Tucker Carlson calls for Senator Burr to resign and await prosecution for insider trading if he cannot provide a reasonable explanation for his actions. He goes on to say it appears that Senator Burr betrayed his country in a time of crisis pic.twitter.com/q7yJa5wjuA
— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) March 20, 2020
He plays a bigoted thug to perfection on TV, but either Mr. Carlson isn’t quite as dumb as he acts, or he’s at least smart enough to hire competent advisors. Lo, a Damascus moment for one of the richest ‘conservatives’ on Fox News!
Tucker Carlson apparently flew to Mar-a-Lago to personally lobby Trump and his aides to take the coronavirus more seriously and to stop seeing everything though a political lens https://t.co/XO50HpH4qc
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) March 17, 2020
Though it’s hard to believe, Fox News host Tucker Carlson made his very first visit to Mar-a-Lago only a week and a half ago. The resort was hosting a birthday party for former Fox host Kimberly Guilfoyle, also attended by Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, and Donald Trump Jr.,—but Carlson wasn’t there for the party. He didn’t even know about it, he says. Instead he’d come with an urgent message for the president. He was there to pull Donald Trump aside and speak frankly about the dangers of the coronavirus epidemic, the gravity of which had not yet fully registered with Trump or his White House.
For his troubles, Carlson was actually exposed to the coronavirus, along with Senators Lindsey Graham and Rick Scott, all of whom had been in the room with infected Brazilian officials attending the party…
Tucker Carlson started talking more extensively about the virus on his Fox News show on February 3, spurred, he says, by harrowing reports emerging from China. Trump, it seems, was the last to know. A White House adviser arranged for Carlson to meet with Trump so the TV personality could, in essence, penetrate Trump’s bubble. They talked for two hours. The oncoming pandemic, Carlson told him, was an existential threat to the nation. To translate it into Trumpian language, an existential threat to his reelection. Mike Pence joined at one point. Carlson won’t discuss the president’s reaction on the record, but suffice it to say that Trump’s denial went on for another week while the pandemic ballooned and right-wing allies—many of them on Fox News—suggested the virus was a liberal hoax and members of Congress, as recently as three days ago, told people to continue going out in public as if nothing was happening.
I’ve known Tucker Carlson for 20 years, since before his infamous Jon Stewart debate on CNN in 2004 and before his paleoconservative tendencies—he was always sympathetic to Pat Buchanan—found their moment in the election of Donald J. Trump, reanimating his career. Carlson has always been one of the most intelligent and reliably savage observers of Washington—even more so off camera. A canny TV diplomat, he won’t say Trump is terrified, weak, politically doomed, in deep denial and surrounded by toadies and mediocrities. But what he does say is enough to make you realize we’re entering uncharted territory…
A sample of the ensuing tonguebath:
We’re at the point where conservative media and right-wing politicians take their cues from Trump and from the White House. Tell me when you decided that maybe something had gone out of whack.
So a lot of Trump voters believe that all news about Trump is designed to hurt Trump. And they’re absolutely right about that. It’s been monomaniacal, the coverage of Trump. So when the moment came, when there was something that ultimately really didn’t have anything to do with Trump, which is the emergence of a weird new virus from Eastern China, they were trained to believe that all coverage was designed to hurt Trump. Because that’s been true. So it was very hard to convince a lot of those news consumers that this was fundamentally not a political story.
Everyone in America has been praying for three years to see all stories through the lens of political advantage, period. And so this isn’t fundamentally political. I mean, it’s affected, of course, by politics and the decisions that elected leaders make. But in the end it’s a story about health and economics. Do you know what I mean?
I do. But I also see that Trump’s political worldview, which 35 to 40% of the country believes, says they should distrust elites and institutions. And we now are in a situation where we need both. We need public trust, we need leadership, and we need faith in institutions to hold up. And now it’s not there.
No, no, we don’t. Now, let’s be wise here. We don’t need faith in institutions to hold up, listen to yourself. We need institutions to behave wisely. That’s what we need. And faith is restored when people make wise decisions. That’s the truth.
