caulfield12

We are doing that to ourselves...self inflected. Can you imagine Reagan, JFK, Truman, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Lincoln agreeing with this idea? The Chinese system is based on maintaining control and allegiance to party...but hasn’t really been outward facing until the 2008 Olympics and 2010 World Expo. There has been blood in the water ever since 9/11 and the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan (in terms of international consensus on US), but the current preference for China is to continue to increase “world market share” through trade and diplomacy...massive loans/development projects in Africa and Asia/Middle East, transforming from USD to RMB denominated transactions, competing with petrodollar, Belt and Road Initiative, etc. Of course, if we had reacted just two weeks more quickly, we could or might have saved the majority of those who have already lost their lives. Unless they could have predicted a totally incompetent US response (certainly arguable), they never could have anticipated the damage to the US and American economies would be so extensive. Keep in mind, they’ve wiped out their #1/#2 export markets (EU/US), so how is that to their advantage if they have nobody left to sell to? India is not their friend, either. More a budding rival. Now their supply chains are under threat....and countries are looking to bring back domestic production of PPE and especially drugs/medicine. None of these are positive developments for China.

Just like Jared and Ivanka take their weekend getaways to Bedminster, NJ (incurring additional government security cost) seriously. Privileged politicians on both sides are not so different, well, except for the insider trading numbers since 2016.

It comes back to “reasonable standard of care.” Would a jury find such actions defensible...in hindsight? We don’t have all the mothers of the world demanding speed limits should be lowered across the board to 30 MPH to save lives, do we? We do have limits on assault weapons, drunk driving and compel drivers to wear seat belts. We do have social norms that also impact behaviors, such as the stigmas related to cigarette smoking. We haven’t banned cigarettes, tobacco or even Big Gulps, but we realize the consequences of our actions. Due to the lack of testing available in the US, not sure we can say the same thing about Covid. There’s reasonably unaware, and then intentionally or blissfully unaware. If you had (unprotected) sexual relationships with 10+ people, and refused to get tested...and passed on HIV/AIDS, is that so much better than having unprotected sex knowing you have tested positive? Maybe. But where does the first person’s behavior go from “reasonable” to reckless or endangering? The same shades of grey exist with the mask and overall lack of testing situation. Can one sue someone because the President has consistently maintained “there are plenty of tests”...they made no effort to do so, and it can be proved in hindsight or retroactively how many others they infected?

I’m assuming you are referring to NYC Mayor DeBlasio’s routine in the morning. Well, he got ripped to shreds for it, and his popularity ratings rose a fraction of Governor Cuomo’s. As for the other part of the argument...there are always those in flyover territory who take umbrage with the behaviors of coastal elites, DC, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, NYC. Growing up in Iowa, there’s a bit of a built-in inferiority complex...that said, most of those states are generally safer statistically, offer solid public education systems and more freedoms (speeds on highways or gun rights) along with a much cheaper cost of living/housing affordability. It’s ALWAYS going to be a trade-off. And there’s also invariably going to be loads of people assuming they’re safe/r in Lawrence than Chicago...so not testing and not wearing masks will cause Covid rates to spike in Kansas, just like in Iowa. And then you're REALLY talking elevated death rates due to the dearth of high quality rural health care (see Gallup, NM or Albany, GA).

