Administration defends its handling of the outbreak as lawmakers say more money is needed beyond the president’s $2.5 billion spending plan.
The Wall Street Journal reports President Trump Puts Vice President Pence In Charge of Virus Response.
President Trump said the risk to Americans from coronavirus remains very low, and he put Vice President Mike Pence in charge of federal response efforts as concern about the outbreak grew among lawmakers and as cities nationwide made fresh preparations.
On Capitol Hill, leaders from both parties said they would seek billions of dollars in emergency spending beyond the $2.5 billion plan President Trump has proposed.
“’We’re very, very ready for this, for anything, whether it is going to be a breakout of larger proportions or whether or not we’re at that very low level,” Mr. Trump said at an hourlong White House briefing surrounded by administration health officials and the vice president. “Because of all we’ve done, the risk to the American people remains very low.”
The fast-moving developments came a day after a top CDC official, Nancy Messonnier, warned businesses, schools and communities to plan for potential outbreaks. Mr. Trump, who has sought to project confidence that the number of cases in the U.S. will be contained, was angered by the tone of the remarks, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
U.S. stocks fell for the fifth consecutive session Wednesday as investors continued to assess the economic impact of the coronavirus epidemic. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said the U.S. should expect more coronavirus cases, and Mr. Trump called on schools to prepare “just in case.” He said he didn’t think it was inevitable that the virus would spread across the U.S.
“This will end,” Mr. Trump said.
This Will End, But Questions Remain
- When?
- How?
- Will it return in the fall if it ends soon?
- How many will get seriously ill?
- How many will die?
- What’s the economic impact?
Exaggerating the Threat
Some Republicans, including Sens. Rick Scott of Florida and Mitt Romney of Utah, have joined Democrats in calling for a czar to supervise operations.
Mr. Azar has faced criticism for his handling of the U.S. response to the virus and has butted heads with some administration officials, according to people familiar with the matter. A former drug company executive who has worked on disease outbreaks as an HHS official in the George W. Bush administration, Mr. Azar was doing a “fantastic job,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Trump, who returned Wednesday morning from a trip to India, has accused Democrats and the media of exaggerating the threat.
Clearly, Trump does not understand pandemics.
It’s unclear if Trump will benefit if there is no serious outbreak in the US. However, if things escalate, it is clear he will get slammed.
Prepared for Anything?
It is impossible to be prepared for “anything”.
For example, are we prepared for a nuclear suitcase bomb? A massive solar flare that would shut down all communication?
Even if there is no serious outbreak in the US, Trump made a very reckless set of statements.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Three points for survival and the “F in” all the political bullshit that saves nobody! As we get older our fiddle strings are not smooth like children’s! The virus attaches to them and as evolved to go through them into our nervous system. With Children it cannot hook up to smooth supple skin, protecting them from infection. Drink a lot of water or fluids(One cup an hour)it can help keep this from happening! If the virus gets into the your stomach acid in most cases it dies! Simpler than we thought and use good sanitation! One more fact if old people are in a chronic care home, there life expectancy is less than six months! NO comment but food for thought!
DRINK A LOT OF WATER!
PS IT IS GOOD FOR YOU TOO!
No one is prepared for this. It is not possible or prudent to have 10x excess inventory in storage for a once per century event. Especially when no one knows just what the features of the event will be. The pols are engaging in CYA in the face of an unstoppable plague. If you’re worried, or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout! Stay healthy!
Mr. Azar is a former CEO of Eli Lilly. By all accounts Mr. Azar is a very bright individual. The issue, as I see it, is the potentially incestuous relationship between “big pharma” and government offices like the FDA and CDC.
This is, admittedly, a good-news bad-news situation, in that the people in charge have perspective from both the public and private sectors. In Mr. Azar’s defense, his education and “Supreme Court” experience are a definite plus.