The truth is people distrust institutions because they’ve hollowed out the economy and made a mess of the country. Now, that’s just true. Trump has been an imperfect vessel for those sentiments. But the sentiments are rooted in reality, and there’s nobody who looks at America 2020 or 2019 who can say that people in charge have done a good job, ’cause they haven’t, they just haven’t, period. So at a time of crisis, you need people to make wise, prudent, selfless decisions. That’s what you need. And you need the institutions to earn the trust of the population…
When you say institutions have failed, I would include the Trump administration in with that.
Well I don’t think anybody thinks the government is going to save you. I really don’t. I don’t think there’s anybody who thinks that…
Nobody with a grain of sense would fall for that crap, of course. Enter the Cosplay Socialists!
unless you write for the intercept.
— golikehellmachine (@golikehellmachi) March 18, 2020
“That a cable-news host used his outsize influence for a positive purpose is something to be grateful for. But that he had such influence to begin with is nothing short of insane.” https://t.co/93nGB1zG2Y
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) March 19, 2020
Margaret Sullivan, who has always refused to play the idiot for the Media Villagers:
… Was Trump’s turnaround all Carlson’s doing? Of course not.
With the world turned upside down and Americans dying, Trump would have been forced to reckon with the disaster eventually. But the talk-show host did seem to get through to Trump in a way that no one else could, which is completely consistent with what we know about this president.
Trump has always placed far too much emphasis on what he sees on television, especially on Fox, which functions as his inspiration and megaphone. Sean Hannity is a close friend and adviser, who once got a slap on the wrist from Fox brass by appearing with Trump at a rally….
All of which is well beyond unseemly. It would be shocking except that we’ve all grown inured to it in this norm-shattering era of reality-TV star as president…
Honorable mention to Fox ‘newsman’ Sean Hannity:
Hannity blasts the media for their coverage of coronavirus while claiming he's "always taken coronavirus seriously" and "never called the virus hoax."
9 days ago, he said people were faking concern over the virus and trying to "bludgeon Trump with this new hoax" pic.twitter.com/jQ1dyiW4r3
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) March 19, 2020
beef
Who is Burr’s replacement on the Intelligence Committee? He wasn’t great there, but he wasn’t Nunes either.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
grazie…
three GOP Senators accused of insider trading in the last few hours
California on lockdown, commenter HRA says their daughter is seeing tanks outside of San Diego
trump asks states to not release new unemployment numbers
hell’s a’poppin’!
cain
Well, if Tucker manages to get these two senators intro big trouble then I say mission accomplished. What these three people did is absolutely heinous. Putting your interests ahead of the nation, never mind your wealth. They broke their oath of office, to the constitution, and to whatever sky father/mother they pray to. Fuck them.
ETA – three not two
The Dangerman
Hannity wasn’t available?
Elizabelle
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Who is the third Senator?
Know about Burr and Loeffler.
Jerzy Russian
I am not sure I want to live in a world where Fucker Carlson is the voice of reason. However, beggars can’t be choosers so here we are.
cain
@The Dangerman:
He was there, his head was stuck between the President’s legs.
Jerzy Russian
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Wait, tanks?
cain
@Jerzy Russian:
We have to defend the toilet paper stashes we got.
smintheus
It’s the Eratosthenes defense: Pay no attention to the things you know I said and did the whole time I seemed to be in cahoots with the bums, but trust me when I tell you about all the admirable things I said to them and did in private.
sanjeevs
Loeffler tweeted this whilst she was rebalancing her portfolio.
hueyplong
What has really happened is Burr got caught red-handed and there really isn’t any defense. Carlson takes him out because: (1) it’s really impossible to do otherwise; (2) throwing Burr to the wolves distracts from Trump’s own virus-related disasters; and (3) Trump probably thought Burr should have been more blatantly obstructionist of the investigations as a public sign of unctuous fealty, so fuck him.
Obviously, not in that order.
WaterGirl
This from the respite thread has me pretty wound up.
