Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

This fight is for everything.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

I really should read my own blog.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

This really is a full service blog.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Thanks for reminding me that Van Jones needs to be slapped.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

Republicans can’t even be trusted with their own money.

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

You are here: Home / 2024 Elections / Friday Evening Open Thread: Programming Note / Pandemic Milestones

Friday Evening Open Thread: Programming Note / Pandemic Milestones

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Per The Hill:

President Biden on Friday will sit down with MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle for his first interview since announcing his reelection bid last week, the network announced.

The two will discuss, “the administration’s infrastructure agenda, the 2024 campaign and recently announced reelection bid, the shaping GOP field, looming debt ceiling crisis, and more,” the network said in a news release. The interview will air Friday at 10 p.m. Eastern time.

Biden’s sit down with Ruhle is the first time he will speak at length about his reelection bid since it was announced last week. The president has had a relatively light public schedule in the time since, attending the White House correspondents’ dinner last Saturday and hosting a few events at the White House this week…

===========

Per Medical News Today, “WHO says COVID-19 health emergency is over as mortality rates reach all-time low”:

On May 5, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced in a virtual media briefing that COVID-19 is no longer a “public health emergency of international concern.”

The decision to end the pandemic’s emergency status after more than three years followed the 15th meetingTrusted Source of the WHO’s International Health Regulations Emergency Committee on May 4.

The WHO’s Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said in a media briefing the pandemic has been on a downward trend for more than a year, as population immunity has increased from both vaccination and infection, while mortality rates have decreased and overall pressure on health systems have eased…

More than three years since the WHO declared COVID-19 a public health emergency in January 2020, millions of people — estimates of around 7 million or more — have died. However, Dr. Tedros said those estimates could be closer to 20 million deaths, warning the virus still posed a significant global threat…

Dr. Katherine O’Brien, director of Immunization, Vaccines, and Biologicals at the WHO, said in a media briefing the high risk of severe illness and death is still low in many countries around the world, particularly in those with high COVID-19 vaccination rates.

“Vaccines have played a really important role in protecting populations,” she said, noting the WHO’s announcement does not mean the fight against the virus is over. “The work remains essential for the life-saving nature of the vaccines,” she said…

From the Los Angeles Times, “The CDC is changing the way it monitors COVID-19 in the U.S. “:

Acknowledging that it is losing some of its eyes and ears across the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week unveiled a scaled-down COVID-19 surveillance system for the post-pandemic era.

The CDC’s new monitoring network won’t have the fine resolution on the coronavirus that the agency strove for during earlier stages of the pandemic. But it will lash together a raft of new and existing tools to keep an eye on the virus while also keeping broader tabs on the public’s health.

With the federal government’s three-year-old public health emergency set to expire next Thursday, the agency will begin to track COVID-19 cases alongside other respiratory illnesses, said Dr. Nirav D. Shah, the CDC’s principal deputy director. New cases of the pandemic virus, which has caused 1.1 million deaths in the United States and 6.9 million deaths worldwide, will eventually be lumped together with influenza, respiratory syncytial virus and other infections that can cause pneumonia and death in humans.

The CDC will still be able to alert communities to upticks in coronavirus spread based on its continued tracking of emergency department visits, COVID-19 hospitalizations and wastewater surveillance from local sewage plants. Reliable statistics on COVID-19 deaths will lag behind other data…

We’ll probably be discussing this in my next Covid Update, but that’s not till Wednesday and I know not every commentor sees it.

Reader Interactions

66Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    The two will discuss, “the administration’s infrastructure agenda, the 2024 campaign and recently announced reelection bid, the shaping GOP field, looming debt ceiling crisis, and more,” the network said in a news release.

    She’ll ask him about his age for an hour.

  2. 2.

    Roger Moore

    I think it’s correct to say that it’s no longer an emergency, but it’s clearly still a concern. When COVID first hit, it was an emergency both because it was severe and because we didn’t know what we were doing. It made sense to take exceptional measures to protect the population, even if we weren’t sure those measures were necessary or effective. Now, though, we’ve had time to figure out what works and what doesn’t, and to put in place a set of policies designed to protect people using the best of what we know. COVID is still a big, big problem- there’s a reason we’re still talking about it and why my local newspaper still has a COVID update on the front page of their website- but dealing with it is now part of normal operations rather than something exceptional.