Funny how eventually the constant lying of the president can lead to serious problems. I don’t like Bernie’s plans, but at least I know what they are… and I’m tired that obese orange creep lying to me. Will be voting democrat for the first time in my life just to get the nuclear football away from this moron.
If you like your insurance you can keep it. If you like your doctor you can keep him/her. The average family will save $3500 a year on insurance. Just 3 of the thousands of lies by our previous POTUS.
I read this is 1000x as infectious as SARS. If you’ve been around it……you’re likely to get it. This stuff is just too perfect, imo, I don’t think it’s natural.
At our quarterly yesterday our big guy exclaims “there’s no doubt coronavirus has slowed things down since we’re an exporter BUT I was talking with some of our other managers and the consensus is this is going to blow over in 2-3 months and then it will be business as usual”.
LMAO! So I work with a bunch of bio-experts I wasn’t aware. Business types think they can chart/graph and control absolutely everything. I am usually at constant odds with the crap that rolls out of their mouths but this time I just sat there in disbelief.
The Great Leader, Kim Il Trump, says everything is under control. How lucky we are to have an expert in everything guide us in this time. All hail our Great Leader!
“The new coronavirus is spreading in more countries and is likely to be declared a pandemic in the coming days, prompting infectious disease experts to say Canada must take immediate steps to ensure the country is ready to handle it.”
At the ground level it would definitely appears we are not ready.
“Another crucial issue is a potential lack of ventilators, said David Fisman, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health. If the virus starts spreading freely in Canada, ventilators will be important in the treatment of patients, particularly those over the age of 65, who appear to experience the worst effects, he said.
“There aren’t enough,” said Dr. Fisman, who is also an attending physician at Toronto Western Hospital. “There’s not a lot of clarity and there’s not a lot of leadership and there’s not a strong voice … in terms of how do you prepare in hospitals.”
Dr. McCready said she believes hospitals may have enough ventilators, but need guidance on how to make difficult choices about how to assign priority to patients who are critically ill with COVID-19.
“We need to be thinking about these decisions now, before I have 10 people in my emergency department who range from 30 to 90 years old who all need a ventilator and we only have five ventilators,” she said.”
“Doctors have admitted that the most vulnerable patients could be denied critical care in a severe coronavirus outbreak, as they also warned that the UK is dangerously unequipped to deal with a pandemic.
Under protocol dubbed ‘Three Wise Men’, senior medics at hospitals would need to decipher which patients to give care such as ventilators and beds to, with a focus on saving those most likely to recover.
The medics spoke to The Independent in the wake of ‘dishonest’ assurances from the Government that the UK can handle the virus which is rapidly spreading across Europe. “
No one is prepared for this. It is not possible or prudent to have 10x excess inventory in storage for a once per century event. Especially when no one knows just what the features of the event will be. The pols are engaging in CYA in the face of an unstoppable plague. If you’re worried, or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout! Stay healthy!
The current reading on the Diamond Princess is 705 cases. 4 deaths. 36 in “serious condition”. 10 reported as “recovered”.
A couple of comments. This was in the face of an admittedly flawed quarantine so about 20% of people in quarantine contracted the illness. And of those who contracted the illness, about 1/2% died. Including the 4 that died, almost 6% of the cases pass through a stage classified as “serious”.
This is the most closely watched population, measured and treated with high quality, quick medical response.
Take from that data what you will, but I see that limiting the amount of exposure is needed to slow the virus down.
10 of 705 recovered means will have to wait a month or so to get proper data from there.
(Edited out : “you forgot to say” – I missed it mentioned)
This proves my argument that deaths are 20 percent and cured is 80 percent. You have 14 people with outcomes, and 4 of them died.
It doesn’t say if the outcomes (4 dead, 10 recovered) are from ‘serious (36)’ or from ‘cases (705)’. In either case deaths are less than 20%, widely off in the second case.
Its totally misleading to count death rate from serious cases. For example – In a typical cancer hospital that has 100 ‘serious’ cases of lung cancer, about 90 of them die within a few weeks. Would you then say that lung cancer has a 90% death rate?