For Black Men, Fear That Masks Will Invite Racial Profiling African-American men worry that following the C.D.C. recommendation to cover their faces in public could expose them to harassment from the police. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/us/coronavirus-masks-racism-african-americans.html You can also certainly understand with people wearing KKK hoods in public and brandishing weapons at public protests that there would be an immense fear factor here...it seems inevitable that this will used as an excuse in a manslaughter case, where someone felt “threatened.” And it’s not just African Americans, you have the cinematic tradition of Mexican/Hispanic bandidos and outlaws in popular culture, and, more recently, the association of Islamic jihadism with head and face coverings. I’ll just put it this way...in places like Michigan, Florida and Texas, how comfortable do you think any of those groups feel with the lack of trust in public policing and now the almost militant opposition to mask wearing? Especially with teenagers having confrontations with various entities in public...the risk is higher of dying (or at least getting injured) in a mask confrontation than from the actual virus itself. Otoh, many young people are asymptomatic carriers. Then you have the fear within a community itself...this association with masks hiding “nefarious” activity. Here in Hong Kong, the protestors consistently flaunted a mask ban (then hid behind it as a health issue) because it was the optimal way to avoid being identified by CCTV cameras and avoid arrest, which goes on public records and into job employment databases.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/live-let-die-blasts-president-013638094.html Who is the idiot who thought playing Live and Let Die at the Honeywell plant in AZ was just a swell idea? Sweet Jesus, that’s tone deaf. They’ve managed to outdo Melania’s anti-MSM messaging jacket, I think. And then choosing the Guns N Roses version, instead of the original Bond...doesn’t Axl Rose ALWAYS go after Trump in the media? Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of President Donald Trump, formed a volunteer-staffed, "shadow" White House task force to help the US government acquire medical equipment during the coronavirus outbreak. But according to a new report in The New York Times, the group fumbled these efforts by prioritizing tips and bids from close Trump associates, rather than from experienced and legitimate suppliers. The group was told to prioritize those with special connections, and even tracked tips from close Trump allies on a spreadsheet titled "V.I.P. Update," according to The Times. Among those prioritized were conservative activist Charlie Kirk and a former "Apprentice" contestant, Tana Goertz, who serves as the campaign chair of Women for Trump. cnn.com

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/05/us/man-wore-kkk-hood-grocery-trnd/index.html Now we have KKK hoods in grocery stores...the main shocker was that it was in California.

I can’t even remember what plan the Tea Party had back in the day...other than complaining about the government takeover of health care. Unsurprisingly, no viable solution from the conservative side of the aisle has arisen in over a decade’s worth of time to consider the problem. In that sense, no different from Occupy Wall Street. Well, THEN WHAT? Perhaps they can hire Elizabeth Warren, she has a plan for everything. In this particular case, it’s going to be we attempted to reopen the economy, went off or lost unemployment benefits...but are still much worse off than we were in late February or early March. Who will be to blame then?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8259203/FEMA-seized-5MILLION-face-masks-ordered-veterans-VA-official-says.html You go though all these stories, it just gets worse and worse. I was trying to find the one about the White House seizing 3600 masks out of a donation from Taiwan to the national stockpile to keep just for themselves, but instead discovered that FEMA was preventing masks from getting through to the VA as well. After all that lip service that Trump pays to veterans? Of course, when MD Governor Larry Hogan used his wife’s connections to bring in a shipment directly from South Korea, Trump laid into him. Further irony, the MD National Guard had to protect it from Federal seizure in a Baltimore shipyards scene reminiscent of Frank Sobotka’s reign as union boss in The Wire.

Thanks! He’s tough as they come, he’s got that working in his favor. He’s already made it through getting hit by a car walking on a residential street in Plano about five years ago, and smoked cigarettes and pipe tobacco for sixty some years as well.

In addition to Dr. Rick Bright, you have a MI GOP Congressman suing Gretchen Whitmer...and comparing it to the freaking American Revolution and her actions parallel to those of King George the 2nd. Mitchell describes Whitmer's executive order as autocratic, saying keeping Michigan "on lockdown indefinitely" is "in all material respects, the same kind of government from which we declared out (our) independence 244 years ago." "The Governor's orders lack objective criteria by which to measure when the 'emergency' is over. In this regard, the Governor has stated that she alone will decide when the emergency will end," the court documents say. The congressman also alleges that the executive orders violate his right to interstate travel and his right to obtain medical care for his osteoarthritis in another state. The orders also interfere with his property rights because he couldn't obtain lumber or hire workers to build a new barn and he couldn't get home improvements or necessary repairs done at his second home. https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/05/politics/michigan-congressman-lawsuit-whitmer-coronavirus-order/index.html

You somehow managed to make the follow-up worse than the original. I know my 92 year old uncle who lives in a nursing home in Texas and just was diagnosed with Covid yesterday would never think this way, thankfully. He can’t see, he can hardly hear, he’s stubborn and ornery as a mule yet is whip-smart at the same time...the thought of suicide by any of those from that Great Depression/World War II generation, well, it would just never cross their mind to do anything but fight for their lives until the very end. Almost all of them learned in Sunday School it was one of the worst, most selfish sins one could possibly commit.

