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OT: Good news on CV-19 treatment

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Trump did something wrong and most people know it.

The US Population is 4 times as great as Canada but the Virus death count is 14 times greater than Canada.

The US population is 2.5 times greater Mexico but the virus death count is almost 7 times greater than Mexico.

The US population is 1.6 times greater than Brazil but the virus death count is 2.6 times greater.

That not a good look for the USA with the best health care plan in the world. I can’t imagine the death count if we had Brazil or Mexico health care.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

How dare you hold the American government to the lofty standard of Mexico and Brazil.

Of the 8 countries with worse death rates than the US, two are extremely tiny and dense (San Marino and Andorra) and one is Sweden which didn't shut at all. Others like Italy have much average older populations.
 
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Trump's handling of the pandemic has been, overall, drastically sub-par.

He de-funded the Pandemic Office right out of the gate, limiting the federal government's ability to be proactive. When the Coronavirus was brought to his attention by the IC (end of 2019), he ignored the briefings. When the U.S. started to show cases he implemented a partial travel ban and called it a day, but that action was too little, too late.

His rhetoric, throughout, was fashioned to downplay the overall impact of Covid-19 ("it will go away, like a miracle, in April, warm weather, etc.) and at every turn was incorrect. He chose to deflect any accountability, opting instead to blame the Obama administration for failings that his administration owned, outright. Recall the outright lies about lack of a "playbook" as well as the ridiculous "they left us with defective tests", ultimately winding up with, "I don't accept any responsibility, at all."

Then there's the incoherent ramblings about hydroxychloroquine - now proven to be ineffective, injecting disinfectant, bright lights, etc. All while still maintaining that, like a miracle, it would just go away.

Trump's narcissism and megalomania, translated into event handling, ensured that no narrative contrary to his own views would be heard. Putting Jared Kushner in charge of the working group, keeping subject matter experts on a leash, berating "Dems" at the state level who chose to operate contrary to his demagoguery. The whole thing has been a textbook example of what not to do.

Sure, it's absolutely likely that the Chinese government worked aggressively to hide the virus from the world. But it's also true, as mentioned previously, that multiple intelligence services - not just ours, but those of other countries, as well - saw through the bluff back in November and December and sent up the alarm. Since Trump doesn't read his PDBs, and has repeatedly stated his mistrust of the intelligence community, there was no action taken.

You don't have to do a lot of research into DJT, in general, and his presidency in particular to know that he surrounds himself with sycophants, does not permit contrary points of view and is laser-focused on his "numbers". He sees himself, and his perceived success, solely from the perspective of the polling data and will immediately flatten anything that puts his numbers at risk. He intentionally sought to downplay and ignore a global pandemic out of fears that he would be tagged with the resulting economic downturn. He wants to be popular, he wants to be reelected and, facts and reality be damned, anything that stands in the way of those goals will be attacked and marginalized, even to the extent that it may risk the overall health of the nation.

Honestly, I don't see the nursing home issue as some sort of crime against humanity. Yes, lots of old people died in nursing homes, but the residential care model itself is largely to blame - in other words, it's systemic. Start with the fact that they are inherently high-density, which we now understand is a prominent driver of infection as a stand-alone factor. Combine that with the fact that most of the residents aren't in great health to begin with, add in the scope of practice inherent to nursing home staff and top it off with the additional element of a for-profit business model and you have a recipe for disaster.

The only possible solution would have been to remove all of the Covid positive residents and put them someplace else. It wouldn't have been impossible to do, but it absolutely would have been difficult. But again, I go back to the notion of "cohesive strategy". I can't say this enough so I'll shout it, secure in the knowledge that we know each other well enough that you'll understand I'm not yelling at you: IT IS THE JOB OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO DEVELOP PANDEMIC MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES.

Handling virus outbreak in high density residential facilities, as well as handling virus outbreak within the context of at-risk populations, should be elementary within the context of those strategies.

The Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents, published during the Obama administration and mentioned, anecdotally, throughout the last several months (and the exact document which Trump and his administration has claimed never existed) is laid out in a manner which would be eerily familiar to you and I (and @e5fdny as well). It reads almost exactly like any federal document oriented toward emergency management. And one of the things that it does is outline, very specifically, a sort of ICS/NIMS event-response rubric allowing for the deployment of various task force components to investigate, manage and mitigate infectious disease outbreaks as well as the deployment of material resources from federal stockpiles. It is precisely the same command / control / execute structure that we are familiar with, having taken all of the ICS/NIMS certification courses. As you read through it, you begin to understand that there was, in fact, a general outline for pandemic response at the federal level which was overwhelmingly ignored.

There's serious dot-connecting to be done, here. Recall the conversations about Trump's refusal to engage the previous administration for purposes of transition planning. The mismanagement of this event is a direct result of the fact that almost none of those (typically) hundreds of meetings was ever held. To put it in more relatable terms, imagine if an election of officers was held at your firehouse or first aid squad. Imagine that the people who won, top to bottom, had no actual experience in firefighting or first aid and no experience running such an organization. Now imagine that the New Year comes along and they walk into the house for the first time, get sworn in, and then tell all of the outgoing officers to GTFO.

