I don’t mean to bigfoot AL’s post, but I wanted to put down a marker before Sunday becomes Monday on the east coast. By this time tomorrow, just before Monday 30 March becomes Tuesday 31 March, more Americans will have been killed by COVID-19 than were killed on 9-11 provided the rate of death continues the progression it is currently on. What you won’t see, however, is the response that the US government took by the end of the 11th of September 2001, nor the vast majority of Americans united in grief and fear, which was quickly giving way to grief and anger.
Part of the reason that you won’t see a quick, coordinated government response is that for all that President George W Bush and his senior advisors had discounted the terrorist threat because their national security focus was elsewhere, and regardless of what you may think about his and their politics and ideological preferences, he had staffed his government with competent personnel. Many with experience in previous administrations. Part of the reason you won’t see a quick response is that members of Congress are not panicked now they way they were on 12 September 2001 when it became clear that the only reason many, if not most, of them weren’t dead or seriously injured was because of the brave actions of the passengers of United Flight 93, which prevented the fourth plane from making it to its presumed target: the US Capitol. And part of the reason you won’t see a quick response is that despite the attempts by the President, some of his senior appointees, Republican senators like Tom Cotton, Fox News, and conservative social and digital media, you cannot really demagogue a virus. SARS-CoV2 didn’t write a manifesto explaining the strategic objectives of its viral march around the globe because it is a virus, not an extremist. SARS-CoV2 can’t be taken out by quickly inserting US Special Operators and CIA paramilitary to forge alliances with locals in an unconventional warfare strategy against it because it is a virus, not a violent extremist organization. SARS-CoV2 can’t be defeated by the “shock and awe” of the US’s overwhelming air superiority or by having the 1st Armored Division commence a speed run to Baghdad. JDAMs and Old Ironsides are useless against SARS-CoV2 because it is a virus, not a violent extremist organization, nor an alleged state sponsor of such a group.
If the current projections for the spread of SARS-CoV2, COVID-19 infections caused by its spread, and deaths from COVID-19 continue apace it will only be a week or two until COVID-19 kills more Americans that were killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom and its successor Operation Inherent Resolve and Operation Enduring Freedom and its successor Operation Freedom’s Sentinel. The former operations have resulted in 4,491 Americans killed in action and the latter 3,458 for a total of 7,949. The events of 9-11, which despite the unexpectedly high (by bin Laden and his key lieutenants estimates) number of Americans killed that day, were still one act of terrorism carried out successfully on three targets, led the US to loose its collective mind. To societally freak out. To not just go after those who had attacked us, which was an appropriate response in terms of the objective if not in the actual strategy, but also to go to war with those who had nothing to do with the attacks on 9-11. To do this, the US government mobilized itself. It put a lot of resources into action in a very short period of time in regard to invading Afghanistan and began the planning for even more resources to invade Iraq less than two years later.
SARS-CoV2 and COVID-19 stand to kill thousands, if not hundreds of thousands more Americans than were killed on 9-11 or in our responses to it. We’re still not testing anywhere near enough, but we know it is all over the country, that no region or state will be spared regardless of whether it is a red, blue, or purple state. Florida, which is on its fourth Republican governor in a row, has finally, unfortunately, gotten one that is completely useless in a crisis. Rick Scott might be a crook and Jeb Bush might be dull, but they were competent in a crisis. Jeb Bush exceedingly so. And Florida is going to rapidly equal if not surpass New York. The chicken-hawks that brought us 20 years of repeating the same stalemated operations in Afghanistan and 17 years of chasing our own tails in Iraq, which had NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH THE 9-11 ATTACKS AT ALL, are suddenly pollyanish. Largely unconcerned; convinced people are making much ado about nothing more than something akin to a really bad flu season. And they will continue to do so, because it suits their political and financial interests, until COVID-19 claims more American lives than were lost on 9-11, than have been lost in Afghanistan, Iraq, and dozens of the other states we’ve been prosecuting the war on terror in. And eventually begins to claim more lives than were lost in previous wars or previous epidemics. All while the President brags about his ratings and insists that if only 100,000 to 200,000 Americans die from COVID-19, then we’ve been successful in combating it.