For those that think the selloff is overdone, I have but one question. The stock market is currently about the same place it was on December 1. In what ways is the stock market today, and the global economy today, in better shape than it was on December 1?
There you go trying to be rationale lol. I’ll take it a step further, I don’t really see any difference between now and 2009 other than papered over BS.
We have money therefore we are entitled to more money, is the thinking.
we’re now very, very ready as opposed to only very ready in dec
Personally, I think ‘buy the dip’ mentality is behind the lack of a crash, not much different that the above. An academic paper that once cited “Greater Fool theory” as a rational response (everybody thinks they can bolt for the exit door first if there’s a fire in crowded theater so they linger longer to watch the show even if they smell some smoke) to herd behavior might be another reason.
We are “readier for anything” than back then 🙂
We are f***ed is more like it. But don’t worry, the Fed will soon print a gazillion to fix this sucker.
Ready all right – with tens of millions of rounds of ammo to enforce the quarantines.
It does seem that readers on this blog are losing a sense of proportion at least a wee bit. Of course the Covid-19 is a dangerous bug. But is the world coming to an end? No. A few thousand people may die, some millions will get sick and recover. I don’t mean to diminish the human tragedy that entails, but is that new? Worse events have occured throughout history. Life goes on. People always die, sometimes even those near and dear. That doesn’t mean we all go into a panic and start the blame game. Remember the ‘world will end’ fear when SARS broke out? Oh, and defintely we’re all going to die from Ebola? What happened eventually?
Humans are resilient, societies are resilient, nations are resilient. Sure, as individuals we should all take precautions and be prepared. But this is a virus. It’s nature doing its thing. As the world gets more crowded and connected such incidents are more likely; that is an inevitable result of modern life. Let’s not blame bureaucrats and politicians. We know that humans have not found a way to defeat viruses yet. Each of us has to pray that our immune system will scrape through. Other than that, just get on with life.
Minimizing it by saying “a few thousand may die” is not helpful. A few thousand have already died. If it gets bad, a few million may die, and may millions may be severely sickened, but yes, humans are resilient.
Government reasonable worse case projection for UK sees half a million fatalities there, e.g.
The briefing that the WHO head of mission gave was interesting. Chinese hospital he was in has 5 ECMO machines.
In one hospital.
We have 5 across the whole U.K.
“Chinese hospital he was in has 5 ECMO machines.
In one hospital.
We have 5 across the whole U.K.”
But “you” have, like, high stock prices, expensive shacks and GBP1500/hr clowns “deeming” and “finding” that the Chinese “stole” English from them and stuff…
It’s all about priorities, you know….
“One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic” – Stalin (Attributed).
Source: 1947 January 30, Washington Post, Loose-Leaf Notebook by Leonard Lyons, Quote Page 9, Washington, D.C. (ProQuest)
As Anda says, 500,000 dead across the U.K.
Mostly, but not all, old.
Schools quarantined means parents get paid. Nobody spending money on the high street, only online if at all, hastens the demise of town centres and the jobs that depend on them. People not making life decisions means house prices will fall, and a glut of properties offered to the market by the families of the 500,000 should create a nice oversupply.
It really is uncharted territory now.
One suggestion from me would be that forms who are making a profit should not be allowed to lay off staff, and banks should give everybody a one year payment holiday on mortgage payments.
Ken Kam… Tssk, Tssk, You are trying to speak rationally when everyone wants this to be a “Pandemic” of Biblical proportions. Politically no matter what (insert your favorite Politician is) Trump, Obama etc. do, they will be crucified for it. Put out a worldwide travel ban, your a racist and overreacting, say you believe you have a handle on it and your a bumbling buffoon. The same people that are screaming that Trump isn’t doing anything are the same ones who want wide open borders. Sorry you don’t get to have it both ways, you want to protect everyone in the US, then completely close “ALL” borders, otherwise I don’t want to hear your grandstanding. I don’t believe anyone is saying it’s not serious, but I’m not sure this is the virus that is going to end Mankind… and if it is, I don’t think there’s a politician around that can stop it.
