There are no current vaccines for any coronavirus. I’m not comfortable explaining why that is the case, but I’m usually told that the actual killer coronaviruses (there are not many, most viruses of this kind are not big problems for humans) came and went too fast to “need” a vaccine.
This is not really true, since at least one such virus is endemic to a region, a continuous threat, but found mostly in domestic camels. There was a vaccine developed to address that virus, but testing was never completed, and deployment never happened, so we don’t know if it was really effective.
The question of “can there be a vaccine” and “do we develop an immunity to this virus” are related, and we still see the occasional panicked revelation that maybe humans don’t actually develop an immunity to this virus. Don’t worry, we do. If we didn’t the situation would look very different than it does now.
However, we don’t know everything we need to know about that immunity. We know that for this kind of virus, it is possible that a partial immunity develops in most but not all people, and that some people have a much stronger immune response than others. It is quite possible that we develop an immunity that lasts only a few years (for most people), and it is also possible that repeated exposures and/or vaccinations will build up a longer term immunity. These are all important questions, but they do not raise the possibility that we can’t be or won’t be immune to SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes Covid-19). Rather, they frame the issue of how a vaccine is actually deployed. We may see a world, in two years from now, where a Covid-stick is an annual event, but one that people take more seriously than they currently take the annual flu shot, and quite possibly, one that works better (SARS-CoV-2 and influenza are very different things).
There are several vaccines in development. In my experience tracking disease and epidemiology (I’m an immunologists or an epidemiologists, but both my wife and I play these roles in the classroom and she is actually a fellow in an immunology program for teachers), the assertion that “we’re close to a vaccine” is one of the Great Lies, which are “the check is in the mail” and two other ones.
But, there is hope, and it might be real hope, that there will be a vaccine, and there is even the possibility that it will take less time than the several years. It may even take less than the oft-cited but pretty much made up “18 month” time span.
A few takes current, add to comments your newer information if you have some:
April 14: Microneedle coronavirus vaccine triggers immune response in mice
Researchers led by Drs. Louis Falo, Jr. and Andrea Gambotto from the University of Pittsburgh have been working to develop vaccines for other coronaviruses… They adapted the system they had been developing to produce a candidate MERS vaccine to rapidly produce an experimental vaccine using the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.
…a method for delivering their MERS vaccine into mice using a microneedle patch. Such patches resemble a piece of Velcro, with hundreds of tiny microneedles made of sugar. The needles prick just into the skin and quickly dissolve, releasing the vaccine. Since the immune system is highly active in the skin, delivering vaccines this way may produce a more rapid and robust immune response than standard injections under the skin.
When delivered by microneedle patch to mice, three different experimental MERS vaccines induced the production of antibodies against the virus. These responses were stronger than the responses generated by regular injection of one of the vaccines along with a powerful immune stimulant (an adjuvant). Antibody levels continued to increase over time in mice vaccinated by microneedle patch—up to 55 weeks, when the experiments ended….
April 14th: Johnson and Johnson claim a vaccine is imminent
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) said on Tuesday it plans to begin imminent production of its trial COVID-19 vaccine on an “at risk” basis, as the coronavirus pandemic infects nearly 2 million people around the world.
Manufacturing “at risk” allows the world’s third largest pharmaceutical company to produce a product before its ultimate design is finalized and released to the public. The company plans to produce its COVID-19 vaccine in the Netherlands, and a facility it is updating in the United States.
“We’re manufacturing at risk to ensure that should the clinical development and the trials be successful, we are in a position to kind of flip the switch and ready to go, to create great access across the globe,” J&J CFO Joe Wolk told Yahoo Finance in an interview.
J&J began developing its vaccine for COVID-19 in early January with its European subsidiary Janssen Vaccines & Prevention B.V. It’s using the same biological platform Janssen uses in developmental vaccines for Ebola, Zika and Influenza.
During J&J’s first quarter earnings call, Chief Scientific Officer Paul Stoffels said the company is also negotiating with partners in Europe and Asia to produce the vaccine, and partnerships will be announced in the coming weeks.
“Our goal is to enable the supply of more than 1 billion doses of the vaccine globally,” Stoffels said.
April 14th: Two Pharmaceutical Giants Collaborating To Develop One. GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi are joining up …
” in an unprecedented collaboration. It brings together two of the world’s biggest vaccine companies with proven pandemic technologies and significant scale, all with the aim of developing an adjuvanted COVID-19 vaccine.”
An adjuvanted vaccine is one that includes a compound known as an adjuvant that enhances someone’s immune response to a vaccine. In the partnership, GSK will be providing the adjuvant and Sanofi will provide the specific protein component of the coronavirus that will generate the appropriate antibody response.
“… we’re planning to start trials in the next few months,” Walmsley said. “And if we’re successful, subject to regulatory considerations, we aim to complete the development required to make the vaccine available in the second half of 2021.”
There is an earlier reported vaccine in development at Johns Hopkins.
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Hoping for a vaccine that works and provides years long immunity to COVID-19.
Worst case scenario – no vaccine for 18 months or longer.
My thought is we will have to go back to work, and develop herd immunity.
It might be smart to do that geographically.
For example, east of the Mississippi goes back to work first. West of Mississippi provides doctors, ventilators and help to East. After a month or so, the West goes back to work and the East provides doctors and ventilators to the West.
Of course, we could do it by State or other geographical region.
This is just a concept idea for discussion.
I don’t think we can afford not to go back to work until we have a working vaccine.
Probably have to go back to work no later than end of June 2020.
Otherwise, the “cure” is worse than the disease.
What are your thoughts?
I don’t think it is a binary choice. Both the disease and the cure are bad!
Thanks for the reply Greg!
Yes – both are bad.
We have to go back to work – it is just a matter of when and how to do that.
Obviously each Governor can make their own decision.
It seems fairly obvious to me that a staged rolling back to work plan would be better than just randomly having each state go back to work willy nilly.
Hence my suggestion.
I hope the states decide to coordinate and put together a regional staged back to work plan – as that would be the most efficient way to build up herd immunity.
We will see.
“Otherwise, the “cure” is worse than the disease.
What are your thoughts?”
You are still an idiot — my thoughts. (Actually, demonstrable fact, based on your posts.)
My thought is that the voters who voted Trump into the presidency should be the ones to open up the country and go back to work while the rest of us stay at home until we see how much danger they encounter. After all, it wouldn’t be nearly this bad in the U. S. if almost anyone else but Trump had been president. (I realize that not all of those voters could be identified but many could be from the crowing they did after the election.) What say you, dean?
Tyvor:
Of course, only those who want to go back to work will. The ones who don’t want to go back to work won’t.
Eventually, the ones who stay home will have to leave and then probably get sick and hopefully get better. That is the nature of herd immunity. You won’t be able to hide forever. No one can (or afford to).
Interesting article on the cost benefit of no social distancing versus too much social distancing.
https://www.pnas.org/content/104/18/7588
Too much social distancing causes more infection from the second wave.
Interesting.
Tyvor
I’ll go along with that. Off you go RickA there’s a good chap.
Rick, as we all know, has a penchant for writing utter drivel. No wonder he supports scum like Trump.
His ‘herd immunity’ comment spits in the face of the doctors, nurses and other medical staff on the front lines. He is essentially telling them that they have no choice but to expect to be worked quite literally to death as hospitals remain clogged by patients sick with Covid-19.
Lastly, there is no guarantee that exposure to the virus confers long term immunity. Fauci said that infected individuals may lose their immunity later this year as the virus evolves. The whole herd immunity schtick is garbage. And in trying to achieve it hundreds of thousands will die.
Aa for being unable to hide forever, try telling that to elderly people or those with underlying medical conditions who are terrified at the moment. What a callous, sickeningly snide remark. Trust Rick to make it.
What Rick’s comments unambiguously prove is that there is clearly something wrong in his head. The crass tone of his comments on this thread are chilling.
Well I and my wife belong to both of those categories but we are not afraid having had much to face during life. What both of us are concerned about are our children and grandchildren where all of the former are classed as essential workers (funny that during the good times their salaries did not reflect that) two being in senior medical positions. Two granddaughters are also in the NHS front line.
It is because of the wrong headed values of the classes from which our ‘senior’ politicians are drawn that those now classed as essential workers are going into battle with a lack of equipment that is hazarding their health and very existence. All those Tory MPs (includes she of my area) who voted against a pay rise for NHS staff whilst awarding themselves above the rate of inflation increases for themselves I hold in the greatest contempt. Every time I hear one addressed as ‘the honourable’ or ‘my honourable’ my sick bucket contents rises.
On the problems and time scales of providing vaccines (and more) against pathogens I once again suggest a reading of:
‘Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs’ by Michael Osterholm, Mark Olshaker
Jeffh:
It is interesting how some people are unable to handle reality.
The reality is we cannot stop COVID-19. With the number of people already infected, with reinfections and with people coming back out of isolation (which we will have to eventually), with the prospects of a vaccine not being available for 18 months (or ever – as there has never been a human vaccine for a coronavirus before) – we simply have to be real.
We cannot stay home forever. The Federal and State governments are beginning to plan for going back to work. Once we do there will be a second wave of infections. That is reality.
Until we build up herd immunity the infection will continue to spread, probably seasonally like flu.
Hopefully we will get a vaccine – but that won’t help unless it is available before we go back to work – which is a month or two away.
That is reality.
Sometimes reality can be chilling.
Re: “only those who want to go back to work will. ”
Unfortunately, wanting has little to do with it for all too many people in the U. S. They have to work or they don’t eat, pay rent, mortgage, car loans, insurance, medications, etc. So, they have to hope they’ll not “win” the COVID-19 lottery and have to be hospitalized and maybe die after piling up medical bills that their survivors can’t afford to pay.
If what you’ve read or heard doesn’t include the correct data it’s speculation and not worth much. We don’t have all the correct data yet, in large part thanks to Trump’s incompetence at making tests available. What is known is that the virus is very easily transmitted, that asymptomatic but infected people can transmit the virus,* and even some people known to have survived the disease still have the virus in their systems (i.e., give positive test results. Unknown, because of the lack of testing (ignore Trump’s lies to the contrary), is a good estimate of how many and where the infected* and how long any immunity actually lasts once gained. * When a NYC hospital tested all pregnant women coming in to give birth, they found, if memory serves, that about 16% tested positive but were asymptomatic.
Tyvor:
I also heard that the tests are only 90% accurate, with both false positives and false negatives. So that is not good. I heard something similar about the blood serum testing.
So we not only need more testing, but better testing.
So we will have to make a lot of decisions without good information.
What else is new! Thats life.
“Unfortunately, wanting has little to do with it for all too many people in the U. S. They have to work or they don’t eat, pay rent, mortgage, car loans, insurance, medications, etc”
True, but those are the people that trump and folks like rickA deem to be nothing more than chattle and whose lives don’t matter, so it’s fine.
Related: you may have noticed on the news the “protest” of right-wingers in Lansing, Michigan, yesterday. The claim was they were protesting the “socialist takeover” of MI by its governor. The displays of guns, Confederate flags, shouts of “lock her up” aimed at Whitmer (the governor), etc., showed it was more than that. It was a turnout driven by “Michiganders Against Quarantine”, a right-wing group funded by DeVos money. Their primary goal is to smear Whitmer with the usual falsehoods we’ve come to expect from the right because her name has been tossed around as a possible VP candidate choice. The fact that she’s a strong and outspoken woman who shouted when Trump stole a shipment of equipment Michigan had ordered also makes her a target.
Local news folks interviewed some of the asshats who were protesting, asking “Why are you here?”
— Fighting a socialist
— Because we’re not allowed to buy (name several things, all assertions shown to be false by referencing the governor’s statements when this started)
— This isn’t needed because there is no danger, it’s fake
Organizers also claimed people would stay in their cars — didn’t happen. They claimed they wanted to slow traffic around the capitol building: they had people park and leave cars blocking two drives into Sparrow Hospital.
