Covid-19 is a slow moving killer. Lags matter a lot.
Today’s number of currently hospitalized people—62k—is also a record. A total of 17 states have reported single-day record hospitalizations. pic.twitter.com/l6h6x8wZG3
— The COVID Tracking Project (@COVID19Tracking) November 11, 2020
62,000+ people are in the hospital due to Covid.
This is a record. The difference between now and early peaks is concentration. Right now, we are seeing a national wave so we don’t have metropolitan regions with several times the demand outstripping supply nor regions where there is nothing happening in the hospitals where staff and supplies could be sent to crisis regions.
More importantly, we are on a lag.
Today’s hospitalizations are mostly people who were infected on Halloween even if they had not yet tested positive yet.
On Halloween, 90,000+ people were reporting positive tests. Today, almost 50% more people have new reported positive tests. Today’s newly infected people have significant chunks of expected but not yet actualized hospitalizations. And those people will be stacking up on top of yesterday’s newly infected cohorts that will need hospitalization and tomorrow’s newly infected cohorts. We’re building up a large bolus of hospitalizations that will be occurring during the week of Thanksgiving.
Today’s bad news on infections are leading indicators of future bad news on hospitalizations and deaths.
Be careful.
Matt McIrvin
Whenever people celebrate a big drop in the CFR, watch out, because that’s what you get when cases are exploding and the people haven’t died yet.
rikyrah
No good news ??
Cameron
Fortunately, down here in Florida, we got it covered. The right man for the right job!
https://www.bradenton.com/news/coronavirus/article247081417.html
debbie
I don’t know about hospitalizations, but two weeks after OSU’s opening football game, Ohio reported a 55% increase in new cases.
charluckles
My son had a close contact at school. Knock on wood, I think we are OK on that one. But it took 8 days for our county to contact us with a quarantine order. 8 days. And I think our county has a decent handle on things compared to a lot of other places.
satby
David, I want to share this, can you change the featured photo to one of the charts or something? Because otherwise when I share the article it shows a massive picture of Tunch, the headline, and about four words of the post; and most people won’t read it because they’ll think it’s a cat story.
TS (the original)
@charluckles:
One of the important items in controlling the outbreak in Melbourne (Australia) was getting test results out in 24 hours & immediately starting contact tracing. The spread in 8 days can be massive & so many US cases aren’t tested or traced.
I know Biden & his team understand this, shame about having to wait another 2 months while trump plays golf & attacks elections.
RSA
I’m reminded of a book I read a while ago on why people believe in “alternative medicine” (roughly speaking, stuff that works most likely due to a placebo effect).
People are not very good at figuring out causation when there’s a significant lag between cause and effect, when there’s uncertainty in the cause/effect relationship, when causal events are not detectable, when effects vary in their strength, etc.
I’m probably conflating COVID-19 with what I remember from the book, but I think it’s interesting that if you were looking for a disease that people would not take seriously due to cognitive biases, you’d end up describing something like COVID-19.
raven
@debbie: There are no fans at Big 10 games?
satby
@TS (the original): Not only are cases not getting tested and traced, many sick people aren’t getting tested deliberately so that they don’t have to stop working, at least in my little corner of red state hell. They cough and wheeze and say it’s just a cold.
debbie
@raven:
There were crowds outside the stadium, and the bars and restaurants in the area were overflowing with fans. The videos on local news programs were appalling.
White & Gold Purgatorian
The slope of that daily new cases curve is terrifying — at least to me.
On the other hand, my extended family in another red state are still business as usual. In fact, one of my nieces is making daily visits to her grandmother who is sick with Covid right now, taking her kids with her, and then returning to socialize with the rest of the family, who are not yet sick. I don’t see how she could do more to spread the disease if she were trying. They see no need to isolate if sick or exposed and apparently their state and local health officials are not communicating that need. Mind you, in the before times these were reasonably smart people. Now … I don’t know.
AM in NC
I am gonna be so fucking pissed if we amazingly get an effective vaccine developed this quickly but I die anyway because before I can get the vaccine Winter Is Coming and the Republican response (at the national level and in GOP-run states) has been, and continues to be, criminally negligent.
satby
@debbie: And here’s what my area will be dealing with in just days.