Of course humanity will survive, but you seem to gloss over a few facts like how various countries are already drowning in debt, how a ton of households in America are already living paycheck to paycheck, etc. Basically there is ZERO slack in this world except for the 0.1%. Things will get ugly if this thing ever takes hold and stops the economic gears. Just imagine delivery people getting sick and being unable to deliver food, etc.
You obviously didn’t notice my handle…”Flyoverstate”. I’m not a 1% and I live in the middle of no where. It’s the place everyone makes fun of for living in. Except for now since our exposure to Coronavirus will be nil, I have cattle & deer grazing out my back door and a locker a couple of miles away to butcher them and a garden for fresh vegetables during the growing season, so the whole delivery problem for food isn’t a big concern for me. Life isn’t always easy here or maybe as exciting as the big city, but my worries are few and life is good.
My original reply was to Ken Kam. Also, when the going gets rough, people will think the same as you i.e. go long social distance (escape densely populated cities and states). Unless you live in some magical valley, eventually someone will find you, and that someone might have the flu or worse, he’s there to rob you. We are talking about social breakdown here in the worse case. I am sure you have a bazooka, but that doesn’t mean other people won’t.
Anyone remember the governments response efforts to Hurricane Katrina, The Horizon Deep Water Spill and recently Puerto Rico? Pathetic…Inept and lacking in any sense of humanity. The Feds don’t have anyone’s back, prepare accordingly.
There is now a confirmed case of a lady in Japan being reinfected after recovering from the virus weeks ago.
He seemed to me to be the very model of a modern major-general.
Domestic travel is going to follow international travel into a virtual lockdown. What will Trump do to save his overextended hotel empire? Thats Job #1.
Who’s going to be doing pleasure travel as the whole world drifts into a semi quarantine state. Cruise lines, airlines, pro sports leagues, Japan olympics.
Industrywide bailouts are coming – starting with the banks, travel industry, autos – use your imagination
n apt empire to be used as no-bid government funded quarantine centers, then jewish lightning them after , a win-win
Good point. Trump is no doubt very leveraged, and the hotel business will be hit hard. This will probably wipe him out, personally, and he will have to start over, as the Clintons did.
Though a little out of context, does anyone wonder why, having the second largest population in the world there are only 3 declared cases in India? I believe that official action is restricted to people coming to hospitals with the disease and does not include the Govt actively going out to detect and handle the disease in the wild. Looking forward to opinion on this view.
Fake numbers in China (notice the new cases there seem to rise either 400 or 500 per day, lockstep) and non-existent reporting in Africa and India, and probably in the Philippines (where I fly to in a month, if I can find a plane).
So to conclude, in absence of an efficient remedy, there is a very high probability that everyone on earth will very quickly “test” this virus.
WHY THE CHINESE PRESIDENT CALLED THIS VERY VIRUS A “DEVIL’
We have now sufficient datas which prove that this corona RETRO virus has some special proteins allowing it to enter silently in cells of healthy peoples (probably 80 per cent of the population). They remain asymptomatic for a long period and are able to transmit it unknowingly to others.
I assume now that there are thousands of such asymptomatic bearers spreaders in every country because population travels are still incredibly maintained at a high level worldwide.
What is needed to detect this silent infection is the advent of suspected death case, hospital visits which happen when less healthy peoples are in contact with these spreaders. When the country like Italy or Korea start to retro investigate then they find hundreds of bearers in a very short period of time.
Furthermore the so called cured people are more and more showing proofs that the virus may remain hidden (like HIV when treated, or HERPEX SIMPLEX, Cytomegalovirus… ) in niches.