“I also heard that the tests are only 90% accurate, with both false positives and false negatives. ”
If you are stupid enough to think that false negatives and positives are surprising — you should educate yourself before making any more comments. That is trump level ignorance.
The notion that making money is more important than safety of the public is also stupid.
On two related notes: we’re getting results that support what was widely suspected at the start.
The UofM medical group had been testing it on patients and stopped early because of two things: no benefit and non-trivial side-effects.
It is clear that a significant minority of the US population has dumbed down to levels which are little better than that of the DumbF in charge. That DeVos is education speaks volumes.
PS I have a degree in education, studying comparative education alongside American exchange students (from East and West coasts but none from the South or the Midwest) in the 1980s the fractured nature of US education was one topic back then.
The slow descent into loss of analytical thinking from lack of knowledge is well presented in this book:
‘The Age of American Unreason: Dumbing Down and the Future of Democracy’ by Susan Jacoby
Worth a read.
Here you are RickA, this is where your illustrious (cough) leader is sending the USA:
US’s global reputation hits rock-bottom over Trump’s coronavirus response the lead image could not show Trump in a more accurate light.
Priceless, coming from you.
Here’s a bit of reality you have conveniently ignored:
– Denying / minimising climate change is just like denying / minimising CV
– Rightwing governments and the muppet army that keeps them in power do both
– The CV disaster is a little preview of why rightwing ideologues are so dangerous
Had the US (and UK) government not indulged in denialism and minimisation, the disease might have been contained early enough to avoid the vast economic costs of extended lockdown and the likelihood of repeated infection spikes as / when it is eased.
Not to mention the shocking human cost unfolding daily.
Perhaps you might ponder the climate change / CV denialism parallels if you find time during your enforced stay at home.
And do please read this analysis about how wrongheaded talk of an early end to lockdown actually is.
BBD:
Nobody denies that the climate changes. Hello – ice ages.
I also find it interesting that you blame the spread of this Chinese origin virus on Republicans. As if a different party would have made any difference. That is your ideological denial. Liberals were bitching over banning travel from China back on Jan. 25th – calling it racist. So no matter who was in power, this disease would have reached the USA and with an R0 over 1 it would have spread.
All we are doing is spreading out the number of infections over time – which isn’t bad, but which we cannot do forever.
You are in denial if you think any country can avoid this disease.
I guess we will see.
Hello non sequitur.
The spread in the USA is down to the Trump administration. The geographic origin of the virus is irrelevant to that fact.
The same goes for the UK and elsewhere. I’m not reserving criticism for Trump, but he will be remembered for his handling of this.
BBD:
Despite Trump’s claims otherwise, it is the States who have the general police power – not the Feds. So the States are in charge.
The first case of COVID-19 arrived Jan. 15, 2020 in Washington.
The Governor of Washington didn’t issue a stay at home order until March 23, 2020.
Oops – I guess it is the democrats fault this spread across the USA.
I am afraid you are wrong on the facts and blinded by your own ideology.
Not to surprising since you are a democrat.
I see dean already nailed your lies.
The fact – irrespective of political orientation – is that Trump denied and then minimised CV, and has hugely delayed the national response. So many Americans will die, unnecessarily, as a result.
I’m not surprised you are finding this hard to swallow, but you’ve been warned often enough that rightwing bullshit is ultimately lethal.
It literally doesn’t matter what you say at this point. Reality speaks for itself.
Trump and his wretched government cut 80% of the CDCs budget last year. It has just emerged that he quashed a program in October which aimed at preparing for the possibility of a pandemic. The Guardian piece by Simon Tisdall reveals what a laughingstock Trump is seen as internationally. There is little doubt that most western governments beholden to the neoliberal order were incompetent when faced with the emerging possibility of a pandemic in late January. The precautionary principle was thrown out the window by governments owned by powerful vested interests or controlled by them. They feared being accused of ‘crying wolf’ by the corporate sector if they had initiated measures to get ahead of the virus before it could spread widely – by temporarily reducing air travel and issuing ‘lite’ lockdowns – and there was no pandemic. It was a no-win situation, so they ploughed ahead as usual, threw the dice, and hoped it would fizzle out.
It didn’t, and now we are all paying the price. Proactive responses are not in the neoliberal political handbook. Thee system is only reactive. Trump and Johnson score the lowest, along with Italy. Trump spewed lie after lie in February as the pathogen spread, and the twisted moron is now so deluded that he lashes out at any reporters who stand up to him. Claiming like he did the other day that ‘his actions have saved hundreds of thousands of American lives’ is pure bile. Now, as the virus rips through the heartland, he talks of ‘opening up the economy’ with his comical ‘Committee to re-open America’ leading the way (his daughter and son-in-law are 2 of its seven members). Reopening America in the midst of a pandemic is going to lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths. But Trump and his goon squad are a death squad. Their focus is on ensuring that the rich continue to loot the treasury, and human life is meaningless to them.
As for RickA’s herd immunity, it is pure fiction. No pandemic in human history has infected entire populations. There is no reason this one will either, unless, as it seems, he wants it to as quickly as possible. The aim of flattening the curve is to protect the vulnerable by reducing the immediate infection rate. This also helps the brave men and women on the front lines in the hospitals and clinics to cope without being overwhelmed. And, as I said, immunity is transient. Viruses evolve.
It was the neoliberal capitalist system’s refusal to respond to the threat early on that got us into this predicament. Now the same vested interests are begging for public handouts, support and rescue. Isn’t it amazing that a one-month shutdown brings this vile system to its knees? Clearly, if it is unable or unwilling to respond to an imminent threat like Covid-19, how on Earth is it going to respond to a more gradual, but ultimately greater, threat to our survival, namely climate change?
It won’t. Or it can’t. The neoliberal capitalist system is hard wired for almost immediate gratification via short-term profit maximization. It fails completely when faced with any threats to shut it down even temporarily for the public good. This is why we must get rid of it.
Jeffh:
If herd immunity is not possible, then why were there influenza A serotypes to the Spanish flu of 1918 in peoples blood? Are you suggesting that everybody who got it died? Eventually it stopped spreading – and not because everybody died.
If a high enough percentage of a population get it (about 65-70% I believe) and get better, it won’t spread well after some point, and thereby protect those in the population who didn’t get it in the first place. That is how people survived corona viruses before vaccinations – they developed herd immunity naturally.
All flattening the curve does is stretch out the same number of sick over a longer period of time – which can be good, but isn’t possible forever. Absent a vaccination, with a R0 over 1, it will spread (by definition).
At least this is my understanding.
Good luck getting rid of capitalism.
“That is your ideological denial. Liberals were bitching over banning travel from China ”
There was no travel ban from china then, or from Europe later. The regions that were excluded let thousands of people in.
And putting the reason for the ban on racim: that’s always the safe bet with trump and people like you.
No, it stops the already stretched health services from being overwhelmed. It creates time for already stretched health services to prepare for more illness. Remember that they were already stretched by dealing with everyday demand before all this shit started.
They have to carry on dealing with that same pre-CV everyday demand *as well* as coping with the plague.
The idea is to stop them being overwhelmed and collapsing. At which point, lots of people die.
So curve-flattening is much more than stretching out the same number of sick people with CV over a longer period of time. It’s about keeping the system functioning.
The only good thing about rickA posting here is that checking when a statement of his is a blatant lie (which is, admittedly, every statement) is how easy it is to do that check.
From that same story.
So rickA, if you claim (incorrectly) that governor Inslee screwed up his response, where are your comments about the lies and lack of action from your president?
God, you are a horrible excuse for a person.
dean:
I said stay at home order.
See https://www.governor.wa.gov/sites/default/files/proclamations/20-25%20Coronovirus%20Stay%20Safe-Stay%20Healthy%20%28tmp%29%20%28002%29.pdf
I am not the one who started the blame game (that was BBD) – but it is pretty clear that if blame is to be placed, it belongs on democrat governors. They are the ones who allowed COVID-19 to spread from Washington to the rest of the country.
Trump stopped air travel from China on Jan. 25, 2020, about 2 months before the stay at home orders.
This from the muppet accusing others of being unable to handle reality, political bias etc.
Words fail me.
Don’t worry RickA. Nature itself is doing a good job of taking apart the neoliberal capitalist system all by itself, exposing how flawed and rotten it is. As I said, the system is clearly shredded by any kind of immediate calamity. It functions on a tightrope, and is clearly not remotely prepared for unforeseen events. This pandemic should give many the time to pause and reflect on the best way forward afterwards. Attempts to restart economies in the midst of a pandemic reveals desperation. The first wave is in its midst and any attempt at business-as-usual is just going to swamp health systems with more sick and dying people while it is already overwhelmed. But since the political system is fatally flawed and has no apparent contingency plans built into it to deal with such a crisis, then those pleading to restart economies are willing to see millions die. Is that your ‘herd immunity’ approach? As for your 65-70% figure, then this means around 200-220 million Americans. If the death rate is 0.5-2%, then this means a death toll of 1 to 4 million Americans. You are content with that to build up herd immunity? Seriously? It seems to me like you haven’t done the math. Even Boris Johnson backpeddled on this strategy when the numbers became evident.
What is beyond parody is that the utter incompetence of Trump and his administration in dealing with this pandemic has been completely exposed, and methinks you still support him. Despite the massive cut to the CDC, and elimination of programs to deal with pandemics, both of which the narcissist-liar-in chief pushed through last year, you and millions of other idiots still worship at the Trump cult temple.
Thus rickA shows the vastness of his stupidity: I’m not sure how he thinks the virus was in Washington state alone when none of the scientists do — although the fact that scientists say that isn’t so is most likely why he says it’s so. It also isn’t clear how other governors of any state would have influence over its leaving Washington.
Perhaps ass bag rickA would like a listing of the states that followed the advice of the scientists and took action to protect citizens compared to those that didn’t, and the political parties of the governors.
RickA continues with false narrative:
“the slithy tove Did gyre and gimble in the wabe”
with thanks to Dodgson.
Trump never actually banned flights from China or Europe. Why?
many other sources will show similar.
Re: “All we are doing is spreading out the number of infections over time – which isn’t bad, but which we cannot do forever.”
Actually we can do it “forever”, if that word is taken as an exaggerated way to say: for a long time compared with human lifetimes. For example, over time many modern societies adjusted to the death rates due to heart disease, cancer, and automobile accidents and their hospitals, hospices, and mortuaries adapted to keep pace and even include excess capacity for common emergencies.
“Spreading out the number” is exactly how rational societies handle problems. Given time, such societies can adjust themselves and their economies and focus to keep the problem from being overwhelming and minimizing collateral damage. In this case, it is important to rein in the infection rate to keep the health care and mortuary systems from being overwhelmed and thereby provide time for the society as a whole to adjust by, as obvious examples, ramping up manufacturing capabilities of now necessary commodities, and training additional and replacement health care professionals.
It should also be clear that the “just-in-time” manufacturing and resupply mode adopted by U. S. and other corporations to avoid the costs of warehousing and replacement of out-dated stored commodities has proven to be woefully inadequate to respond to sudden calamities such as we are now facing.
One of the reasons for the extinction of Neanderthal people (or Neandertal if you prefer) versus the survival of the anatomically-modern humans is that although the were strong and successful in their long history, they seem to have lacked what is called “forward thinking”, which can be construed as the ability to extrapolate from the present (or from an imagined set of conditions) into the future. Our impeached president seems to suffer from the same problem. Early on, his words — such as “we have five cases and they’ll soon be zero”, and his lack of appropriate action indicated that he did not extrapolate based on the fact of a “very communicable” disease from which no one is immune.
The even more recent example of Trump-lovers, mostly unprotected, crowding into the streets in Michigan because “COVID-19 is a hoax” and other ridiculous slogans, also showed just such a lack of forward thinking (and callousness shown by the blocking of access to a hospital). Judging from the statements of and positions taken by members of both parties, these qualities seems to be much more prevalent — even characteristic — of modern Trumpist Republicans compared to modern Democrats.
“Trump stopped air travel from China on Jan. 25, 2020, about 2 months before the stay at home orders.”