The document carries the seal of both the Health and Human Services Department and the Homeland Security Department. The projection contains a range of estimates. The forecast of 200,000 new cases and 2,500 deaths per day are around the middle of the range. The documents are labeled “for official use only.” The slide deck is labeled a “Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Situation Update” but a CDC spokeswoman, Ana Toro, said the projections were “incorrectly attributed” to the agency. She didn’t say where it came from, referring further questions to a spokeswoman at the Federal Emergency Management Agency who didn’t respond to an email. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-04/white-house-disclaims-projection-showing-surge-in-virus-outbreak Right there alone, you have four government agencies who are on the “outs” with Trump but still attempting to fulfill their missions...it’s a wonder even more Americans haven’t died. Then you have Jared “It’s Our Stockpile” Kushner actively working with US military leaders to seize critical PPE supplies, to the point where GOP (MA, OH, IN, MD) and Dem governors were forced together into regional coalitions to combat this...the closest the government response actually is to a wartime footing is fighting against each other and bidding up the price of supplies (leading to further state budgetary issues.) Additional resources spent by NPS to make Trump look even smaller by being in closer physical proximity to the Lincoln Memorial for a Fox Town Hall (instead of outside on the steps). The same week, attacks by the Lincoln Project (conservative ”traitors” like George Conway) so offending Trump with a brutal oppo campaign ad that he has to stay up all night tweeting about it. Stephen Miller using every chance he gets to tie the Covid response into immigration broadsides that appease the base...while simultaneous undermining suddenly more and more critical aspects of the economy disproportionately worked by immigrants like farming, “last mile delivery,” nurses, gig workers, grocery store employees and meat processing plants. Essential workers are now being treated like the least among us, except for just 4 1/2 minutes of generic mentions in task force briefings over an entire month. As of today, they were also the only ones to actually be ordered to do anything by the Defense Production Act. Which was to sacrifice themselves for the good of the country while corporate liability was removed from their overlords.

You would think the phrase “per capita” never had been invented. Stockholm doesn’t even have a population of ONE million. Goteberg or Gothenburg, #2 largest “city” at 548,000. That would be #33/34 in the US, Tucson or Fresno metropolitan area. Let’s look at Vietnam for a country to emulate, last time I checked they had just a handful of deaths...and they’re not even “first world” compared to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and the larger megacities in eastern and southern China.

Even if we “discounted” older lives at just $1-2.5 million (because of the average age of death from Covid-19) instead of the suggested $10 million in the article below...we’re now willingly sacrificing twice as many Americans in the process and essentially revaluing their lives at JUST $235,000 per person in NY, FL, TX and GA. In every instance, looser restrictions improve the performance of the economy but also lead to more deaths. If New York loosened restrictions by two notches, there’d be more business activity and $2.4 billion in additional statewide income. But 5,000 more people would die. Texas and Georgia now have moderate restrictions in place, which the Rand model estimates will cause 25,000 additional deaths in the two states combined. But it will also generate an extra $5.1 billion in income, combined. Extrapolating to determine the income gained per death when comparing moderate and strict measures yield these figures: New York: $163,000 Florida: $276,000 Georgia: $247,000 Texas: $254,000 California: $700,000 When evaluating the impact of government policies that affect public health, analysts place a statistical value of about $10 million on each human life as a way of measuring the appropriate amount of risk a policy may cause or mitigate. By that standard, the payback from reopening is low, although governors are factoring in other things such as the political mood, hospital capacity and demands from businesses. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-cost-of-reopening-the-economy-in-lives-201007725.html