Adam Smith once wrote that there is a great deal of ruin in a nation, meaning that it takes a tremendous amount of political bungling and mis-governance by political leaders to bring down a powerful and prosperous nation. We are all going to get to see just how much ruin the United States can withstand, especially given the amount it has been subjected to by the President, his appointees, Senator McConnell and his majority caucus in the Senate, the Republican caucus in the House, the Roberts’ Supreme Court, the President’s supporters and surrogates, Fox News, conservative and social digital news and media, and the President’s base for the past three years.
And all while the numbers of Americans killed by COVID-19 increase one after another after another…
Open thread.
N M
Well said Adam. A marker indeed.
Mary G
Thank you, Adam.
Between “the NY doctors are stealing masks” and “if only 100,000-200,000 Americans die, I will be the greatest preznit evah” the amount of BS in the air is choking.
I like Biden’s new ad:
BruceJ
A new Guy Fawkes verse for our Plague Year
“Remember, Remember this Third of November, treason and voting the murderers out”
Adam L Silverman
@Mary G: It is a good ad!
Adam L Silverman
@BruceJ: It just trips off the tongue.
Anne Laurie
Well said, Adam. One for the blog Hall of Fame.
(Which doesn’t mean I won’t bigfoot you in an hour or so, because the insomniacs need something soothing to hear… sorry!)
Calouste
So it’s going to be at least half a million dead then, because the shitgibbon wouldn’t know a good job if painted itself purple and danced naked on top of an harpsichord singing “ Good Jobs Are Here Again”.
Adam L Silverman
@Anne Laurie: No worries. I kept looking for an opening to do this and posts kept going up and I finally decided if I didn’t do it now, I wasn’t going to get it in.
Adam L Silverman
@Calouste:
What did we say about combining nachos and LSD after 8 PM?//
Another Scott
Well said. Thanks.
2996 (- 19 hijackers) on 9/11/2001. Including one of my next door neighbors. :-(
A minor (?) suggested edit in the closing.
FIFY.
Grrr…
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: BGinCHI’s 90 minute rule and now this?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
The Villages are probably going to decimated. Adam, what’s your opinion regarding Trump’s “rally-around-the-flag” boost? Do you think it’s sustainable in the face 100,000-200,000 deaths? I personally don’t think so. When 1 in 3 Americans knows somebody who died from this virus, that’s pretty hard to spin and make people forget about
I know Matt McInvrn (SP) who comments here occasionally was going all doom and gloom this morning, saying that the crisis came too late for Americans to blame Trump. I think it’s BS, of course
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus:
I have no idea what this is.
Adam L Silverman
@Another Scott: Fine, we’ll play it your way.
Another Scott
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks.
Whoops – Monday March 30 to Tuesday March 31 – also too. [corrected]
Thanks again.
Rest easy, everyone. Challenging days ahead.
Cheers,
Scott.
Bokonon
The new line of propaganda I am seeing as of this evening is that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats caused the pandemic problem – because of their impeachment drive. They have timelines and pictures and everything! And they are rolling it out through right-wing media as we speak.
The bastards were busy this weekend, it seems …
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Adam L Silverman:
You missed out. It was a Medium Cool post. Basically, you only had one cassette tape to make your own mix tape of all your favorite songs. 90 min was the limit. It was a lot of fun
Here’s my mix tape (which was heavily 80s. If I hadn’t rushed, it would’ve had more recent stuff. The last two tracks are within the last 20 years)
NotMax
@Anne Laurie
From the Big Book of Bloggery: Anything over 30 minutes doth not a bigfoot make.
:)
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: So many new rules.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Rules are made to be broken, Omnes. Release your inner Rebel Without a Cause ; )
Omnes Omnibus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): You aren’t the boss of me.
rikyrah
Good post????
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
No fair, that’s a rule!
;)
Adam L Silverman
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): It is in the Villages. It is in Del Webb and the other retirement communities. It is in the nursing homes and ALFs.