No, you stupid dishonest potato, he did not stop it. There were people coming in for at least another month, since he left zones open. Same for Europe.
I’m sure you’e equally upset with his:
— giving states equipment and ventilators not based on what they needed, but whether he was political pals with the governor
— his stealing supplies states had ordered and paid for (as he did with michigan, new jersey, and others) then turning it over to a third party to be auctioned off again
— lying as recently as yestereday about how great a job he’s done at getting testing out
— selling equipment to china as late as february 28 as demand was rising here
Your dishonesty is amazing rickA, even after all the years you’ve had to demonstrate it. You are, as we all know, just a skin-wrapped lying sack of shit.
Yeah, the tea-bagger scum we had in lansing the other day took marching orders from a group of right-wing state senators and funding from a DeVos group. They showed all the characteristics of the modern right: lots of people saying there isn’t a problem, that the numbers are fake, that this is a push for socialism by our governor (who they, like rickA, dislike for being a smart and strong woman, when she should be cranking out babies at home). Chanting “lock her up”, waving confederate battle flags (the racist’s favorite flag), truly people as evil as rickA.
And, when they were asked why: they wanted to be able to go boating. They wanted to be able to buy landscape supplies and flowers (they can, the restrtions only apply to large mega-store outlets), etc. In short, spoiled whiners — which also describes libertarians and modern republicans.
The latest update: the tea-baggers in our senate are trying to band together and limit the power of the governor to make these types of decisions.
These are the type of scum with whom rickA feels brotherhood.
I am in good company on herd immunity. It looks like Laurence Tribe agrees with my take on this.
https://hotair.com/archives/allahpundit/2020/04/17/laurence-tribe-time-us-get-infected-lots-people-die-order-achieve-herd-immunity/
Maybe some of the drug trials will give us a treatment.
Maybe a vaccine will be developed quickly.
But we cannot stay home forever – my guess is end of May or maybe End of June, but beyond that will be unworkable.
Perhaps actually read the link carefully. For example:
Anyway, if you read his daily Russiagate commentary on Twitter, you know Tribe’s always ready to one-up the competition in expressing his contempt for the president. “Your incompetence has left us no alternative but COVID Jonestown, Mr. President” would fit right in. That’s probably what this is about.
Wait, rickA thought that article supported his point? What a maroon.
RickA wibbled:
Define treatment as opposed to cure.
he wibbled some more.
Here is an idea RickA, why don’t you actually read up on pandemics, vaccines and other things you clearly don’t grasp the fundamentals of right now. I made a suggestion up thread, here it is again:
‘Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs’ by Michael Osterholm, Mark Olshaker
“Here is an idea RickA, why don’t you actually read up on pandemics,”
Because that would require him to deal with big words and science, and he can’t handle either one.
Note: the trial rickA mentioned will wrap up soon, but as U Chicago resaerchers note — there is no control group for comparison. The goal now is comparing 5 and 10-day regimens. U Chicago’s infectious disease specialist is optimistic of what she’s seen, U of Chicago’s official statement was ““drawing any conclusions at this point is premature and scientifically unsound.” — which it should have been, since the trials aren’t done.
There will still need to be more studies, promising as the anecdotes coming from it seem.
Will it come soon? No way to say, but betting money should come down on “not as soon as people would like.”
As long as we continue to trail pretty much everyone in testing though, we’ll be running in the dark on the true extent of the problem.
Interesting article:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1
Which sez:
Which is probably true but what matters is that the healthcare system can cope with the escalating numbers of people requiring hospital treatment. Many are already struggling to do this. If the load is not spread, the branch might break.
Just watched Almanac on Channel 2 (a local PBS Minnesota show).
A fairly famous Doctor from the University of Minnesota was saying that only about 3% of the population has been infected, and we can expect 50 – 60% to be infected. He too thinks we need to get to herd immunity. He too thinks we will need to get back to work.
He said going back to work isn’t a light switch (on or off), but instead is a rheostat (dial it up and down depending on infection levels).
I need another Rum and Coke.
Why do your stories never have any names or links?
Yes, but giving in early to the pressure from Big Money to resume economic activity will result in a surge of severe illness and deaths that will overwhelm the health service.
Which is why giving in too early would be homicidal to many American citizens including those needing hospital care for other conditions than CV.
Those pushing and pushing for an end to lockdown are going to be responsible for large numbers of unnecessary deaths if they can force their way.
Why are they pushing? Because money. This calculus of profit before the lives of others is not acceptable. Yet you are apparently endorsing it.
After seeing the news this afternoon, I note that the impeached president (I. P.) now infesting the White House has a new plan: a plan dependent on things to get worse, the worse the better. Here’s the sequence of events by which the plan has unfolded so far:
1) The I.P. claimed it was essential to “open the country” and claimed “absolute authority” to overrule governors’ stay-at-home orders.
2) When this got the backlash it deserved, he promptly announced that he “authorized” the governors to develop their own plans, thus keeping up the pretense that he had that authority while slipping out from under any responsibility for anything that went wrong or could be claimed to have done so. He also overtly shed any responsibility for testing and asserted that it was all a problem for governors.
3) The next day he undercut governors and their authority by praising and encouraging protestors against the stay-at-home orders issued by many governors both Republican and Democrat. The more protests there are, the better for the plan because protestors seem to take some pride in being both unprotected and closely packed. Thus, they are more than likely to have become infected while spending hours on the streets and serve as vectors for further infection. (The Michigan protests blocked access to hospitals by hospital staff members and people needing medical help. Anything to gum up the works, apparently.)
There’s the plan: (1) claim authority, (2) then shift the problems of testing and relaxing the orders that are responsible for flattening the infection curve to the governors. (3) Then, agitate personally for a fast “opening” and encourage protests against the governors in order to spook them into opening up without proper testing and facilities and supplies to handle the inevitable problems.
It is a plan that could only be developed and put into play by an idiot or a narcissistic sociopath with no empathy whatsoever for the people who will sicken and die as a result of any attempt — especially a premature attempt — at going back to what used to be the normal workings of society.
It wasn’t just that president shitstain sided with the losers who were protesting, he tweeted LIBERATE (put state with Democratic governor here), amplifying the false message that those states were under siege.
And yes, in Lansing, the spokespeople for the clowns who clogged the streets promised people would stay in cars, they wouldn’t interrupt areas outside the capitol area, … We knew that wouldn’t work from the start, and it didn’t. The blocking of the hospital was horrible, and intentional. Photos from several blocks away from the hospital show them blocking the route of an ambulance trying to get there.
Exactly the type of person ricka is.
Spot on.
Just when you think Trump cannot go any lower, he does it again.
I couldn’t believe my reading those tweets.
‘LIBERATE’. All caps. It couldn’t be more explosively inflammatory. This will get people killed, one way or another.
If what he said is true, this ‘fairly famous doctor’ is making things up on the go, just like the clown in the White House who lies as much as he breathes.
How the hell does he know how many people will be infected by Covid-19? And over what timescale? Days? Months? Years? Where are the specifics? If 60-70% of the population are infected with the virus over just a few months, then hospitals will be overwhelmed, healthcare will break down and millions in the US alone will die.
Is this your preferred scenario RickA? I wonder what your opinion might be if you become housebound, gasping for breath, when you are infected? Your views expressed on here are beyond callous. They are almost sociopathic.
In the Netherlands, blood samples recently taken reveal that around 3% of the population between the ages of 14 and 69 – or half a million citizens – contain Covid-19 antibodies. However, medical experts stress that this does not mean that many or even a majority are immune to Covid-19. Herd immunity is a myth. For measles, around 95% of the population needs to be exposed to the virus. We have no idea how many people need to be infected with Covid-19 or indeed how long immunity lasts.
An equally important point is that around 30% or more of the population fall under the vulnerable groups – elderly people or those with serious underlying medical problems. This means, to achieve herd immunity, almost 100% of the non-vulnerable groups will have to be infected and survive to confer herd immunity if it is around 60-70% and to shield the vulnerable. This isn’t going to happen. For RickA’s scenario to pan out, 60-70% of the entire population, vulnerable or not, must be infected. This means millions of deaths.
That anyone with a shred of decency would defend this strategy is mind-boggling. Clearly RickA has no decency if he is pushing this deadly meme.
Here you are RickA, the malign effect of the Dumbf in the WH, you cannot escape that his dithering and bravado cost time which costed lives. Responsibility for many deaths still to come can be laid at the door of the I/C – the idiot in charge.
[1] With another following closely both heading in the direction of being failed states except the one I inhabit doesn’t have the bananas.
What sort of person can try to negate these truths.
Lionel:
Except that in the United States, the idiots in charge are the Governors. They have the police power and can order stay-at-home – not the Federal government. Under our constitution Trump cannot order people to stay-at-home. Trump cannot shut down business. Your anger at Trump is misplaced.
I don’t try to negate your story – in fact I pointed out that the person in Washington arrived on Jan. 15 (and was diagnosed 5 days later). So I think we agree on that. It is the Governor of Washington who had the power to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and failed. Ditto for the Governor of California and New York and so forth.
Personally, I don’t really blame any of the Governors – I am just teasing BBD and you for blaming Trump for this virus and its spread (playing the blame game). You cannot shut down a state over 1 sick person, and I don’t fault the Governor of Washington for not shutting down the state on the first sick person, or the 10th, for that matter. It was inevitable that this virus would spread across the USA – because it is very infectious (R0 of 3 ish). Wishing a mighty wish isn’t going to change that.
In Minnesota, we have shut down the state over 2000 ish sick people – a state of 5.6 million people. I don’t disagree with this decision, but others might. I am sitting at home obeying the stay-at-home order and I am not out protesting or encouraging others to protest (like Trump). But I do wonder (sitting quietly at home) how long we can shut down 5.6 million people given the number of sick and dead we have thus far experienced. Yeah, it was supposed to be 55,000 dead in early modeling, but those numbers have dropped quite a bit over time.
Probably 3 or 4 million people will ultimately get sick in Minnesota, because that is how many will have to get sick and better to reach herd immunity. Sure, we can stretch this out to avoid overloading the hospitals – but that is probably the number of cases we will have – unless we develop a vaccination before we reach herd immunity.
I don’t trust the numbers out of China – but I don’t see how they avoid more flare ups as they lift their stay-at-home orders. We will see (at least what they release).
I think Sweden’s approach has merit. I guess history will tell us which is the better approach.
In the meantime, I stay at home and read and blog, and get some enjoyment out of your rage at Trump, Republicans and Capitalism.
No it isn’t. Trump bears personal responsibility for the appalling mishandling of the US response to CV. He is the President, after all. And the buck does most emphatically not stop on State Governors’ desks. It’s unsettling watching you blank out all the viciously self-dealing politicking the man is mixing into this crisis. But he’s your guy, and clearly you will overlook anything he does, no matter how vile.
Apart from the frank admission that you are a troll, this is a good summary of why you are so problematic.
Trump, Republicans and capitalism are in their various ways damaging to human lives. This is just fact; it isn’t a matter for ‘debate’ any more than the fact that the Moon orbits the Earth.
But for you, trolling people who acknowledge these facts is ‘enjoyment’.
“Your anger at Trump is misplaced.”
Trump
– removed the response teams that were put in place to get a rapid start to just these sorts of things
– had his team throw out the information about crisis situations and how to respond that they received in transition briefings (because, you know, if they were developed under a non-white president they certainly couldn’t be good)
– repeatedly downplayed the spread in the states while complementing the chinese response
– claimed that the impeachment was distracting the attention of his team when it was over before this began — but he did find time to golf and hold rallies almost every weekend
– sold supplies to china through the end of february, ignoring please from states for supplies
– withheld supplies from states because he didn’t like the governors of the states
– turned down the offer of testing supplies from WHO and did order tests to be developed here, the result of which is the current state of affairs with the US woefully behind in testing, ranking (at last check) 44th in the world
– refusing to open the federal reserve supply of equipment because “it’s ours and not for the states”
– pushed a fake “treatment” with serious side effects over the advice of his science advisors
plus a shit-ton more.