Brachiator
And the days leading up to and including Thanksgiving may see a new event where people may be exposed and become infected. Friends and family gathering together indoors and perhaps college students returning home and infecting family members.
ETA. I keep hearing deniers say that the pandemic is no worse than the flu. We know that this is not true from the number of deaths, but I also wonder how hospitalizations compare.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
Positive, symptomatic case at my workplace. Ten people sent home to quarantine. We mask so hopefully no one else got it from the person. Wish I could work from home…
MomSense
I got my negative result yesterday. We are going through a big spike of Covid since several employees at local bars tested positive. I was with someone who was bar hopping on Halloween and I developed cold symptoms plus body aches.
We never should have gone to stage four opening bars and restaurants for indoor service. It only lasted two weeks, but it didn’t work out well.
MomSense
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
I wish you could, too. We all need to be working from home if possible.
satby
@Brachiator: They continue to say it’s no worse than the flu, and if pressed they pull a “deaths from flu” number out of their ass too. But most people don’t die from flu so they assume if they get it they’ll have similar results. And they completely blow off the idea that there may be long term damage we don’t yet fully understand from this new virus, even in people who were asymptomatic.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@MomSense: thank you. I work in health care so it’s just not possible, I just am being really careful as I am due to have surgery in January and I do not need to have it canceled. Again
David Anderson
@satby: Updated with generic COVID image.
raven
@debbie: Got it. We are allowing 20,000 at games but the students have been having big parties football or not.
MomSense
@AM in NC:
The problem in the blue states with effective democratic administrations is that the right wingers go nuts with the conspiracy theories and start defying the sensible orders about indoor gatherings. We’ve had church services cause multiple outbreaks and deaths and they are defiant about it. Then the employers look for every possible way to exploit any space between the words in the orders to keep people working.
It’s infuriating. No one at our office told us one of our coworkers was exposed – I figured it out because I knew she was going out on Halloween and saw her social media photos which placed her at bars that had positive cases. Her direct boss knew but apparently isn’t required to inform us. Fuck that.
debbie
@satby:
I saw that. Just nuts.
Nicole
God, I’m so tired of the “no worse than the flu” crap. First of all, no, in fact it’s worse, and second of all, WE HAVE A VACCINE AGAINST FLU. Which, a not-insignificant number of the population get every year.
This is the first year in… ever… that I won’t see family at either Thanksgiving or Christmas, but the governor says, please don’t travel if you don’t have to, and I care enough about my fellow citizens that I’m not going to travel. And it sucks and I hate it. But there it is.
rk
I have a co-worker whose sister in law has COVID. The co-worker was not directly exposed to her sister in law but told to keep her mask on all the time (she wears it below her nose) and go to an isolated room for breaks for a few days.
Yesterday I asked how her sister in law was doing. She told me her sister in law was fine, this is just like the flu and is not a deadly disease. I asked her if she did not believe that a quarter of a million people are dead. She shook her head and smiled. She is a young, anti vaccine Trump supporter.
debbie
@MomSense:
Right wingers are going plenty nuts in the red states too, and since this stupidity won’t be ending on January 20th for any of us. I’ll never get out of this fucking apartment.
Cheryl from Maryland
We generally spend Thanksgiving with my 97-year-old mother-in-law, who lives locally in a condo complex for the elderly. Just the three of us. Not this year, and probably not Christmas either — it’s not worth the risk.
Cheryl Rofer
We will see record increases every day for the next fourteen days, because nobody has changed their behavior.
And the increases will continue beyond that, because I don’t see anyone changing behavior today.
Happy holidays
Cervantes
Reported deaths are already rising, actually. Seven day moving average is up to 1,003 from an October low of about 700. That will move very quickly now.
dmsilev
@Nicole: Yeah. A really bad flu year might kill a few tens of thousands of people in the USA. COVID-19 is at about ten times that, and we’re far from done.
