Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

Innocent people do not delay justice.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Books are my comfort food!

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Too little, too late, ftfnyt. fuck all the way off.

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.

“In this country American means white. everybody else has to hyphenate.”

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / Open Thread: Pandemic Stories

Open Thread: Pandemic Stories

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This post is in: ,

Blogmaster bait!

… If those viruses happened to be in the right people—those who traveled from China to Italy before the latter went into lockdown—they could easily have spread explosively across Europe, and eventually into the U.S. Indeed, that’s the pattern we see: The D614G mutation first appeared just before the coronavirus moved into Europe, and almost all the G-viruses around today are descendants of that initial continent-hopping pioneer. China’s intense social restrictions likely stamped out many other coronavirus lineages within its borders, and stopped them from spreading further. “The only lineages you’ll see are those that got out, which include the ones with this mutation,” says Bill Hanage of Harvard, who studies pathogen evolution.

Such events are especially important in the early stages of a pandemic. Some virus lineages will do really well and others will disappear for reasons that have nothing to do with the viruses themselves and everything to do with the movements of their human hosts, whom those hosts interact with, and the policies enacted by the countries those hosts live in.

This isn’t to say that the Los Alamos study is bad or wrong—it comes from a respected team and presents interesting data. But the evidence it provides cannot distinguish between two equally plausible explanations—that the G-viruses were more transmissible, or that the G-viruses were just lucky…

Always a silver lining, if one looks closely enough…

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – A llama called Winter could prove useful in the hunt for a treatment for COVID-19, according to U.S. and Belgian scientists who have identified a tiny particle that appears to block the new coronavirus…

The group began four years ago looking into antibodies that might counter the SARS virus, which spread in 2003, and the MERS virus that flared up in 2012.

“The work was a side project in 2016. We thought maybe this was interesting,” said Xavier Saelens, joint leader of the Belgian part of the collaboration. “Then the new virus came and it became potentially more crucial, more important.”

Winter, the llama, was given safe versions of the SARS and MERS viruses and samples of its blood were later taken…

.
What if we promise to tell you it makes your… hands… look big?


Reader Interactions

106Comments

  1. 1.

    zhena gogolia

    I am really digging some of the never-Trumpers these days. George Conway tells it like it is. I know, I know, Kellyanne. (WaPo link.)

  3. 3.

    Mike in NC

    Fat Bastard and his henchmen are working hard to scapegoat China (or as he pronounces it “Gyna”) as deliberately releasing the virus, and pretty soon there are going to be widespread attacks on random Asian-Americans from the goobers carrying assault rifles and Confederate flags to their state capitals. Xenophobia is one of his most reliable and predictable moves.

  7. 7.

    Anya

    @Mike in NC: I was watching U.K.’s channel 4 and they were talking about how this strategy is losing America a lot of world allies who were initially supportive of the idea that China’s secrecy and cover-up caused the world a much needed time and prevented countries from protecting their citizens. Of course the vulgarian overreaches on everything so the stupid conspiracy stuff is giving China more of a leg to stand on because they are now defending against a crazy accusations not some legitimate criticism.

  8. 8.

    jl

    The llamas will save us! I am sure of it. I think they are nicer than camels. At least I remember going to some petting zoo, and patted one and it didn’t bite my hand off. I’d check the wiki but too lazy right now.

    As for masks and emasculation, how dumb to some of these dudes have to be? is it because the the sound ‘mask’ appears in both words? These idiots don’t mind masquerading as non-shitheads. In a sit-com, these kinds of dopes are the comic relief next-door neighbor out-of-it white guy doofuses, but in real life 40 percent of the country takes these mooks seriously. Unbelievable.

  11. 11.

    Anne Laurie

    @Anya: How is that marriage real?

    Either they’re bound by genuine love & history (not to mention their young kids)… or they’re really, really cynical.  Playing ‘good cop, bad cop’ in the certainty that whichever side ‘triumphs’, one or the other partner will have a prime slot for profit in the DC / Media “village”.   Or maybe both are true!

