Pyrian on 22/3/2020 at 18:39
...Are you joking? Reasonable estimations are ~3% or less, nor will everyone get it in the first place even if we did nothing, nor are there no mitigation efforts already underway. The study that sent everyone scrambling estimated a worst-case scenario of 4 million dead in the U.S.A., and that was under the assumption we did nothing and the health system was overwhelmed.
Gryzemuis on 22/3/2020 at 19:28
TBH I have no idea.
I still see people who don't take this seriously. I still see politicians that think we can get away with partial solutions. We don't have a vaccine or a medicine. And the biggest problem I see is: what will happen when numbers go down, and countries come out of lockdown ? Will the cycle repeat ? Anything is possible, I'm afraid.
Starker on 23/3/2020 at 05:53
President Best Brain is giving medical advice in order to appear to have this thing under control:
Quote:
(
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-fauci-coronavirus-hloroquine-azithromycin_n_5e768e4fc5b6eab77949660d?ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000067)
President Donald Trump touted a two-drug cocktail Saturday to battle coronavirus. But the medicines together have been linked to cardiac arrhythmia and sudden death.
Concerned physicians responded to Trump’s tweet crowing about what could be “one of the biggest game-changers in the history of medicine” with warnings about the serious side effects — and urgent pleas not to try to obtain the drugs without a medical prescription in consultation with a doctor.
[...]
Trump at Thursday’s briefing first touted the anti-malarial drug Chloroquine as having “tremendous promise” against the coronavirus. He falsely suggested it had been approved for use against COVID-19. “It’s been approved ... they took it down from many, many months to immediate,” Trump said.
But FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn immediately contradicted Trump, telling reporters: “That’s a drug that the president has directed us to take a closer look at as to whether an expanded use approach ... We want to do that in the setting of a clinical trial, a large pragmatic clinical trial.”
Trump responded that he had a “good feeling” about the drug. “It’s been around for a long time, so we know that if things don’t go as planned it’s not going to kill anybody,” Trump said.
[...]
A study by the Wuhan Institute of Virology found that people could die with just twice the recommended daily dosage of Chloroquine, Bloomberg reported.
China tried the drug as a treatment for the coronavirus after early positive clinical trials, but within days officials warned health-care professionals of its lethal side effects, according to Bloomberg.
What do you have to lose:
Quote:
(
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/health/coronavirus-chloroquine-trump.html)
At a long-winded White House briefing on Friday, President Trump enthusiastically and repeatedly promoted the promise of two long-used malaria drugs that are still unproven against the coronavirus, but being tested in clinical trials.
“I’m a smart guy,” he said, while acknowledging he couldn’t predict the drugs would work. “I feel good about it. And we’re going to see. You’re going to see soon enough.”
[...]
Mr. Trump’s boosterish attitude toward the drugs has deepened worries among doctors and patients with lupus and other diseases who rely on the drugs, because the idea that the old malaria drugs could work against the coronavirus has circulated widely in recent weeks and fueled shortages that have already left people rushing to fill their prescriptions.
[...]
The excitement about the drugs is based largely on reports from China and France that they seem to help patients. But researchers and Dr. Fauci have stressed that the reports are not based on carefully controlled studies, which are the only way to be sure a treatment really works.
In a tweet on Saturday, Mr. Trump called attention to yet another unapproved treatment for Covid-19, this time a combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, a common anti-bacterial agent. He cited a report by French researchers in a scientific journal that was not a controlled clinical trial, and studied only 20 patients.
As word of the drugs’ possible effects have spread around the globe, demand has surged, with hospitals ordering the treatments in a desperate effort to treat severely ill patients.
[...]
Hydroxychloroquine is especially important for people with lupus, which can be life-threatening, Dr. Lockshin said. The drug can lower the risk of dying from lupus and prevent organ damage, and is considered the standard of care. If patients stop taking it after using it regularly for a long time, they can gradually become quite ill. He said it was particularly disturbing to think that people known to benefit from the drug could lose access to it because it is being diverted to a disease for which there is no solid evidence that it actually works.
[...]
Onisis Stefas, the chief pharmacy officer for Northwell Health’s 23 hospitals, said the system began stocking up on hydroxychloroquine several weeks ago. He said the drug was being given to many coronavirus patients, but that Northwell’s 10 pharmacies were also setting aside supplies for patients who had been taking it regularly for lupus or rheumatoid arthritis.
Concerned about shortages, Mr. Stefas said, “The last thing I want to happen now is that, especially since President Trump and others have been mentioning this by name, is that people will go out and ask their doctors to write prescriptions, just in case.”
On Friday, Mr. Trump appeared to encourage Americans to do just that, arguing that there was little downside to taking a malaria drug that is already on the market.
“If you wanted, you can have a prescription. You get a prescription,” he said. “You know the expression, what the hell do you have to lose?”
Renzatic on 23/3/2020 at 06:03
My mom takes Chloroquine. It is not a drug you want to suggest people take lightly.
Renzatic on 23/3/2020 at 06:30
Someone needs to explain to me the wisdom of keeping the bailouts of any large corporation a secret for 6 months. I can understand why we have to bail out some banks and corporations, even if it stings to do so. You don't want them going under, leaving millions of Americans without a job, and taking the economy with them...
...but why hide who gets what?