So either we stop every population contacts like in Wuhan has done and we probably will reduce dramatically the speed of infection or we consider it as a severe flu which will in less than a month overwhelm the hospitals everywhere.
The third solution would be to find a remedy (vaccine or drug) very soon which without confinements would help the medical system not to be overwhelmed.
And what are the chances the Wuhan virus was a product of an accidentally leaked coronavirus from the bioweapons lab there? In view of the fact the director of said lab was advertising for a coronavirus expert last fall? Using Bayesian statistics, I’d say pretty likely. Especially when DNA sequencing to see if Covid-19 is artificial or natural is an inexact science from what I’ve read, and at least one scientific paper sponsored by none other than the Chinese government says Covid-19 may be man made and originated in Wuhan (damage control by the CHN government?)
It is obvious that president, along with masses do not understand biology…or may be they are playing Dumb and confident. We cannot produce enough masks, medicines, hospitals…the list is endless. We are shamefully ill-prepared. It seems that stock valuations are more important than human lives.
Its amazing how unbelievably slipshod the US government response to this has been. Without even discussing the human carnage the supply chain disruptions will be legendary, globalisation will be rethought, and the market repricing of assets will vaporize a lot of wealth. Historic!
“Market repricing of assets will vaporize a lot of wealth.” Don’t worry, the Fed will go to negative rates, and it will be off to the races.
“Wealth”? It’s not wealth if it can be eliminated that easily. Look, the market has been overvalued by 25-30% for several years.
I don’t find it amazing at all. Our government is totally corrupt and has been since at least the time of the 911 false flag attack. The reason it has gotten this way is because we do not have a free press. We have American Pravada; simply a mouthpiece for the traitorous elite who control this country. An elite who consider US citizens to be nothing more than cattle to be used until they have served their purpose and then disposed of.
American have the government they so rightly deserve.
Just BTFD!!!
As the Silicon Valley folks will say, “don’t worry there will soon be an app for that”
Anyone that knows someone who dies will not buy it. Trump said it was contained. Trump wanted to cut the CDC budget. The Democrats offered $8.5b to fight this, but Trump wants much less. People who lose a loved one will blame Trump.
Trump took our farmers to the cleaner and they are still supporting him. Later on he will simply say that he’s been misled by his “very good friend” Xi, and his base will rally around him. Also 8.5 billion is a drop in the ocean compared to the size of the economy. If this thing becomes entrenched in the US, expect small businesses, restaurants, etc to fail at a rapid rate.
it’s already entrenched. this article explains why: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/26/health/coronavirus-asymptomatic.html
Yes!!!!!!
It is a dangerous policy. If I know I cannot be tested how can anyone possibly ask me to self quarantine? Slowing progression of this keeps ICU’s from filling to capacity, and quarantine slows progression. I think the PTB know that we won’t comply with serious quarantine unless we are scared, really scared. Perhaps they don’t trust the populace to comply with the results of testing I don’t know. Still test we should.
Everyones talking about supply chains and such. Cant get people back to work. Worried about the stock market etc. their seems to be less concerns about actual people. (Getting food supplies etc)if it goes big. We live in a country where a good chunk of people live pay check to pay check and a 500$ medical bill will sink them. Whats missing say two weeks of work because schools, daycare or work is closed gonna do to the economy. The fed lowering rates is not gonna help them.
What happens to those who HAVE been paying for medical insurance, when they can’t get the care they’ve paid for because no beds are available. Is that a consideration?
Trump had the high ground. All he had to do was to act Presidential, and say something like “Coronavirus is a global threat. We take coronavirus very seriously, and we are devoting as much effort to fighting it as possible. So far it it contained in the US, but it is an ongoing risk. I am very concerned for all the people who could be at risk if this begins spreading in the US. I have asked Congress for additional funds to fight this threat. It it time for an end to partisanship, and we need to all work together, and then our country will emerge stronger, regardless of what happens.”
