Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

In my day, never was longer.

Republicans in disarray!

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

T R E 4 5 O N

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

Let there be snark.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

The willow is too close to the house.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

After roe, women are no longer free.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

The words do not have to be perfect.

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

The revolution will be supervised.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 Coronavirus / COVID-19 Coronavirus Update – Monday/Tuesday, April 20-21

COVID-19 Coronavirus Update – Monday/Tuesday, April 20-21

by | 33 Comments

This post is in: ,

Thread from an outbreak science + epidemiology + health security specialist:


Longish read, but well worth it:

Reader Interactions

33Comments

  1. 1.

    mrmoshpotato

    I didn’t have “Hanging cruise ship execs” on my card, but here we are apparently.

  2. 2.

    Amir Khalid

    Malaysia’s daily numbers: New cases 57, total 5,482; deaths 3, total 92. Recovered 54, total 3,349 (61% of total cases). 18 of the cases recorded today were Malaysians returning from abroad, the rest from infection in the community.

  4. 4.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I have a hard time accepting Tucker Carlson as the voice of reason. I wonder why?

  5. 5.

    Amir Khalid

    A disturbing report from the CNN liveblog on violence against medical personnel treating Covid-19 in India:

    Health care workers in India need to be protected by a nationwide law after a spate of violence against doctors and nurses, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) said on Monday.
    The group issued a statement saying that “doctors have been abused, beaten up, denied entry and residence.”
    “IMA has maintained utmost restraint and patience in spite of extreme provocations,” the statement read.
    “We demand a special central law against violence on doctors, nurses, health care workers and hospitals,” added the statement. The IMA has asked health care workers across the nation to light a candle as a form of protest on Wednesday.
    If the government does not formulate a central law on violence against health care workers, the IMA has called for a “black day” to be observed on Thursday where doctors will work with black badges. Further decisions will be taken if the government still does not act, according to the statement issued by IMA.  …

  9. 9.

    raven

    from the editor of Decaturish:

    You really want to know what I think about rescinding shelter in place in the way this order is structured?

    It’s about making sure people can’t file unemployment. It isn’t about saving lives, certainly. It’s not about the peak of the curve. I think lots of people are going to ignore the governor and stay home regardless. This isn’t a decision being driven by epidemiology. It’s the rawest and most lethal of political decisions, and it will kill people.

    Kemp is looking forward to the fiscal discussion in 2021 and 2022, when all of this really starts to hit. He got elected by out-yahooing the field. His base has been trained to view government spending as a crime, and he knows that he becomes politically vulnerable to an attack if he raises taxes. He is not capable of delivering a nuanced message around necessity, because his base doesn’t know how to hear it.

    The state is staring at one million unemployment applications. It probably cannot pay those over six months. The unemployment fund has a reserve of about $2.6 billion. Last week it paid out about $42 million — which is about three times as much as it usually does. That figure will double in two weeks, give or take. Maybe more.

    At that rate, the fund is empty in about 28 weeks. Probably less. Even if things improve later, that fund will run dry in a year, because unemployment isn’t going to return to 5 percent for a long time.

    Georgians did the Kansas thing a couple of years ago and instituted a hard constitutional limit on income taxes of 6 percent. It cannot go higher without amending the state constitution. What that means is that there’s no easy mechanism for the state to accommodate an extraordinary expense, like this, without somehow telling Republican reactionaries that they must raise taxes.

    Those reactionaries are the ones who will be protesting in front of the state house Friday, when this order goes into effect.

    If there’s no state order calling for businesses to be closed, the people who are unemployed can no longer claim that their unemployment is involuntary, even if it would be utter idiocy for them to return to work. A hair dresser or a massage therapist cannot maintain social distance. But they can certainly file for relief … unless the law says they can work.

    “Gyms, fitness centers, bowling alleys, body art studios, barbers, cosmetologists, hair designers, nail care artists, estheticians, their respective schools & massage therapists.”

    Not banks. Not software firms. Not factories. Not schools.

    It is no coincidence that the businesses on this list are staffed by relatively poor people. Because that’s who he wants off the unemployment rolls. And if they die … well, they’re mostly black people, or Asian, and poor, and an acceptable political loss for a Republican governor.

    The purpose of this isn’t to open up these businesses. It’s to get the workers there off the dole. Work, and die. Or don’t work … but you’re on your own. Because we can’t raise taxes to cover the time you spent trying to save your life and the lives of the people around you.

  10. 10.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    A flood of new research suggests that far more people have had the coronavirus without any symptoms, fueling hope that it will turn out to be much less lethal than originally feared.

    That’s been obvious for a while;

    South Korea 10,674 cases 236 deaths 1 in 45

    Ice Land 1,773 cases  10 deaths  1 in 177

    Singapore 7,213 cases  11 deaths 1 in 655

    United States 790,480 cases  42,200 deaths  1 in 18

    So unless American Corona virus is Number One on Deadly, our shit isn’t together on detecting it.  Which is of course unpossible.

    Going by Singapore’s numbers that means 27 million Americans have already had the virus.

  11. 11.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @raven: From an AP article:

    Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp announced plans to restart the state’s economy before the end of the week. Kemp said gyms, hair salons, bowling alleys and tattoo parlors could reopen Friday, as long as owners followed strict social distancing and hygiene requirements.