Which of those things qualifies as a good job rickA? I can’t break things down any simpler for your puny little libertarian mind, so find someone to read them to you if need be
rickA’s response to Lionel above should be copied and save and pulled out any time he goes to his “I don’t lie” and “I believe in science” bullshit. It’s one of the clearest examples of his doing both available.
RickA
Not so but your continued lack of censure is morally reprehensible given what we know and that which dean has just pointed out.
Federalism has become another casualty of Trump and the coronavirus
Why not spend your time more profitably and research the topics on which you opine and do something about your partisan wilful ignorance? Now that is me being eleemosynary, seeing as Trump appears to be trying to start another civil war, like the treacherous dog he is.
Has anyone taken a look at Bill Gates’s plan to build several factories at the cost of billions to mass produce a vaccine before the vaccine has been determined? Apparently he wants to build a factory for each of the leading candidates while testing is in progress, and throw away the factories for all but the best vaccine. I don’t understand why this would lose so much money. Seems like the factories could be built to adjust production later in the construction process.
Re: “Trump, Republicans and capitalism are in their various ways damaging to human lives.”
That may be so, especially when unfettered. A replacement for Trump is not hard to imagine and the present Republicans are a kind of mutant version of what Republicans used to be. They seem to have evolved to fill the niche formed when the Tea Party takeover of Republican primaries eliminated old-type Republicans from contention. Given a few failures in elections and they may go extinct.
This leaves capitalism? It seems to me that enforcement of reasonable regulations would do a lot to civilize the beast without losing its useful features. What alternative that hasn’t proven to be worse would you suggest that could provide a decent life for the billions of people now living and those to come? That is, would not require giving up more than would be gained.
I don’t mean this as a hostile question, it’s just a question.
Perfectly reasonable, and I have come across as more anti-capitalist than I intended. I should have said something like ‘under-regulated capitalism’.
Picking up on what dean said in his response, the problem is of course free market ideology, libertarianism and the sockpuppetting of political parties by vested interest.
Re-the tea baggers: remember that their organization and growth was funded by the right-wing folks who were upset about a black man being elected: nothing more, nothing less (there was no mention of them until after Obama was put into office). In terms of “economic policy” — they’ve contributed nothing useful, and much that is harmful (same is true for libertarians). It would be good if they would quickly leave all areas of government, but with the decades of misinformation the right has been cranking out, that intellectually and morally challenged folks like rickA eat up, they have a vocal base. I fear we’ll be cursed with them for some time.
Agree with your comment about capitalism: absent regulation it is a recipe for disaster. But, with the tea-baggers and libertarians still around working hard to destroy protections and the environment, it’s hard to be optimistic.
Be still my heart and fetch my fainting pearls, trump lied about not knowing if this? WHO could have guessed?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/americans-at-world-health-organization-transmitted-real-time-information-about-coronavirus-to-trump-administration/2020/04/19/951c77fa-818c-11ea-9040-68981f488eed_story.html?outputType=amp&utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark
From your link dean,
Let RickA argue his way out of that.
Why does RckA consistently set himself up to fail the truth test?
“Why does RckA consistently set himself up to fail the truth test?”
It’s his default behavior.
Add to that the repeated praise Trump rained on China.
Jan 24: Trump tweeted
Jan 30, on the fox propaganda network:
Feb 7:
February 10, again on a fox propanda network:
There were more, but similar to those. The bolded parts are there to point out the times he repeated his bullcrap about the virus vanishing like magic in warm weather.
So yeah, rickA has once again been caught in multiple lies. But it is in a month that has a vowel in its name, so it’s really not a surprise.
Official WHO statements:
Jan. 5, 2020 – the WHO reported a “pneumonia of unknown cause” in Wuhan China. “WHO advises against the application of any travel or trade restrictions on China on the current information available on this event.”
Jan. 14, 2020 “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus. . . .”
Jan. 23, 2020 “it was too early to declare the coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.”
Jan. 29, 2020 “The whole world needs to be on alert now. The whole world needs to take action and be ready for any cases that come from the epicenter . . .”
Jan. 31, 2020 Trump restricts travel from China.
Feb. 4, 2020 – Tedros of WHO urged that there be no travel bans.
Feb. 28, 2020 – the WHO raises the global risk of the coronavirus from “high” to “very high”.
March 11, 2020 – Tedros of WHO “made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic.”
It looks like Trump was ahead of the WHO to me.
It is easy to say something should have been done sooner after the fact.
Greg’s first post on the coronvirus was Jan. 26, 2020.
Who don’t you link your posts (dean, Lionel, BBD) from before Trump took action on Jan. 31, 2020 with your recommendations about what you would do to stop the spread of coronvirus.
I look forward to reading them.
“It looks like Trump was ahead of the WHO to me.”
Of course it does — because you are a congential liar and immune to facts.
You were asked whether you defend his stealing from states and other actions. Stop being such a dishonest and evasive shit and answer a question. Do you defend his inactions pointed out above.
Some of these mentioned earlier — here just to remind the right wing liar rickA.
Trump, Jan 22:
Jan 23:
Jan 24:
Jan 29:
Jan 30: WHO declares world health emergency
Jan 30:
Feb 2:
Feb 4:
Feb 11:
Feb 13:
Feb 24:
Feb 26:
Feb 28:
March 5:
March 10:
March 11:
March 16:
March 17 (possibly the most horrible lie Trump told — no doubt ricka buys it)
1) Here’s a chilling New Yorker opinion piece on fascist propaganda and Trump’s daily reports on coronavirus (= reelection rally speeches):
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/studying-fascist-propaganda-by-day-watching-trumps-coronavirus-updates-by-night
2) Here’s 2 related questions:
Since the overwhelmed psuedopresident has (1) refused the role of “shipping clerk” for the federal government and (2) officially ceded authority to the governors for both testing and the manner and timing of the “reopening” of the country, what is left? So, as he is just a bystander now, why should the country pay any attention to his secondhand “updates”?
Very good find. Two extremely relevant items:
Tyvor:
You don’t have to pay attention to the President’s briefings if you don’t want to.
The President was never in charge of “reopening” or “closing” in the first place. That is the role of the Governors, as they have the general police power, and the power to quarantine (see Typhoid Mary).
The President does have the power at the USA border – so he can restrict travel from China, Europe, Canada and so forth. He can order quarantine of people coming from abroad.
Thanks Dean for comprehensively demolishing RickA’s garbage. Trump’s handling of the pandemic has to be one of the most flagrant examples of incompetence and lies I have ever seen in my life. First of all, Trump hardly restricted travel from China, allowing planeloads of infected American citizens to continue flying from there. How could the warped narcissist liar be concerned about Covid-19 when throughout February he went out of his way to downplay it? Moreover, the vast majority of infected individuals were flying from Italy, Spain and other parts of Europe into the United States.
Unlike many other governments, such as many in Europe (Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Norway, Netherlands, Denmark) and elsewhere in the world (New Zealand, Taiwan, South Korea) where lockdowns were initiated early enough to contain the pandemic, Trump only reacted when it was too late. His regime has been playing catch-up ever since. This was despite seeing what was transpiring in Italy and Spain. Whereas in the proactive countries the pandemic curve is flattening at the moment, the US heartland has only begun to see the worst effects of the pandemic. Despite that, Trump’s cultist base of right wing Tea Party-type nitwits are braying from social media downplaying the effects of the virus and demanding that measures to contain its spread, including social distancing and lockdowns, are immediately rescinded. They believe nothing except what they want to believe; when the mounting death toll hits 100,000 and beyond, these idiots will call it ‘fake news’ and start espousing more conspiracy theories.
Note how recent polls across the political spectrum in the US show that people want strong measures to contain Covid-19 to remain in place for the time being. Over here in Europe, the overwhelming majority of people want the same, despite the success of measures taken thus far. They see how the strategy in Sweden, the only country that did not impose a lockdown, is backfiring badly, with a rapidly climbing number of infected and death toll. The herd immunity approach to Covid-19 is a form of mass murder, and those countries which initially followed this route, including Sweden and the UK, are paying a heavy price.
When Trump retweeted those nauseous LIBERATE tweets this past weekend, he was not only revealing what an amoral creep he is, but that he thinks he is a king, a divine ruler, a monarch. That anybody can support him or his repugnant party is beyond me. RickA isn’t the brightest bulb on the tree in my opinion, but he clearly has the political acumen of a trilobite.
Jeffh:
Where you calling for a travel ban before Jan. 31, 2020?
Re: Jan 30:
At a campaign rally in Iowa, Trump talked about the U.S. partnership with China to control the disease. “We only have five people. Hopefully, everything’s going to be great. They have somewhat of a problem, but hopefully, it’s all going to be great. But we’re working with China, just so you know, and other countries very, very closely. So it doesn’t get out of hand.”
= = =
Since January, I have been struck with the way that Trump kept quoting numbers of people infected in the U. S. as if they were all that existed in the country, completely disregarding (1) the lack of testing and (2) the fact that the virus is easily spread to others.
Either one of these facts should indicate to any reasonably intelligent person that there were more infected people than the number known and that more and more people would be infected if rapid action were not taken to trace contacts and quarantine them.
Then, when the Northern CA case of an infected person with no known contacts with anyone in or out of the U. S. known to have the virus was diagnosed, it should have been realized that the spread across the nation was inevitable and reducing the number would require what we now call “social distancing.”
Trump constantly praises his own intellect; has even called himself a genius. His words and actions (or lack thereof) have shown something quite different, along with a strong aversion to accepting advice from those with more expertise.
Tsch! RickA
When is a ban not a ban?
When it is this:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/mar/22/trump-never-actually-banned-flights-from-china-or-/
“the slithy tove Did gyre and gimble in the wabe”
Were you calling for travel restrictions before Jan. 31st?
Just to add some numbers to your comment on Trump’s early but porous ban on travel from China: The headline at the site below is: Nearly 40k flew to U.S. from China after Trump’s coronavirus travel ban
https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-trump-china-travel-ban-45a2da12-8063-4ad9-ba28-61cdeb1ce0b3.html
However, ~45% of the American people in poll after the poll give unwavering support to the impeached resident in the White House despite ample reason to abandon him. Oh, I said “reason” didn’t I. Never mind. I keep forgetting the late George Carlin’s comments on the bell curve of intelligence.
“Were you calling for travel restrictions before Jan. 31st?”
rickA, repeating your lie doesn’t make it the truth.
I notice you still refuse to address the evidence that trump fucked this up from the start.
Apparently having no facts on your side does register with you — not enough to make you an honest person though.
The quote from Trump about 15 is going down to 0, look at the full statement. The going down happened, because he was talking about the specific 15 cases. Not sure if it went down to 0. In the same talk, he says it could get worse, but he hopes it’s under control.
Trump basically followed the Rush Limbaugh line that this is no big deal, while also following the recommendations of Dr Fauci.
All those quotes of ‘this is no big deal’, you can find similar things from Dr Fauci. ‘I don’t believe the Chinese data on asymptomatic transmission. This would be a first. I’d like to see the data.’ ‘Nothing to worry about in the USA’ ‘We are monitoring cities to see if this spreads throughout the country’ ‘If you want to go on a cruise, go.'(for young people, oldsters not so much)
Question, was Dr Fauci right about this being a unique feature of COVID-19, pandemic driven by asymptomatic transmission?
MikeN:
I find it interesting how the peanut gallery criticizes and nit picks every decision the Federal government makes, without having advised the correct action before the problem became obvious to everybody.
For example, could the Federal Government have anticipated that 50 states buying PPE, when every country was trying to buy PPE, could be a problem?
Sure, with hindsight that is obvious. But show me the evidence that critics (bloggers here or newspapers or democrat politicians or anybody) anticipated the problem and recommended the Federal government make one giant order for the whole USA, so it could dole out PPE to the states (presumably based on population or other metric). I want a link. Even if that had happened, I am not sure our order would have been served before Italy or another countries.