Pyrian on 23/3/2020 at 07:40
I'm actually a little surprised they didn't just straight up make that figure past the election. Obviously they need to make sure the brazen corruption that is certain to follow stays under wraps, but at least this way they'll have six months to figure out how to not release it for another two (or less). Going by the Trump administration's behavior so far, they'll just not release it and fight any lawsuits tooth and nail. Shouldn't be hard to snow it in for a couple months. They'll even have the gall to say it shouldn't be released during the election runup, I'm sure.
demagogue on 23/3/2020 at 08:57
What the news says:
Quote:
But that confidence seems to have faded since then, as Democrats press for a host of provisions Republicans have resisted, including expansions of paid leave, unemployment benefits, and a huge stabilization fund to help state and local governments weather the crisis.
What the rightwing cohort says ... Let's see if this works for you like it does for me, but the trend is pretty lopsided towards rightnut rage:
(
https://www.facebook.com/search/posts/?q=pelosi&epa=SERP_TAB)
(
https://twitter.com/hashtag/pelosi?lang=en)
If I could boil it down, my rightwing cohort is raging that Dems aren't being socialist
enough by not allowing this relief to get to the little guy like the GOP is trying to do and instead funnel it to their special interest or just to spite their altruistic efforts, when it looks like the Dems are trying to get his relief to actually go to the little guy, like paid leave and unemployment where it's actually needed and what actually gets people staying at home, instead of big businesses that we can guess aren't going to pass the relief down against Trump's flying monkey enablers trying to funnel it to their own interests.
Or something. Their comment threads are so incoherent batting between rabid pro- and anti-socialism that the phrase irony inside of irony doesn't even give it justice ... it's dizzying.
Starker on 23/3/2020 at 15:07
Testing, testing:
[video=youtube;ZlU473QiD8A]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlU473QiD8A[/video]
Nothing to worry about:
[video=youtube;xfPk1HIBLfM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfPk1HIBLfM[/video]
Pyrian on 24/3/2020 at 06:58
Quote:
When asked about the provision allowing the Treasury to dole out this money without oversight, Trump said: “Look, I’ll be the oversight. I’ll be the oversight.”
BWAHAHAHAHAHA... Ha. Hahahahahahaha.
Heh. Heh.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I can't stop laughing WTF.
Can anybody draw a Trump fox saying this over a dollar bill henhouse, please?
Starker on 24/3/2020 at 13:01
Ah, unrequited love:
Quote:
(
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/21/politics/north-korea-trump/index.html)
President Donald Trump confirmed Sunday that he sent a letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un about cooperation on the novel coronavirus and offered assistance to North Korea, Iran and other countries that need help.
"On North Korea, Iran, and others, we are open for helping other countries. It is a very serious time. North Korea's going through something, Iran is going through something very, very strong," Trump said. "Iran is really going through a difficult period with respect to this as you know. I have put the -- it's really a glad hand, to North Korea, to Iran and to many other countries."
His confirmation comes after North Korea said Trump sent Kim a personal letter in which he expressed his willingness to help with "anti-epidemic work," according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency early Sunday.
In the letter, Trump "explained his plan to propel the relations between the two countries of the DPRK and the U.S. and expressed his intent to render cooperation in the anti-epidemic work, saying that he was impressed by the efforts made by the Chairman to defend his people from the serious threat of the epidemic," according to a statement from Kim Yo Jong, Kim's younger sister and first vice department director for WPK Central Committee, as reported by KCNA.
She also praised Trump's move as "good judgment and proper action" toward retaining a good relationship with the hermit nation at a time with what she referred to as "big difficulties and challenges."
"We regard it as a good judgment and proper action for the U.S. president to make efforts to keep the good relations he had with our Chairman by sending a personal letter again at a time as now when big difficulties and challenges lie in the way of developing the bilateral relations, and think that this should be highly estimated," she said.
[...]
The two leaders have enjoyed a turbulent relationship since Trump has been in office. Prior to their historic first summit in 2018 Trump and Kim had traded threats and insults with the American President dubbing the North Korean leader a "little rocket man." But after meeting Kim in Singapore, the two seemed to strike up an unlikely friendship culminating in the President telling a rally in fall 2018 that they "fell in love."
In January, Trump sent a birthday message to Kim but his public comments on North Korea have been noticeably more muted.
On New Year's Eve, Trump reiterated that the leaders had a "good relationship," but also acknowledged that they may have divergent agendas.
"Look, he likes me; I like him. We get along. He's representing his country. I'm representing my country. We have to do what we have to do," Trump told reporters at Mar-A-Lago when he was asked about the Christmas gift promised by the North Koreans. That gift -- which the administration expected to be a missile launch of some sort -- never came.
[...]
Quote:
(
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/21/world/asia/coronavirus-north-korea-trump-kim.html)
[...]
On Saturday, Mr. Kim attended the testing of two short-range ballistic missiles by ​his military.
Ms. Kim said on Sunday that her brother had “mentioned his special personal relations with President Trump again and appreciated the personal letter.” But she said good personal relations between the two leaders were not enough to improve their countries' ties.
“We try to hope for the day when the relations between the two countries would be as good as the ones between the two top leaders, but it has to be left to time and be watched whether it can actually happen,” she said. “However, we will never lose or waste time for nothing, but will keep changing ourselves to be more powerful for that time just as how we made ourselves for the past two years.”
[...]
