Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

People have been floating around on cruise ships with dead bodies for weeks. De Santis initially said "keep floating", then said "Florida only." TA said "crickets."

Pretty sure "legal" was never a consideration, and most certainly not from the TA. They are now brazenly flaunting legality on any issue they feel strongly about. The stimulus bill just passed has a binding provision for oversight. Yesterday T fired the IG in charge of that oversight. If he is replaced at all, or not by someone whose only qualification is the licking of boots, it will be shocking.

If legality was indeed an issue here, then that's saying a lot about how they view(ed) this event.

 

Agree. I was questioning the call for him to "ban flights" with US citizens returning home.

 

We are buying them from the UK now, since they actually are making them. (Dyson)

And again, I will bet a small sum (I'm a teacher, so that's all I ever have) that the GM deal is already done. A grand announcement with T pretending to be all King Kong will be coming to FNC within days.

Tesla and Ford are also making them, FWIW. And they also proactively volunteered weeks ago. TA making a big deal of one and not the others because of the base's fascination with hating GM.

 

Perhaps that is all correct. I am just pointing out that some places do have a surplus that was not expected.

 

Apologies if I misread. I understood your quote as saying they had improved in the month that has followed.

I have no issue owning it if I misread.

 

Interesting conversation. I was not a Hillary fan at all but viewed her as, at least, an adult. I think only a very disciplined, science focused, coordinated, and well advised politician handles this situation with aplomb. Hillary is more science focused and would have advisors (not untrained/untested family members) advising her. She, however, would not have been well coordinated (my guess) as she is not a consensus builder and her long history of politics has given her many enemies no matter what she does (like Trump). In comparison, this crisis plays into every weakness of Trump: arrogance of thinking he knows everything, putting boot lickers in as advisors, undisciplined and totally incapable of working well with others. Sadly, the perfect storm for our country (though a war would be a disaster with this guy "coordinating" - and attacking others internally).

As to your your neighbors response, many think Trump has done some things right (limiting travel quickly), but many things wrong - most egregiously the ongoing failure with testing and giving bad information. But when you say things like "Definitely not a Trump fan, but not one of the radical bomb-tossing hate-filled lefties seen far too often, especially on this board", my guess is your neighbor may not engage with you openly? You just called people on this board "bomb-tossing" and "hate-filled." It would not breed conversation, as it is akin to somebody calling you a goose-steeping, neo-nazi. Not true and says more about the speaker than you.

 

And that would obviously be a logical step, also. I believe there have been articles posted here about governors working together to transfer supplies. I don't know if that included ventilators or not.

I believe one of the other lessons here is that stockpiles of "unnecessary" goods can't be produced months after the necessity finally arrives. It is harshly logical that a market system does not supply goods that only have a future hypothetical demand. So we should use this time to stash those supplies, if they thankfully go unneeded.

I hope that the need turns out to be much lower than originally feared. Even if so, one day the higher projection will be a reality. This is one of the great failings of this one. I'm fine with dragging the previous admins into it too, but the fact is this is 2020 and this admin wants to be reelected in just months. At this point they own everything, and the clear priority to never own anything except the positives, and even then to steal other's positives and to totally fabricate others or just blatantly lie about the fails is breath-taking. In this case, literally.

 

Again, no one is calling for that. It is more of a rebuttal to Trump's constant chest pounding over doing so.

 

As of yesterday she was feeling fine. I'll call her in a little bit.

 

We’ll pass Italy by end of week. Will probably get worse next week and that will hopefully be the peak.

 

Pretty much everything Trump has said about GM and Ventec's efforts to supply more ventilators, so far, has been false.

Inside G.M.’s Race to Build Ventilators, Before Trump’s Attack

Emphasis mine, we have to tiptoe around the snowflake because he has the power to destroy.

 

FFS. The tail chasing required to defend Trump is dizzying. I can see why some are (claiming to be) reluctant to do it.

Reality: The Trump Administration has bungled the handling of this pandemic from the start.

Trump Defender: Nuh-uh. Look how quickly they banned flights from China!

Reality: No - they only banned Chinese nationals from entry. Thousands of people returned from China to the U.S. and they weren't properly screened or isolated, if at all.

Trump Defender: Well, uh, it wouldn't be legal to stop U.S. citizens from returning home.

Reality: Right, no real travel ban was in place and people returning from China were not properly screened or isolated, if at all.

Trump Defender: Okay, maybe people returning from China should have been screened better, I'm just questioning this call for the Trump Administration to ban flights.

 

I deleted my comment because I didn't think this was the proper thread. With respect to your opinion as to how Clinton would have handled the current situation, I see nothing in her history to indicate she could do it, in spite of the nice adjectives you used to explain her nature.

And, if you don't think there are "hate filled" and "bomb tossers" on this board perhaps you are not reading many of the comments or are not being entirely honest with yourself as regards much of what's posted on this board, or both. Seemingly every discussion deteriorates quite quickly into an argument with Trump-bashing or Pelosi+Schumer bashing. Quite often there are erroneous generalizations and disparaging comments regarding liberals and conservatives, democrats and republicans. In fact, one person who could easily characterized as a "bomb tosser" recently referred to a group of conservative legislators as "scumbags". So it goes same comments from the same people, day after day.

 

Republican fundraiser looks to cash in on coronavirus

How did they go from non-existent to the largest global supply chain in the world in just a week?

 

“Relationship based, I can’t say anything else” = corruption.

 

It's been a minute, so let me clear my throat.. mmmmhmmmmmm.... Corruption Rules!!

 

Again, Trump's ban didn't stop multiple planes that originated in China from landing in the US. There were more that originated in China, made one stop in Europe, then landed in the US. The only thing Trump stopped from entering was Chinese nationals and other foreign nationals that were coming from the direct flights from China. Like the virus cares what a person's nationality is.

Everyone coming from China should have been quarantined and tested. That didn't happen. We simply weren't prepared, even though there was time enough to prepare to quarantine and test. But that time was wasted.

As far as what Hillary Clinton might have done, it is always difficult to speculate. But we do know that Trump notoriously ignores intel briefings, especially if they oppose what he "thinks" to be true. And we know there were briefings that warned at how serious this could get in early January. One would hope the President, any President, would have taken this seriously and prepared properly. We know Trump didn't, as he believed, in February, we had this under control, it would all, magically disappear, and he took no responsibility. Now sure how Clinton would have acted, but I know it wouldn't be any worse than what Trump did do.

 

Maybe he's smarter than you or I. He probably saw an opportunity based on people he met and decided to do something about it. What really pisses me off about some of you is how you draw conclusions and assume the worst. If this guy turns around and gouges the buyers, then go after him. But the article never stated that he was doing that. What if he does procure 100m masks and sells them at fair market value? How is that a bad thing? What if this was a democratic fundraiser? Would this even get an article on Politico? Would you even be creating a thread about it?

 

Why was he able to make it work when no one else could? Two weeks ago he wasn't in the business and now he is the biggest supplier in the world? You aren't the least bit curious about how he pulled that off? His cageyness about answering questions as to how he pulled it off doesn't raise your eyebrows a little?