It is pretty easy to wait until an obvious problem develops and then criticize and say they would have done something different (were they in charge). But I want to see evidence of that – I want the link to the advice that predates the obvious problem.
Personally, I don’t blame Trump that COVID-19 got to the USA. I don’t blame Trump that COVID-19 spread across the USA. I don’t blame Trump that we don’t have enough PPE. I don’t blame Trump that we don’t have adequate testing. Even without the CDC testing kit mistake, we wouldn’t have had enough testing and certainly not enough antibody testing. We could be months away from having enough testing to test every person in the USA or 20 million per day or whatever level we decide is “enough”.
Are we not acting to address the PPE situation? Are we not acting to address the testing situation? I think we are. Probably not fast enough for critics – but steps are being taken.
Some things are just out of the control of humans – even the President of the United States of America.
With hindsight, are there things we could learn from COVID-19 and apply to the next pandemic – sure. But lets not pretend that had Trump acted faster we would not have this pandemic in the USA. In a perfect world it would even be less bad – but we don’t live in a perfect world. Most people understand that.
That is my opinion anyway.
Bullshit mikeN. Look at all of his comments.
Re: “Who [sic] don’t you link your posts (dean, Lionel, BBD) from before Trump took action on Jan. 31, 2020 with your recommendations about what you would do to stop the spread of coronvirus.”
= = =
That question is ridiculous. It doesn’t matter what they would have done, what matters is what a President with expert medical professionals to consult should do.
What the actual president did was to impose a ban on direct travel from China with exceptions for Americans and others and little else, if you don’t count lying about how prepared we were. This supposed “ban” was so porous that ~40,000 Americans (and some others) entered the U. S. subsequent to that ban.
Furthermore, Trump said that only Americans screened for illness would be allowed to reenter the U. S. They were not screened at the boarding sites, only after landing in the U. S., and I believe that they were only screened by temperature tests and questions regarding other symptoms. (Feel free to check this.)
But wait, there’s more: There was no ban on indirect travel from China that involved connecting flights so there almost certainly “leakage” there.
“But lets not pretend that had Trump acted faster we would not have this pandemic in the USA”
Nobody is you dishonest POS. What is being pointed out is simply this: trump botched this from the beginning. We certainly can blame him for the problems with PPE and ventilators because he had experts telling him what was needed and he effing ignored it, then he continued selling equipment to China until the end if February, and then began stealing shipments states had purchased and reselling them.
You are a dysentary level flow of shit.
By the way, it’s no surprise that mikeN took Fauci’s comment way out of context.
Feb 29, on the Today show:
Dean, if Dr Fauci had said that in January, that would be one thing. However, he said this at the end of February. He is still in the mode of ‘maybe it gets worse.’ I don’t see how Trump should be faulted when his advisers still aren’t sure it’s serious, that maybe people won’t have to change anything they’re doing.
Re: “You don’t have to pay attention to the President’s briefings if you don’t want to.”
=
My question had nothing to do with having that choice but why anyone would make the choice to watch them given his distancing himself from the situation, thus making him a bystander.
= = =
Re: “The President was never in charge of “reopening” or “closing” in the first place. That is the role of the Governors, as they have the general police power, and the power to quarantine (see Typhoid Mary).”
=
Of course not, but he had said that he was, and he had declared a state of national emergency which is not just a figure of speech or a way to say that things are bad. It supposes that a President will do something useful — more than just talking (and lying in his case) about the situation. The only real actions he took, other than the travel bans such as the absurdly porous ban on travel from China and later on, the strange ban on travel from Europe (which excepted the already heavily infected UK).
He never really boosted social-distancing or encouraged a country-wide stay-at-home, or suggested its utility to the recalcitrant Republican governors. Most recently he has encouraged and even praised the protestors of such orders and lied about their behavior. That is particularly important because leaving gaps in the coverage of such guarantees that large reservoirs for reinfection will exist long after the virus infection curve is dropping elsewhere. Or are you envisioning heavily patrolled state border walls to protect those states from reinfection by people from the red states in which nothing has been done to minimize their infection numbers?
= = =
Re: “The President does have the power at the USA border – so he can restrict travel from China, Europe, Canada and so forth. He can order quarantine of people coming from abroad.”
=
He said that he had such power (“total authority”) and in ceding it he still said that he “gave them the authority” as if he did have it to give. Don’t you think that such an ignorant mindset in a president is a problem? In any case, I and others have already provided evidence that the one travel ban about which he’s been boasting the most as a great job was in fact so poorly designed as to be ineffective.
“I don’t see how Trump should be faulted”
I’m not surprised you don’t when you refuse to look at the evidence with an honest eye.
Amazing how RickA inflates Trump’s hollow July 29 pronouncement that was full of loopholes but dismisses everything – or nothing – he did in February. “The virus will disappear, we are safe, it is no worse than the flu, warmth in April will destroy it” etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum. And lest we not forget (like RickA does), this wretched regime led by the orange buffoon last year gutted funds to the CDC and programs aimed at preparing for a pandemic.
Essentially, Trump has bumbled his way throughout the duration of this emergency. And not once has he had the decency to apologize to the American public for his rank incompetence. His ego is so bloated that he claims his actions have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. That alone proves that something is seriously wrong in his head.
Jeffh:
While Trump proposed cuts to the 2021 CDC budget, they are not law yet.
No gutted funds yet.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-cut-cdc-budget/
Somehow I don’t think the CDC will get cut in 2021 after all – given the pandemic.
Just a hunch.
Your facts are wrong.
Wrote he who never produces facts.
Your thinking has become as scrambled as Trump’s. I note that Tyvor has made a brave attempt at parsing that word salad.
Re: “Are we not acting to address the PPE situation? Are we not acting to address the testing situation? I think we are. Probably not fast enough for critics – but steps are being taken.”
=
I’d say no. Any useful steps taken so far have been by governors and private individuals (like the grade school girl who was sewing 26 masks a day), certainly not Trump or his minions. Instead what Trump has had sent out has often been small fraction of what was asked for and needed, and even that was often the wrong thing and/or defective.*
Furthermore, he has been complicit in driving the cost of supplies up (aiding profiteers) and even having FEMA bid against them the states. He and his “pandemic team” could have developed a science-based national strategy for distributing material and money as needed. That’s the kind of useful thing that declaring a national emergency means to everyone but Trump.
If that wasn’t enough, he has his federal minions stealing supplies ordered by the states, and has his son-in-law telling the states that the supplies are “ours” — whoever that means — and not the states’. If it means the Trump administration, who is going to get those supplies and who will choose? Would it be just Republican governors? Governors who praise or thank Trump the most effusively? Anyone who pays the most, or what?
* Yes, that definitely IS his fault. Part of preparation for something is to stockpile whatever is likely to be needed in a hurry and keep the stock up to date and the danger posed by epidemic diseases has been shown within recent memory. Furthermore, the incoming Trump administration was briefed on what should be done in cases of pandemics but the Trump administration ignored it, instead doing away away with the apparatus for preparing for such a catastrophe left behind by the Obama administration. The Trump administration justified this disastrous move by saying that it was a waste of money and that, if needed, the requisite staff could be hired as needed. (Any savings more than disappeared in the tax cuts that benefited the already wealthy most.)
You are certainly entitled to your opinion. Just as I am entitled to mine.
My facts are wrong? Because of hindsight? So Trump was only intending to gut the CDC then, until Covid-19 made him reappraise his views? This is like saying I planned to reduce paying my house insurance premium by 80% until my house burned down. Looks like the fire occurred just in time! If Trump’s proposed cuts had gone through, and the pandemic occurred in 2022, then what effect would that have had?
RickA, what is wrong with you? There seems to be some kind of blockage in your brain that interferes with rational thinking. You continually defend the worst President in US history and one with clear psychological issues. What prevents you waking up to reality?
“RickA, what is wrong with you?”
He’s still butthurt that the previous president wasn’t white.
Jeffh:
I can tell the difference between what is and what might be (and what might not be), while you cannot.
There is nothing wrong with me.
Using your analogy – if you pay twice as much for your house insurance is your house half as likely to burn down? Maybe you should pay triple and be really safe.
What would have happened if the CDC’s budget had been cut? I don’t know. Do you? What would have happened had the CDC’s budget been increased 10%? Do you think they would have decided not to make the test kits in-house and screwed it up? Do you think if their budget had been doubled they would have avoided the mistake with the test kits? I don’t know the answer to those questions and neither do you (or anybody). But you can go ahead and pretend you know what might have happened with your fantasy thinking, while I continue to look at the world with logic and reason.
“You are certainly entitled to your opinion. Just as I am entitled to mine.:
The fallback copout for the congential liar who refuses to take any responsibility for his lies. We knew it was coming.
When I reach an impasse, I stop arguing.
You merely turn to insults.
Prove I have lied about anything – go ahead I dare you.
Look at any of your posts dirt bag. Your repeated claims that trump shut down china. Your claims about science.
You’ve never tried to make an honest argument about anything, since that isn’t needed in your libertarian world
So just your opinion then. That is what I thought.
I find you endlessly amusing!
Because you are a troll.
No – it is because dean, you (BBD), Lionel, Bernard and I am sure others who post here, are so childlike. You think like children, reason like children and have childish opinions. That is why I find you all endlessly amusing.
I say something like – People die. You guys say (I paraphrase) – you want people to die. You are a horrible person.
I find that sort of thinking amusing.
So I will try again.
This pandemic is going to kill people. Until we either develop a vaccine, a good treatment or develop herd immunity people are going to continue to die. We won’t be able to stay home forever. Once we leave home more people will get sick and some will die. At some point enough people will get sick and then better so that herd immunity will develop, and the pandemic will be over, assuming no vaccine or good treatment happen.
Do you agree with this? If not, why not. What do you suggest we do about the pandemic?
My plan would be to do a rolling regional reopening, keeping the old and morbidly obese home, and let 70% of that region get sick and get better. Use resources from outside the region to help until herd immunity is built up in that region. Move to a new region and rinse and repeat.
Yes, I understand people will die with this strategy. Yes, I am willing for my region to go first. And so forth.
Lets try to discuss without name calling.
“You think like children, reason like children and have childish opinions. ”
Stomp your foot a little harder.
You are upset at people posting comments based on facts, and having them point out that you neither post facts nor respond to the items that don’t match your ignorant little world-view is childish.
More provocative trolling.
I’ve told you – others have told you – that your pro-business pushing will kill Americans unnecessarily because it will overwhelm the health system. But you repeatedly blank my comments and keep on and on with your toxic bullshit.
What could be more childish than that?
So you can fuck off with your nonsense. Again.
No rick,
– your lies about climate change — purposefully contradicting the results of the papers
– your defense of the china travel ban that didn’t exist
– your “immigration crisis” bullshit from several months ago
– your assertion that people said the virus would not be here if trump had acted earlier — which nobody said
It really doesn’t matter how you find people, since the view of you will never change: racist, bigoted, misogynist, scientifically illiterate, and lacking in any ability to tell the truth. Liberarianism personified.
You couldn’t even respond to direct questions about the documented screwups your presented made and then lied about.
Well at least we reason quite unlike yourself who has a brain not evolved beyond the pre-palaeolithic hunter gather stage. What other explanation is there for somebody who repeatedly promotes debunked ideas such a disastrous:
You have been repeatedly informed why this is a bad idea given the inability to produce enough reliable testing kits let alone vaccines. If you read suggested literature you would realise why this is so. But no, you would rather continue to opine from a position of ignorance, wilful ignorance, thus your opinions do not add to our knowledge but rather subtract.
With every post you make the noise to signal ratio falls.
But the main point is that you refuse to see Trump for what he is, if you do and you are simply trolling then that is being childish in the extreme, so don’t lecture us about being childish you dont have any legs to stand on with that.
“With every post you make the noise to signal ratio falls.
Rises? (falls for signal to noise ratio)
– or else I’ve been using that phrase wrong for many years.
The resident denier may well argue about this, but it’s worth pointing out:
https://www.npr.org/2020/04/21/837348551/timeline-what-trump-has-said-and-done-about-the-coronavirus?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark
Not virus related, but trump related — just so we don’t forget.