Situation 1 is pretty close to Swine Flu. The number of confirmed cases was approximately 1.6 million.[6] However, some studies estimated that the actual number could be 700 million to 1.4 billion people—or 11 to 21 percent of the global population of 6.8 billion at the time.[12] The lower value of 700 million is more than the 500 million people estimated to have been infected by the Spanish flu pandemic.[13] The number of lab-confirmed deaths reported to the WHO is 18,449,[7] though this 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic is estimated to have actually caused about 284,000 (range from 150,000 to 575,000) deaths.[14] A follow-up study done in September 2010 showed that the risk of serious illness resulting from the 2009 H1N1 flu was no higher than that of the yearly seasonal flu.[15] For comparison, the WHO estimates that 250,000 to 500,000 people die of seasonal flu annually.[9] wikipedia (CNN) A man accused of shoving an Austin, Texas, park ranger into the water while the ranger was explaining to a crowd the need for social distancing is embarrassed by his actions, his lawyer said. A video that gained attention after it was posted on social media includes the moment a young man pushes the ranger into a lake at Commons Ford Ranch Metro Park last Thursday afternoon. Brandon Hicks, 25, faces a charge of attempted assault on a public servant, a state jail felony, said the Travis County Sheriff's Office. According to an arrest affidavit, ranger Cassidy Stillwell was talking to a crowd of people, described as "unlawfully drinking and smoking," on a dock near Lake Austin. It's unclear from the affidavit whether Hicks was part of that group mentioned in the affidavit. https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/04/us/social-distancing-ranger-pushing-lake-covid-19-trnd/index.html

We need a massive entrepreneurship initiative...but geared more to the needs of the next 20-30 years. It’s not about maintaining what worked (or hadn’t yet failed) until February...but reimagining shopping malls, community centers, public health, how to encourage social connections in neighborhood instead of watching them fray as we become increasingly fearful of “others” who are different, however one goes about defining it. That shouldn’t be partisan.

My former coworker (chemistry teacher) got really sick here in Wuhan and has finally made it back to the States...and now faces extensive rehabilitation related to a diabetes/Covid-related episode. Was in the hospital for almost six weeks total. He’s originally from the Chicagoland area...BEVERLY to be more precise. He went to Augustana. Since he lost his job here, or had no choice but to give it up, the mother is trying to enroll him in Medicaid. Not sure how successful that will be or how long it will take, since his previous position was here in China. They’ve raised around $20,000 through GFM, but a big chunk of that was already spent on inpatient hospital bills and two plane tickets out of here three weeks ago when the prices were incredibly high. Our school insurance was/is capped at just around $7,000 USD. Is facing a pretty extensive rehabilitation period...so just looking for any helpful advice. My 92 year old uncle staying in a long-term care facility in Plano, Texas, has Covid-19 now as well. Tough times. His brother (these are my father’s two older brothers, oldest served at tail end of World War II in the Pacific) is 94/95 and in the same facility.

Give Me Liberty — And Give Me Death Why Trump’s Plan to Reopen the Economy is Going to Fail https://eand.co/give-me-liberty-and-give-me-death-80f145090326 Whatever the numbers are, it really doesn’t matter at this point, because every single aspect of this is so politicized. What I would like to see, though, is someone explain how the 60-80% of Americans struggling from paycheck to paycheck...the majority working for small businesses, are going to get through this, because no matter what happens in the coming months, the majority of Americans are going to dramatically change their spending/consumption habits. And the way this is predictably working out so far is that we’re simply strengthening the power of oligopolies over the daily lives of every American, regardless of whichever side of the partisan divide they occupy.

In all honesty, it seems like one of those “well, I’m a lifetime Democrat/Republican but this election I’m finally so fed up with XYZ that I’m going to vote...” It must be 30% of the calls at C-Span these days. If you look at most articles from various publications that are being republished at other sites, there’s almost always a string of comments over the last 2-3 weeks exactly like this one: “Scare tactics to say the least probably motivated by political ideology. I live and have lived in a metro area of more than one million residents. I know of no one who has contracted coronavirus, I know of no friends or friends of friends who have the virus. A good friend is a doctor at a major hospital here and said there are only 8 patients hospitalized for covid19 in his hospital. Why hasn't the homeless population been more affected, why haven’t our grocery workers or mail carriers been more affected? Sure it spreads fast and can be deadly, but we are all in hyper panic as a result of news media reports and doomsayers? Life is a gamble, nothing for sure, take necessary precautions and live life.” Seems that 1/3rd the country won’t even believe this is actually real until a close friend or relative contracts it and is hospitalized.