With a statement like that, he wins either way. If corona doesn’t cause large number of deaths in the US, it was because of his strong response. If it does, it was despite his efforts, and the resulting recession was not something he could have prevented or be blamed for. Either way, his re-election would have been almost certain.
Instead he downplayed it. Now instead of a win-win scenario he is in a lose-lose situation. In the more likely case, corona does create problems for the US economy, not only can he not win, Republicans will be wiped out in Congress as well. Expect Sanders to be elected, and to have a better than 2/3 majority in both houses. In the less likely scenario, it is contained and never becomes an issue in the US. In that case, coronavirus is forgotten, and ceases to be a factor. Even though he was right, he gets no credit because the supply disruption in China causes a recession anyway, which he gets blamed for, and he loses the election that way, too, though the Republicans end up perhaps holding the Senate.
Without question, this was the worst political move I have ever seen at any level. He had a winning hand, and he folded and accepted defeat.
I think there is no way to keep Coronavirus from spreading in the US. There is just too much travel. I talked to four customers today. I’m in a relatively small town in the middle of nowhere. One had just returned from Africa. Another was headed to Mexico for a cruise. Another was on his way to Germany. Still another was headed to Israel on Friday. This is going on in every city in America. Coronavirus will be here sooner, rather than later, and Trump, and the Republicans will pay a heavy, heavy price for his incredibly ill-advised speech tonight. The stock market will probably rally for a couple days, though. I hope it was worth it to him.
Yep. President Trump put his head on the political chopping block for no good reason. If uncontrolled outbreaks start appearing in the US, Democrats are going to play that clip where he claims to have stopped the virus again and again and again. It will be their primary campaign message.
great assessment, his corona experts will be dropping like flies as US outbreaks occur, Pemce is obvious fall guy but can’t be fired, replace him with greater fool on ticket. Every democratic gov and mayor with local outbreak will be blamed
Jared’s survival instinct obviously kicked in
The stock market futures started falling during the speech and are down 350 this AM. You can’t fool the market.
He put his head on the chopping block for a great reason; he’s a moron. Smart people have been telling you he’s a moron for years now. The problem is dumb people can’t tell the difference between smart and dumb.
Game changer if true
I’m wondering if this virus is a forever virus like chicken pox/shingles.
I still find it more likely that the official Wuhan outbreak, was preceded by earlier, more dispersed, less symptomatic outbreak(s), which had already seen some circulation. Particularly in East Asia, but also in other parts, by people in contact with those.
Then, a nastier, more aggressive, more successful variant emerged in, or was fairly quickly introduced to, Wuhan; and was, for a while, up until heavy quarantining, spread by a continuous spreader (a snake or a thousand coughing on all passersby…).
This second one is the one that got the world’s attention. But the two (or two thousand….) somewhat independent evolutionary cones, are genetically similar enough that nucleic acid tests for the second, also pick up variants stemming from the first, although perhaps with less sensitivity.
Immunity from infection by the first, may (sometimes at least) be too specific to prevent reinfection by the second, as coronaviruses in general seem to build only very specific, hence not long lasting against an evolving genome, immunity. This “feature” of coronaviruses in general, will inevitably be even more acute, if the first infection is by a version of the genome with very limited success in infecting humans, hence limited ability to cause symptoms and cause an immune response.
While it’s just speculation, it’s a scenario that is much easier to bend into accounting for the massive number of positives on Diamond Princess and seemingly everywhere else where testing is ramped up. And also other pockets of positives with no traceable link to Wuhan post the “official” outbreak. As well as reports of official nucleic acid tests missing a fair number of positives. It also matches the (limited, but still) network models of sequenced genomes I have seen, as well as reports of how the disease is spreading.
Still, just speculation. Smarter and more knowledgeable people than me have access to more data, and may well have obtained better fits from different models.
That is one likely scenario, that Covid19 joins the FOUR other permanently endemic human coronaviruses, which tend to cause cold-like symptoms.
