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When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Bark louder, little dog.

John Fetterman: Too Manly for Pennsylvania.  Paid for by the Oz for Senator campaign.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 Coronavirus / COVID-19 Coronavirus Update – Friday/Saturday, March 13/14

COVID-19 Coronavirus Update – Friday/Saturday, March 13/14

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Regards to our overseas readers — hope you are all doing well, or at least as well as can be expected…

… Singapore was hit early, as one of China’s key trading partners. Within a few weeks of the first official notice of “Wuhan flu,” it had a dozen cases. But it very quickly realized that this was more than the seasonal flu, and took rapid action. Primed by experience with the SARS virus of 2002-3, Singapore began carefully tracking cases to find the commonalities that linked them. Within a day, sometimes two, of a new case being detected, the authorities were able to piece together the complex chain of transmission from one person to another, like Sherlock Holmes with a database. As of February, everyone entering a government or corporate building in Singapore had to provide contact details to expedite the process.

It’s not simply the ability to detect the cases and explain why they happened that makes Singapore such a role model in this epidemic; nucleic acid testing kits were rapidly developed and deployed to ports of entry. Within three hours, while individuals are quarantined on-site, officials can confirm whether or not they are infected with the virus before allowing them to enter.

The response in the US has essentially been the opposite. Early on, most people seemed to assume it was a “Chinese,” or perhaps an “Asian,” issue—pandemics don’t happen in the US! This arrogant complacency allowed the public health authorities to let down their guard. Dozens of infected people, perhaps more, were allowed into the US and allowed—even encouraged—to go to work sick, hastening the spread of the virus…


Speaking of the UK: If true, this seems… suboptimal:

Reader Interactions

56Comments

  1. 1.

    WereBear

    The response in the US has essentially been the opposite. Early on, most people seemed to assume it was a “Chinese,” or perhaps an “Asian,” issue—pandemics don’t happen in the US! This arrogant complacency allowed the public health authorities to let down their guard. Dozens of infected people, perhaps more, were allowed into the US and allowed—even encouraged—to go to work sick, hastening the spread of the virus…

    Er, no. We had a stunningly incompetent federal government which had already dismantled our Pandemic Response Team and stocked the CDC with fanatical Christian culture warriors. Then Faux News told the most vulnerable population to move along, nothing to see here, it’s all a ploy to ruin Trump’s re-election.

    THAT’S what happened. Let’s all be loud and clear about that.

  2. 2.

    OzarkHillbilly

    James [email protected]
    Remember that being nice online is good praxis, especially at times like these. A lot of people are cooped up and on edge right now, with online being the bulk of their social interaction. Try to read things charitably and cut people a little extra slack

  3. 3.

    Lapassionara

    Thank you, AL, for this daily update. I don’t trust any of our statistics because we are still not testing enough.

  5. 5.

    Cermet

    The rube’s voted in a stupid, incompeted asshole and will likely be the ones to suffer the most; however, taking down others is a choice they normally make all the time (like crabs in a pot.)  So no surprise they’ll stick to the orange fart cloud and say his ass smell’s like roses. The fake (aka fox) news backed by the asswipe putin and his bot army will be certain to encourage their level of self delusion.

    We the innocent bystanders will suffer, of course. Like the similarly stupid anti-vaccer’s that endanger all we get caught in the same net.

  6. 6.

    Betty Cracker

    So that thing Trump said yesterday about Google building a C-19 screening site? That was a big fat lie:

    Google is not working with the US government in building a nationwide website to help people determine whether and how to get a novel coronavirus test, despite what President Donald Trump said in the course of issuing an emergency declaration for the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, a much smaller trial website made by another division of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is going up. It will only be able to direct people to testing facilities in the Bay Area.

    Unsurprising. The press conference was 100% aimed at Wall Street, and lying about Google fits with the parade of CEOs stagecraft.

  8. 8.

    Royston Vasey

    A grand total of 6 cases in New Zealand, with the latest case picking it up from…New Jersey.

    Surprisingly, still plenty of toilet paper on the shelves. Although you can’t buy face masks, hand sanitizer, or Dettol antiseptic.

  9. 9.

    mrmoshpotato

    pandemics don’t happen in the US!

    Yeah!  We only have frequent mass murder by guns – no pandemics ya stoo-ped fernners!

  10. 10.

    WereBear

    @Betty Cracker: I mentioned in the other thread that this is like a Bond Villain-level plot device, where a virus targets only certain segments of the population…

    In this case, the combo of the most vulnerable portion of the population was told for weeks this was all the libs trying to ruin Trump’s glorious re-election.

  12. 12.

    NotMax

    @OzarkHillbilly

    Real ‘murkins are sitting in an overstuffed Herculon recliner, underneath a bare incandescent bulb, busily swabbing their guns – inside and out – with discount store brand hand gel.

    //

  14. 14.

    Baud

    @NotMax:

    Real ‘murkins are sitting in an overstuffed Herculon recliner, underneath a bare incandescent bulb, busily swabbing their loaded guns – inside and out – with discount store brand hand gel.