I also canceled traveling to see my family for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. Sucks majorly, but I’d prefer to only see my parents by phone or video rather than run the risk of never seeing them again.
satby
@David Anderson: Gracias! More people need to read this!!
satby
@Cheryl from Maryland: @dmsilev: Yeah, I cancelled holidays with my kids two weeks ago. I’m debating pulling out of the farmers market before Christmas, because once it’s cold and the multiple doors are all shut, it’s a superspreader just waiting to happen.
Sab
@rk: I think a lot of people who play down the flu haven’t ever actually had the flu, just a cold during flu season. Last time I had flu was 45 years ago and I still remember it because the fever was so bad.
New Deal democrat
Current infections are 1.8x the number from the last peak in July.
The peak in deaths afterward was about 1160/day. 1.8x that number is 1900 deaths per day in about 4 weeks.
That is *already* baked in the cake.
And so far there is no evidence of infections even leveling off, let alone declining.
Large parts of this country are only a couple of weeks away from a NYC-in-April level of emergency.
PsiFighter37
It’s going to be a long winter, and not helped by the fact that Dump and his toadies, on the way out, are going to do absolutely nothing about it. They are more focused on purging people and trying to delay certification of election results.
JoyceH
@satby: “debating”? What’s to debate! Cancel!
Cheryl Rofer
@satby: I love, love, love our Farmers’ Market but have stopped going because the customers don’t distance. They don’t look where they are walking, and I have to stop and wait for them to diddle by on their phones.
The vendors are doing everything they can, and everyone masks because it is required by the state. But every visit now is a nightmare for me.
Barbara
A crude measure of the case fatality rate is to look at the number of deaths on a Wednesday (basically, a day when everyone is reporting and backlogs have been cleared) and count back to the number of cases reported 14 days previously. Maybe 21 days would be more accurate. Whichever way you do it, fatality rate by that measure is around 1.2%. Even if that is two or three times the infection fatality rate (for cases that never get tested because people aren’t sick enough or don’t bother), it’s a lot higher than the fatality rate in a normal flu season. And of course, the hospitalization rate is much, much higher than the flu.
I met a friend for coffee in a socially distanced, outdoor setting a few days ago and we both agreed that it’s going to be hard to get over the refusal of so many to take even the most minor steps to protect others around them. No Thanksgiving as usual for us, that is for certain.
MomSense
@Sab:
Exactly. I once had an actual flu and ended up in the ER. I’ve never been so sick in my life. 20 years later and I still remember it.
rikyrah
debbie
@Cheryl Rofer:
The farmer’s market I went to over the summer had very strict rules. You had to be masked and you had to distance. I went during the old peoples’ hour, so I didn’t see any problems, but this is a blue neighborhood, so I’m sure it went well.
Sure Lurkalot
I got a text yesterday from a friend who said she and her husband flew to Iowa to celebrate his birthday last week. And they have tickets to fly to Arizona for Thanksgiving meeting their kids and spouses there flying from Iowa. No relatives there, just for fun. My sister’s son and DIL are planning to fly out of state for Xmas to visit DIL’s large extended family.
These are all people I consider well informed and intelligent. The best I got was my friend saying her trip may be canceled (I assume because of COVID explosion) but she hoped not. And a recurring question if this was ever going to end. I wanted to say, judging from your behavior, no time soon.
I tell people we are not going anywhere…not even to my in town in-laws, until there’s a vaccine, don’t want to get or give this to anyone so we’re trying to do our part. What else can you say to influence their bad choices? There are stories everyday screaming DO NOT GET TOGETHER FOR THE HOLIDAYS JUST THIS ONE YEAR…
PsiFighter37
@debbie: The farmer’s market in Union Square in Manhattan always has a bunch of people, but everyone is wearing a mask. I feel completely comfortable going to it and have been doing so virtually every weekend for months now.
rikyrah
@satby:
Just say NO????
