Self-quarantined post, for dangerous levels of narcissistic senility…
Trump just said the WHO estimate of a 3.4 percent coronavirus death rate globally is "really a false number" adding "this is just my hunch" but "personally, I would say the number is way under 1 percent."
— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) March 5, 2020
Trump calls it “Corona flu” and says, “Some people are getting better by sitting around.”
Please God make it stop. https://t.co/NWWwAYt4hv
— Touré (@Toure) March 5, 2020
He really does, folks, I know we tend to accept it and keep scrolling but Trump really just told a live TV audience to go to work even if they have coronavirus. The absolute only comfort is knowing hardly anyone who actually watches Hannity is less than 85.
— zeddy (@Zeddary) March 5, 2020
Expanded clip of the same ‘conversation’ (monologue):
In this clip, Trump:
1. Denies WHO's coronavirus death rate based on “hunch"
2. Calls coronavirus "corona flu"
3. Suggests it's fine for people w/ Covid-19 to go to work
4. Compares coronavirus to "the regular flu," indicating he doesn't get the difference pic.twitter.com/uC9c03zX31— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 5, 2020
Out in the real world, there’s a lot of stories like this thread…
I live in Seattle, I have all symptoms of COVID-19 and have a history of chronic bronchitis.
Since I work in a physical therapy clinic with many 65+ patients and those with chronic illnesses, I decided to be responsible and go to get tested. This is how that went.
— sketchy lady (@into_the_brush) March 3, 2020
The only way I can get treated is if my symptoms get so bad I develop pneumonia or bronchitis, which is very likely in my case. Then I'll be in the ER and quarantined for several days while waiting for a test and for the results to come back.
— sketchy lady (@into_the_brush) March 3, 2020
Since this is getting attention.
COVID-19 HOTLINE: 1-800-525-0127
DON'T CALL unless you are experiencing all symptoms or have been exposed to a case. Leave the lines open to people who need it most. Any other questions can be answered on the CDC, WHO, or WA public health sites.
— sketchy lady (@into_the_brush) March 3, 2020
From the other side of the country:
Just spoke with ER doc who say he's seeing cases he's 99% sure are #coronavirus. Negative for flu, recent travel, work in airports. Not allowed to test. Patients return to work because they can't take time off w/out a firm diagnosis. Other ER docs seeing the same thing.
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) March 4, 2020
NH
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) March 4, 2020
As someone connected to the medical field, I can confirm this is true in doctors offices in NYC. And has been for at least two weeks: patients who test negative for flu & strep, who have all the symptoms of Coronavirus, but aren’t severe enough for ER. Spreading for weeks.
— Peterd (@paperboynyc) March 4, 2020
????NBC NEWS —
"The Trump administration last year moved to roll back regulations designed to prevent infections from spreading in nursing homes, a decision that is facing renewed criticism for endangering the elderly amid the coronavirus outbreak." https://t.co/i5tfjYcz3A
— Jesse Ferguson (@JesseFFerguson) March 3, 2020
NEW: 60 House Dems Demand Improved Coronavirus Response From Trump Administrationhttps://t.co/lCs9zpG2AE pic.twitter.com/lt9tnEv5fn
— Rep. Don Beyer (@RepDonBeyer) March 4, 2020
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 4, 2020
What might’ve been…
When you call anything inconvenient to you a "hoax," when you undermine facts and truth, and when you rid the government of experts who are loyal to science rather than to you, you're going to have some problems. https://t.co/KdQRFMyEfZ
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 4, 2020
Coronavirus emergency bill stalled over vaccine cost concerns https://t.co/Ir2TCAaIUP via @politico
— Carl Zimmer (@carlzimmer) March 4, 2020
President Trump on bringing US coronavirus victims from Diamond Princess cruise ship back: "In one way, I hated to do it. Statistically, I hated to do it, from the standpoint of having people coming in, that's gonna, you know, is it going to look bad?"
— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) March 5, 2020
He wants to be able to boast about an immediate “fix.” It’s the Singapore summit film-flam applied to a public health crisis https://t.co/aOMlIIBeVD
— Daniel Larison (@DanielLarison) March 4, 2020
Like they know how dangerous he is, but they've just given up trying to do anything about it.
— Schooley (@Rschooley) March 5, 2020
holy shit — SecDef Esper warned our commanders not to take actions to protect their troops from coronavirus that would upset Trump’s PR effort to downplay the threathttps://t.co/JBZ4e4d0Ny
— Jesse Lehrich (@JesseLehrich) March 3, 2020
"Also, we're currently supporting a lawsuit to strike down all essential health benefits" https://t.co/8xdTPMantL
— The face toucher (@JonIsAwesomest) March 4, 2020
Trump today groundlessly blamed Obama for coronavirus testing delays, citing an old, never-enacted regulatory plan
that’s why Naval War College historian Stephen Knott calls Trump ill-equipped for this moment: “He’s just not a person with credibility"https://t.co/LUVnKctH8Q
— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) March 4, 2020
Pence said Trump referred to an Obama regulation requiring university labs to coordinate w/FDA
Obama WH aide Ron Klain responds: “wasn’t a problem in rolling out massive Ebola testing program in 2014. if Trump people couldn’t manage, why didn’t they fix it 3 months ago?”
— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) March 4, 2020
Trump blames Obama for coronavirus because he’s nuts and any reporter who covers this President as if this is normal is failing you.
(My public service announcement for the day.) https://t.co/hRrVzDb2wi
— Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) March 4, 2020
Thank you Dr. Faucihttps://t.co/rqWQYnhqEa https://t.co/zMNxl5cro6
— Vipin Narang (@NarangVipin) March 3, 2020
Oh. Oh my. https://t.co/7QzkBZsq1H pic.twitter.com/RXXpLA3zOS
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) March 3, 2020
A real doctor is in the house. Dr Fauci talks to Trump like he’s a dementia patient…bc he is a dementia patient. He firmly & calmly restates reality directly to him. He must be mortified by Trump’s presence in the WH, the praise sessions & the coverup of Trump’s mental decline. https://t.co/yfVa7sBStw
— Tom Joseph (@TomJChicago) March 3, 2020
A government so small you drown in a bathtub.
— Schooley (@Rschooley) March 3, 2020
NotMax
By next week its creation* will have been funded by the eight thousand gazillion dollars Hunter Biden bilked out of the Chinese.
*Makeshift lab in the basement of a pizza parlor?
/wish I were kidding
Emma from FL
So… first time in years that I wake up without an alarm before daylight, and this it what I wake up to. Screw it, I’m going back to bed.
Brachiator
Did Trump have his sharpie in his hand when he said this?
This president is a profoundly ignorant man.
And we have to hope that people who know what they are doing will be able to navigate around Trump’s stupidity.
John Revolta
-USA Today
Cermet
I hate the fat, stupid orange cloud of gas with a white heat intensity; but he isn’t wrong if one looks solely at the Amerikan victims on that ship (a far better “control” for looking at pathology of the illness). The best example is that
virus petri dishluxury linear in Japan. Of the 3700 people, 705 got corona (over 90% didn’t get anything but mild to moderate levels of illness), and 6 died. All deaths were for victims over 80; far worse (and here the Japanese are very guilty for extra deaths) all these people were forced to endure a far larger virus load from the recirculated air. They should have all been put in isolation at proper facilities.As for the less heathy people in much of the world, while WHO’s number is too high (the Chinese NEVER knew of all the mild cases) I do believe this is far worse than the common flu but not that high. Facts are facts.
prostratedragon
“This president is a profoundly militantly ignorant man.”
Thank you for these horrifying but necessary updates, Anne Laurie.
Brachiator
If they develop a vaccine, I wonder how many fools will say, “I’m not taking it. I don’t trust the government,” or “I don’t trust Big Pharma.”
opiejeanne
Schooley
@Rschooley
·
7h
I’m going to go ahead and predict the Republican convention will feature a speaker whose spouse died from Coronavirus but they are very upset at how unfair Democrats were for politicizing it.