    Fixed.

  18. 18.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: Not a chance. The corona virus is the inevitable result of over vaccinating our children at too young an age.

  19. 19.

    Geminid

    All the talk of “social distancing” makes me realize that the term describes my normal lifestyle. I am fairly happy as a loner, but, paradoxically, I no longer feel so alone.

  22. 22.

    Sloane Ranger

    @WereBear: Add in ignorance and racism, conscious and subconscious. I live in the UK and am a committee member of an organisation for retired and semi retired people. Only yesterday a member asked me whether a vaccine developed by China would work on Europeans or would we need to develop our own.

    She’s quite liberal in her outlook. We went on a couple of anti-Brexit marches together. So if she’s asking this, it’s quite believable that others really didn’t think something that started in China could affect white people.

  23. 23.

    JPL

    Earlier I had a power outage and fortunately GA power has workers that repaired it.   If the virus spreads, I assume it will hit power company employees also.

  25. 25.

    mrmoshpotato

    @WereBear: Voting for a racist, fascist manchild to own the libs.

    Possibly dying because of a racist, fascist manchild to….own the libs?

  31. 31.

    Jeffro

    @WereBear:

    We had a stunningly incompetent federal government which had already dismantled our Pandemic Response Team and stocked the CDC with fanatical Christian culture warriors. Then Faux News told the most vulnerable population to move along, nothing to see here, it’s all a ploy to ruin Trump’s re-election.

    THAT’S what happened. Let’s all be loud and clear about that.

     

    Loud and clear and never stop, either.

    I forget which post had a tweet in it that said (paraphrasing here) for a rich Western democracy, the U.S. sure acts like a failed state in many ways.  And it’s true.  And the track of that dismantling starts with a) the upward flow of almost all the economic gains of the past four decades to the top 10%, 1%, and especially .1%, and b) the downward trajectory of their tax rates.

    We need to get back to highly progressive tax rates if we’re ever going to rebuild even a modest amount of civic and hard infrastructure in this country.

  38. 38.

    Sloane Ranger

    @JPL: Long pause to process the fact she’d actually asked what I thought she’d asked, followed by reminding myself that she’s in her 80’s and a product of the educational and social mores of her time, then a brief lecture on Human Genetics for Dummies.

  40. 40.

    mrmoshpotato

    @MagdaInBlack: Same here!  Oh, wait! ?

    It’s actually from an episode of Scooby Doo.  There’s an episode where a guy in an old diving helmet is up to no good (started making trouble in my neighborhood) and Shaggy and Scooby get into shark and swordfish costumes respectively for some reason.

    I wish I could find a screenshot because it’s hilarious.

  44. 44.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Jeffro:

    We discuss politics, get Baud! 2020! slogans yelled at us, talk about pets and share recipes all in the same post!

    And there are no nested comments!

    (blank stare)

  45. 45.

    mrmoshpotato

    @MagdaInBlack: It’s such a good show.  Ridiculous as all hell, and tons of fun.  I still don’t understand how beanpole Shaggy can run carrying a full-grown Great Dane.

  46. 46.

    burnspbesq

    @debbie:

    You saw how Wall Street believed his address the other night. He’s rapidly losing even them.

    if you were watching the Dow, NASDAQ, or S&P yesterday you could see the vote of no confidence unfold in real time.

  50. 50.

    lee

    I’ve got a question for the jackals.

    At work we are going to 50% of us work from home (long story why only 50%). We were told to ‘work it out ourselves’ on each team who works where and for how long.

    My team get along really well and we’ve worked together for years. Our initial plan is 1 week home, then 1 week at work.

    Now I think a better plan would be 2 week cycles. Because with 1 week cycles if one of us gets it potentially we’d be back to work before symptoms appear.

    Thoughts?

  52. 52.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Baud: Dream the fuck on. After a vaccine is developed, tested & deployed, they’ll still be bitching about side effects. And they’ll double down once a high enough percentage of the population has seroconverted (via vaccine or actual exposure) to generate herd immunity – they’ll continue to refuse to have themselves or their families inoculated, & we’ll see the intermittent outbreak of COVID-19 in vulnerable populations for the foreseeable future.

    Cretins. When I think back to how parents all across the USA fell to their knees & wept for joy when the polio vaccine was announced as safe & effective…

  56. 56.

    terry chay

    @Baud: I assume you are joking as usual.

    It’s obvious such things will not stop anti-Vaxxers but cause them to redouble efforts. The reality is vaccines are a public health defense, not an individual one. We should treat them as the equivalent of yelling “fire” in a public theatre and their actions equivalent to trying to actively spread the disease.

    There are already clear limits on free speech that cover what they say. Liability laws should cover what they do. At the minimum everyone who gets sick from something preventable like measles should be able to sue every person in the community who was able to get a vaccine and didn’t have a specific prohibition in their religion or a medical reason not to, if they have a problem with that they can get an insurance policy against it and that company can pay for the damages they wreak.

    It will not end their behavior entirely but that behavior will be correctly “priced in” in our society instead of damaging it like some ugly, toxic externality.

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