who has/had it and experienced only minor symptoms, the worst being fatigue. Godspeed to you and your mother, friend.

Point. In the US the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, that imo was what DIck Cheney was referring to when after 9/11 he mentioned going to the dark side, has become the American SS. It's a trope accepted as reality that when the American SS gets you, your rights are suspended. Which to a thinking person means you had none in the first place!

I agree with you on that one. Just today or yesterday the DOJ was trying to petition congress to give them emergency powers, threatening habeas corpus. The conditions are ripe for power-seeking.

DOJ Seeks New Emergency Powers During Pandemic

In France one requires a form to leave the house. In the UK, one can be arbitrarily detained if he is suspected of being infected. Curfews, lockdowns, an economy crippled by our collective absence... It's surprising how quickly people have handed away their hard-fought liberties because of this pandemic. I suppose they were too busy enjoying their liberties to want to protect them, and hopefully an event like this will remind them of the costs of this species of complacency as it did in the wake of WW2.

But for now, authoritarianism is the dominant ideology. I suspect this will be difficult to roll back once we get through this.

Did Gates get it right?

So did the popular snake-oil psychic Sylvia Browne.

“In around 2020 a severe pneumonia-like illness will spread throughout the globe, attacking the lungs and the bronchial tubes and resisting all known treatments. Almost more baffling than the illness itself will be the fact that it will suddenly vanish as quickly as it arrived, attack again ten years later, and then disappear completely.”

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/sylvia-browne-coronavirus/

If you don't mind me asking, what are the points of contention? I thought I laid my case out fairly well, and if you object I really would like to hear why.

Partly since reason dictates for my reasoning to be incorrect there must be an issue of form or one of my premises isn't true.

I do not object to anything you've written.

It doesn't necessarily lead to their infection, but the employer knows that there is a higher risk of contracting the infection by being in the physical presence of others. Why wouldn't that be taken as more important than overhead and such? Is health less important than overhead? Also, what responsibility does the manager have to the greater society? Presumably, less physical space with others would be less chance for others to contract and spread the virus to society at large- including to people who are most vulnerable to the disease.

All good questions. But I do not think we can blame the employer here unless he himself infects others with the virus. Rather, wouldn't it be unethical for an employee to go into a crowded workplace with an infectious virus?

Interesting take, though if there is a risk doesn't an employer need to consider the ramifications of the thing he is risking as well? Just because things do not follow with necessity doesn't mean that people aren't supposed to consider them. Someone might not necessarily be mad if I drink their soda, but they might. So I don't. By analogy, the business can say that their employees aren't necessarily going to get sick because of what the company tells them to do, but they still might. And if that is the case, to ignore the risk that the company is putting them at would be an ethical failing, wouldn't it?

I do think the employer needs to consider the ramifications. He'll need to weigh the risks of operating in a confined space during a pandemic with the risks of disrupting and harming his business. I don't think his decisions are necessarily unethical, but they do place a higher burden of responsibility on the employees to protect themselves.

If the employer makes the employees come to work because it's less than 10 people, and technically there is no shelter-in-place in effect (or perhaps even if there is it's left up to the employers themselves) would the business be in ethical boundaries in the time of coronavirus?

I don't think we can say the employer makes people come to work, as if pointing a gun at their head. They certainly risk losing their employment if they do not show up.

But the employer has overhead: office space, equipment, and other costs. So I can understand why he'd want his employees to work there.

The risk is higher I suppose, but I think the employer is within his ethical boundaries by the fact that requiring his employees to come to work doesn't necessarily lead to their infection.

Some interesting data from Iceland and their large-scale testing efforts..

Iceland health authorities and deCode Genetics have undertaken comprehensive screening for the virus that causes COVID-19 among the Icelandic population. The testing by deCode Genetics started Friday 13 March and the results of the first 5 490 diagnosed tests have yielded 47 positive samples.

To date a total of 3 699 samples have been diagnosed by the healthcare system. The healthcare system's testing has yielded 362 results indicating infection. About a third (36.4%) of cases can be traced to overseas travel, mostly to high-risk areas identified in the European Alps. More than a quarter (27.9%) of cases have been traced to domestic transmission. The rest (35.7%) have not been conclusively traced to a source of transmission.

Current efforts to estimate the prevalence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus within the general, largely non-symptomatic, non-quarantined, population in conjunctions with very expansive testing already performed on those who were symptomatic or were for other reasons considered to be at-risk for having contracted the virus, have resulted in a total of 9 189 individuals in Iceland being tested out of a population of 364 thousand. In terms of tests per one million inhabitants, Iceland has now tested 25 244, which is the highest proportion we are aware of in the world.