If I remember correctly from Gov Newsom’s press conference yesterday, he talked about 80% being mild cases, 15% requiring significant help and 5% really in trouble.
Hoping I am remembering wrong because otherwise 2.5 million * even 5% = 125,000 = we are so screwed. In 8 weeks, so essentially all at once. Doesn’t sound like a flattened curve to me. if it’s 20% who need a lot of care, that’s 500,000 or half a million people. Trying to stay calm. Hoping there’s something seriously wrong with my math or with my memory from last night’s speech.
Another Scott
nycsouthpaw has been searching through the Senate database – https://efdsearch.senate.gov/search/home/
Good for (her?). Crowdsource that thing until it screams.
Grrr…
Cheers,
Scott.
sanjeevs
@hueyplong:
Guarantee you a huge part of the abysmal response is Trumpworld looking to profit off everything.
Developing their own test instead of WHO test, failing to pre-order PPE etc.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Tanks have gotten loose in San Diego before, could be that. //
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jerzy Russian: two threads down
WaterGirl
@cain: It’s like mice or cockroaches. If we’re seeing 3 right away, it’s a lot more than that.
The Dangerman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
WTF? A little more, please.
Nelle
Hey, remember last Nov/ Dec when so many had The Cough from hell, unlike any we’d ever experienced? I know that included Ozark H, and Josie. But others too? My daughter in Phoenix and my friend in Fargo and my husband, all the same week and me about a week later – all four of us were hit with laryngitis and then it seemed to go to the chest. This may be nothing but..
My daughter said her brain went on alert when she read this: Remuzzi says he is now hearing information about it from general practitioners. “They remember having seen very strange pneumonia, very severe, particularly in old people in December and even November,” he says. “This means that the virus was circulating, at least in [the northern region of] Lombardy and before we were aware of this outbreak occurring in China.” from https://www.npr.org/2020/03/19/817974987/every-single-individual-must-stay-home-italy-s-coronavirus-deaths-pass-china-s?utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20200319&utm_term=4469412&utm_campaign=breaking-news&utm_id=10804548&orgid=95
Jerzy Russian
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Thanks for the pointer. I would like to know more, for example which mountain town, which local university, etc. However I understand if they which to remain anonymous.
Adam L Silverman
@beef: It would be whichever Republican senator has enough seniority to want the position. And that Republican senator may not even be on the committee. This is why if the Republicans retain their Senate majority next year that Grassley will be taking back the Judiciary chairmanship. Because he wants it and he’s got more seniority than Lindsey Graham.
Another Scott
@Elizabelle: nycsouthpaw points to Inhofe. (See the tweet in my comment above.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Chetan Murthy
It’s reported Ron”Dumbass” Johnson sold beween $5m and $25m. Also, saw a report that Inhofe sold ($500k)? I won’t be surprised to learn that most GrOPer Senators sold. And to hear that Tucker’s been told to walk back his accusations, b/c “we can’t all resign, Tucker”.
A Ghost to Most
@Another Scott: And Ron Johnson.
Cheryl Rofer
@Nelle: I had a cough from hell before that. A friend had something that her doctor said was whooping cough, although she had been vaccinated against it recently. Mine was shortly after hers.
I’ve been wondering about those illnesses too.
Jerzy Russian
@WaterGirl: That seems like that would be a lot of people in deep ship. If only there was a way to find out who is infected and who is not…
The Dangerman
@Chetan Murthy:
Why not?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Looks like he sold his family company? Mike DeBonis is a local reporting WI
HRA
I wish I was more tech savvy and could sent you all the photo. They are in a very long single line going through her upper canyon area.
hueyplong
@Chetan Murthy: I’d guess the number who dumped stock probably matches the number of Senators in the room.
No doubt a GOP-only meeting because Democrats would have blabbed. Because they’re, you know, human beings.
There is no bottom with Trump Republicans.
Chetan Murthy
@The Dangerman: “Who would make sure our owners get paid, Tucker?”