    I’ve been with my partner for more than 25 years, which is approximately 24 more than either of us expected, going in.   And we don’t even have kids.  All I know for sure is that every relationship is more complicated than it looks from the outside.

  12. 12.

    Gin & Tonic

    What does the word “quietly” mean when it ‘s used to describe something that’s on the front page of the NY Times?

  13. 13.

    jl

    As for models, sad thing is that the IHME model was only useful for the exponential explosion part of regional epidemics. Useless after the peak. Curve fitting is OK if it is not humanly possible to do anything to change the shape of the curve. Past the peak, lots of human policy interventions can change the shape. For example, you want to make it go up again? Sure, that can arranged. Just reopen before you have an outbreak control system that can handle… you know… outbreaks outbreaks that are 99 percent sure to arrive.

    But, shouldn’t blame the IHME people too much. Clear now that Trumpsters really don’t give a damn, and if the IHME model doesn’t give them the forecasts they want, then they do far dumber curve fitting on their own, and pump that bilge out to the public.

     

    Edit: actually the IHME covid-19 model failure is sad. They do top notch work in chronic non-communicable and endemic infectious disease, produce excellent data sets. They were lax in thinking techniques that brought them great success in another field of health care could be adapted to acute infectious disease epidemics without much self-critical analysis. Didn’t perform due diligence checking with experts in that specific field, IMHO. Harmed their own reputation.

  14. 14.

    Tenar Arha

    @Anne Laurie: They’re like the living embodiment by marriage of “why not both?!” to being “inside the tent pissing out & outside the tent pissing in.”

    It boggles my mind if I pause to think about either of them.

  16. 16.

    jl

    @Baud: “I really thought the alpacas would step up. ”

    Alpacas never step up. If the llamas don’t pan out, we’ll have to go on a very dangerous and tortuous journey through the dark and dangerous woods to the alpacas, and be nice to them, and hope they deign to help us.

  17. 17.

    dogwood

    I see that Duterte isn’t letting the pandemic slow down his fascist power grab.  The major network, ABS-CBN,  in the Philippines shut down yesterday.  Problems with “licensing” renewal has taken the purveyor of “fake”news” off the air.

  19. 19.

    ThresherK

    Here’s an answer to the question, “Why don’t men want to wear masks?”

    Hey, those Future Brain Donors are also the idiots who most resist wearing motorcycle helmets.

  20. 20.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Men who fret constantly about “emasculation” really have very little (see what I did there?) to worry about, because they have tiny dicks.

  21. 21.

    planetjanet

    That Scientific American article describes so much of what is wrong with this country.  Could it really be that simple.  Fragile male egos will kill us all.

  25. 25.

    Another Scott

    GovExec:

    Several key officials involved in pandemic-related work plan to exit the Trump administration in the coming weeks.

    Officials will depart for a variety of reasons as the administration works to respond to the novel coronavirus pandemic and fend off reports about mismanagement, “early missteps,” issues with private sector volunteers, and other problems hampering the response. This adds to the Trump administration’s high levels of turnover and vacancies, which have not ceased during the pandemic.

    White House Domestic Policy Council head and coronavirus task force member Joe Grogan, who’s been very involved in the administration’s coronavirus response, is leaving his post on May 24, The Wall Street Journal reported on April 29. Grogan has been in his role since February 2019 and before that was a health care official in the Office of Management and Budget for two years. Grogan told the paper he’s on good terms with the president and stayed in his position longer than planned. He also said the decision has “nothing to do with [Health and Human Services Secretary Alex] Azar,” with whom he’s battled in the past, according to Politico.

    On Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Josh Dozor, deputy assistant administrator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response group and a 13-year FEMA veteran, is expected to leave the administration in the next few weeks for personal reasons. Dozor, who was appointed to his current role in June 2018, was involved in early coordination efforts with HHS before FEMA became the lead agency for the pandemic response, according to the paper.

    […]

    Nope, not my bag – your bag.

    Nope, not my bag either – your bag!