A bipartisan Senate report released Tuesday affirms the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusions that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election in a far-ranging influence campaign approved by Russian President Vladimir Putin and aimed at helping Donald Trump win the White House.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/senate-panel-backs-assessment-that-russia-interfered-in-2016?fbclid=IwAR0BaeK-fO3n6FiMPgoyWiw1w9GWtG3CUBacTqA99IMB4xoNC-Bw6uUuWX0
Re: “I find it interesting how the peanut gallery criticizes and nit picks every decision the Federal government makes, . . .”
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Now I thought that was every American’s unrestricted right.
= =
Re: “. . . without having advised the correct action before the problem became obvious to everybody.”
=
Is it necessary for them to have known these things personally? What if the “peanut gallery” just happens to know that both the general pandemic problem and particular aspects of it regarding medical supplies was made known before it became apparent to Donald Trump? He, by seeking the presidency and winning it, made it a part of his responsibility to prepare for such eventualities. Now see below.
The following is from: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/19/politics/trump-briefing-fact-check-april-19/index.html
As CNN’s KFile team reported in early April, Azar and Tim Morrison, then a special assistant to the President and senior director for weapons of mass destruction and biodefense on the National Security Council, spoke at the BioDefense Summit in April 2019, where they specifically talked about the possibility of a flulike pandemic.
When it comes to the supplies needed for such a pandemic, studies and health experts have warned of the medical equipment shortages the US would face.
Dr. David Morens, a top National Institutes of Health official, specifically noted in October 2018 that there would not be enough room in hospitals in the case of a pandemic like the 1918 flu. Morens also said that while the total number of items like drugs, antibiotics, antivirals and ventilators in the US national stockpile is unknown, “what I do know is it’s not nearly enough.”
= =
I wouldn’t be surprised if you could actually find out about those “studies and health experts” mentioned above if you put some effort into it. I don’t think they were just made up. Real news organizations validate their information. And if you look into the reason for the President’s poor performance, I think you will find that the main problem that he, as members of his own staff have said, refuses to read briefings, resents being briefed by experts, soon interrupting them to assert that he “knows more than they do” about whatever the topic happens to be, is vindictively angered when corrected or contradicted, and gets much of his information from Fox News and right-wing conspiracy sites. (Feel free to prove any of the foregoing wrong if you can.)
Yes dean, well spotted, I was wondering how good the logic of our resident legal eagle was.
RickA, have you any idea of how vaccines are developed, the stages of development and testing and the monumental task that is producing quantities on an industrial scale? Have you any idea of the commercial risks for developers and producers? Consider what happened over influenza virus (nearly 200 possible variants known) production earlier this century. References have been provided for those with the ability and honesty to chase them down.
You show no evidence of having a clue on this in-spite of references, in this thread, that would help you understand. Note ‘in this thread’, my having gone to the trouble of providing same it is up to you to scroll through comments to find them. The fact that you could not be bothered to pick up on those on the first mention, or indeed subsequent mentions is not my problem. The moan from you about us not linking to our own posts is a mark of how intellectually lazy you are, such behaviour could be forgiven in an infant school child but not in a supposed adult.
As for so called ‘herd immunity’ this failed in the US with the measles virus. Why? Because of a high percentage of national coverage by vaccination measles had been eradicated from the US. But then because measles had become unheard of in the US, and anti vaccination bigotry (which any Covid vaccine will face too) people decided not to have their children vaccinated.
The result was children coming into the US, one on holiday to Florida and Disney-world was enough, not affected by the disease but carrying it new waves of measles kicked off in the US.
Lionel:
What is your point? Are you saying we shouldn’t try to develop a vaccine for COVID-19? Are you saying people won’t die?
What do you think we should do to deal with COVID-19? Do you think staying at home is a long term plan? How long do you think we can stay at home before more people die from that than COVID-19?
People have to eat. In order to eat, people have to be able to buy food. In order to buy food, people have to work. For many many people, in order to work, people have to leave home. So staying home for 18 months isn’t an option – and that is assuming we can develop a vaccine in 18 months. So I don’t see staying home as a long term option. Do you?
I don’t count on developing a vaccine because we have never developed one for a coranavirus before (for humans). So I am sure it will be tough. I am sure some won’t take it. But I am sure more than 70% will, if one is developed.
The only other option is herd immunity. You already know my plan for developing herd immunity – which is the only game in town once staying at home is no longer workable. As I said before, by the end of May or maybe June, staying at home will no longer be an option (in my opinion).
I look forward to your comments in response to my points. And I appreciate the lack of insults in your last response.
Interesting article on the Swedish experiment:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-swedish-experiment-looks-like-it-s-paying-off
Jesus Christ rickA, you are one stupid dick.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/sweden-coronavirus-deaths-lockdown-social-distancing-denmark-finland-norway-a9470771.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/05/sweden-prepares-to-tighten-coronavirus-measures-as-death-toll-climbs
Sweden has 1585 cases per 1M of population. Less than Luxembourg, Iceland, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Ireland, Italy, France, Portugal, Lichtenstein, Netherlands, UK, Germany, and Austria.
If you go to worldometers.info/coronavirus, filter to to Europe and soft decending by Tot Cases/1M Pop you can see for yourself.
Given Sweden’s limited social distancing don’t you wonder why it isn’t worse? Do you wonder if they might be better off in the end, once they develop herd immunity? Do you think they might have a lower death rate than other countries, once they lift stay-at-home and we have a second wave or third wave of COVID-19. Perhaps Sweden is simply compressing their deaths into a shorter period of time.
Looking at the worldometer data – I am not sure Sweden is doing the wrong thing. Are you?
Food for thought.
No it isn’t paying off at all. Over 2000 dead and 16,000 infected officially so far, despite limited testing, and way more than in Denmark or Norway where lockdowns were imposed. It is a monumental flop, and the Prime Minister looks stupid for taking this gamble.
You conveniently ignored the low testing rate there as well in calculating infection rates.
The Spectator article is garbage.
RickA
Lord help us, foxtrot-uniform-charlie-kilo-/- yankee-oscar-uniform with the rag end of a pineapple.
No and No you dumb-ass.
Oh and here is more for you that your great orange leader (reminds me of Jabba the Hutt) will not mention:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/apr/22/coronavirus-us-live-first-deaths-weeks-earlier-trump-cuomo-latest-news-updates?page=with:block-5ea030078f0898fe360d5f7e#block-5ea030078f0898fe360d5f7e
“Sweden has 1585 cases per 1M of population”
Maybe check deaths per million?
Yes, Sweden has been taking the wrong path. People with IQs higher than the temperature where skim forms on cooling pudding understand that.
Sweden 192
Iceland 29
Ireland 142
“Do you wonder if they might be better off in the end, once they develop herd immunity? ”
You’ve had why that hope is bs explained to you many times.
“Do you think they might have a lower death rate than other countries, once they lift stay-at-home?”
They don’t have a stay-at-home order — they have an advisory people can choose to follow or not. They have recently closed ski resorts (at least some).
Once again, your lack of understanding and refusal to make an attempt to understand shine through.
Liechenstien 26
Austria 57
Trump keeps up his theft.
https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-delaware-company-says-fema-seized-mask-shipments-amid-coronavirus-20200421-3yz7dks53fbl7jlrjhuq2xokyu-story.html?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark
Some internet research on what warning Trump had (or could have had if he were a functional president) on the need to prepare for a pandemic, the following seemed very relevant to me.
1) https://couriernewsroom.com/2020/04/14/obama-prepared-for-a-potential-pandemic-trump-gutted-his-work/
Obama Prepared for a Potential Pandemic. Trump Gutted His Work.
In addition, a link in the article brought up the information that George W. Bush had warned of the pandemic danger in 2005. It was Obama, however, who set up an actual pandemic response team and supporting structure.
2) https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/3/14/21177509/coronavirus-trump-covid-19-pandemic-response
The Trump administration’s botched coronavirus response, explained
From insufficient testing to a lack of coordination, Trump’s Covid-19 response has been a disaster years in the making.
3) https://www.vox.com/2020/4/12/21218305/trump-ignored-coronavirus-warnings
A new investigation reveals Trump ignored experts on Covid-19 for months
In the pandemic’s early days, Trump heeded friends and political whims over his own medical and security experts.
“In the pandemic’s early days, Trump heeded friends and political whims over his own medical and security experts.”
To be honest, he’s still doing exactly that.
Re: “People have to eat. In order to eat, people have to be able to buy food. In order to buy food, people have to work. For many many people, in order to work, people have to leave home. So staying home for 18 months isn’t an option . . .”
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The problem with going to work at the present time is that there is a shortage of protective masks, gloves, smocks, etc. even for hospital staff, let alone for the general public. Once these things become abundant enough, most people could go back to work in relative safety if properly instructed in the use of that equipment at work.
Right now, President Trump seems more interested in posturing and shifting responsibility away from himself rather than in using the authority and tools of the federal government to provide a national policy to encourage or even compel what is left of our manufacturing sector to produce what is needed to allow the general public to “dress up” and go to work. And he could play the diplomat and find foreign sources of the needed supplies. (There is an economy of scale which would help with that. As would offering suitable incentives.) This would save millions of people from being sacrificed to achieve the “herd immunity” on which you seem to be so tightly focused.
In a perfect world we wouldn’t go back to work until everybody had PPE and knew how to use it.
We don’t live in that world.
We are going to be short of PPE for quite some time – as everybody in the world is trying to get some at the same time. What we do have will be prioritized for the most needed (hospitals and first responders). Companies will try to get some and likely fail to get enough.
So we will most likely be in a world where people make their own masks and stay six feet apart and call it good.
That is likely to be the reality for most workers (in manufacturing and offices).
You won’t be able to wait for the government to provide everybody with PPE, and that isn’t their job anyway. Ultimately businesses and people are responsible for their own PPE, just the way it has been always.
Some companies that don’t have enough PPE will not reopen and some will. Some employees will demand the companies reopen and some employees will want a guarantee they cannot catch COVID-19 at work. What else is new.
I am sure it will be a mess, disorganized and probably work out good enough that we muddle through, as usual.
We made our own masks, and use them when we leave the house. I suspect soon enough there will be enough homemade masks for everybody to at least have one. Since we will need to build up herd immunity lots of people will get sick, better and be immune and won’t need PPE or masks, once tested and “cured”.
Your herd immunity comments turn my stomach, Rick. You are such a dweeb. If the two studies in California are correct, and the true infection rate is say three per cent, then extrapolate that across the US to achieve herd immunity. So far the death toll is approaching 50,000. If we multiply the 3% by 20 to get 60%, then that means a death toll of around one million Americans to achieve herd immunity. Higher infection rates lead to 1.5 million or more deaths.
That you entertain such a notion as being a rational objective is sickening. People are dying in industrial numbers and you come on here with your vile semantics.
You belong on Fox, Breitbart and Daily Caller with your profound ignorance. Your views on climate change are hard enough to bear, because you are truly clueless. The worst thing is that you honestly think that you are enlightened. That is the most pernicious fable of them all.
RickA – will you stop blanking Jeff’s comments about the human cost of ‘herd immunity’. He’s repeated them often enough that I can see the words with my eyes shut.
Read the words.
You seem to think you have a choice here. Either we develop a vaccine or we don’t. Either we stay at home , or we don’t. If we stay at home to long, more than 1 million people will die – from hunger, suicide, domestic violence and other causes as well. If we don’t stay at home, COVID-19 will infect people until herd immunity has developed.
The only way to avoid the million or more deaths you are talking about is a vaccine or finding a workable treatment. I hope we find a vaccine or a workable treatment – but so far no joy.
In the meantime, we have to decide which path leads to the least death. It is my opinion that staying home merely delays the deaths – it does not avoid them. It is my opinion that staying home to long will kill more people than COVID-19. It is my opinion that herd immunity will cost less total lives than staying at home for to long – say more than 2 more months.
These are just opinions. They could be wrong. But these are my opinions.