A security guard is shot and killed after telling customer to put on a face mask (Family Dollar in Flint, MI) https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/04/us/michigan-security-guard-mask-killing-trnd/index.html Pulitzer-prize winning science journalist who predicted pandemic and has been all over this story since January, Laurie Garrett (from New York Times) https://www.yahoo.com/news/she-predicted-coronavirus-does-she-185553863.html “I’ve been telling everybody that my event horizon is about 36 months, and that’s my best-case scenario,” she said. ..... If America enters the next wave of coronavirus infections “with the wealthy having gotten somehow wealthier off this pandemic by hedging, by shorting, by doing all the nasty things that they do, and we come out of our rabbit holes and realize, ‘Oh, my God, it’s not just that everyone I love is unemployed or underemployed and can’t make their maintenance or their mortgage payments or their rent payments, but now all of a sudden those jerks that were flying around in private helicopters are now flying on private personal jets, and they own an island that they go to, and they don’t care whether or not our streets are safe,’ then I think we could have massive political disruption. “Just as we come out of our holes and see what 25% unemployment looks like,” she said, “we may also see what collective rage looks like.” ..... Referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and its analogues abroad, she told me, “I’ve heard from every CDC in the world — the European CDC, the African CDC, China CDC — and they say, ‘Normally, our first call is to Atlanta, but we ain’t hearing back.’ There’s nothing going on down there. They’ve gutted that place. They’ve gagged that place. I can’t get calls returned anymore. Nobody down there is feeling like it’s safe to talk. Have you even seen anything important and vital coming out of the CDC?”

WTH??? Some label their expected second civil war “the boogaloo,” and experts have tracked a spike in interest in the term on social media, plus a proliferation of advice on how to prepare. The name is a pop culture reference derived from a 1984 movie flop that became a cult classic called “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo.” It went through various mutations and emerged sometimes as the “Big Igloo” or the “Big Luau.” That is why adherents sometimes wear Hawaiian shirts, say those who track them. Many such shirts were in evidence when armed protesters stormed the state capital in Lansing, Michigan, on Thursday; and they have appeared in rallies across the country. Enthusiasts riff on the name, calling themselves “boojihadeen” or “the boog.” Not all those in the “boogaloo” movement are white supremacists, but groups who track hate culture find some overlap in terms of Nazi iconography and other extremist symbols. There are some 125 such groups on Facebook, more than 60% created this year, according to a report from the Tech Transparency Project of the Campaign for Accountability, a nonprofit watchdog group. Facebook, which had previously said it wrestled with the term because it is also the name of a popular music genre, issued a statement Friday saying it would remove posts that link the term to violence. https://www.yahoo.com/news/coronavirus-becomes-battle-cry-u-120054248.html

“Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job!” That Hurricane Katrina quote turned out to be even more damaging...

For that, he received a tongue lashing asking where President Bush was during the impeachment hearings...

The problem is that it definitely wasn’t addressed to workers or first responders, but directly to Governor JB Pritzker. There were also “Heil, Pritzker” signs with Nazi swastikas (see link). https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2020/05/heil-pritzker-right-wing-anti-quarantine-protestors-in-illinois-carry-nazi-signs-against-the-jewish-governor/ “The expression comes from the title of an 1873 novel by German philologist Lorenz Diefenbach, Arbeit macht frei: Erzählung von Lorenz Diefenbach, in which gamblers and fraudsters find the path to virtue through labour.[2][3] The phrase was also used in French (le travail rend libre!) by Auguste Forel, a Swiss entomologist, neuroanatomist and psychiatrist, in his Fourmis de la Suisse (English: "Ants of Switzerland") (1920).[4] In 1922, the Deutsche Schulverein of Vienna, an ethnic nationalist "protective" organization of Germans within the Austrian empire, printed membership stamps with the phrase Arbeit macht frei. According to visitcracow.com: “In the 1930s, they (Nazis) promoted programs against unemployment through this sentence.” The phrase is also evocative of the medieval German principle of Stadtluft macht frei ("urban air makes you free"), according to which serfs were liberated after being a city resident for one year and one day.[5] source: wikipedia