PenAndKey
In my corner of Wisconsin the two main hospital networks are at capacity and there’s a massive outbreak in a couple of the nursing homes in the area but none of the residents can be hospitalized because there are no beds. My ex-gf’s father is one of those cases and he’ll very likely die from it because of his condition pre-COVID. She’s a nurse at one of the hospitals that can’t treat her dad, and I’m fairly certain the next person who tells her “it’s just the flu” might get a butterfly needle to the eye.
debbie
@Sab:
I last had the flu in 2013. My temperature was 102, I was dehydrated, and I hadn’t eaten in two days, so not surprising when I almost set my apartment on fire trying to make some toast. Flu makes you stupid.
debbie
@PsiFighter37:
How I miss that market!
Barbara
@PenAndKey: Rate of hospitalization for Covid is much higher than for the flu. There is no comparison at all.
cintibud
@MomSense: @Sab: Same here! I rarely get sick aside from colds and even those are uncommon since I left teaching 25 years ago. Then a couple years ago while returning home from a ski trip I started feeling ill and asked my wife to finish the drive. The next day we were both sicker than either of us could remember. It took all day just to unload the car. We were down for two weeks. Oh, and we both were vaccinated several months earlier.
MazeDancer
So depressing that the hospitals, doctors, nurses, techs, maintenance crews will be expected to “just take care of it”.
Because so many people don’t feel at risk any more. Thanksgiving, let’s do it. A dear friend invited me to hers saying “but what if you know the people”. I started screaming at my friend, literally: That is how people die,
People don’t care. And while part of me is thinking: well, they all die. Except what isn’t fair is the toll this insanity will take on hospital workers.
Nicole
@debbie: I last had the flu in… ’07 or ’08, I think it was. Prior to that, I was someone who took pride in NOT getting the flu vaccine, spouting the crap everyone who doesn’t get it says- oh, it’s not 100% effective, I’m young, it’s good for your immune system to fight things off every so often, blah blah blah. And then I got the flu. Lesson learned. Thank goodness it happened when I was young enough to fight it off easily. And by easily, I mean, three days of wishing I was dead, and another week of feeling pretty weak.
Cole himself said that the clearest indication that the flu vaccine is effective is that insurance companies are willing to pay for it. They wouldn’t pay for anything they didn’t see as saving them money.
taumaturgo
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/16/health/thanksgiving-cdc-covid-guidelines-wellness/index.html
cintibud
David, while writing my comment above I looked up to see if the flu vaccine for that year was less effective than usual. My google search came up with this link – Past Seasons Vaccine Effectivness – I was shocked to see that the effectiveness is so low – as low as 10%! (2004-2005) Am I reading this wrong? Is that the same criteria used when talking about the 90% effectiveness for a Covid vaccine ?
Just One More Canuck
@rk: ‘you know, a moron’
yellowdog
@MomSense: Dave Barry wrote a memorable column about having the flu and feeling he was being assaulted by the air molecules. Even without a high fever the weakness is debilitating.
Barbara
@cintibud: 10% would be really low, but one reason the flu vaccine is less effective is that public health authorities have to predict which strains are likely to be the most prevalent. They have data that they work with so that it is not a random guess, but if they miss the mark and don’t identify a prevalent strain, then for all intents and purposes the vaccine won’t work against that strain at all. This is unlike any other vaccine.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
As was pointed out above, Florida just hired some uber drive as their Pandemic data analyst so he would give the numbers the governor wants. No point in talking to REAL America about it until they had so much pain they drop the BS.
Hey Blue
I am so thankful that I have been able to work from home since March.
My brother called me the other day about coming to visit our mom, she’s 94 and not in great health. It was tough to say “no way” given the current situation, but I’d be concerned about flying 3 hours to visit not only for my own potential exposure but more so for possibly exposing her when I got there. Hard no. Talked to my sister who lives back east as a reality check and she 100% agrees, she got the same phone call.
Our adult kids both live locally and one of them has two kiddos, we do see them occasionally but we are super careful (mostly outside, always masks, etc.). My wife and I were talking last night and no Thanksgiving get together this year, and likely the same for Christmas. It sucks, but…
I’m assuming 2021 will be another year of no high school baseball to umpire – my favorite diversion.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
That’s how people catch HIV too. “Oh well she comes from a good family so she has to be clean”
NYCMT
In February of 2001, I caught an influenza that turned into a bilateral upper lobe pneumonia. I was so sick, I could not make it to the bathroom to drink, and festooned my flannel comforter with gobs of my green and red -clot filled sputum.