I don’t think it is sustainable. Soon everyone will know someone either with COVID-19 or who has died from COVID-19 if not more than one person in each category or have COVID-19 themselves. The gaslighting will continue, but I don’t think it will be successful. The early polling on the misinformation based influence operation to rewrite the history of the past three months shows it isn’t working. And the small handful of competent cabinet appointees of the President, regardless of what you might have thought of how they did their jobs, are all long gone. And with them the competent people they hired. There isn’t a single cabinet secretary left who would have even been considered for a deputy assistant secretary position in any other Republican administration. The only two competent senior appointees left outside of the senior uniformed military leaders, as in actually know what they’re doing and are effectively running their departments, are Director Wray at FBI and Director Haspel at CIA. Not a single one of the rest, nor the impoverished and largely unqualified political appointees serving under them, are up to the task of what’s coming. CDC Director Redfield and Dr. Birx, the current White House Coronavirus Coordinator and Special Envoy for Combatting AIDS and HIV were only appointed because they were close to VP Pence. And they are only close to VP Pence because despite their medical credentials, they employed their expertise in studying AIDS and HIV in a way that was discriminatory against LGBTQ people. Dr. Birx’s statements about how SARS-CoV2 will spread is fundamentally flawed because it is rooted in her experience with how AIDS spread. They are two very different diseases, spread very, very differently. The only really competent and qualified person involved at the Federal level at this point who is not a career military senior leader is Dr. Fauci.
Adam L Silverman
@Another Scott: That’s what happens when you look at the calendar in the pop up app bar on the MacBook Pro and you’ve lost track of whether it is before or after midnight.
Adam L Silverman
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I don’t think I missed it at all. I’m glad you enjoyed it. That sort of thing is not my thing.
Duane
@Adam L Silverman: Don’t eat too many nachos or you won’t be able to sleep?
Adam L Silverman
@Duane: In my case yes. Refined carbohydrates make me sick.
The Dangerman
@Adam L Silverman:
Share?
Calouste
@Adam L Silverman: You’ve never watched Blackadder????
hitchhiker
After I saw Dr Birx making those comments about trump’s ability to absorb scientific papers I went looking for her credentials and experience.
That’s when I realized that not just her but CDC Director Redfield and the Surgeon General are all evangelicals. That, all by itself, scares the hell out of me.
My daughter, who is 30 and healthy, had a passing fever yesterday afternoon. Just for a few hours, accompanied by exhaustion and achiness, and then gone. She’s in a rural county a couple of hours from Seattle, and there are some cases out there. The idea that this could touch her is … I can’t. I really can’t.
Adam L Silverman
@Calouste: A long time ago.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
It wasn’t so much favorites as it was 90 minutes of music (of any sort) which you wouldn’t go stark raving nuts over listening to repeatedly if stranded on a desert isle type of thing.
Wolvesvalley
This is from Aaron Blake’s analysis in the Washington Post of Trump’s coronavirus press conference today:
What on earth does he think constitutes an emergency?
Adam L Silverman
@hitchhiker: She, Redfield, the Surgeon General, and CMS Director Verma are all part of the Pence health care crowd he brought to DC. Birx, Redfield, and the Surgeon General (who was Pence’s Public Health director in IN) have all been involved in anti-LGBTQ activities involving AIDS and HIV. Verma is part of the if you get sick and you can’t afford insurance, then you should just die quickly crowd. She’s also a crook.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: Still not my thing.
NotMax
@Wolvesvalley
If Ivanka, Junior, Eric and (maybe) Jared need them.
SATSQ.
Adam L Silverman
@Wolvesvalley: He shipped a whole bunch of stuff to China back in January and then they never replenished the stockpile. The former was the right thing to do, the latter is strategic malpractice.
https://china.usembassy-china.org.cn/the-united-states-announces-assistance-to-the-novel-coronavirus/
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Adam L Silverman:
I know, right? He should have started ramping shit up in fucking February at the latest. But you can’t tell Trump’s lickspittles and sycophants that. Nothing is ever his fault and he never makes mistakes and if you get aggressive with them online they usually shut down and run away
Leto
Oh ye of little faith… /s :P
Sing along with me:
“Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Covid!” – John McCain
Enhanced Voting Techniques
In California they are tracking how people move from their cellphones, and the data is mostly good
https://www.sacbee.com/news/coronavirus/article241568556.html?fbclid=IwAR3NMHS8j7y2oejoedlN675DHR3x_yYQ1-PHLhEU8JEjmFj6XcsYEAjWpH4&fbclid=IwAR2y5ULg51JP7nikpo8AUwfJOLqKQigM0xzMXKkHFBIuV7mmdQUAi_YF7iQ&fbclid=IwAR2dRpb98O5ulejKrFPmNWPeKhh-RJv3cOCyaYMRheNzp_4rSlDN3kpz-oc&fbclid=IwAR1I6cmTpkX2AHQscgvg7d0L3M0eIA7Vl404UR4ODkNOfGgrlxc-9RSl_uA
Adam L Silverman
@Leto: The ammosexuals have the same problem: SARS-CoV2 has no center of mass.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
Buckshot.