    OMG!  Get me out of here!!  I’m not holding that rassin-frassin Bag!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  26. 26.

    cain

    @Mike in NC:

    So let’s see, they hate the mexicans/latinos, they hate the muslims, the jews, the natives and now they hate the asians. They have not yet hated the hindus yet. I guess we aren’t there yet. They have been working hard to hate the liberals too.

    Looks like they might as well expand the message that we are all disease carriers.

  28. 28.

    raven

    @jl: A friend of mine worked on a film called ?El Charango? about a Andean stringed instrument. The film included a trip down into a mine and an episode about Llama’s The part about the Llama’s was pretty disturbing because they had the tied up before slaughter and the animals knew what was coming and we freaking out. I had seen it once and was at a screening and sitting next to a family with a couple of kids. As the scene approached I told the parents they needed to get the kids out of there. They did.

    On a lighter note here’s my vid of some Llama’s and Alpaca, kids and Bohdi chasing them.

  29. 29.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Anya:

    how are they staying together?

    I’ll take George’s Outrage Is A Sham for 800, Anya.

  32. 32.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    rancor from the primaries has led to schisms on the left: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the final competitor to cede to Biden and the liberal figure best positioned to push for concessions, has declined to support Warren despite their ideological alliance, according to three people familiar with his conversations with Biden, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to recount the private discussions.

    Grievance, resentment and misogyny to the bitter end

  35. 35.

    Mary G

    Honestly, you couldn’t make some of this shit up:

    The year is 2020. Amidst a global pandemic, Guns N’ Roses’ Axl Rose says the Secretary of the Treasury and producer of Wonder Woman is “officially an asshole.” In response, the Executive Producer of the Lego Movie asks what Rose has done for his country with the flag of Liberia. t.co/c0pMA3Hyqy— Rob Lee (@RALee85) May 7, 2020

    Not on my pandemic bingo card, that’s for sure.
    ETA:
     

    Now deleted and tweeted again, this time with the flag of the United States of America (??) rather than Liberia (??). pic.twitter.com/Af6wj8W9gF— Philip Crowther (@PhilipinDC) May 7, 2020

    Both tweets now deleted by @stevenmnuchin1. Am I the only one on here who follows both the Guns ‘n Roses frontman and the Treasury Secretary?— Philip Crowther (@PhilipinDC) May 7, 2020

    Your tax dollars at work, America!

  38. 38.

    cain

    @David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:

    I’ve seen some PoCs also object, but our lady of the blog – AngryBlackLady is a fan of Warren. I’m also a fan of warren – but for VP I think I would prefer Kamala. We need a bull dog, head smacker who will put some fear in the hearts of others.

    Warren is better off in the Senate, plus she’s nearly as old as the rest.

  39. 39.

    cain

    @mrmoshpotato:

    I suspect my gf is going to be having a watch party with her sorority sisters (alpha kappa alpha?) to watch that. Forever FLOTUS!

  40. 40.

    Fair Economist

    @jl:

    But, shouldn’t blame the IHME people too much. Clear now that Trumpsters really don’t give a damn, and if the IHME model doesn’t give them the forecasts they want, then they do far dumber curve fitting on their own, and pump that bilge out to the public.

    I do blame them, because the initial assumption of a rapid decrease like Wuhan was already clearly false by the time they released the model, plus they had *NO* way at all to adjust the declining phase of the epidemic. The back end forecast method was deliberately faulty.

    It was a model designed, intentionally, to project the forecast reasonably in the near term but under-project the long term destruction. They knew it would provide cover for do-nothing policies and hoped they’d get press and support from people who wanted cover for bad actions, like the White House.

  41. 41.

    Jeffro

    @Mary G: too funny – just saw that on Twitter and came here to see if anyone had heard about it, and yup here we are.  =)

    Since this is an OT: watched “Scott Pilgrim” tonight with the family and that was just about what the doctor ordered.  Weird seeing two future Avengers together in such an oddball movie, but still, good flick!

  44. 44.