This leads to a higher confidence in our efforts to contain the spread of the COVID-19 disease in the country. The combined efforts also provide a very valuable insight into the spread of the virus. In the coming days more results from testing in the general population will continue to elicit a much clearer picture of the actual spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in Iceland.

https://www.government.is/news/article/2020/03/15/Large-scale-testing-of-general-population-in-Iceland-underway/

Optimism isn’t disinformation. Speaking confidently about ones actions and decisions is optimism by definition.

The fatality rate of covid19 in Wuhan, China is now down to 1.4%, according to a Nature study.

But some suspect it will be even lower, possibly lower than seasonal flu. Dr. John P. A. Ioannidis recently wrote:

This evidence fiasco creates tremendous uncertainty about the risk of dying from Covid-19. Reported case fatality rates, like the official 3.4% rate from the World Health Organization, cause horror — and are meaningless. Patients who have been tested for SARS-CoV-2 are disproportionately those with severe symptoms and bad outcomes. As most health systems have limited testing capacity, selection bias may even worsen in the near future.

The one situation where an entire, closed population was tested was the Diamond Princess cruise ship and its quarantine passengers. The case fatality rate there was 1.0%, but this was a largely elderly population, in which the death rate from Covid-19 is much higher.

Projecting the Diamond Princess mortality rate onto the age structure of the U.S. population, the death rate among people infected with Covid-19 would be 0.125%. But since this estimate is based on extremely thin data — there were just seven deaths among the 700 infected passengers and crew — the real death rate could stretch from five times lower (0.025%) to five times higher (0.625%). It is also possible that some of the passengers who were infected might die later, and that tourists may have different frequencies of chronic diseases — a risk factor for worse outcomes with SARS-CoV-2 infection — than the general population. Adding these extra sources of uncertainty, reasonable estimates for the case fatality ratio in the general U.S. population vary from 0.05% to 1%.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/

Asked about the criticism at a House budget hearing Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said that, “during the president’s tenure, every part of our preparedness and infectious disease program activity has been enhanced and expanded.”

Azar went on the say the president’s budget proposals are just the jumping-off point for budget negotiations.

“Budgets are like the first move in a chess game with, I’ll be honest, a fairly profligate Congress,” Azar said. “And the president starts that move with a budget knowing that we’re going to get a lot higher there as we work with Congress.”

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-cut-cdcs-budget-democrats-claim-analysis/story?id=69233170

Art of the deal, baby.

And what is true is this:

the CDC “cut back on this program of overseas vigilance.” The CDC decided to end epidemic prevention activities in 39 out of the 49 foreign countries it was active in due to a predicted absence of funding for the programs, even as funding for other CDC activities increased.

You’re wrong, actually.

CDC did not have to cut back its work from 49 to 10 countries,” said Maureen Bartee, CDC’s associate director for Global Health Security, in a statement to FactCheck.org . “In the FY18-FY20 annual appropriations, CDC received base appropriations for global health security from Congress. This was used to continue the essential public health capacity development in the four core areas that was started in 2014 with the one-time supplemental funds.”

Those four core areas, Bartee said, are surveillance, laboratory systems, workforce development and emergency management and response. “Focusing on potential weak links in these core areas ensures that partner countries are better prepared to respond to disease threats, wherever they might begin,” she explained.

CDC operating budget plans show that its funding for global public health protection — which includes global disease detection and emergency response and global public health capacity — increased from $58 million in fiscal year 2017 to around $108 million in fiscal years 2018 and 2019. (And that does not include any remaining supplemental funds available for use.) The increases included nearly $50 million more each year for CDC’s global health security initiatives.

Those amounts went up again in fiscal year 2020, when the CDC was awarded $183 million for global public health protection, overall, and $125 million specifically for its global health security efforts. For fiscal year 2021, President Donald Trump has requested that CDC funding for global disease detection and other programs be increased further — to $225 million total, with $175 million going directly to global health security.

With its current funding, Bartee said, the CDC is actually working in “more than 60 countries” — not 10 — to address the threat of global infectious diseases and outbreaks.

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/false-claim-about-cdcs-global-anti-pandemic-work/

If Trump’s optimism is all you need to blame Trump for the death of Americans, then I’m afraid I cannot do much to convince you otherwise. But I can do my best for the sake of others.

Trump’s right, he has done a great job, and recent approval ratings reflect this. And this isn’t some rinky-dink country of a few million. It’s a massive country with a massive population spanning a massive geographic area.