Jeffro
Burr, Loeffler, Inhofe, Johnson, and possibly Feinstein too
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Even the liberal Fox News.
sanjeevs
@WaterGirl: Mortality rates are varying a lot. Germany is at 0.3% still.
Jerzy Russian
@Chetan Murthy: If Fucker Carlson can bring even one of those asshole senators down, then I will take him off of the list that I plan to give to my nut-kicking robots (these robots are still in the early stages of development). Until that time, he is on the list because he is Fucker Carlson.
Another Scott
@Jeffro: I hope that anyone who dumped their stocks on the news is rightly punished for it.
But I hope we wait for the evidence – gazillionaire Senators could have automatic selling things set up that just kicked in at that particular time.
The details may matter – and may matter a lot.
Cheers,
Scott.
HRA
@Jerzy Russian: My other NYS daughters work at a local university.
MY CA daughter works as a medical tech at a a medical center. She lives in a canyon and the mountain road is close by her home.
Brachiator
@WaterGirl:
The governor also said that social distance and more people staying home may reduce this figure.
The Dangerman
@Jerzy Russian:
These, um, nut kicking robots, um, they could be, um, repurposed, right? Asking for a friend from San Fernando Valley. Apparently social distancing isn’t working well for his product.
hells littlest angel
How hopelessly fucked up is your party when a wretched weasel like Carlson is one of its most principled members?
Fair Economist
@Nelle: We have hundreds of sequences and this unambiguously started with the Wuhan outbreak. All the sequences descend from the wuhan ones except a few from an immediate ancestor we didn’t get sequenced.
hueyplong
@Another Scott: If Burr’s stock was sold on some automatic trigger, I’d guess that would have been their cover story. It wasn’t.
Don’t know about the others, but I’d bet a small amount of my greatly reduced retirement on Burr being guilty as hell.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I know songs about “I hear that train a’comin…”, I don’t know any about busses
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m old enough to remember when Dump and Jack Welch would accuse Obama’s Labor Dept of cooking the books on the unemployment rate.
Always projection.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
What the fuck? Did a quick Google search and am seeing nothing. What in the world is going on in San Diego?
smintheus
@Nelle: I had something last fall, I think it began in October and it took months to shake it. It started suddenly with laryngitis (within 45 minutes I suddenly could barely talk, by the next morning I was feeling quite sick in my upper throat). A few days later it was bronchial and I was flat on my back. The phlegm coating my windpipe was so thick and sticky I could barely cough it out at all; but I had to keep coughing because the phlegm was restricting my ability to breathe. My whole body shook from coughing and it was painful, not as bad as whooping cough and only for a few days, but something of that order. My doctor said I had a combination of infections, both viral and bacterial. Antibiotics took care of the bacterial, but I continued to have sever problems thereafter for weeks. The doctor tested for strep, but it was not that; she could not figure out what it was that I had. I went back to teaching after about a week or week and a half away, but felt so weak that I nearly collapsed in front of the class. I had to start cancelling class again, briefly, before resuming teaching again the next week. For more than a month after that, a couple of hours of teaching would leave my throat extremely sore and I felt physically exhausted. In Dec. I finally got some relief for my throat by gargling intensively with hot salt water. And then in late January the sore throat started to return because the sinus infection has never cleared up.
I never had more than slight fevers, at worst, but I’ve sometimes felt that I was slightly flushed…only to have it pass. This continues to the present day. I also sometimes felt and feel slight nausea, and every once in a while dizziness for no apparent reason. My symptoms now are so slight and passing that they barely affect me, but every now and then I’ve wondered whether I still have what I had last fall or worse that I’m starting to come down with corona.
I hope that I have not had corona all along, because I travelled for weeks in northern Italy in early January. In fact, around Jan. 6 I visited the small town where the first Italian with corona was in the hospital (Monselice).
West of the Rockies
I loathe Hannity. Ted Koeppel saying directly into his face that he (Hannity) is dangerous was great. Hannity tried to pout and scrinchy-eye a different answer with his squeaky little “Really?” Ted didn’t budge. Hannity is among the 1% most harmful people in the country.