    Anya

    @mrmoshpotato: I used to believe that but now I genuinely believe he really, REALLY hates Trump. I mean, who wouldn’t? He got as many judges as they can get and I tend to believe he doesn’t believe sacrificing the country for more wingnut judges is not worthy it.

    I am just not clear how he stays with Trump’s mouth piece who lies for him and makes an ass of herself for Trump all the damn time.

  45. 45.

    jl

    @Fair Economist: Fair points. I took it as a model as a good faith attempt to explain the importance of shelter-in-in place policies, since the US was so hapless, only dangerous and long and expensive versions of that policy were alternatives by then.

    The kind of modelling and math they resorted too was a lot of work to go to just to please the Trumpsters. And it has similarities with what works well for chronic non-communicable and endemic infectious disease that stays around equilibrium. I mean, jeez, if they just wanted to please the Trumpsters, just takes a few seconds to get the excel trend line doohicky up.

    I think more likely that they didn’t know much about modelling infectious disease, but thought they did after reading an intro. You do see examples of symmetric curves used to fit small, and uncontrolled, epidemics in text books.

  46. 46.

    jl

    @Tom Levenson: ‘ “Nicer than camels” is an exceptionally low bar. ‘

    For some reason your comment made me think that Pence reminds me of that doofus newscaster on the Mary Tyler Moore show, who in some ways was nicer than a camel, but in other ways not.

  47. 47.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Anya:

    I am just not clear how he stays with Trump’s mouth piece who lies for him and makes an ass of herself for Trump all the damn time.

    The checks from the US Treasury clear.

  51. 51.

    Patricia Kayden

    As I said a few weeks ago: "We need collective grief as a rebellion against the normalization of mass death. Because what we are fighting for is our value and our collective understanding of that value. We are talking about a battle over what death means." t.co/PqctRyI5Jo— Puff the Magic Hater (@MsKellyMHayes) May 7, 2020

  52. 52.

    Peale

    @dogwood: Yep. ABS-CBN has been critical of the old man and his Marcos cronies. But you have to look at Duterte as a former marxist turned member of one of the cadet branches of Marcos. ABS-CBN is controlled by a very wealthy member of the oligarchy that was opposed to Marcos. So it was taken from them by Marcos and given to someone else. When Marcos fell, they took it back, because, well, it was stolen from them. This is really then a grudge by the former but illegal owners against the rightful owners who have been waiting for 25 years to either steal it back or ruin it for everyone.

  55. 55.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @jl: I believe Pence was a couple years ahead of Woody– I heard him tell the story on Marc Maron’s podcast a while back

  56. 56.

    jl

    So, intertube blurb click bait came up that Mnuchin is in a fight with Axl Rose? And Mnuchin’s come back was to put a Liberian flag in a tweet to Rose by mistake and thought it was the US flag??

    I assume it’s a hoax and didn’t click.

  58. 58.

    laura

    @Mary G: The Roadie Brothers and I have been texting amongst ourselves over the whole sorry spectacle. Also, however one may feel about Axl, he takes his role as a citizen as seriously as any of the rest of us.

  59. 59.

    jl

    @Mary G: OK, thanks. I didn’t see your annals of the great Mnuchin-Rose death cage match. I skim the comments too much. So… it’s not a hoax. And I am not drunk. The US is on a bad speed trip. I think I’m oriented now.

    Looks like Mnuchin lost, though. So, something good came out of it.

  60. 60.

    mrmoshpotato

    Well fuck you Samsung – deleting YouTube and now Netflix from my DVD player.

  61. 61.

    Patricia Kayden

    Here is the 2020 election in a nutshell:Trump today on the Affordable Care Act: "What we want to do is terminate it."In the middle of a pandemic that has killed 70,000 Americans, Trump is actively trying to end health care for 20 million of us.That's what we run on.— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) May 7, 2020

  63. 63.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Patricia Kayden: Silly Senator Murphy.  There’re countless marks against Dump we could run on.  “Dump wants to take away your healthcare” is just one – a big one – but one.