Van Buren
@opiejeanne:
Damn, that would be so in character for the GOP.
opiejeanne
@Cermet: You know, it’s disturbing to see someone shrugging off the deaths of people over 80 because they’re old and have other health issues.
Today is mr opiejeanne’s birthday. He’s 73. My birthday is Monday, I’ll be 70.
Today, a young man who helped us load some heavy bags of mulch into our pickup said something about the chaos being over, and I thought he was talking about the panic-buying which also hit stores like Lowe’s and Home Depot, but when I mentioned the coronavirus he had no idea what I was talking about. Then, he caught on that people had been dying in China and right here, he said it was just the ecology working. He’s talking to two people with wrinkles and gray hair, heck, mine’s almost white, and he’s cavalierly blowing off the potential deaths of people.
I think he was either high or really stupid, or maybe both.
opiejeanne
@Van Buren: Bob Schooley has been positively prescient, and he is disturbed by some of the jokes he’s made coming true. People reading that tweet said they’re going to bookmark it.
Rusty
The key piece coming out is the US isn’t testing The Italians have such a high rate (they closed all the schools indefinitely yesterday) because they are testing very broadly. Our testing bias is blinkering the US to reality. If you only test people who had recognizable contact with a carrier, you will never find all the other carriers. What a mess
Barb 2
The hoax remark by dump really shows who he is.
today I had a Dr. Appointment with my primary care doc. But she decided that we could discuss my health over the phone. She works out of an Urgent Care clinic – meaning potential Covid-19 cases could be in the waiting room.
Without testing the medical and scientists don’t know what they are dealing with. The sniffling could be early seasonal allergies (trees are blooming) or it could be one of two Covid -19 viruses. The scientists are discovering that there are two different viruses. A patient can have one of the other or both.
Rumor has it that some of the brilliant scientists at UW have developed a better test for Covid-19.
British develop breath test for covid-19
Sab
So my stepdaughter is a Uber driver and frequently borrows my husband’s car for Ubering. Should I be concerned? Should we be swabbing down the interior surfaces every time she returns it to him?
NotMax
Anecdotal report from Mom of Uber drivers in NYC area refusing to provide rides to Asians.
SFAW
Peripherally-related question: what’s the “Singapore summit flim-flam” that Larison is referring to? Yes, I’m lazy.
Rusty
@Rusty: Saw a better report, Italian schools closed for two weeks. Korea has drive through testing, we can’t seem to test anyone.
Barb 2
Question – and answer about testing for covid-19 – Seattle Times
Cermet
@opiejeanne: Who did that besides the person in your example? Certainly not me.
Sab
@NotMax: Since about half of my extended family is Asian, I don’t see that as an acceptable option. Also it’s all over the world, so any passenger off of any airline could have it.
JPL
@Brachiator: If they rush a vaccine, I’m going to wait. I still remember the Swine Flu vaccine in the mid seventies.
OzarkHillbilly
No, that is not how one (should) talks to a dementia patient. Dementia patients live in an alternate reality, one that reboots every 1 to 5 minutes depending on how far they have cognitively declined. They know they no longer have it all together, that pieces are missing, even if they don’t know what they are. Even if they can not say what is wrong, they know something is undeniably wrong. They aren’t stupid, they aren’t childlike. Understandably, this upsets them. This scares them. This angers them.
Don’t bother correcting them, it only upsets them even more, and in 5 minutes they will repeat the incorrect information anyway. Besides, reality is the enemy.
One’s job with a dementia patient is to keep them safe, even tho you can’t. It is to keep them calm, for now. It is to reassure them, even tho their fears will return in 5 mins. It is to put a smile on their face even if only for a very fleeting moment. One’s job is to lie, because the truth doesn’t matter anymore.
