This is absolutely incredible. Jared Kushner has the entire federal gov't at his disposal, every health crisis org on the planet at his beck and call, and his brother's father-in-law is doing pandemic response research for him on Facebook.https://t.co/PWByiaqsKS
— Gary Legum (@GaryLegum) March 13, 2020
Since it’s late and a weekend, I’ll burn off this draft post for the lulz. Crowdsourcing, it’s what we do! No, SRSLY:
Jared Kushner has a lot on his plate. The White House senior adviser was tasked this week with conducting research into the coronavirus to help Trump decide whether to declare a national emergency. According to Politico, Kushner is talking to ‘relevant parties‘ and will ‘present his findings to the president’.
It appears that one of these ‘relevant parties’ is an emergency room doctor called Kurt Kloss, father of Jared’s sister-in-law Karlie. And Dr Kloss sought the advice of other medical professionals on Kushner’s behalf…in a Facebook group with almost 22,000 members.
‘If you were in charge of Federal response to the Pandemic what would your recommendation be,’ Kloss wrote in the private group Wednesday, according to screenshots passed to The Spectator. ‘Please only serious responses. I have direct channel to person now in charge at White House and have been asked for recommendations. I have already expressed concern for need for ventilators and more PPE (personal protective equipment) for frontline and test kits.’…
Many of the doctors in the group were forthcoming with suggestions — but some expressed skepticism. ‘For transparency I will provide some background about my unique circumstance. I have not shared this in a professional forum before,’ Dr Kloss clarifies. ‘Our daughter Karlie Kloss (one of the top models in the world, 45 Vogue covers and counting; proud dad commentary) is marred to Mr Joshua Kushner. His brother is Mr Jared Kushner son in law to the President and who is now directly involved with the response to this. I have been over the past two weeks expressing our concern through Josh about lack of PPE availability, the frustration of not being able to test and especially to ensure enough ventilators. Tonight I was asked by Jared through my son in-law for my recommendations, that’s when I turned to you guys my fellow BAFERD’s for help.’
BAFERD is an acronym for ‘Bad Ass Fucking Emergency Room Doctor‘….
And, since that was an eternity (over a week!) ago, here’s the cream of the “jest”: We’d be better off if the dumbfvcks had actually taken an actual doctor’s advice. (Apart, IMO, from an over-optimistic emphasis on top-down command & control, not to mention suspending the law that requires emergency rooms to treat everybody, regardless of their ability to pay.) But still, what a way to run(down) a country…
Thoughts so far
1) Nationalize as in war time production of PPE’s, testing kits and ventilators
2) Suspend EMTALA (the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act)
3) Activate FEMA and DMAT teams
4)Pop up Field Hospitals with ICU capability Israel seems to have expertise
5)Decentralized testing away from hospital or if on hospital away from ED (emergency department)
6)Drive through testing capability and I would add pulse ox capability
7)Draconian travel restrictions
8)Canceling all mass gatherings
9)Massive marketing of PSA explaining what patients to do especially not going to ED if not in respiratory distress (Need to refine this message )
10)National Telemedicine for screening
11)Locking down Nursing Homes require all care givers in full gear and frequent testing
12)Use state ACEP (American College of Emergency Physicians) for some sort of incident command structure
13)Use emergency funding to compensate quarantined
— Theo Littleton (@CptnJustc) March 13, 2020
Let’s Make Our Own Fun
Chetan Murthy
This was good: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
Esp the section “Understand the True Problem: Testing and Tracing”.
He argues that neither “lockdown until it passes” nor “let the fire burn thru” will work. And that the only viable plan is to do what SK and other East Asian democracies did. Test/trace/quarantine. And that if we do that, life can go back to quasi-normal. Safely. Worth a read.
West of the Rockies
So glad I live in a state where the governor is intelligent and very proactive.
Chetan Murthy
@West of the Rockies: Do you remember when Newsom was running for office, and people were worried that maybe he wouldn’t be up to the job, or would treat it as a stepping-stone? He seems to have been up to the challenge (and this, even before this pandemic).
pablo
Adding “Dr Kloss clarifies. ‘Our daughter Karlie Kloss (one of the top models in the world, 45 Vogue covers and counting; proud dad commentary” to a plea for info about a deadly worldwide plague shows how seriously we should take this bozo.
And we don’t give a fck about your spokesmodel spawn.
gwangung
@Chetan Murthy: Problem is…we need staff to track and trace. We need resources to support those trackers and tracers. We need expertise to develop and run a system to do that.
We don’t have that. They’re gone, thanks to Just In Time business models, Republicans and deficit hawks.
And I very much doubt we have the political will to fund and develop that in the time that lockdowns will give us.
West of the Rockies
@Chetan Murthy:
Yes, there seemed to be some who believed Gavin was not a serious person. I think he might one day be presidential timber if he continues to do well as governor.