“Hey, Goober, I think ya got five o’ them suckers this time.”
;)
ruemara
Thank you, Adam. The scope of the amount of deaths has been very hard for me to process. I don’t think people are mentally prepared for it. We’re all going to know someone who is sick and be tangentially connected to people who will die. Not losing our collective minds is going to be the real task.
joel hanes
@Adam L Silverman:
The gaslighting will continue, but I don’t think it will be successful.
I hope you’re correct, but I am afraid.
The local evening TV news here said flatly that Trump extended the isolation measures — as if he had initiated them himself, instead of opposing and ridiculing those who did impose them, as if he had the power to lift them.
Here’s what I see on my google news aggregator:
CNBC: Trump extends social distancing guidelines through April 30
Reuters: Trump extends coronavirus guidelines until April 30th
CBS: Trump extending guidelines on social distancing until end of April
This is all kayfabe. Trump resisted every measure to combat the pandemic until it was too late, ridiculed the governors and mayors who provided foresighted leadership in the absence of such from the federal government, and just a few days ago was suggesting that he would lift the social distancing restrictions. Now, having floated the idea that he might do something he does not have the power to do, he says he won’t do it after all, and our goddamned failed media take the bait and depict him as The Leader in the pandemic fight.
I’m so angry I’m spitting nails.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: You don’t seem to understand the concepts of center and mass, as well as how a shotgun works against a physical object like a body. I’m not sure, but you might also be a bit fuzzy about the concept of “of”.
Chris T.
some suggested headlines:
Donnie Dollhands’ Deadly pan-Demic
Dumb Donald Dawdled
Toxic Trumpery
joel hanes
@Wolvesvalley:
What on earth does he think constitutes an emergency?
That materiel is reserved in case Donald J. Trump himself needs medical attention. That’s what he thinks constitutes a real emergency.
Adam L Silverman
@joel hanes: Is your local news a Sinclair station? As for headlines, they’re always terrible. At most news sites they’re not written by the people who wrote the article.
Adam L Silverman
This is brilliant!
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Adam L Silverman:
Oh I don’t know, Roddy Piper’s shotgun in They Live (1988) was able to shoot pretty center of mass ; )
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Adam L Silverman:
Sinclair’s not the only bad actor in town. Nextstar owns quite a few local news stations.
My local news station that is still independently owned but affiliated with NBC said the same thing about the quarantine measures being extended
I still don’t think it’s going to work forever for the reasons you outlined above
joel hanes
@Adam L Silverman:
Sinclair?
In Silicon Valley? It is to laugh. No, it’s actually KGO, a pretty-good local news station, ABC affiliate. They watched Trump elbow himself to the front and preen at the presser, and reported what Trump demanded that his lackeys tell them that they should report.
Notice that Reuters and CBS both fell for it too.
mrmoshpotato
@Adam L Silverman: Dammit, Adam.
Adam L Silverman
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): You seem to have the same problem as NotMax. It isn’t that shotguns aren’t effective against center of mass or any mass within range, it is that the virus has no center of mass for the buckshot to obliterate.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Omnes Omnibus:
@NotMax:
You two are too funny lol
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Adam L Silverman:
These folks aren’t buying these guns to shoot at the virus. They’re buying them in case society collapses. Even in the worst case scenarios that likely won’t happen though. It’s panic-buying and it’s stupid
Adam L Silverman
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I’m all too aware of why they’re buying them.
mrmoshpotato
@Bokonon:
Hoo boy! The amount of stupid just boggles the mind.
Anne Laurie
C’mon, Jared is the son he really deserved! He’d take a ventilator away from DTJr to give it to Jared. (I’m not sure he remembers Eric exists, without a strong hint or three.)
And I’m not entirely sure he wouldn’t take the vent from Junior to give it to Junior’s current sidepiece, who is hawt, and knows how to make Daddy happy… by calling him a genius on the TV.