What matters, the only thing that matters, is that they know they are loved, that you will always be there for them, that you will never abandon them. But that too is a lie, one that will rip the heart right out of your chest when you finally are forced to put them in a home because you have a job, you have a wife, children who need you and one can’t be a 24 hr caregiver and the other things too.
Sorry for the rant, but it’s personal.
Chyron HR
@SFAW:
Trump’s totally not a staged photo op summit in Singapore where Kim Jong-un supposedly agreed to give up all his nuclear weapons.
Anne Laurie
That was when Trump ‘solved’ the North Korean conundrum, just him & the dictator who sent him ‘love letters’, all by their mighty selves.
Tons of money spent on publicity & media, nothing accomplished.
Gvg
@Sab: I don’t think he said that as a solution. I think he mentioned it because you mentioned Uber and that reminded him of something else he had heard connected to corona virus and Uber.
I guess you should be concerned. It’s hard to swab down fabric interiors effectively. Why does she need to Uber drive? Is there any way she can do without that income for a few months? IMO this is not a good time for that kind of job but economics can be inescapable. Play around with different scenarios and see if you can come up with something?
I start with a moderate distaste for Uber anyway so it’s easy for me to come to that conclusion. I’m biased but I also think people might not be using public transport like Uber as much and staying home, so the missed income might not be as much as normal anyway.
SFAW
@Chyron HR: @Anne Laurie:
Thanks.
After a while, all of the Liar-in-Chief’s smaller con jobs seem to have melded into one extended con job, in my mind.
Sab
@OzarkHillbilly: Thanks for your rant. For a minute there I thought you were Ruckus. It’s personal to a lot of us.
Shalimar
@Gvg: She might consider changing to one of the food delivery companies temporarily. Less income but still some, and no strangers in the car.
Princess
@OzarkHillbilly: Thank you for this. It is very helpful. And I am sorry.
Sab
@Gvg: I hope my comment didn’t come across as a criticism of NotMax. I know he didn’t mean it that way and I didn’t take his comment that way.
Our presidential administration does mean it that way, and that is also infectious. I am sure Miller looks at this as another opportunity to fan the flames of racism and push forward on his racist agenda.
I would really like to have useful information on what precautions work. Handwashing I get, and I do. What works for swabbing the car down? I don’t know and nobody I trust is telling me.
One of our local judges, Republican but otherwise sensible, just put herself into 2 week self-quarantine. Shut her court down for two weeks. She just got back from visiting her college kid on junior year abroad in Italy. Kid wasn’t sick but her friends were. Doesn’t know what they had and what they exposed her to, but she thought it prudent not to bring it into court.
Italy, not Asia. That seemed sensible to me.
Sab
@Shalimar: Thanks. I will suggest that. Also lots less mileage.
Cheryl Rofer
Please don’t use the term “corona flu” even if it’s mocking. It’s misleading and will lead to people dying.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
At wok we were ordered to stay home if ill, if the managers see staff that are ill, to send them home, that HR would work something out if we didn’t have sick leave (family leave or the like), that staff who can work from home, should. That if someone came down with something that looked like the virus at work, they would tell us. This is California so at lest they are taking it seriously here.
Sab
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I work in a seasonal job with sensitive client data. We can’t work from home. Lots of us need the income to eke out the rest of the year.
But last year one of my co-workers crawled to work with flu. Her husband got dangerously ill with it, but he came through. Good kids, I am glad. It infected the whole office, but we are olds and current in our flu shots. So all of us got minimal flu.
This year, the new corona virus isn’t a normal cold and certainly isn’t flu. My bosses are more at risk than the minions. Response should be interesting. ( And bosses are good guys. Unusual in boss world.)
White & Gold Purgatorian
@Sab: I would wipe the door handles, key (before opening the car) steering wheel, gearshift, brake lever, etc. with alcohol wipes. Then hose down the interior with something like Lysol spray and leave it sit, closed up, preferably in the sun for a few hours. No idea if that would be 100% effective, but it is my personal plan for dealing with the car if one of us gets sick or is exposed to someone who definitely is sick and has been in the car. I haven’t bought disinfectant spray in decades but purchased a can last week in case we need to hose down a vehicle. It would be nice to spray some in the heater/ac vents and run the fan a while, but I wouldn’t want to be in the car with the spray.