Do you think we can keep people home until we develop a vaccine? Do you think we can prevent people from getting COVID-19 if we lift the stay-at-home orders? Have you given any thought to how many people will die if millions cannot afford to buy food? How many will kill themselves without the dignity of work?
So I believe a rolling back to work plan to build herd immunity is best. Maybe we pair up neighboring states and one opens and one helps their neighbors sick, then switch a month later. But some sort of staged process to get people sick in a controlled manner so they can get better and immune and back to work.
If you have a better plan, please share it. Because pretending you can ignore COVID-19 by staying at home for 18 months is not a plan.
Hey BBD – what do you think the human cost will be to stay at home for 18 months (or longer)?
Go back and read what I have already said to you about the impact to NON CV patients in the healthcare system if it is overwhelmed by allowing too rapid a spread of CV within the population. I’m not repeating it again so you can blank it again while pushing your nasty little rightwing political peanut.
You might also want to ponder why even our hard right Brexit nutter government did an abrupt U-turn away from this herd immunity bullshit. Too late to avoid significant loss of life, but at least they U-turned eventually.
Think, for once, instead of wittering.
Re: “You won’t be able to wait for the government to provide everybody with PPE, and that isn’t their job anyway.”
Perhaps you are blinded by libertarian ideology and can’t comprehend what people working together in a disciplined way can accomplish. In a national emergency (which the President has already declared) it IS exactly the government’s job to do such things as I outlined, and to facilitate the doing of such things by mobilizing extra-governmental resources. We need things made of cloth and plastic which we already know how to make, not developing brand new sophisticated electronics and rocketry for a space program from scratch. Nor must it be done all at once. And the President already has a Korean Conflict-era law to that empowers him to tell industries what to make if they won’t do it voluntarily.
If it was so easy to make more stuff, why have I been unable to buy any toilet paper for a month?
“wittering”
Huh. I had never heard that word before — had to look it up. Handy to have.
See also blithering, chuntering and prattling.
🙂
“Perhaps you are blinded by libertarian ideology ”
No perhaps, and not hard, since “libertarian ideology” has two main points: “I got mine, screw everyone else”, and “People are poor because they deserve to be.”
It’s also telling that the local trump butt-boy doesn’t understand the purpose of the federl government.
Re: “Since we will need to build up herd immunity lots of people will get sick, better and be immune and won’t need PPE or masks, once tested and ‘cured’.”
And what if the virus mutates as viruses do and herd immunity is never built up? How does even successful herd immunity prepare us for the next killer virus that comes around? Conditions such as global warming, human exploitation of formerly more or less pristine and isolated areas, and increased “bushmeat” harvesting have made it easier and more likely for viruses to be transferred to humans and create new epidemics with the potential — aided by greater numbers of people traveling internationally — of turning into pandemics.
Tyvor:
If the virus mutates the odds are it mutates to a less harmful form, because that is what they normally do. The more harmful the virus the faster it burns out.
It would be very unlikely that herd immunity cannot happen. Immunity to COVID-19 will likely provide some immunity to closely related cousins. Just like with the common cold and the flu shot. If not, well then some percentage of the population will die – just like they do every year from the regular flu season. 2.8 million people die in America every year (from all causes). That is normal.
Herd immunity to COVID-19 does nothing for the next killer virus. We will have to deal with the next killer virus when it arises. We would have to do that anyway.
But again – what is your alternative? I am interested in what you think we can do other than develop a vaccine? And how long do you think we can stay at home?
Since your opinions are based on ignorance and ignoring facts and science in general, they aren’t worth shit. Par for the course for you.
dean:
What is your plan?
“What is your plan?”
Listen to the process the experts say will work. It certainly isn’t to listen to the crap right-wing scum who don’t care about public health or safety (like trump, the low lifes on fox propaganda, or people like you) say needs to be done.
You don’t have a plan. You have a “waaah, I’m a spoiled dick and I want to get a haircut” whine.
Re: “If the virus mutates the odds are it mutates to a less harmful form, because that is what they normally do.”
=
This from Feb. 27, 2020 section of day by day coronavirus-related events at”
https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/news/coronavirus-a-timeline-of-how-the-deadly-outbreak-evolved/
Japanese woman tests positive for second time
– A Japanese woman from Osaka has tested positive for the coronavirus for the second time.
– She first tested positive in late January and recovered on 1 February.
it would be interesting and useful to know (a) what happened to her the 2nd time around and (b) how many others have been found to be reinfectable (if that’s a word).
= =
Re: “Herd immunity to COVID-19 does nothing for the next killer virus. We will have to deal with the next killer virus when it arises. We would have to do that anyway.”
If we bypass the need for herd immunity, then we will already have a way of coping with the next killer virus and will have practice doing it.
= =
Re: ” I am interested in what you think we can do other than develop a vaccine? ”
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I have answered that question in another recent comment on this site and related it to a gradual return-to-work scenario so it will not be necessary for so many to stay at home. Some people even prefer it.
= =
Re: “If it was so easy to make more stuff, why have I been unable to buy any toilet paper for a month?”
I don’t know. We have been able to buy it, although not necessarily our preferred brand. I never said that the rate of production of ALL consumer goods could be increased at will or that it wouldn’t take time or require some ingenuity and repurposing of factory space. Toilet paper is, after all, not strictly necessary, just convenient. One could shower. The President portrayed himself not many days ago as a “war leader” and in war rationing and doing-without some desirable things is often necessary.
” why have I been unable to buy any toilet paper for a month?”
Incredibly surprised at this comment. Don’t know what remote area rickA might live in, but we know several people in Rochester, Duluth, and Minneapolis, and none of them have mentioned having that problem.
Not impossible, but in most places the TP issue is gone.
RickA continues with his arguments from ignorance,
What hideous scrambled thinking on display there, this is most certainly not the case as was seen with the influenza outbreak in the US from 1917- through 1918.
I have already provided references that you should study, here is another:
The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John M. Barry
That from the shitstain president who months ago that it would just go away.
The idol of lowlifes like rickA then tried twice more to harass his medical team into saying it wouldn’t come back.. Both of them essentially, point-blank: “The president is an effing idiot.”
RickA is trapped in a worse nightmare than CV.
All his pro-profit, pro-wealth, pro-establishment rightwing instincts will lead to mass death and political annihilation for Impeached President Trump.
The alternative is equally horrendous – the Federal Government will have to embrace socialist policies on a massive scale: free food, free healthcare, universal wage etc. until the crisis is at a more manageable stage. However long that takes.
Also wibbling.
as in ‘wibble, teapot’
🙂
Stay well, Lionel.
RickA
I had some pollen or something blurring my vision and read that first as:
“I been unable to buy any toilet paper for a mouth?”
and immediately thought that must be why we see all this verbal diarrhoea from you.
BTW, have you yet figured out why expecting cures for many victims could be little better than wishing for unicorns?
We continue to get more evidence of just how fundamentally stupid the people around trump are. These two comments are from stephen moore (who couples his stupidity with racism and dishonesty in his general work).
Then he said
And people wonder why the response has been screwed up from the start.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/politics/stephen-moore-coronavirus-economy.html
BBD
Thanks BBD you too.
My concern is about the two daughters and two granddaughters who are at the drip face, and another daughter, who already has to use an inhaler, a primary school teacher (ex Chemistry I st graduate, worked for Tyco and then the Environment Agency until having four children made her change tack) now an essential worker as is her brother and husband a Chem PhD.
This is why I find RickA’s endless wilful ignorance so appalling.
21.2% of New York City has antibodies to COVID-19.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/23/new-york-antibody-study-estimates-13point9percent-of-residents-have-had-the-coronavirus-cuomo-says.html
A little bit less than 1/3 of the way to herd immunity.
The good news is a lot of New Yorkers are recovered and don’t need to stay at home – but can help the other 79% who will probably get it.
It’s getting to the point that your comments remind people of a cruel South Park character who is a brain-injured kid learning how to masturbate.
I don’t hide from reality. You do.
WRT the supposed 21% antibody positive test results, you are clutching at straws:
Source
More insidious rubbish. If It was remotely correct, then it implies that at least around another 10,000-20,000 will need to die in NYC before the 60% level is achieved. And given how little we still know about the virus, we do not really know the actual rate of infection necessary to achieve population-level immunity. The 60% level is arbitrary. Furthermore, nobody in their right mind thinks that the virus will ultimately infect 100% of the population in the city. Certainly not for years, anyway.
Dean sums you up perfectly RickA. You are demented, warped and vile.
Yesterday on Yahoo! there was a discussion over Sweden’s strategy in dealing with the coronavirus. It is most certainly not a herd immunity approach, although many think it is. But the herd immunity question was raised, and there were some fools, like RickA, who said that the US should adopt it. The same points were raised: that those vulnerable to Covid-19 should be shielded, meaning people over the age of 65, and those with underlying medical conditions such as heart and respiratory ailments as well as diabetes. Moreover, it was argued that, because they are highly vulnerable to the coronavirus, obese people need to be shielded as well. A doctor in a Dutch hospital recently said that at least 80% of patients in the IC coronavirus-infected ward were obese. In New York, obesity is linked with severe coronavirus-related symptoms. A person On Yahoo! commented that, including obese people, this probably means that around 90% of Americans are vulnerable to Covid-19. It was a sarcastic comment, of course, but not that far fetched. Around 40% of Americans are clinically obese, leaving just 60% who aren’t. Throw in a suite of other medical conditions, and that certainly leaves a minority of Americans who are truly ‘healthy’.
So which vulnerable group is RickA going to insist gets infected to get to his magical 60%?
Assuming an R0 of 3, herd immunity is about 70%. The calculation is 1 – 1/R0.
I see Minnesota already has a plan to start getting back to work.
Governor Waltz is doing a good job in Minnesota.
‘Herd immunity’ is for vaccinated populations, you muppet.
Please stop pushing your little political peanut long enough to understand the context in which this term is normally used.
Now, why did the hard right, Brexity UK government abruptly U-turn on ‘herd immunity’ (to the point of trying to gaslight the nation that it wasn’t even on the table)?
You didn’t answer me when I asked the last time and you need to think about this. It really is key to why you and Trump and all the rest of the get-the-tills-a-ringing brigade are going to kill a large number of people in the pursuit of profits.
BBD says “‘Herd immunity’ is for vaccinated populations, you muppet.”
Wrong.
According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity):
Herd immunity (also called herd effect, community immunity, population immunity, or social immunity) is a form of indirect protection from infectious disease that occurs when a large percentage of a population has become immune to an infection, whether through previous infections or vaccination, thereby providing a measure of protection for individuals who are not immune.
We are currently running a natural experiment in herd immunity by previous infection. It looks like we will get to 70%, whether we manage it or not. All the wishful thinking in the world won’t change that – because we don’t have a vaccination and we have to go back to work someday (in Minnesota starting shortly).
If you guys survive, and if I survive, we can check back in a year and see if we have achieved herd immunity yet and get a better estimate of R0. That is life and death in a pandemic. Getting mad about it isn’t very productive.
Which confirms that you have no idea what you are talking about. I mentioned ‘context’. You blanked it, so here we go again, with emphasis added for dishonest little shits trying to score points by misrepresentation:
The means of inducing herd immunity to a dangerous pathogen is via inoculation, not by allowing the disease to kill hundreds of thousands and collapse every healthcare system in its path.
Now, you are still dodging the question – why did the rightwing UK government abruptly U-turn on this nonsense and then try to pretend they never even proposed it?
You need to think about this – and demonstrate it by answering the question – as it illustrates why even muppets can be fantastically dangerous to the rest of us.
“I don’t hide from reality”
No rickA, you just lie continuously about it. Possibly it makes you feel better to spread such unfounded crap, but it’s more likely that it’s just that your political and social “philosophy” demand that you deny every result you don’t like.
Global race to a COVID-19 vaccine:Team at Harvard plans to launch clinical trial in fall
– The Harvard Gazette, April 13, 2020
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/04/harvards-coronavirus-vaccine-efforts/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=harvard_alumni_gazette&utm_content=haa_ade_all_alumni_2020-04-23
That great American leader Jabb-the-Hutt has pronounced his fix for Coronavirus.