  4. 4.

    gwangung

    @Roger Moore: Yup. I think I’m a lot more active than I was during the early year or so—more indoors, audience-existing activities, even an occasional dine in dinner.

    But I just got my second booster. I’m not taking stupid risks.

  7. 7.

    gwangung

    Oh. This is an open thread. Well, crap, I almost forgot about this.

    Co-producing a Seattle-area sketch and improv show with Jet City Improv featuring 11 AAPI comedians. And I did an interview or two about my group and the show.

    So go out and buy a ticket if you’re in the Seattle area….

  10. 10.

    JWR

    What’s this?!! A tape of TFG’s deposition has been released? Leastwise it’s leading off the news on NBC, and they say it’s Breaking

    ETA that this has to do with the E. Jean Carroll case, and it ain’t Breaking.

  16. 16.

    zhena gogolia

    @Baud: Must be the one from earlier today, where he expounded on how “stars” have been grabbing pussies for “at least the last million years.”

  18. 18.

    zhena gogolia

    @JWR: Uh, I’m having a nice chardonnay after a hard week’s work. Think I’ll pass. I’ll reserve my watching energies for Rufus Sewell later tonight.

  20. 20.

    zhena gogolia

    @Omnes Omnibus: Okay, I’ll say that watching that has more impact than reading it. He is so sure of himself when he says “That’s Marla.”

    For God’s sake, I could tell that’s not Marla, and I don’t give a fuck about Marla.

  22. 22.

    Steeplejack

    @Baud:

    It’s the deposition that we’ve seen excerpts and transcripts of previously. This is just the first time video has been released.

  23. 23.

    zhena gogolia

    @zhena gogolia: I mean, this is the proof he’s mentally impaired. How do you not recognize someone you’ve been married to for several years and had a kid with?

  24. 24.

    zhena gogolia

    All respect to E. Jean Carroll, Jessica Leeds, and Natasha Stoynoff. Brave women.

    And Christine Blasey Ford.

  26. 26.

    JWR

    @Baud: Dunno if we’ve heard it before, probably most of the “good” parts. It’s 48 minutes and I’ve not watched all of it.

    @zhena gogolia: Sorry. ;) Enjoy your vino!

  28. 28.

    zhena gogolia

    @JWR: Thanks, I’m seeing that I should watch it. Reading the transcript doesn’t convey the utter amorality and psychosis of the creature.

  32. 32.

    JWR

    @Omnes Omnibus: Yep, that’s in there, and I haven’t a clue how he mistook her in the picture. I’d have to find some contemporary images to see them side by side. Meh. Maybe later.

  34. 34.

    Anne Laurie

    @zhena gogolia: How do you not recognize someone you’ve been married to for several years and had a kid with?

    Honest answer:  It was never their faces he looked at.  Not Ivana’s, not Marla’s, not Melania’s — certainly not any of his assault victims.

  37. 37.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @zhena gogolia: Yes, a complete gentleman.  When we picked him up at the airport, he tried to insist on carrying own suitcase.  I had to jokingly tell him he was making me look bad before he let me take it from him.

  38. 38.

    dc

    @Roger Moore: It was also a new virus that no one’s immune system had dealt with before. That’s mostly not the case now. Most people in most places have either had the virus (and survived) or have been vaccinated or in many cases both. This makes a big difference too.

  40. 40.

    NotMax

    Supreme Court still capable of doing something sound.

    The Supreme Court on Friday blocked the execution of an Oklahoma death row inmate who claims he is innocent in an unusual case in which the state’s attorney general agreed that the underlying conviction was unsound. Source

  42. 42.

    Splitting Image

    @zhena gogolia:

    Must be the one from earlier today, where he expounded on how “stars” have been grabbing pussies for “at least the last million years.”

    That’s gonna hurt him with the Young Earth Christians.

  43. 43.