Barron who? Look, if the Arm Candy in Chief didn’t already take the chance to sequester a few ventilators for her kid, not to mention herself, maybe the old folks, she’s not the operator he married.
mrmoshpotato
@Leto: Oh John “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran!” McCain ?
Suzanne
I could really use some good news when I first check the intertubes tomorrow morning. I’m done with this nightmare.
joel hanes
@Suzanne:
Katie Porter didn’t have it.
A big surge of online orders allowed Powell’s Bookstore in Portland to re-hire a hundred employees, and it’s possible the store may survive in some form if people keep ordering online.
mrmoshpotato
@Chris T.: Soviet Shitpile Mobster Manchild Kills Thousands
Adam L Silverman
@Suzanne: Might I recommend you just take the day off and stay away from the Internet?
mrmoshpotato
@joel hanes: Medical attention for Dump? Like half of a physical?
Another Scott
@Adam L Silverman:
You just have to pile up all the viruses first.
HTH!!
Cheers,
Scott.
CaseyL
Good news from the Emerald City: Seattle’s stringent containment policy seems to be working. No one is ready shout it from the rooftops, and Inslee’s lockdown order has another week to go (at which point it might be renewed or modified; unlikely to be rescinded altogether), but for now the increase in new infections is slowing and the death toll is doubling every 8 days rather than 3 or 4. Our medical system is not yet overwhelmed, though supplies are getting thin here like everywhere else (except Florida, where the Hideous Excrescence sent double what they asked for while dribbling a few crumbs to NY and WI).
The slowdown is just in the Greater Seattle area so far. Elsewhere, particularly in Central and Eastern Washington, where they make it a point of pride to do the opposite of whatever the western part of the state is doing, the cases are starting to accelerate.
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
Wasn’t even that, as the staff at Walter Reed didn’t know in advance he was coming and none of the protocols for the regular physical visit were in place.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: Oh! Son of a platypus!
Mai naem mobile
@mrmoshpotato: that’s not from this evening . They’ve been saying that for a while. Hannity even has a piece about that on his show. The new one I saw is that Cuomo didn’t need the vents because they haven’t been distributed to the hospitals yet, and that Cuomo.is hoarding them to resell them .
cain
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
That’s unusual amount of Rush, but you forgot the most important song of all for these days – “A Farewell to Kings”. It’s so spot on that it’s scary. It was released in 1977. Let me present part of the lyrics:
When they turn the pages of history
When these days have passed long ago
Will they read of us with sadness
For the seeds that we let grow?
We turned our gaze from the castles in the distance
Eyes cast down on the path of least resistance
[Chorus]
Cities full of hatred, fear and lies
Withered hearts and cruel, tormented eyes
Scheming demons dressed in kingly guise
Beating down the multitude and scoffing at the wise
[Verse 2]
The hypocrites are slandering the sacred halls of Truth
Ancient nobles showering their bitterness on youth
Can’t we find the minds that made us strong?
Can’t we learn to feel what’s right and what’s wrong?
What’s wrong?
[Chorus]
Dan B
@CaseyL: Yep Seattle could be at the top of the curve already. It’s eerily quiet here mid Beacon Hill and people are organizing to help the less fortunate with a big front page article on a food pantry getting moved from a closed High School on the hill to a coffee shop run by a latinx family. We go to the mexican cafe and teeny gay bar run by the family’s gay brother.
Rural Washington counties are probably defying Gov. Inslee’s social distancing order and will pay a high price. Hatred of ‘the other’ is not a viable long term strategy. It’s sad because there are wonderful people everywhere.
cain
@Adam L Silverman:
That is really really depressing. No competency anywhere. I really blame McConnell here for not pushing back on all of this. But he’s approved this whole set of folks.
When the final death count comes out – there needs to be an accounting. A hard one. The U.S. govt has one primary mission which is to protect this nation from all threats internally and externally and they failed.
cain
@Wolvesvalley:
It’s for the states that supported him.
cain
@joel hanes:
Hey I bought a book too – one on Rust. I’ll see what else I can buy. We Portlanders are not going to allow Powells to die. It’s a local relic that is part of the soul of Portland.
Dan B
@Dan B: I recall a poll that showed Seattle was one outlier in US cities, probably lots more but whatever, in an extremely high percentage of residents believed the CDC (70% – 90%?) and didn’t believe Trump (84%).