Lost fifty pounds.
So when I hear no worse than flu, iit makes me enraged.
And New York City is inching up again in a steady ratchet.
Zinsky
This is really not good. I live in Minnesota and the COVID positivity rate here continues to soar. A good part of the population here, especially in the cities, are diligent maskers and practice good social distancing. However, outstate, the rural folk think their “liberties” are being infringed, even though COVID is tearing through some of these small towns like wildfire. There will soon be more dead than the system can handle and coffins will be stacked up like cordwood. We should expect some grotesque scenes like this over the next few months. But that unquantifiable reservoir of their intangible “liberty” will abide, and that’s all these right-wing doorknobs seem to care about. Societies pay a high price for stupidity.
Another Scott
This is all so preventable. And tragic. And infuriating.
Management at my workplace has been very good about imposing sensible rules. Building occupancy ~ 25% of normal, everyone inside has to be wearing masks and keeping 6+ feet apart, cleaning touched surfaces, no return to work unless 14 days have passed after traveling outside of local area, etc. And if anyone tests positive, their work spaces are closed until 7-14 days have passed.
Yesterday we got a memo for our holiday planning that anyone attending any gathering of more than 10 people, or taking any public transport, will have to quarantine 14 days before returning to work. Maybe some exceptions (e.g. a negative COVID-19 test 3 days after last possible exposure), but generally no.
Even with these sensible measures, we know that more people will get sick. Of the ~ 250 people in our building something like 3 have already been positive. It will continue to get worse until more people take sensible measures.
Stay safe, everyone.
Cheers,
Scott.
The Moar You Know
Quite a few of the San Diego county schools reopened in the past three weeks, and MYSTERIOUSLY we are now back on full lockdown.
It’s almost like the kids don’t get sick but can still carry and transmit the disease!
Another Scott
@Barbara: Yup.
DeLong made a very simple model months ago – https://www.bradford-delong.com/2020/11/covid-extrapolations-as-of-2020-11-06.html
People need to realize that the math is baked-in. Unless people change their behavior and take the virus seriously, infections will keep increasing, hospitalizations will keep increasing, deaths will keep increasing, and the economy will get much, much worse. The choice isn’t between the virus and the economy. The choice is between death and not-death. The economy will not recover until we get the virus under control. We’ve known this for many, many months.
Grr…
Cheers,
Scott.
WV Blondie
My extended family normally has a big Christmas-to-New Year shared vacation. This year it was supposed to be in Florida. I wasn’t planning to go anyhow (I’m the black sheep of the family), but my sister and her partner have cancelled. Given that the three of us are the only actual Democrats out of the bunch, I’m resigning myself to a bunch of funerals – that I won’t attend – next January or February.
VOR
A colleague at work claimed the CDC didn’t post flu deaths for last winter season because they had re-classified them all as COVID. It was part of the conspiracy, you see. I pulled up the relevant page on http://www.cdc.gov which had last season’s estimates for deaths from flu. He smoothly went on to the next piece of wisdom he read on Facebook or something.
MisterForkbeard
@Cheryl Rofer: At our local Market people are mostly distancing about 3-5 feet away. You don’t stand close to people if you can avoid it, but people aren’t really trying to stay 6 feet away, either. And people keep bringing their kids, which I don’t understand at all.
That said, I think it’s still much safer than my local grocery store.
StringOnAStick
@MomSense: Yes, my experience as well. People chat about “oh, I had a 24 hour flu” which is utter BS. If it lasts 24 hours, it’s a virus but NOT influenza. The one year I didn’t get a flu vaccination is the year I got it and I can’t recall being that sick ever as an adult; I had Scarlet fever as a kid and it compared well. Two weeks of hell; I was 33 years old and very fit and healthy, and it was still awful.