But it doesn’t take too much effort to remember that while Trump was taking decisive measures to meet coronavirus head on, the press and Democrats we’re trying to impeach him, and spectacularly failing in the process.

So while one can string together disparate, out of context quotes to make a case against Trump’s efforts, all I need to do is look at what one suspiciously left out to make a case for the opposite.

Jan. 14th

*crickets*

But, as we’ve come to learn, we now know that they they were warned in December by Taiwanese health officials.

Taiwan has accused the World Health Organization of failing to communicate an early warning about transmission of the coronavirus between humans, slowing the global response to the pandemic.

Health officials in Taipei said they alerted the WHO at the end of December about the risk of human-to-human transmission of the new virus but said its concerns were not passed on to other countries.

https://www.ft.com/content/2a70a02a-644a-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6a68

The WHO also advises against travel restrictions, contradicting most governments. An Italian virologist says the Italian government took the same approach, but that they would rather lay the lives of its citizens at the alter of political correctness.

"There was a proposal to isolate people coming from the epicenter, coming from China," he said. "Then it became seen as racist, but they were people coming from the outbreak." That, he said, led to the current devastating situation.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/18/europe/italy-coronavirus-lockdown-intl/

Trump, on the other hand, took decisive action almost immediately.

Jan. 25th

U.S. Working to Evacuate American Citizens From Epidemic-Stricken Chinese City

Jan, 29th

Trump Forms Coronavirus Task Force

Jan. 31st

Trump administration declares coronavirus emergency, orders first quarantine in 50 years

Feb. 3rd.

Since we’re using one’s optimism as a point of criticism, Andrea Ammon, the director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, had this to say about the coming pandemic.

“An outbreak of novel viruses is always an issue of public concern, [but] the situation right now is really under control [in Europe]," Ammon added.

https://euobserver.com/coronavirus/147350

A little more than a month later, Europe would be declared the epicenter of the coronavirus.

Feb. 4th (eve of impeachment trial), the night the press and Dems were praising Pelosi tearing up his speech, his state of the Union address:

“Protecting Americans health also means fighting infectious diseases. We are coordinating with the Chinese government and working closely together on the coronavirus outbreak in China. My administration will take all necessary steps to safeguard our citizens from this threat”.

Feb. 29th
(22 known infections of coronavirus and one death in the US)

Bans Travel from Iran

March Onward

At the first death, Trump’s actions immediately escalate, resulting in a flurry of proclamations, meetings with industry leaders, near daily press conferences, coordinating with governors, mayors, and consecutive legislative actions that are just too numerous to get into, but that all concerned citizens should take a look at from a sufficient distance from the antitrumpism.

The virus continues to spread and continues to infect many, but Trump’s leadership, his nimble instincts, decisive actions, and the 24/7 work of the administration has and is saving lives, not ending them.

As for my own criticisms, the massive spending is worrying me. But worse, on a personal note, the general public response and American refusal to take the issue seriously might seriously affect my family.

That you readily gobble misinformation so long as it serves your bias concerns me very little. Even now, after showing that the “I am not responsible” epitaph on Trump’s efforts is fake, you hold it up as a shield against your nascent dissonance.

That is where the poison lies: in your fantasies, in your world view, in the undying hope that you are on the right side of history and that your efforts weren’t simply that of a useful idiot. But the dustbin of history awaits your arrival.

Curfews have been ordered in India, Tunisia, Serbia and Jordan. Malaysia Is deploying the military to help restrict movement. California has issued a euphemistic “safer at home” order. The UK has given the police sweeping power to detain people they deem in need of quarantine. Non-essential movement is banned in France. Isreal is tracking cellphones of the infected.

I’m impressed that many governments are imposing these restrictions with regret, but for an indefinite amount of time authoritarianism is the new normal.

“No I don’t take responsibility at all” is another good one. He was speaking in regards to the lag in testing, which Fauci himself said was a “technical glitch”, and which others testified was because of previous regulations. And here it is used as fake news. Thanks for sharing.

Anti-Trump Fake News during a Pandemic

The Fake news has been working overtime to malign the administration’s efforts during the pandemic. Trump took decisive coronavirus-related actions back when impeachment was all the rage, saving countless lives while the media was garnering countless clicks, but none of that will stop the usual suspects from dancing on the graves of Americans to further their political futures. Their ghoulish efforts during this pandemic has only increased confusion, anger and division in a time when we need to pull together.

1. Google Website

This article by CNN once painted a much different picture: Google will partner with US government to develop a nationwide coronavirus website, company says. It once read: Google says it's not publishing a national-scale coronavirus site anytime soon after Trump announcement.