  64. 64.

    MomSense

    I think the weight of this has sort of settled over me and I don’t  like carrying it around.  It would be much easier to adjust if I had confidence in our leaders and trusted their judgment.  I’ve been very impressed by Maine’s Governor and public health team, but individual states cannot manage this alone and too many of our citizens are idiots.  There is not an adequate testing and tracking regime in place which means every “reopening” plan is going to be forked.

  65. 65.

    Redshift

    …reports about mismanagement, “early missteps,” issues with private sector volunteers, and other problems hampering the response.

    I know it’s not much consolation for the devastation the Administration inflicted on Iraq, but once again I hope someone there is able to take some grim pleasure that now we are being governed by the Coalition Provisional Authority.

  67. 67.

    Adam L Silverman

    @gwangung: I’m quite aware of what is going on. Expect more and more violence the closer we to the election. And then, regardless of who wins, after the elections.

  68. 68.

    geg6

    @jl:

    Sadly, it is not a hoax.

    Axl’s been on a real tear against Trump and his henchmen for a while now.  Which, I gotta say, kinda surprises me.  I always thought he was an asshole.  But it’s not a bad thing to have a few assholes on our side for once.

  69. 69.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @HumboldtBlue:

    Also, I’m 12 minutes into Becoming and I have already teared up twice.

    I just finished watching it, and I had the same reaction. It’s beautifully done. The way Michelle connects so directly and intimately and genuinely with everyone she meets is beyond special. Guarantee I’ll be rewatching it soon.

     

    @HumboldtBlue:

  70. 70.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    This is fine

    The Postal Service’s board of governors confirmed late Wednesday that Louis DeJoy, a North Carolina businessman who is currently in charge of fundraising for the Republican National Convention in Charlotte, will serve as the new postmaster general.
    The action will install a stalwart Trump ally to lead the Postal Service, which he has railed against for years, and probably move him closer than ever before to forcing the service to renegotiate its terms with companies and its own union workforce. Trump’s Treasury Department and the Postal Service are in the midst of a negotiation over a $10 billion line of credit approved as part of coronavirus legislation in March.

  71. 71.

    patrick II

    During an interview today Donald Trump stated that he was not closing down the coronavirus task force after all. ” I had no idea it was so popular”.

    Popularity seems to be the significant measure of why keeping the task force together is important.

  72. 72.

    Jeffro

    FWIW George Conway has a doozy of an op-ed in the Post today/for tomorrow.  Lays it all out.  Wowzers.

  74. 74.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    One man says: “It’s submission, it’s muzzling yourself, it looks weak – especially for men.”

    Anybody ever says something like this to me when I go back to work or some asshole tries to cough on me or wipe their nose on me like that asshole did in some store recently, I swear to god I will beat the shit out of them

  75. 75.

    Redshift

    @MomSense: Yeah, I agree. In Virginia we have a governor who’s a doctor, and he’s doing a good job under the circumstances, but the federal failures mean we can’t possibly have enough testing.

    There was a news story a few days ago that the state had requested 500,000 swabs from FEMA in early April, and the order was cancelled because “FEMA HQ is canceling any [requests] asking for nasal swabs of over 14,000 per week for each state.” 14,000 per week!

    They reduced the order and resubmitted, and received none for six weeks, and finally got 29,000 in the past two weeks. WASF.

  77. 77.

    Benw

    @geg6: Axl was a jerk when he was young, but he’s grown up and is solidly a woke asshole on our side. Also in that same category: Sebastian Bach, who is also surprisingly woke and does not give a fuck about it

  78. 78.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I’m quite aware of what is going on. Expect more and more violence the closer we to the election. And then, regardless of who wins, after the elections.

    Would some of these asshole idiots getting shot to death/beat up have a deterrent effect?