My ex-boss used the “Covid won’t hurt someone as active and fit as you” to try to keep me working. I quit instead because wow has that idea been repudiated. Now the other dentist tested positive and so far his staff have tested negative but my old co-workers were not told about his positive and all found out about it by the office grapevine. the OSHA guidance is supposedly that as long as the co-workers were wearing PPE, no one has to quarantine. Seems….somehow like the needs of capital outweighing the health and safety of workers. No surprise there.
cintibud
@Barbara: Thanks, I knew the flu vaccine effectiveness was low, just didn’t think it could be that low with such big swings. But what you say makes sense
MisterForkbeard
@VOR: I got into a 4 hour long argument with a conservative acquaintance of mine about this back in… June, I think? He straight up would not acknowledge that the CDC had publicly said they weren’t doing this, and had publicly posted their numbers. He just refused to believe it.
I stay facebook friends with this guy because he’s been sort of reasonable in the past and he would ask for an informed Left opinion. We did a lot of this in 2015, for example.
Now it’s all conspiracy theories, anti-masking, pwning liberals and ludicrous pro-trump propaganda from him. It’s infected everyone on that side of the aisle.
In an earlier thread today, Kay said that we don’t really argue Voter ID anymore because it’s just not rooted in fact at all, so you can’t combat it. That’s what happens with covid and any other issue the Right cares about – it assumes a religious significance and then you’re done.
@StringOnAStick: I can’t remember the last time I had ‘the flu’ proper. I think maybe 10 years ago, and I was sick for 3-4 days and felt miserable for weeks afterwards. But I remember when I was 10 I caught the flu, and… after a miserable 6 hours of puking I literally spent the next day unmoving on the floor. The flu is no joke, and COVID is much, much worse than the flu.
Brachiator
@StringOnAStick:
But this was never the case. It is weird that anyone would believe this or make this conclusion about what is known about the virus.
And yeah, I can understand a boss trying to use this to keep workers.
debbie
@StringOnAStick:
Aside from the flu, I’ve had food poisoning a number of times and pneumonia three times. Trust, flu is far worse.
Martin
Deaths lag cases by about 21 days. The good news is that doctors, provided the hospitals aren’t completely overrun, have gotten a fair bit better at keeping people alive compared to April. The numbers will still be horrifyingly bad.
Since most states aren’t actually taking the kind of drastic action that is needed, we may lose a congressional district worth of people by inauguration day.
KenK
@debbie: not sure you can tie that together with so few fans in attendance.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
It’s far worse. Some examples that you don’t hear about during flu season:
Roger Moore
@MomSense:
It’s not just wingnuts doing it for political reasons. There are a lot of ordinary people who are just unwilling to forego their big social events- birthday parties, holiday celebrations, weddings, etc.- and deceive themselves about how and why they’ll be safe. They say they’ll do things exclusively outdoors and then have informal gatherings in the kitchen, or believe they’re safe because nobody has obvious symptoms, or whatever. Or they’re young and believe they’re not at risk even if they get sick.
J R in WV
@KenK:
She pointed out the fact that tens of thousands of fans were in the area around the stadium, in bars and at parties. A less controlled environment than if they were in the stadium.
Sounds like you are a “Covid-19 is no worse than the flu” denier. The flu can and does kill people, and Covid is much worse.
I have a good friend who was in a former life a professor of Epidemiology at N C State, and who has done the math which predicts their current rural state of residence will have ~100,000 deaths out of a population of just over a million.
IS that grim enough for you? Wake up, idiot!
debbie
@KenK:
As I said, it was about the people in attendance, around the stadium and in neighborhood gathering places. People gathered specifically for the football game.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Roger Moore: It’s not just a lack of willingness; right now, a space alien who came down for some on-the-spot anthropology would glean that there is a *real* controversy over how dangerous Covid-19 really is.
Some pollsters described Paul Ryan’s “Death-to-Medicare” plan to voters, and asked their opinion. If (generic)you need a refresher, that was to replace traditional Medicare with “premium support” that would lead to seniors being priced out of the insurance market (unless they were rich, of course).
They couldn’t get a good answer because *no one* believed *anyone* would do such a thing.