Coronavirus: medical experts denounce Trump’s latest ‘dangerous’ treatment suggestion
This is beyond parody, it is almost as if Trump is being deliberately primed to spew forth dangerous nonsense in order to make all Americans realise what an idiot Trump is.
Did you see rudy 9-11 on fox dismissing contact tracing,saying “then why don’t we do it for cancer, obesity, or heart disease?”
Sort of like rickA — it isn’t simply that those people are so dishonest and uneducated, it’s that others believe anything they say.
It is simply a clueless dick, enabled by dishonest staff and supported by even less intelligent people.
When the White House released the first transcript of the shit show where trump brought up the crap about “light and disinfectant”, he gave a long rambling answer that ended with this word mess:
A reporter then said “But sir, you’re the president”. trump turned and asked
The first transcript gave this as her response.
After it was repeatedly pointed out that that was not what was said live, on tv, as people could find anywhere, a second transcript was released. This included the good doctor saying (correctly)
Stupid and ill-educated comment such as we have grown to expect from these types. Should be made to go on re-education courses, biology for one, as they clearly missed important stuff during their former lives. Perhaps he was home schooled by parochial parents.
RickA
Following in the footsteps of Senator Edwin Vare and his medical officer lackey Dr Wilmer Krusen of Philadelphia in 1918 no doubt. That Vare’s ‘chief lieutenant’ was Mayor Thomas B Smith should have warned of the endemic corruption that would lead to the deaths of thousands.
The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John M. Barry
The corruption and stupid is now at WH level where Jabba-the-Hutt does not know the difference between a viral and a bacterial infection and how disinfectant works. Maybe the CinC (Clown in Chief) should be the first to volunteer for an intravenous injection of disinfectant and probes with attached UV light sources to be inserted in all orifices except for the ears for there would be nothing within to see.
It will be a surprise to nobody (who has the capability to think and believes experts know about these things) that rickA’s repeated ejaculations about herd immunity are bullshit.
https://www (dot) jhsph (dot) edu/covid-19/articles/achieving-herd-immunity-with-covid19.html
https://www (dot) healthline.com/health/herd-immunity#effectiveness
https://www (dot) sciencealert.com/why-herd-immunity-will-not-save-us-from-the-covid-19-pandemic
dean:
I am not talking about herd immunity to prevent COVID-19.
I am talking about a way to manage COVID-19 to get to herd immunity – since the other way (unmanaged) we get there willy nilly. We cannot stay at home for 18 months or until if and when we develop a vaccine. In Minnesota we are staying at home until about May 1st and then some are going back to work. Of course we will wear masks and keep six feet away – but still people will get sick. So we have to manage the process of who gets sick, how many get sick (so as not to overwhelm the hospitals) and try to get to herd immunity.
Of course we can do it your way. The whilly nilly way looks like New York City. I think we can do better by managing our way to 70% sick, recovered and immune. This is just one person’s opinion – feel free to ignore it. Hopefully those in charge are less emotional in their thinking and more logical and left brain in their thinking. We will see.
You are talking bullshit rickA. Nothing more than that. It’s your only nature.
Your denial and head-in-the-sand thinking are in full display.
You are the same way on nuclear power as a cure for global warming.
Oh well – you can lead a horse to water . . .
It’s not you dishonest shit. And I – a sometime nuclear advocate – have shown you that even the nuclear industry itself, on its own most optimistic projections agrees that it’s not. So why the fuck are you still lying about this?
You know, I’m pretty sure you are stupid enough to believe the left brain/right brain bullshit. You also probably believe in “learning styles”. You seem to practice equal opportunity in the non-scientific crap you buy into.
My wife and I are both under 60 (just), our kids are out of the house, we are healthy, not obese, have no heart problems, no diabetes – so we volunteer for the first wave of managed COVID-19 patients. We can stay at home, get sick, self-isolate, hopefully get better and add to our states herd immunity level.
How is it possible you don’t realize how fucking stupid you are?
This ‘herd immunity’ rhetoric was dangerous nonsense from the outset and remains so (emphasis added for the hard of thinking):
Source: WHO.
Rick, go right ahead. Go for the Darwin Award. You really are a clot.
Re: Hopefully those in charge are less emotional in their thinking and more logical and left brain in their thinking. We will see.”
=
You CAN’T be talking about Donald Trump and the sycophantic stooges he’s placed in high places throughout the government. Trump combines stupidity, ignorance, and narcissism into a Dunning-Kruger exemplar. If he had any positive qualities you describe, he would have never have dismantled pandemic preparedness in the first place (in 2018 and in 2019 just 3 months prior to the start of the pandemic), and would have immediately begun mitigation as soon as any cases appeared in the U. S. Instead he lied, denied, and eventually ceded any role in mitigation to the governors and private individuals. We are now living in a de facto confederacy of states with no head. We’ve tried confederations twice before and it was a failure both times; the second time with a huge associated death toll and a failed reconstruction.
Nope. Trump isn’t in charge. The governors and the people running the businesses are. I am almost sure I said that before.
Trump isn’t in charge. A competant president would be, and would have done the required work back at the start of the year.
But the crapstain we have now? Do anything the correct way? Not a chance.
Trump asserted total authority, then walked it back, then incited civil disobedience with the – even now, after all he has done – shocking LIBERATE tweets.
Then he threw Kemp under the bus for doing exactly what he was agitating for.
This malignantly manipulative blame-dodging incompetent is the man you are defending.
You clot RickA, here is evidence of logical thinking from your heroes:
Revealed: leader of group peddling bleach as coronavirus ‘cure’ wrote to Trump this week
So, start taking your bleach RickA like a good little acolyte of the DumF in the WH.
Again, if ANY other person were the president this would have to be an Onion article.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/24/revealed-leader-group-peddling-bleach-cure-lobbied-trump-coronavirus?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other&utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark
Applicable to the president, his staff, and rickA.
Also: it’s worth rereading Betrand Russell’s The Triumph of Stupidity.
He linked the rise of Adolf Hitler to the organized fervor of stupid and brutal people—two qualities, he noted, that “usually go together.” He went on to make one of his most famous observations, that the “fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
Describes trump’s supporters to a t.
Re: “the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
An early version of what is now, I believe referred to as the “Dunning-Kruger effect” on the basis of studies of such.
Re: “Nope. Trump isn’t in charge. The governors and the people running the businesses are. I am almost sure I said that before.”
=
I know that I said something very like that before. It was in the context of a blowhard who claimed absolute presidential power then backed off and ceded what authority a president actually does have because (a) he is a natural human weasel and weaseling out of responsibility is the story of his life, and (b) he thinks that he can then blame the Democrats for whatever death and damage the pandemic does, counting on the Republican establishment, right-wing media (Rush Limbaugh et al.), and Russia to bury his record of Coronavirus lies, inaction, and incomptence in a blizzard of disinformation, conspiracy theories, and alt-facts.
Trump isn’t in charge – except when he is in charge – except that he isn’t in charge when he is in charge etc. etc. etc. The man-child is doing everything he can to get booted out of the White House in November (getting his brainless supporters to ingest bleach is certainly one way to lose votes if you get my drift). Isn’t it pathetic watching him downplay every dumb thing that he does, in this case claiming he was just being sarcastic. Just another lie on top of the 18,000 plus he has made since coming into office. He was being 100% sincere when he made the bleach remark. The idiot truly believed it. Then he does his predictable damage limitation exercise the following day and his army of ignorant cultists defend him on it.
As an aside, check out the comedy video remake of the song, “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” called “The Liar Tweets Tonight”. Hilarious! “Vote him away, vote him away, away, vote away”. Great parody!
https://local.theonion.com/man-just-buying-one-of-every-cleaning-product-in-case-t-1842493766
Apparently some of his supporters really are stupid enough to believe him.
Yup, I saw that just now. But you can be sure that Impeached President Trump will not feel a scintilla of personal responsibility for the harm he has caused to American citizens.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/25/us/who-immunity-antibodies-covid-19/index.html
Indeed, and it should be considered that viruses can mutate and do so frequently with the rate of mutation being proportionate to the number of infections.
The annual flue vaccine is one prepared best suited to the variety of virus HxNx (nearly 200 permutations) that is expected to show up. Also components to aid immunity to previous strains can be included in the new dose.
I have read that Coronavirus Covid-19 is not anticipated to evolve as rapidly as influenza strains but then the game is still in play.
Just when you think trump couldn’t get any more disgusting than he was by having the federal government steal supplies from the states, we find out he’s had FEMA stealing from the VA.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/va-health-chief-acknowledges-a-shortage-of-protective-gear-for-its-hospital-workers/2020/04/24/4c1bcd5e-84bf-11ea-ae26-989cfce1c7c7_story.html?ICID=ref_fark&utm_content=link&utm_medium=website&utm_source=fark
As we know words have consequences:
US Poison Control Centre sees spike in number of people ingesting disinfectants
Indeed, words have consequences even when spoken by an ignorant nutcase.
The oranges of advice to ingest bleach came from the Orange in Chief. The local cheer-leader for whom has gone awfully quiet.
In Maryland, a similar thing happened, as reported on Friday, April 24, 2020:
https://www.motherjones.com/coronavirus-updates/2020/04/maryland-donald-trump-bleach/
It is, I think, a telling indictment of the impeached President’s unfitness for his office that he apparently has no idea that his defense, i.e. he was just being sarcastic, even if it were true, is completely and idiotically out-of-place in what is supposed to be a report to the nation on the coronavirus.* What other modern U. S. president would have said anything so ignorant and dangerously misleading on such an occasion.
*Of course, his supposed “reports” are just reelection rallies aimed at pumping up his base. Actual information on Covid-19 takes up just a few minutes per hour of his “reports.”
Apparently the rolled gold liar has cancelled today’s briefing.
According to what I heard tonight on the Rachel Maddow Show, Although previously, the CDC could investigate disease flare-ups and require businesses to adopt practices and make changes (including testing) to mitigate or end the problem, now the CDC has phrased such things only as optional suggestions to the meat-packing plants which are sites of major Covid-19 infections.
https://brownfieldagnews.com/news/osha-and-cdc-issue-new-guidelines-for-meat-packing-plants/
Now, by executive order our impeached President — who has still failed to facilitate the manufacture of sufficient numbers reliable tests for the virus — has ordered meat-packing plants to open if closed and stay open if not closed. This apparently removes workers ability to sue over unsafe working conditions and, to my knowledge, there are no conditions put on the plants themselves to make them safer for the workers.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/28/politics/defense-production-act-executive-order-food-supply/index.html
Tonight’s news also included the item that Republican governors in the states in which such plants are located have decided that workers who fail to report for hazardous duty and are therefore fired, will not be eligible for state unemployment benefits. Go to work and maybe die or stay home and maybe starve and/or be evicted. Nice.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jgewm7/gop-states-reopening-early-will-push-people-scared-to-work-off-unemployment
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I’ve resisted weighing in on vaccines for a long time, for several reasons. The biggest one is that I’m not an expert on vaccines.
However, I know people in biotech who are. People who have labored “in the trenches” (or should I say, “at the benches”) on dengue fever, and on other vaccine efforts. They all tell me the same thing: DON’T BELIEVE THE HYPE.
This article is not about a tempest in a teapot. It is a big deal. It reports on the latest example of a pattern we’ve seen with would-be vaccine makers, big and small, since February:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/19/rush-share-good-news-covid-19-drugs-is-undermining-science/?utm_campaign=wp_opinions&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_opinions
What’s more, my own quasi-scientific assessment – and I won’t provide reasons, because there have been reviews of this and when I find a super good one I’ll post it – is that there have always been substantial biological obstacles to surmount before an effective vaccine against any coronavirus can be developed and deployed. COVID-19 is NOT your grandfather’s Oldsmobile … I mean to say, virus.
Optimism is great. Realism, however, is much better.