Now imagine a major MCI in the following days.

It's a really good analogy.

In before the lock, but perfectly said. I've said all these things multiple times, but I'll give you credit for tying it together better. Many misses and errors, as you said, with my vote for #1, overall, being simply not following the pandemic playbook for what is obviously a National Security threat with the response to such threats wholly owned by the Federal Government. And it's not just the playbook left by the last administration.

Some don't know that there were two other major pandemic exercises in 2018, one run by the actual Administration, as Azar at HHS oversaw the "Crimson Contagion" simulation last year to evaluate whether we were ready (no) for a pandemic, plus the CSIS (highly respected bipartisan DC think tank with the team's co-chairs being Julie Gerberding, former CDC head and now at Merck, and former US senator Kelly Ayotte, a republican from NH) came out with a very detailed analysis of what was needed to protect human health/national security from biological threats last year, also. By the way, that report’s number-one recommendation was to undo the Trump administration’s cuts to pandemic planning: “Restore health security leadership at the White House National Security Council.” Both are detailed in the links below.

https://www.wired.com/story/an-oral-history-of-the-pandemic-warnings-trump-ignored/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-outbreak.html

And if I had to pick out the one very specific task that this administration botched the worst it would be testing. Testing is the most critical part of determining where and when any viral transmissions are occurring, so one can quickly respond with interventions. While we were completely screwing up testing, countries who successfully fought off the pandemic (so far - it ain't over yet) mostly relied on massive early testing to start. We likely had 25K+ cases by early March in the NYC Metro area (which includes NNJ/CNJ) before we had run a single test! If we had known the explosive exponential growth ongoing in our area in early March, we could have locked things down ~2 weeks earlier, reducing transmissions and deaths b 70-90%, as several studies have shown.

It was initially a failure by the CDC, but when it became obvious by about 2/10 that they were screwing it up, Azar and Trump should have stepped in and demanded we bring the readily available WHO test into the US. In any decently run organization, if there is an obvious source of catastrophic failure to an enterprise and that "source" can be easily and cheaply dual-sourced, one spends the money to do so, no questions asked. We did not. South Korea, Taiwan, China and other countries knew this and ensured they had adequate testing. They all have about 1/100th the deaths per capita that we do.
 
Totally asinine comment.
If the N.Y. and N.J leadership took the same approach as President Trump back in March { it’s a Hoax} the death count would be much worse.
And instead they took the genius approach of sending infected people back into nursing homes where the most vulnerable people were living, causing 12k deaths. Btw trump never took that approach. He's cleared this up literally dozens of times by explaining that the media hysteria was a hoax, which is true. You say his comment is asinine yet fail to explain how. I like Cuomo but him and Murphy got their states crushed. At least Cuomo wasn't keeping his state locked down while protesting with thousands of people.
 
In before the lock, but perfectly said. I've said all these things multiple times, but I'll give you credit for tying it together better. Many misses and errors, as you said, with my vote for #1, overall, being simply not following the pandemic playbook for what is obviously a National Security threat with the response to such threats wholly owned by the Federal Government. And it's not just the playbook left by the last administration.

Some don't know that there were two other major pandemic exercises in 2018, one run by the actual Administration, as Azar at HHS oversaw the "Crimson Contagion" simulation last year to evaluate whether we were ready (no) for a pandemic, plus the CSIS (highly respected bipartisan DC think tank with the team's co-chairs being Julie Gerberding, former CDC head and now at Merck, and former US senator Kelly Ayotte, a republican from NH) came out with a very detailed analysis of what was needed to protect human health/national security from biological threats last year, also. By the way, that report’s number-one recommendation was to undo the Trump administration’s cuts to pandemic planning: “Restore health security leadership at the White House National Security Council.” Both are detailed in the links below.

https://www.wired.com/story/an-oral-history-of-the-pandemic-warnings-trump-ignored/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-outbreak.html

And if I had to pick out the one very specific task that this administration botched the worst it would be testing. Testing is the most critical part of determining where and when any viral transmissions are occurring, so one can quickly respond with interventions. While we were completely screwing up testing, countries who successfully fought off the pandemic (so far - it ain't over yet) mostly relied on massive early testing to start. We likely had 25K+ cases by early March in the NYC Metro area (which includes NNJ/CNJ) before we had run a single test! If we had known the explosive exponential growth ongoing in our area in early March, we could have locked things down ~2 weeks earlier, reducing transmissions and deaths b 70-90%, as several studies have shown.