Helping her find another way to make some money is an even better idea. This is a time to try and limit your exposure to people, not meet more of them. If she is young, this disease would probably be mild for her, but she could spread it to family members where it could be much more serious.
Soprano2
I’m not freaking out yet, but that tweet about people testing negative for strep and the flu but having some all the symptoms but not bad enough for the ER describes what happened with a co-worker two weeks ago to a T. She’s a smoker, and gets bronchitis, but this was something else that eventually turned into bronchitis. She said the doc told her it was a virus and to go home and get better! There hasn’t been a case reported in MO yet, but it could be here and how would we know since they haven’t been testing people like her for it?
I’m not worried for myself, but for my husband, who is 73 and has diabetes. He also gets what he thinks is an asthma recurrence in the winter, but since he won’t tell the doctor about it he’s really not sure. When he goes out in the cold air it makes him cough; the cough goes away in the summer. Anyway, I’m hoping I don’t get it mostly so I won’t carry it home to him. I was in the doctor’s office yesterday, and it was deserted. The doctor said they hadn’t had too many calls about it; I said wait until the first case in MO is reported, then everyone with the sniffles will want to be tested.
Sab
@White & Gold Purgatorian: Yeah. She could kill her dad, who is the center of her universe.
Aleta
@Sab: Just my opinion, but I believe yes. (Taking into account what I think might be his age group, your location, increased exposure due to #s of random riders, and also how long the virus may be able to last on hard surfaces.) The virus may –possibly– survive much longer on hard surfaces and door handles and longer on stiff plastic seats than on fabric or fake leather ones. To me, even minimizing possibility is worth doing, so at the least one could start with doing just a few things like door handles, etc. Could opening windows afterward for some exposure to air and sun help a bit? (I don’t know.)
Isn’t wiping down a taxi every night a normal standard in taxi world?
Btw, over-using the same wiping cloth can transfer germs from one surface to another, so you have to throw out the paper wipes, or wash the cloths ones in hot water. (If some rider seemed sick, wash the cleaning cloths w/some peroxide or bleach too.)
You can make smaller wipes by cutting and folding squares of cloth or thick paper towels into a wide container or a large ziplock bag. (Ziplock bag is handy for inside a car.) Then pour in a sanitizer mixture (easy to make) and shake container, or press through the bag. Use enough to saturate. If excess isn’t absorbed, you can drain off and save. Keep sealed to prevent evaporating.
Josie
@OzarkHillbilly:
This is not a rant; it’s very good information. I had to learn with my mother to avoid saying things like, “Don’t you remember?” or “We talked about this.” I learned to answer the same question many times without showing irritation. I learned to let go of my guilt when I finally took her to assisted living. It’s a really difficult journey and you describe it so well.
WaterGirl
@Sab: I would immediately stop loaning the car for Ubering. Today.
JanieM
@Josie: It’s unfortunate that two things got mixed up together: how to talk to a dementia patient, and how someone like Dr. Fauci should talk to Clickbait in front of the public when Clickbait is spreading lethal and vicious lies about a public health crisis. Regardless of the dementia question, calmly and repeatly restating the facts in the face of Clickbait’s malignant fantasies is a public service.
Sab
@WaterGirl: So how is she supposed to feed her children?
laura
@OzarkHillbilly: I’ve been down that road too. Guilt – ever present, hovering around every good decision, clouding every rational decision, robbing fleeting moments of pure joy, crushing your soul when they no longer recognize you, because you failed to stop the disease that you have no control over, that curb stomps your self confidence. Four years gone and how I miss her so.
Sab
@Josie: Yes.
Robert Sneddon
@Aleta: A taxicab built for the purpose here in the UK could be cleaned out with a pressure washer, never mind a few alcohol wipes. Taxis regularly get puked in, pissed in, bled all over, food and other noxious spills because they’re the last-resort late night transport when stupid has been well and truly executed with abandon. Private-hire cars like Uber are not as easy or convenient to valet comprehensively after a bad night.