CNN and others ran with this “gotcha” until Google later confirmed that they were wrong.

2. The president is putting his own political interests over the well-being of the American people, according to Vanity Fair.

A Vanity Fair author said that “Trump Reportedly Afraid Coronavirus Testing Could Hurt Reelection Chances”. This dangerous accusation, sowing discord and division in a time of crisis, was extrapolated not from any evidence or statement of Trump’s, but from a politico reporter’s “understanding”.

My understanding is he did not push to do aggressive additional testing in recent weeks, and that's partly because more testing might have led to more cases being discovered of coronavirus outbreak, and the president had made clear - the lower the numbers on coronavirus, the better for the president, the better for his potential reelection this fall.

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/12/814881355/white-house-knew-coronavirus-would-be-a-major-threat-but-response-fell-short

3. Trump dissolved the pandemic response team, cut funding for the CDC, and reduced the CDC presence around the globe.

In May 2018, Trump ordered the NSC’s entire global health security unit shut down, calling for reassignment of Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer and dissolution of his team inside the agency. The month before, then-White House National Security Advisor John Bolton pressured Ziemer’s DHS counterpart, Tom Bossert, to resign along with his team. Neither the NSC nor DHS epidemic teams have been replaced. The global health section of the CDC was so drastically cut in 2018 that much of its staff was laid off and the number of countries it was working in was reduced from 49 to merely 10. Meanwhile, throughout 2018, the U.S. Agency for International Development and its director, Mark Green, came repeatedly under fire from both the White House and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. And though Congress has so far managed to block Trump administration plans to cut the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps by 40 percent, the disease-fighting cadres have steadily eroded as retiring officers go unreplaced.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/31/coronavirus-china-trump-united-states-public-health-emergency-response/

Much of these falsities are woven with little bits of truth, but is ultimately misleading,according to factcheck.org. As usual the nonsense is already widely spread among media parrots.

4. Trump called the Coronavirus a hoax.

CNN continues to push this lie to their servile followers.

But Trump never called the coronavirus a hoax. He was clearly speaking about the Democrat’s politicization of the pandemic, and only through deceptive editing of video could this lie possibly work.

5. Trump Declined WHO Coronavirus Test Kits

The trump-bashing reached new heights when politico claimed the administration declined WHO test kits.

Why the United States declined to use the WHO test, even temporarily as a bridge until the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could produce its own test, remains a perplexing question and the key to the Trump administration’s failure to provide enough tests to identify the coronavirus infections before they could be passed on, according to POLITICO interviews with dozens of viral-disease experts, former officials and some officials within the administration’s health agencies.

This was parroted by the Biden campaign during the debates and found a comfortable home in the minds of millions. Of course, it was false. No testing kits were offered. No testing kits were declined. And there was no deviation from standard protocols.

6. Trump offered large sums of cash for exclusive rights to vaccine from Germany

This unsubstantiated misinformation made Germans angry in a time of pandemic, and offered soothing balm to any Trump-hater’s cognitive dissonance. Citing some German newspaper, the claim made its way through the Twitterati and their obsequious followers, who readily believe anything that makes Trump look bad. But those actually involved in the discussions—on both sides—disputed the claims entirely, not that they made any sense to begin with.

https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/03/17/trump-poach-coronavirus-vaccine/

So, what if people are out of work and have not enough to pay rent/ mortgages?

The US is suspending HUD foreclosures and evictions for at least 60 days.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/18/hud-suspends-foreclosures-evictions-coronavirus-135783

Feck off, this thread's about Coronovirus, not Trump...

Oh, I brought up Trump. Hilarious.

Oh, he figuratively did the same. Utter nonsense.

Trump did the same as the CCP? That’s a massive lie.

Oh, here we go.

I’m just placing blame where it is due. I see no problem with that.

According to this report:

A study published in March indicated that if Chinese authorities had acted three weeks earlier than they did, the number of coronavirus cases could have been reduced by 95% and its geographic spread limited.

This timeline, compiled from information reported by the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the South China Morning Post and other sources, shows that China's cover-up and the delay in serious measures to contain the virus lasted about three weeks.

People are dying because of this.

What does any of that have to do with cronies?

I say that because they allowed massive companies to be exempt from mandated sick leave.

For a start I’m not going to run defence for the CCP.

As it is with the typical cronyism, companies with more than 500 employees are excluded from the paid leave mandate, for whatever reason. Companies with fewer than 50 are also exempt if to do so jeopardizes their business.

It’s not just politics. We can just let it happen or we can fight back. I prefer the latter.