  83. 83.

    rikyrah

    THREAD

    1) The VA signed a $34.5 million deal for N95 masks with a company that advertised “block chain” solutions and had only existed for 2 years. I called the company to see why Ended up on a private jet, following one of the most bizarre stories of my career …— J. David McSwane (@davidmcswane) May 6, 2020

  84. 84.

    rikyrah

    And, they won’t tell the public who these businesses are ??

    This is wild. Two Utah businesses instructed staff to ignore quarantine guidelines, resulting in 68 cases. At one of the businesses, half of the employees got it. t.co/zi4qxgKdHF— McKay Coppins (@mckaycoppins) May 6, 2020

  87. 87.

    rikyrah

    There is an international organization called CEPI, which includes almost all our allies, working right now to find a vaccine for coronavirus. Trump refuses to join.It's foreign policy malpractice that could prove fatal, and Congress must fix this in the next relief bill.— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) May 7, 2020

  88. 88.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Adam L Silverman:

    What if it was white vigilantes shooting white racists/fascists?

    Just to be clear I don’t condone violence but these evil pricks piss me off

  89. 89.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @rikyrah:

    To get ahead of rising projected infections and fatalities Arizona orders state epidemiologists to stop creating models.

    I saw that earlier today! It made me so mad. They’re trying to cover this pandemic up ?

  90. 90.

    Patricia Kayden

    Hang tough, Governor.

    Republican leaders for the Michigan state House and Senate have filed a lawsuit against Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, alleging that her extension of the state's state of emergency was unlawful and goes against the Michigan Constitution t.co/5iU9CUSslx— CNN (@CNN) May 7, 2020

  91. 91.

    Patricia Kayden

    Arghhh

    This New York doctor who’s been treating coronavirus patients says she’s still reeling days after getting a devastating letter: Her green card application was denied. “I’m honestly beside myself. It’s like a slap in the face.” t.co/NmDS0RVgGg— CNN (@CNN) May 6, 2020

  93. 93.

    Redshift

    @rikyrah: Yeah, I saw that on Maddow. The governor got a different model from the White House that says opening up is going to be fine. And they won’t show anyone the “new model.”

    If we survive this and win the elections, a lot of people need to go to prison.

  95. 95.

    Elizabelle

    Dana Milbank in the WaPost:

    If Trump ran the Manhattan Project, we’d all be speaking Japanese

  96. 96.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Patricia Kayden: SCOTUS just kicked one of these from Pennsylvania today. They refused to hear it claiming the orders were not unconstitutional. That will pretty much put paid to most of these that are brought in Federal courts. If they bring it in Michigan state court, I have no idea how it will play.

  97. 97.

    John Revolta

    @patrick II:

    Kellyanne was put on the Trump campaign by the Mercers when they decided to back the Pustule. I suspect she’s being kept there by them, for whatever reason they have e.g. keeping an eye on things and telling him what they want done.

  99. 99.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @John Revolta: I think that’s all true, but I suspect her inner mean girl is also thriving in the willful, determined toxicity of trumpworld

  100. 100.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Patricia Kayden:

    @Adam L Silverman:

    The Ohio House of Reps today voted to limit the ODH Director’s power today. State senators say it likely won’t even come to a vote and if it does likely won’t pass but I’m fucking pissed. They don’t give a flying fuck about my life. “Essential” means expendable at this point

  101. 101.

    Another Scott

    Evan Hurst at Wonkette on Rick Bright’s whistleblower complaint:

    […]

    The complaint states that HHS “leveled baseless criticisms” at Bright for trying to fight for an actual vaccine and procure actual PPE, and then retaliated against him for refusing to go along with their plan to “flood” states with the unproven Trump miracle drug Hydroxybonercream 3000 from Pakistan and India, which “had not been inspected by the FDA.” When the Trump administration was just pretty sure Bright was the source for an article about how the hydroxys are actually not good — he was a source, and acted as one because nobody else would listen and people were fucking dying — they fired him.