Re: transmission — I’m working an event on Sunday with 67,000 people jam-packed into a sports stadium and its surrounding area, more than a few of them from abroad. For various reasons this time around my duty post will be outside the stadium fence, not inside but I’m still going to take prophylactic precautions before, during and after.
Dupe1970
@Cermet: But that means based on deaths reported so far we have 1300 cases in the US but we have not come close to identify the majority of them.
Sab
@laura: Trying to communicate to my kids when they have to face the inevitable difficult decisions about us that they aren’t alone and they won’t be the first. Every generation gets better.
My great grandfather was a millionaire and wandering in the streets in his pajamas because his kids did not even know there were the decisions to make. ( Granted that his daughter was a horrible person and would have made the same bad choices.)
Sab
@Robert Sneddon: Prophylactic precautions: which are??
Neldob
@OzarkHillbilly: yes. Thanks. May all creatures be free from suffering.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
@OzarkHillbilly: Thanks for the rant. A brother in-law spent too much time at Ground Zero with EMS, and is now in the onset of dementia, at 56. Glad to hear from another jackal who knows what’s going on.
opiejeanne
@Cermet: There’s a lot of that on the internet, that cavalier dismissal that COVID-19 is only killing the elderly and people with health problems. By the time you’re “elderly”, everyone has some health problems.
Someone on Twitter said it better than I did, a tweet that said essentially “we can hear you when you talk about it killing only us, so knock it off”.
Cckids
From Bellevue/Seattle here. Yesterday, Microsoft told all employees to work from home for three-four weeks. My day job (smallish tech co. ) has cancelled all travel. There are petitions circulating to close schools, though those aren’t getting too much play yet.
In my #2 job, cashier at the grocery store, things are . . . interesting. Like the Chinese curse version of interesting.
Since Friday, there has been a panicked run on staple foods, soap, bleach, rubbing alcohol, disinfectant wipes, paper towels, and especially (& inexplicably) toilet paper. Dear gods, the TP sales. We’ve sold out four times in five days.
Hand sanitizer, masks, gloves have been gone for a month, people are very pissy about it.
Every day there is like blizzard Thanksgiving. It’s exhausting.
On the bright side, there is lots of chocolate and wine left. I have no idea how bad this is likely to get, but those will help me get through it.
ziggy
My sister lives in Seattle, and is one of those who thinks they have coronavirus. She is very ill, has had a bad cough and fever every day for several days. The doctors office told her there is no point in going in unless she gets worse. They have no testing ability, and would prefer she not go out in public. Her area of expertise is in public health policy, and this whole situation is driving her nuts. Fortunately even though she is older, she is in pretty good health.
I tend to agree that the mortality rate is probably lower than 3.4%. If there isn’t widespread testing, and accurate and truthful reporting of cases, you won’t get an accurate mortality rate. In South Korea, where there is a very good testing regime, the mortality rate is around .5 %. Much more believable.
opiejeanne
@Dupe1970: In Washington state alone the number is probably between 500 and 1500, because it’s been in the wild here for 7 weeks.
opiejeanne
@Cckids: One of the symptoms of COVID-19 is diarrhea. They’re buying toilet paper so they won’t run out if they’re stuck inside for up to 4 weeks, possibly with other sick family members.
ziggy
@Cckids:
I TOTALLY get the toilet paper shortage thing. That’s the first thing I asked my husband before his Costco run–do we have plenty of TP?! Running out is a scary thing! What did we do before TP?
Barbara
@ziggy: I agree that 3.4% is probably higher than it ends up being, but even .5% is 5X worse than seasonal flu, and the rate is MUCH higher for people over the age of 70. I hope your sister stays safe and fights this off.
NotMax
@ziggy
That’s what the Sears & Roebuck and the Montgomery Ward catalogs were for.
;)