    I wonder how one tattoos, cuts hair, or gives a massage from 6 feet away

  13. 13.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @raven:  It’s an interesting point, but these days I think it’s far to deep thinking for Republicans; they want to get their hair cut and a session with their sex worker after being shut in with the family for a month. And by they, I mean Kemp, himself.

  14. 14.

    Sloane Ranger

    It is no coincidence that the businesses on this list are staffed by relatively poor people. Because that’s who he wants off the unemployment rolls. And if they die … well, they’re mostly black people, or Asian, and poor, and an acceptable political loss for a Republican governor.

    The problem for him and the idiots supporting reopening these businesses is that these unimportant people will catch the disease and pass it on to their white middle class important people customers. I suspect they won’t be so casual about this when they’re the ones struggling for breath.

    They may believe they are different from “The Other” but the virus begs to disagree.

  15. 15.

    germy

    GOP governor announces plans to reopen kissing booths, communal hot tubs, utensil-less buffets; says state will also make aggressive bid for 2020 Close Talker Convention.

    — Radley Balko (@radleybalko) April 20, 2020

  16. 16.

    Geminid

    Jack Kemp is just an ass, who cheated his way into his job. Assuming she is not on the national ticket, I look forward to seeing Stacey Abrams run him out of the Georgia Governor’s Mansion in 2022.

  17. 17.

    debbie

    Thanks for the link to that article in Science Magazine. It’s really very enlightening. We are screwed.

  18. 18.

    raven

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: I agree, the idea that “mostly black people, or Asian, and poor? “Gyms, fitness centers, bowling alleys, body art studios, barbers, cosmetologists, hair designers, nail care artists, estheticians, their respective schools & massage therapists.” is a bit whacky.

  21. 21.

    SFAW

    @Geminid:

    Jack Kemp is just an ass

    But he was a pretty good quarterback. Brian Kemp, on the other hand, has absolutely nothing to recommend him.

  22. 22.

    Anne Laurie

    @raven: Thanks!  Just ‘repurposed’ Mr. Chidi’s letter for a post on that very topic, due to pop up around 9:30am, FYWP willing.

  24. 24.

    zzyzx

    ” But even if these are true, 4% is nowhere near herd immunity ”

    Well yeah, but the point is that California has barely been hit. The open question here (assuming immunity exists, which I’m going to right now, because if it doesn’t we have to completely change our approach) is if the current wave we’re having will leave 3-4% of the population with antibodies or 15-20%. The former is a much different situation – and much better – than the latter. This is information we need to know to know how deadly the virus is and how many more huge waves we’re likely to expect.

    It’s not, “Wooo! This means we’re cured!” but “Whew, this would put us on a path that is still bad, but not nearly as bad as some of the others we could be on.”

  25. 25.

    azlib

    For the lawyers on the list – is it possible Hannity and Fox will get sued for the lethal disinformation they spread and on what legal theory?

  26. 26.

    charon

    Article at Daily Beast suggests obesity is the worst comorbidity to have with COVID-19 – worse than age, COPD, high BP etc.

    Paywalled though.

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-coronavirus-pandemic-shows-why-we-have-to-tackle-the-obesity-crisis?ref=topic

    Every critical care specialist attending COVID-19 patients in the intensive care unit where I have been filling in as an intensive care physician for the past two weeks makes the same observation: Our patients seem almost universally obese, while most ill but stable patients elsewhere in the hospital have lower body masses.

    Critical care doctors in other parts of the country, as well as my colleagues in Europe, report seeing the same thing.

    New research backs up the anecdotal observations. Data from my institution, NYU Langone, shows that body mass consistent with even early obesity in the setting of coronavirus infection makes a patient three times more likely to need intensive care medicine, suggesting a more severe clinical course.

    May explain why mortality is so high in the U.S., considering obesity prevalence.

  27. 27.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    Great article from Science Magazine.  It’s clear from various reports from individual doctors that there are differing ideas as to how the worst cases of COVID-19 attack the body and thus how to treat them.  But to see all of these thoughts in one place is impressive and reinforces the need to keep stay-at-home, social distancing, mask-wearing, etc. not only to keep people alive but to give scientists and doctors the time to understand COVID-19 and the appropriate therapies.  Especially since, as one doctor mentioned in the article, vascular issues are more of a factor in a serious case than respiratory conditions, suggesting that breathing issues are a by-product of the virus’s attack, not its main focus.

  28. 28.

    laura

    @mrmoshpotato: you lash a stout boot to a barge pole and then commence to crotch kicking. Safe and effective! That twitter thread about opening up the country state capital cracker fests nails it – the demand that others return to work to serve the privileged. Really gets down to the heart of the matter that our service economy is designed to crush those doing the serving.

  31. 31.

    Another Scott

    @raven: Absolutely correct.

    I’m sure this is at least part of the thinking why Moscow Mitch and the GOP Senate is so dead-set against spending what it takes to make the states and localities whole for the duration.  They want to force them to make huge cuts to their already meager social safety nets.  It’s always, always, about punching down.

    Thanks for posting it.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  32. 32.

    Bill Arnold

    @mrmoshpotato:

    How does one kick Kemp in the crotch from 6 feet away?

    Stochastic mass murder demands a lot more than a simple crotch kick. If it were being committed by left of center people, there would be quite open talk (or more) of 2nd Amendment solutions.

Comments are closed.