Jerzy Russian
@HRA: Thanks. I don’t see anything in the news yet, but it is still early. We have had winter weather (relatively speaking), so there could be mountain road closures due to mud/rock slides and the like.
Fair Economist
@WaterGirl: Communications from Cali have not been good. The 25 million was later clarified to if we did nothing, which means nothing, because we have already done a lot. The address tonight was rambling IMO but the claim is that with current projections we will go 20,000 hospitalizations over our 80,000 bed capacity. So, we have to have stricter rules.
Amir Khalid
@HRA:
There’s a way to get a photo to a front-pager for them to post, if you have Instagram or Flickr or similar, and I think it will get posted if enough jackals say they want to see it.
Tanks in San Diego? I wonder why. They don’t strike me as very useful in enforcing the stay-at-home order.
sdhays
I wonder what McConnell’s portfolio looks like…
Adam L Silverman
@HRA: Email it to me. Use the contact a front pager tool. Please include the details of where and when the picture was taken. Thanks!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Inhofe made two sales, each between 50K and 100K, of Brookfield Asset Management, which sounded familiar…. ah, that’s why (wiki):
Jerzy Russian
@West of the Rockies: Hannity is a name that appears several times on the list that I will be giving to the robots.
terry chay
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@HRA:
What direction were they traveling in? Perhaps they were heading towards the US-Mexico border?
Another Scott
@Amir Khalid: It’s probably something innocuous. E.g. https://patch.com/california/watsonville/viral-video-tanks-on-train-explained (from 2012).
I remember driving on a highway in Ohio decades ago, going about 55 mph, and being passed by a line of tanks (that had listed top speeds of about 45 mph) – it seemed to be a National Guard unit out on some sort of drill…
I don’t see anything in Google’s news, but they often lag by hours.
Cheers,
Scott.
HRA
@Adam L Silverman: It is on my IPhone, Adam. I will get my local tech savvy daughter to come over tomorrow to help me send it to you.
Martin
@WaterGirl:
Er, it’s 25 million, not 2.5 million. So you’re an order of magnitude too low on everything.
That’s probably not helping, huh.
Mary G
Making Burr resign is just giving up something you were going to lose anyway. He announced he wasn’t running again in 2022. I think he’s a sacrificial lamb:
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The governor of North Carolina is a Democrat. There is no way McConnell lets him resign and get replaced with a Democrat who then gets to run as the incumbent.Never mind.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: Tanks in San Diego. OK, it was one tank that a guy stole.
Adam L Silverman
@HRA: Standing by, though I will, between now and when you send it to me, also sit by, lounge by, and lie down and sleep by. There will also likely be have dogs pounce on me by as well!
When she helps you send it, please have her provide as much context and information as possible.
Amir Khalid
@Another Scott:
Just the US Army going about its normal business, then? I remember the right wing freaking out for no reason over Army manœuvres in Texas a few years back. The last thing anyone needs is a similar freakout in southern California. But these times are fraught with worries.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mary G: I’m hoping the stink stays on Thom Tillis. I’m sure Cal Cunningham’s campaign is tweeting like mad at Tillis to call on Burr to resign.
Adam L Silverman
@Amir Khalid:
HRA
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): She said tanks coming in from San Diego. It could mean something or it could just mean nothing. It was a very unusual sighting.
Amir Khalid
@Adam L Silverman:
Yeah, that’s the one.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Adam L Silverman:
Playing devil’s advocate for a second, isn’t it possible the right-wing isn’t a monolith and different factions of it believe different things? Or were the same people who thought Jade Helm was some evil plot to imprison them in FEMA camps also the same ones who praise the military under GOP presidents?
terry chay
Please stop with this “I had the Coronavirus in November or a October” bullshit. It is dangerous and you endanger others by repeating it.
They traces the Coronavirus to a single exotic foods market in Wuhan. They know it made the jump from Bat to Pangolin to Human in late October there and only there. Every instance has been genetically traced to that lineage.
with the way it spreads, if Northern Italy caught it in November, they’d have had their current numbers in January when Wuhan did. They got it through some spread in late January, same as what happened in Washington State.