Brachiator
BBC news reports that people are throwing out huge amounts of the perishable items that they previously hoarded. Panic buying was not only stupid, it was wasteful and probably expensive for some people.
BTW, I don’t hear stories about people who have gone off the grid and who are now living off the land.
CaseyL
@Dan B: It’s great to hear people are taking care of local businesses!
There’s really not much activity here in the north end. I’ve scarcely left the house in over a week: some neighborhood walks, and taking care of the neighbors’ cats while they’re out of town, and that’s it.
I miss Movie Night at a friend’s house. And, boy, do I miss going to restaurants. And even grocery shopping…
Cathie from Canada
Yes, I actually have wondered for the last 3 years whether the United States was wealthy enough and democratic enough to withstand Trump and his supporters.
God, I hope so.
I’m 71 years old and I have seen polio, measles, mumps, chicken pox, Asian flu, Hong Kong flu, swine flu, AIDS, Legionnaires, Zika, SARS, Ebola and H1N1. In all that time, through all those illnesses, I never saw a single pundit or politician or epidemiologist or CDC doctor who warned the United States that a pandemic would cause millions and millions of people to lose their jobs overnight. That is a disaster from which it will be very difficult to recover, even with the best leadership in the world. Right now, the United States has the worst.
bjacques
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): invest in a couple of drones large enough to carry Molotov cocktails to drop on their houses. Gun-humpers must think America is Flatland.
Welp, for all the abuse of the word “epicenter”, at least “decimated” looks to be used somewhat correctly.
Sab
One of the issues here is medical privacy, which I am all in favor of. My 95 yo dad is in a full service nursing home ( much like this blog) that ranges from senior apartments through assisted living all the way to skilled care. They also have a wing that does rehab, and another that does short term skilled care out of hospitals.
They had the first public case. It was in short-term skilled care out of hospitals. They locked the place down tight as a drum immediately.
I was freaking out about my dad a couple of weeks ago, but it was just them locking down. If I had taken him out of there it probably would have been disastrous. After all, he was there because we couldn’t cope at home.
However, he is in the only nursing home in the county that admits the problem. Three other nursing homes have cases, but are using HIPA to hide their identity.
We have had deaths in my county, but HIPA prevents the release of any information. So the deniers won’t know if it is in their community, or who is getting it. I understand that and applaud them protecting patients.
But a lot of people really misunderstand who is at risk. And HIPA keeps them from knowing. It is not all 95 yo nursing home residents. And twenty and thirty and forty year old people might get a more serious case. I know some forty year olds who will probably survive, but will be really sick for weeks.
I had to walk out on my seasonal job of twelve years, that I loved, because my bosses, who I also loved, had absolutely no clue what risks they were running and therefore did nothing to protect us. Office staff were clueless. Ate out until last possible minute. Went to church. Went to sports events. Office manager went to rec center to work out until it closed. She thought wipes took care of everything. Breathing was irrelevant. No six feet in the office. We are all friends, right?
So no distance at all in office. People wandering and chatting.
Clients climbing off of airplanes from all over the world, dumping off their documents and grabbing the receptionist’s pen off her desk to write notes. Getting face to face meetings when they are visibly unwell.
Government tells us what our risks are. A large part of our population isn’t paying attention. They are keeping businesses afloat. If the government does’t hit them upside the head with a 2×4 they won’t notice. This federal government is doing less than nothing, and is undercutting governors who ate doing a lot.
The whole phucking country is going to be blindsided, because nobody is allowed or willing to talk about what is happening now.
WereBear
@Sab:
Yes, yes, exactly. It’s natural for denial to set in over such a frightening upheaval. While it is on a tiny scale, those of us who listened to public health officials talking about science were properly informed, and we accepted the information. Even though it was upsetting, it was more upsetting for us to pretend it didn’t matter.
But thanks to Trump’s lies and Fox News propaganda and even compliant big media outlets, lots and lots of people thought everything was normal. Because lots of money was spent to make it look that way.
Jeffro
And they’re still freaking out on the right…always have been…
debbie
Adam Smith was wrong. It doesn’t take much at all to destroy a nation. Just a smidge of petty vindictiveness is more than enough.
Mike in Pasadena
@Adam L Silverman: Haspell of the coverup of torture and the destruction of torture tapes, that Haspel? Or have I confused Haspell with someone else, perhaps. Self isolating has fried what little was left of memory.