We’re in the same situation, only far more so. The only truth is one that sounds so viciously partisan that it’s hard to believe.
The Republican Party is willing to let people die, rather than go against Dear Leader. Maybe it’s because they are still pantswettingly scared of him, maybe it’s because they’re in too deep; if they are wrong *today*, why weren’t they wrong, and lying like a cheap, trip-hazard rug, in March, or April, or July?
All I can think of is a legend I heard of Hitler’s Final Solution. The legend goes, it was announced in a large meeting, and as it was announced, you could all-but literally hear jaws dropping to the floor. Thing is, everyone in that meeting was dirty already. It was like, “I could tell my spouse that I didn’t realize my actions were leading to extermination camps, and even my spouse would probably look at me like I was a total idiot, like I swore I didn’t eat the last piece of cake, with crumbs on my shirt and frosting on the tip of my nose.”
They were all in too deep, and, individually, they all had *far* too much too lose; more importantly, if you tried to gather the outraged people to Do Something, you’d better not pick the ones who’s okay with extermination camps, or are too scared of being caught and purged if they make trouble.
Republicans are in the same sort of trap.
Trump’s taken bribes from foreign leaders, and this is also a violation of the emoluments clause; Republicans didn’t care.
Trump’s violated the domestic emoluments clause by directing monies from the government into his own business.
Trump’s violated his duty to see the laws faithfully executed too many times to count but the above two examples are enough for proof.
Child separation; obstruction of justice; palling around with Putin and Russian puppets (like Junior and Jared); abuse of office, extortion, and further obstruction of justice; they didn’t care.
And they’ve run an entire election on “Trump’s doing as well as could be expected”, which requires them to buy into his lies about how we’re turning the corner, it’s no big deal, one day, like a miracle, etc..
With all that, you have to believe either:
A) The Republican Party cares so little for American lives, it’ll keep up with the lies, or
B) Covid-19 really isn’t *that* bad.
Which is an exceptionally long winded way of saying “the constant flooding of the zone with shit has made the nation’s psyche, and physical body, so infectious that it’s little surprise that we’ve got a raging pandemic, with little chance of controlling it.”
Which is one reason why we *really* need investigations of the many crimes and failures of the Trump administration.
moops
Here is a crappy fact. Those places that are holding on to a good situation by our fingernails are going to be asked to absorb a surge of critically-ill COVID patients from the ungovernable tribal regions. Even if we do everything right, our ICU beds are going to get filled, and our medical staff and their families are going to get sick.
WaterGirl
@moops: I know. I think about that, too. It’s awful. You guys are doing great, so we’re gonna bring a zillion people who are sick with COVID into your environment.
moops
@Brachiator: I think some employers are trying to finagle the idea that people without pre-existing conditions have a low fatality rate. While true, the effect is not that big now. Age is by far the biggest pre-existing condition effect now for a fatal response.
Which entirely ignores that chronic post-COVID syndrome that LOTS of Americans are going to suffer with. Something like 10% to 15% of COVID survivors are ending up with chronic health problems. And that effect is not nearly as skewed to the very elderly. The biggest cohort there is 30-50 year olds. So, everyone that is under pressure to get back to the office or get up in front of the classroom.
Uncle Cosmo
@NYCMT: I knew 2 people who died of complications from the flu.
First was in the early 70s, an elderly childless couple who rented the upstairs apartment in my folks’ house. Miz Minnie was rough & tough & big & bluff – but she caught the flu & was admitted to the hospital when it worsened to pneumonia, which finally overtaxed her heart. Cause of death, heart failure, but we all knew it was the flu.
Second, 25 years later, AA coworker in his late 20s, young man in a hurry (in a good way) burning the candle at about 15 ends, ran himself down, caught the flu, turned into pneumonia; medically-induced coma as a last-ditch measure; didn’t work. We were all heartbroken, even the boss (a card-carrying sociopath).
Just FTR. As noted, ‘Rona has a much higher rate of hospitalization – and while the death rate has been easing as we learn what works & doesn’t, it’s still significantly higher than the seasonal flu.