Spreading such false rumors is dangerous. It makes people think they caught it and are immune so they can rationalize not following protocol, catching and spreading it some more. That is the ONLY reason for these bullshit stories.
Kelly
After a backpacking trip in 1997 I caught a ride in Lone Pine, CA with some guy from the boondocks adjacent to China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station. He had a number of good stories about living that neighbor. The best was he once saw a cloud of dust come over the hill from the weapons range. It was several Jeeps (?humvees?) chasing a tank. The tank had been rigged for remote control for a weapons test. The test weapon had taken out the remote controls and left the tank running. All the Navy could do was chase it until it got stuck a mile or two outside the boundary.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@terry chay:
I had a co-worker tell me she and her doctor thought she had it sometime in January, which is more plausible imo
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@HRA:
Huh. Looking forward to seeing the picture
Eolirin
@WaterGirl: I think your math is off by a factor of ten…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Link to Gummo’s now-deleted tweet of Feb 28, saying he thinks it’s a great time to buy!
Go Tish!
Fair Economist
@terry chay: People should also know that the circulating human common cold coronaviruses can also cause symptoms like SARS2, just much milder. No doubt others of the 300 or whatever common cold viruses can too.
Jess
Yeah, I had that nasty bronchial flu thing in October, and it was definitely making the rounds in Mass. Too early to be the coronavirus. Just some other nasty flu. It hit me the week before I was planning to get my flu shot. :-( Oh well.
Another Scott
@Kelly: Reminds me of a camping trip to Dolly Sods, WV a couple of decades ago. We were day-hiking out in the wilderness when we started hearing this aircraft noise that kept getting closer and closer but we couldn’t see anything. Then a couple of A-10s appeared in a flash just above the tree-line, flying very close together, within maybe 100 yards of us.
And then they were gone.
Cheers,
Scott.
leeleeFL
@Jerzy Russian: I always say that a broken click is correct twice a day
Adam L Silverman
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Lot of cognitive dissonance. Especially given that a lot of the people freaking out lived in Killeen, which is home to Ft. Hood or El Paso, which is home to Ft. Bliss, or San Antonia, which is home to Joint Base San Antonio. If the US military wanted to take over Texas, it would not be necessary to actually invade the state. We’re already positioned to do it. Especially now that US Futures Command is in San Antonio. And that’s not counting the National Guard and Air National Guard assets in the state.
LeftCoastYankee
In December, I had a 2 week long stubborn cold/mild annoying flu thing i never had before, that came with a progressively more fierce dry cough that was not upper respiratory (as a life-long asthmatic with allergies I usually worry about upper respiratory — aka snotfest– issues). This was deep lung and felt close to the time I ended up with pneumonia in my youth. Sounds familiar.
Here’s the thing, even if it’s theoretically possible this all didn’t start in Wuhan, it doesn’t really matter in terms of personal protection, or community protection. Until there’s a protocol that confirms that you are recovered and now immune, you’re considered “infect-able”, and therefore a conduit for infecting others.
There’s two considerations for all our precautions:
Keep breathing deeply (for the stress relief), and be safe all.
Nelle
@terry chay: I don’t anyone is saying that they had it in November. I was saying that there was something unusual then, a virus, that our doctors responded to by saying that they didn’t understand it. Raising questions isn’t the same as making assertions and you are being unnecessarily harsh. There’s all sorts of new viruses, yes. To ask if there is a connection? Some of us aren’t virologists.
ema
@terry chay:
They’re still trying to confirm patient zero:
<i>A 55-year-old individual from Hubei province in China may have been the first person to have contracted COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus spreading across the globe. That case dates back to Nov. 17, 2019, according to the South Morning China Post.