Chetan Murthy
@gwangung: Lotta people sitting at home, who could be trained and deployed. Some of them are probably smart enough to learn fast. But it doesn’t matter: his article makes it clear that it’s the only option. Anything else involves killing millions of people.
He makes a good case (that I hadn’t thought of, sigh) that “flatten the curve” will kill too many also. B/c unless you flatten the curve well below hospital/ICU capacity (which seems unlikely) you’re still going to kill a lotta people who can’t get an ICU bed. In his words, if you have a heart attack and it takes 50min for that ambulance to arrive instead of 8min, you are dead. You gotta flatten the curve really damn low — and that means the ordeal (for the economy) goes on *forever* to forestall such deaths.
Test/trace/quarantine is the only viable option.
Villago Delenda Est
First, lock the orange idiot up in a meat freezer.
Anotherlurker
@West of the Rockies: I have been a Ca. citizen for @ a year and an half and I am impressed with Governor Newsome.
I am an ex-NYer and I moved here, The Bay Area, in Nov. 2018. I never liked Gov Cuomo, but I have to say he is doing a great job in NY.
I moved to Ca. from Florida. I know what a shitty Gov. looks and acts like.
Sab
I think I’ll dig into my projects basket and make some masks. I certainly have enough fabric.
rikyrah
RIP, Gambler????
Chetan Murthy
@Anotherlurker: Cuomo started doing a good job before this crisis, too: I think it was the lege that held his feet to the fire, forced his hand. B/c back in the IDC days, he was kinda shitty sometimes. Newsom doesn’t seem to need that sort of pressure to do the right for his constituents. And that puts him above Cuomo in my book.
Sister Golden Bear
@Chetan Murthy: As mayor of SF, Newsom seemed to be a bit of an empty suit. I’m thankful he’s grown as he’s moved into higher office, and in particular he’s stepped to this challenge in particular.
Duane
@Villago Delenda Est: Then ask Joe Biden and his staff what to do.
Chetan Murthy
@Sister Golden Bear: Indeed. And heck, even Cuomo, as much as we used to sneer at him, has really demonstrated competence and fervor. It’s such a difference from the GrOPers: even ones we deem laggard, are streets-ahead of those fuckers.
Raven Onthill
It’s the bad old days returned. This is how a monarch handles problems; they get their relatives to do it, because they’re the only people the monarch trusts.
In other news, I have been explaining to Berners on Twitter that, no, the attitude isn’t helping. I’ve quoted Marx, “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” I’ve blocked someone because I couldn’t stomach their Warren-hatred. This may be the first time I’ve ever blocked someone for simple disagreement; it was so toxic and so sexist.
The irony is not lost on me.
Mary G
Newsom learned from Jerry Brown, thank Dog. I linked an LA Times article in an earlier thread – Los Angeles County Health Department says no testing unless needed for the particular patient’s treatment. They don’t have the budget or manpower needed to do contact tracing, so we’re never going to know how many asymptomatic carriers or people with mild symptoms are here. So aggravating. This is no way to run a country. So amateur hour. Cheryl Rofer also linked to an article, I can’t remember exactly what publication, that said the WH used Survey Monkey to see who needed what help.
Mary G
J.B. Pritzker is also advocating hard for Illinois. His tweets at the WH were epic.
Chetan Murthy
@Mary G:
Just insane. They’re going to burn thru more $$ paying people to sit at home, than it’d cost to do the tracing. Insane.
James E Powell
Can you imagine what the NYT and the entire world of cable news would be saying if we were in this situation with President Hillary Clinton and she put Marc Mezvinsky in charge of anything?
I will never understand the latitude, free passes, and protection they give Trump and his family.
Shalimar
Thank goodness his daughter isn’t one of the world’s leading porn actresses. Then the bragging in a disaster relief bleg might have been weird.
Martin
@Chetan Murthy: There’s no point to the tracing right now. It’s too widespread. If everyone does what they’re told, it shouldn’t be necessary.
It’s something to resume when they’re ready to lift these lockdowns though. And on a large scale.
Jay Noble
@Chetan Murthy: A lifetime ago I was a Production Planner for truck mounted cranes (Mational Crane) and beginning the process to become certified when my job went to Pennsylvania without me. The certification process goes thru the American Institute of Certified Planners and the American Planning Association. And Supply Chain and Logistics folks. There are thousand of folks out there who would step up to do what needs to be done to get things rolling. But you have to get the imbeciles out of the way. Usually means just going around them but occasionalli bulldozing them. Dr. Fauci is close to the bulldozing stage as are some governors. Test/Trace/Quarantine is doable, we have examples of how it works. People just need to give Trump & Company the finger and go. Remember Katrina with helicopter pilots and Honoré?