    Katz explains that in “early January,” Bright and other HHS scientists knew how dangerous coronavirus was, despite how HHS Secretary Azar was telling Trump and everybody else it was FINEJUSTFINE. (Azar says he was running around with his hair on fire like a common Richard Clarke and it was everybody else’s fault. We will split the difference and assume it was all of them.) And what Bright got from HHS leadership in exchange for waving his hands and shouting “FUCK! PANDEMIC!” was “indifference which then developed into hostility.” He couldn’t get them to do anything. They needed money. They needed virus samples from China, which HHS refused to even request, apparently, even from the CDC, which was acquiring them. And even back then, Dr. Bright knew they needed N95 masks and other PPE. This guy was trying to fix the mask shortage problem in fucking January. Oh yeah, and testing! On January 23, Bright told HHS leadership that the coronas “might already be here. We just don’t have the tests to know one way or the other.” So he was already yelling WHERE ARE THE FUCKING TESTS, in January.

    He got jackshit for his efforts. Dr. Kadlec didn’t give a fuck. Alex Azar didn’t give a fuck. Donald Trump didn’t give a fuck. Katz writes that Bright’s requests did set off a “shit storm,” though, in the words of Bryan Shuy, Dr. Kadlec’s chief of staff, and that his pleas for BARDA funding “offended HHS leadership.” So they kicked him out of the coronavirus meetings.

    Oh, and remember how for the longest time, the US government just didn’t think people should wear masks, but then all of a sudden they changed their mind because “new information” or whatever? That sounds more political than ever, now that we’ve read about a February 7 meeting where Bright sounded the alarm about mask shortages in a meeting with CDC officials and was told “that the plan was to monitor for any supply chain issues and, if needed, ask the CDC to update its guidelines to tell people who ‘don’t need’ masks to not buy them.” Good plan, guys!

    […]

    I haven’t read the complaint yet (the full thing is at a link in the Wonkette story). I hope summaries like Evan’s help it get the visibility it desperately needs. Hundreds of thousands of people may die in the US because of the criminal incompetence of Trump and his minions and we have to make sure people know the truth.

    Grrr…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  102. 102.

    Amir Khalid

    @jl:

    Ted Baxter, played by the late great Ted Knight. Ted Baxter’s wife once explained to Mary that she loved him because “Somebody has to.”

  104. 104.

    Barbara

    @Another Scott: Grogan’s departure should not be viewed as a loss. As easy as it is to criticize Azar, Grogan is the budget hawk jeering at anyone who asks for more resources.

  105. 105.

    Barbara

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I wonder when we start hearing these state officials fretting about the loss of tourists and foreign investment, and why US travelers are being barred from entering other countries. You can’t wish away a virus.

  106. 106.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Adam L Silverman:  Robert A. Heinlein would like a word from beyond the grave:

    Could any one sect obtain a working majority at the polls and take over the [USA]? Perhaps not – but a combination of a dynamic evangelist, television, enough money, and modern techniques of advertising and propaganda… Throw in a depression for good measure, promise a material heaven here on earth, add a dash of anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, antiNegroism, and a good large dash of anti-“furriners” in general and anti-intellectuals here at home and the result might be something quite frightening – particularly when one recalls that our voting system is such that a minority distributed as pluralities in enough states can constitute a working majority in Washington.

    I imagined Nehemiah Scudder as a backwoods evangelist who combined some of the features of John Calvin, Savonarola, Judge Rutherford and Huey Long. … He teamed up with an ex-Senator from his home state; they placed their affairs in the hands of a major advertising agency and were on their way to fame and fortune. Presently they needed stormtroopers; they revived the Ku Klux Klan in everything but the name …. It was a “good gimmick” once and still served. Blood at the polls and blood in the streets, but Scudder won the [Presidential] election. The next election was never held.

    If Trump supporters were to show up armed and menacing at polling places, how many state governments would send in the police to ask them to disperse? How many of those police would be, shall we say, insufficiently dedicated to the right of citizens to vote without intimidation, or sympathetic enough to the goals of such “poll-watchers” to, shall we say, decline to enforce such an order to disperse?

    I doubt any of us would be happy with the answers to these questions. We can only hope this sort of scenario never comes to pass.

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