    Chetan Murthy

    @gwangung: Ha!  Me too!  I actually met a friend in a crowded bar and hung out for 4hr without a mask!  In a hi-rise hotel, so no windows!  It was a week ago, so I suspect I’m past the window of having been infected, but just in case, knock wood.  Even so, unless it’s something like that, where I *want* to take the risk and an *aware* I’m taking the risk, uniformly I wear my mask in foreign indoor places, b/c hey, “I’m not taking stupid risks”.  Or maybe more accurately (for me) “I’m going to take risks when the rewards are commensurate, not when it’s just run-of-the-mill life.”

  44. 44.

    cmorenc

    Since the Ruhle interview of Biden will be broadcast at 10pm on Friday night on MSNBC, it’s likely to only be watched by a small audience of hard-core Democratic activist political junkies, plus an even smaller number of hard-core Republican activist/operators surfing for excerpts they can misleadingly distort to purportedly show Biden as a senile far-left radical.

  45. 45.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @zhena gogolia:

    Must be the one from earlier today, where he expounded on how “stars” have been grabbing pussies for “at least the last million years.”

    Trump thinks the Flintstones was real history lol

  46. 46.

    JPL

    trump mentioned that the grab them by the pussy can be unfortunate or fortunate.   What the hell is fortunate about it.   That might nail him alone.

  49. 49.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @schrodingers_cat:

    India’s home minister, Amit Shah, is campaigning for his party for the ongoing election in the southern state of Karnataka and is said to have no plans to visit Manipur.

    That about sums it all up. What a fucking dick

  53. 53.

    Ruckus

    @zhena gogolia:

    I mean, this is the proof he’s mentally impaired. How do you not recognize someone you’ve been married to for several years and had a kid with?

    Married? A kid? Are they giving him money? Because the only way he recognize either one of them, if they waved $100 bills in his face. And it’s still not a lock even then.

  54. 54.

    Ken

    @JWR: they say it’s Breaking

    They all say that, even when they’re the tenth or hundredth to report it, three days after the original report. It’s become meaningless.

  57. 57.

    Scout211

    Man who assaulted officers with folding chair, pepper spray during Capitol riot gets longest sentence yet for a January 6 defendant

    CNN — 
    A Pennsylvania man who threw a folding chair at law enforcement and repeatedly used pepper spray on police during the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol was sentenced Friday to more than 14 years in prison – the longest of any January 6 defendant so far.

    Peter Schwartz, 49, was found guilty on 10 charges in December 2022 during a jury trial, including four felony charges of assaulting, resisting or impeding officers using a dangerous weapon. Schwartz’s prior criminal history of 38 felony convictions dating to 1991 was a significant factor behind his sentence.

  58. 58.

    Suzanne

    After I tried to make nutritious food with my leftover pumpkin, Mr. Suzanne got really excited and asked me to make pumpkin bread. Which I did. And now he is whining that it won’t be out of the oven for half an hour.

    My life is so exciting.

  62. 62.

    JWR

    @Scout211: I think what I’m feeling about all these convictions is what TFG meant when he said we would get tired of all the winning. And you know what? When I read your post, I just rolled my eyes and laughed. It’s not so much growing tired of all the winning, it’s growing tired of the monotony of it all. Guilty. Next! Guilty. Next! Guilty. Next!, and so on and on ;)

  64. 64.

    NotMax

    @Scout211

    Why did people who gathered (ostensibly) to hear a speech come equipped with pepper spray/bear repellent/tasers/batons/body armor et cetera?

    Not standard audience attire and accoutrements. To the best of my knowledge there are no kiosks selling such items scattered along the Mall. They knew full well what would be transpiring.

    Premeditated culpability.

  65. 65.

    JWR

    @Ken: Well technically, it really was “breaking”, but not in that it was all that new, but that it came out a few hours ago. So, point well taken. ;)

    And hoo boy! in the background, Bobo Brooks is on PBS News Hour and he says of the court that he doesn’t think these amazing people are or can be moved by money, and that he’s more concerned that they’re being moved by ideology. (wUt? Maybe he’s talking about the George Soros judges.) I’d have to bother myself to listen to it later to get it straight, but hey, it’s Brooks, so no thank you. ;)

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