It was initially a failure by the CDC, but when it became obvious by about 2/10 that they were screwing it up, Azar and Trump should have stepped in and demanded we bring the readily available WHO test into the US. In any decently run organization, if there is an obvious source of catastrophic failure to an enterprise and that "source" can be easily and cheaply dual-sourced, one spends the money to do so, no questions asked. We did not. South Korea, Taiwan, China and other countries knew this and ensured they had adequate testing. They all have about 1/100th the deaths per capita that we do.
Still infected with TDS-16 I see. Prays and thoughts for your recovery!
[roll]
 
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He has shed himself of misinformed, misanthropic twits.
If only it were that easy. But he surely shed himself of some misinformed, misanthropic twits.

Incidentally, you have some very good, factual, logical posts in this thread. Despite the efforts of those who would prefer we all remain misinformed.
 
If only it were that easy. But he surely shed himself of some misinformed, misanthropic twits.

Incidentally, you have some very good, factual, logical posts in this thread. Despite the efforts of those who would prefer we all remain misinformed.

Thank you, sir.

Incidentally, DYC keeps upgrading the equipment for August. We're now up to a Bali 5.4.
 
Thank you, sir.

Incidentally, DYC keeps upgrading the equipment for August. We're now up to a Bali 5.4.
That's nice (and probably wise) of them. It looks like it's shaping up to be an amazingly good time.
 
Murphy and Cuomo caused over 12,000 deaths due to their criminal nursing home policies. Get ready for the lawsuits!

And your phony, corrupt, delusional Trump publicly called the COVID crisis fake news on multiple occasions in February and March. He caused ten of thousands of US fatalities for his denial of the pandemic crisis and hoodwinking the US public.
 
President Trump has saved 2.85MM lives.

So you're saying we would have had 3million deaths from covid in the US with anyone else at the helm - despite the fact that we already lead the world with 100,000+ deaths?

Talk about absurdities!

Are you sure it wasn't 2.9 million, or even 3 million? Your explanation for this is going to be pure gold, or should I say fiction.

The ONLY thing I remember that our president did to limit the virus was to restrict the number of Chinese nationals that could arrive here on planes. Americans returning to USA could return by plane.

He did nothing to restrict flights from Europe which probably resulted in the severe outbreaks in our area.

He stayed in dreamland for more than a month predicting the virus would just go away - while the cases exploded in our area.

He encouraged people to not wear masks or social distance themselves from one another.

He refused to require any actions from states and encouraged re-opening against the recommendations of his own advisors such as Fauci.

Did all these actions save millions of lives also?

Please share with me a detailed account of the actions he took with the number of saved lives associated with each of them. I would prefer a scientific explanation, but I suppose it will be just as edifying to hear the actual source of such knowledge.
 
So you're saying we would have had 3million deaths from covid in the US with anyone else at the helm - despite the fact that we already lead the world with 100,000+ deaths?

Talk about absurdities!

Are you sure it wasn't 2.9 million, or even 3 million? Your explanation for this is going to be pure gold, or should I say fiction.

The ONLY thing I remember that our president did to limit the virus was to restrict the number of Chinese nationals that could arrive here on planes. Americans returning to USA could return by plane.

He did nothing to restrict flights from Europe which probably resulted in the severe outbreaks in our area.

He stayed in dreamland for more than a month predicting the virus would just go away - while the cases exploded in our area.

He encouraged people to not wear masks or social distance themselves from one another.

He refused to require any actions from states and encouraged re-opening against the recommendations of his own advisors such as Fauci.

Did all these actions save millions of lives also?

Please share with me a detailed account of the actions he took with the number of saved lives associated with each of them. I would prefer a scientific explanation, but I suppose it will be just as edifying to hear the actual source of such knowledge.

I know you already know this, but you're wasting your time. They can't actually prove anything they're saying. They're allergic to math.
 
President Trump has saved 2.85MM lives.
What I find most interesting about this claim is not its utter implausibility, but its specificity.

On March 31, the CDC announced that absent any mitigation, we'd have from 1.6MM to 2.2MM deaths. By this time, this statement was already somewhat of a hypothetical, as most states had already begun mitigation efforts.

So even if one were willing to:
  • Accept the outside figure of 2.2MM deaths
  • Accept the claim that Trump deserves sole and total credit for the state-imposed mitigation efforts (which as mentioned is utterly implausible),
We still have to account for the extra 650K lives that he saved.

I guess I just don't appreciate the magnitude of the man.
 
What I find most interesting about this claim is not its utter implausibility, but its specificity.

On March 31, the CDC announced that absent any mitigation, we'd have from 1.6MM to 2.2MM deaths. By this time, this statement was already somewhat of a hypothetical, as most states had already begun mitigation efforts.

So even if one were willing to:
  • Accept the outside figure of 2.2MM deaths
  • Accept the claim that Trump deserves sole and total credit for the state-imposed mitigation efforts (which as mentioned is utterly implausible),
We still have to account for the extra 650K lives that he saved.

I guess I just don't appreciate the magnitude of the man.
His very stride conjures bigly magnitudes. :WideSmile:
 
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