That’s more than a month earlier than doctors noted cases in Wuhan, China, which is in Hubei province, at the end of December 2019. At the time, authorities suspected the virus stemmed from something sold at a wet market in the city. However, it’s now clear that early in what is now a pandemic, some infected people had no connection to the market. That included one of the earliest cases from Dec. 1, 2019 in an individual who had no link to that seafood market, researchers reported Jan. 20 in the journal The Lancet.</i>
Cathie from Canada
We have always been at war with East Asia, haven’t we?
Turning back to reality, here’s an interesting video about COVID that I just saw on Digg, which explains how the symptoms present most of the time https://digg.com/video/what-coronavirus-symptoms-look-like-after-a-few-days
And I read on Twitter today that many COVID patients apparently also lose their sense of smell, apparently its one of the things that distinguishes COVID from other colds and flue.
TriassicSands
There’s a reasonable explanation for his actions: Selling stocks in the face of a global pandemic makes perfect sense since Burr knew that the president is a complete idiot and shouldn’t be in charge of responding to any crisis including a hang nail. The Stock Market is a joke. I takes a huge plunge one day and then some superficial information comes out that doesn’t really change anything and it rallies the next day, only to plunge again on day 3. Business as usual.
I can’t imagine anyone really being surprised that there has been panic on Wall Street. Think about it — your country is facing a pandemic and the absolute worst person on the planet is in charge of the country’s response. You don’t need insider information to be worried about what’s coming.
On the other hand, Senator Burr has no reasonable explanation for acquitting Donald Trump in his impeachment trial. Same complete idiot. Obvious guilt. Acquittal vote. Now, there’s a real problem.
ellie
@Nelle: This. Mid-January, my husband and I had a dry cough along with shortness of breath and a continuing sweaty-cold. My husband went to the doctor and got a chest x-ray; he was convinced he had lung cancer. The x-ray was clear. But looking back, we were so out of breath, we thought it was because we were overweight. But now, who knows?
Dirk Reinecke
@terry chay: You are right it is harmful, but it isn’t people being purposefully bad. It is Apophenia people are good at seeing patterns were patterns don’t exist. Part of the human condition.
Gretchen
@Nelle: I had that too, a horrible dry cough that lasted all of December and into January. My husband and his siblings got similar when they spent time in the ICU in early February.
WaterGirl
@Brachiator: Apreciate the reminder. I was sort of thinking that was already taken into account since there was no “unless people do a lot more distancing”.
WaterGirl
@Fair Economist: ah. That makes me feel a bit better, thanks.
Martin
@?BillinGlendaleCA: That was the best TV news day apart from OJ.
WaterGirl
@Martin: I had it right the first time I did the math before I started writing the comment and got over a million people. Then I got it wrong when I wrote my comment. At least I better understand why I was freaked out. :-)
Jay Noble
We get the Missile Convoys around here enough that we might not notice a line of tanks. :-)
NotMax
@Nelle
Not necessarily unique. Was it two or was it three years ago now when so many of us had The Wracking Cough That Wouldn’t Leave? 7 weeks to the day in my case. Give or take a week, others here reported experiencing the same. Damn thing would eventually subside just enough that one would think one was getting over it and then reignite with a vengeance.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: Just finished episode 1 of Wonderfalls. It’s delightfully goofy.
BruceFromOhio
You dance with them that brung ya. Thought you would’ve figured that out by now, Mr Carlson.
Eric k
@Elizabelle: inofhe
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
:) Enjoy. Whimsy with a serrated edge.
mrmoshpotato
Self-explanatory.
rp
No one is going to comment on greenwalds response to fang? You people are slacking.
Sab
@HRA: Yikes. My sister is in LaJolla.
p.a.
Had a Latin teacher with a ‘Flunk now avoid the rush’ sign above his desk.
ETA: Pressure to get Burr out asap, that will set precedent and not allow other news to bury the issue. This may cross the aisle of course.
MattF
@Nelle: Me too on that. I had a dry cough for a few days in the Jan. Feb. timeframe, unlike colds I’d had before. But no fever, no shortness of breath, so who knows?
Dadadadadadada
@Nelle: I, 36 at the time and in otherwise very rude health, was diagnosed with pneumonia in November. Fwiw.