Jay Noble
@Martin:
That’s the point of doing the tracing. There’s too many out there NOT doing what they’re told.
bjacques
@Raven Onthill: not so much monarchs as mafiosi, whose web of trust extends at best to the extended family and clan. It doesn’t scale as well as corporations, let alone government bureaucracies. I know I’m simplifying a lot, but I’ve always had a theory that, once the government got serious in Las Vegas about nullifying the mob’s advantage of a monopoly of non-state violence, the mob would have been out-competed by MGM et al (sending surviving mobsters to jail helped too, obvs). It’s a handicap even when the ruling family doesn’t include Fredo or the heir isn’t Caracalla or Heliogabalus.
So Kushner essentially crowdsourced his epidemic policy ideas, which the rest of us are effectively doing in the absence of national leadership.
Here’s what a modern monarch can do:
https://www.royal-house.nl/documents/speeches/2020/03/20/speech-by-his-majesty-the-king-in-light-of-the-coronavirus
mrmoshpotato
“Sirious, sup with the Krakatoavarious, guurl?” Love, Jared.
“Also, is Krakatoa real?”
“And what is the Kraken?”
sukabi
@Villago Delenda Est: that would make for a much better outcome.
John S.
@James E Powell: This continues to amaze me as well. The same media that went bonkers over Obama’s tan suit and Hillary’s emails just looks the other way while Trump does whatever crazy crap Trump does.
Nicole
One of the writers for Jezebel did this pretty hilarious piece about her feelings for Cuomo in a crisis:
https://jezebel.com/help-i-think-im-in-love-with-andrew-cuomo-1842396411
(Cuomo called her after seeing the article, which makes it even funnier)
Martin
@Jay Noble: But you can’t trace at this scale. By the time you’ve traced an individual, you have 10 new cases to trace.
Before any of these efforts can work, we need to get the scale of the problem down to something that tracing can handle. You need to have control points, you need a methodology, you need a systematic approach which is impossible if you have shortages of tests.
You have to buy time until those things get in place. And the problem the US will have is that without a coordinated federal response, you’ll have 50 different systems at work, some working somewhat better than others. It’s going to be whack-a-mole for quite some time.
But I haven’t seen any plans yet for how to do that next phase. We’re throwing everything at keeping the hospitals from going under. Remember, China did this step as well. They didn’t have a community test until nearly this point. They were diagnosing people largely through CT scans. But they had a methodology. They had control points. They could get the problem down to a scale that would them tackle it. That’s what we need to do as well.
It’s too late for tracing to contain it, and too early to resume the effort. Tracing didn’t get the Chinese citizenry to comply, the military and pervasive personal monitoring did. Italy is relying now on the military. My guess is we will as well if people don’t get things in order. Honest to god, they need to halt gun sales just to keep people in their houses.
And if your neighbor buys a gun at this time, it tells you a lot about what they think of you.
Uncle Cosmo
Can we get an “amen”? Let me speak from bitter, recent secondhand experience: The live-in partner of one of my tenants, handyman in his mid-fifties, suffered a massive heart attack five weeks ago. She called 911, the paramedics arrived, got him breathing again & to the hospital…but his brain had been starved of oxygen for at least five minutes. For 10 days the CCU staff tried everything they knew to revive him, but he never regained consciousness. They took him off the respirator and he expired a few minutes later.
(He was a peripheral Trumpista with a rebel flag in the apartment, but AFAIK he was never hostile to any of the POCs in the neighborhood. He’d had his issues with ethanol but he was in the process of working past them & straightening out his life. Damn shame he never had the chance to complete that.)
J R in WV
@Martin:
And exactly how well do you think the Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, etc, etc… health departments are going to do state wide? The black belt won’t get a hand shake, much less actual health care!
Racism is still alive all around us. Classism too, if you live in a trailer, do you really deserve help?
ETA: Obviously I believe they do, but I’m not in charge of anything but my tiny hollow…
Honus
@Shalimar: yeah, the comments about his daughter bring a supermodel were bad enough and the “BAFERD” self-reference pretty much convinced me this guy was a lightweight. Great job, Jared, run a deadly national epidemic with characters from a beer commercial.
SFAW
@Villago Delenda Est:
Don’t be a jerk, locking him in a closed freezer would be inhumane. He should have a regular cell, or maybe a cage. Maybe have Traitor Turtle in one next to him.
And I think it/they should have a great view of the ocean. Say, the view of the ocean at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.
SFAW
@Honus:
At this point, I’d probably prefer to have Bob Uecker running things, rather than these moronic grifters
AnotherBruce
@John S.: It’s the residue of so many media sources being run by republicans. In Seattle, The Post Intelligencer was a Democratic paper that dissappeard into online only. The Seattle Times is run by Republicans. the Chicago Tribune which is one of the blue est Cities in the U.S. is republican. Also the Sinclair group is spreading their own virus by co-opting small town local news sources.
Chetan Murthy
@Martin:
Martin, that’s what we’re doing right now, hunkered-down in our houses, right? The fewer of us who transmit the virus, who are infected, the less work tracing has to do, when it starts up, right? And when we start moving again, it’ll be slowly, so that tracing can keep up? I completely agree that right -now- there are too many infected for tracing to be able to work, -unassisted-.