Chicoms cooked up some bad shit in their Wuhan lab
Why do they assume it ever cleared her system. Two weeks later I would expect another positive result.
The hospital asked CDC for testing on the already very sick California patient a week ago last Wednesday and was refused until Sunday, when the test was made and the result given this afternoon. It’s contained if you don’t test for it.
I see no evidence that people have ‘brains’. There is a virus HERE and we have no way to fight it. China has been using positively medieval methods to prevent it spreading but its all over the world now. It is here.
They tried sealing up the population of a city bigger than any in the USA and using brutal tactics to enforce the quarantine. Try that in Tokyo or Los Angeles…! It hasn’t worked.
Carnival still is advertising cruises and airlines are still flying. I almost threw up to hear, this morning, that a Korean airliner landed in LAX with an infected stewardess amongst the cabin crew. KAL knew it before the aircraft took off but, hey, whaddya gonna do? The company needs the revenue so they send a biological weapon to California.
The US is obviously in bad shape if the virus takes off here, hospital visits are prohibitively expensive for many. Add in that many people are a missed paycheck away from oblivion, and a lot of people are incentivized to go out in public and hope for the best even if they suspect infection. Krieger put up a good Miami Herald article about a guy who got tested after visiting China over a month ago:
What should he have said in a statement to the nation? “Everybody freak out! Sell your stocks, horde Campbell’s soup, and fight over the last package of N95’s at Home Depot!” I don’t see his statements as reckless. There’s nothing much the US public can do now but cancel your spring break trip to Japan and wait and see if/when there’s an outbreak in your town. People do have brains. As do local governments (well, it’s a rumor).
A fair observation. Is it possible to be straight with the facts and not create a panic? Seems possible. But the message should come from the health professionals, not a rambling POTUS. He claims he took very strong steps to halt the spread of the virus in the US, but in fact the administration took almost no steps, letting the airlines decide who got to fly here. He suggested that everyone who enters the country is being tested, but this isn’t true, and the little bit of “testing” being done generally consists of taking someone’s estimated temperature. This despite the fact that many, many infected persons show no symptoms. He makes the case that a lot more people have died from the flu, but fails to acknowledge that COVID appears to be (based on limited data) about 10-20x more deadly than the flu (although still far less deadly than the worst kinds of flu and other communicable diseases).
It is admittedly a tricky balancing act avoiding creating unnecessary fear while getting all the facts out. But in his meandering talk today, it can’t be said that the President painted a fair picture of what is known and what the future, more likely than not, holds. Yesterday’s CDC spokesperson provided a much more accurate picture — today’s dog and pony show was intended to obscure that picture and (they hope) calm the markets.
Agreed, Trump is trying to project calm and optimism. There’s actually a wide range of future possibilities here (this is a fact) and he’s emphasizing the best case scenario. I don’t have a problem with that. Any leader knows he or she is not the only voice in the organization, and his or her own job is to supply a productive vision to the org. If you want scientific views, look to scientific orgs like CDC and more. … I’m just not feeling overly cynical about Trump on this. I go back to: everybody use your own brain, and don’t throw a fit because the nanny state isn’t handing out blankets and binkies.
The gov is obviously spending millions toward medical solutions, which is the most important thing if not the only thing it can do. (Or should it shut down all international flights?!) Did the CCP get too draconian with quarantines, or have they not done enough? I’m so confused! … And here’s a libertarian blog blowing up with cries of “the gov isn’t doing enough!” Kind of funny.
Well, there’s no last package of N95’s at Home Depot to fight over anyways. All sold out.
NO, people don t have brains ! International air traffic, mostly leisure or boredom related, would ve grinded to a halt, not to mention going on stupid cruises with a highly contagious virus out there, staying at hotels, breeding grounds for diseases etc…Like I said , NO brains, …. greedy, selfish and moronic on top of that ….
Many people don’t use their brains. But that’s not Mommy Government’s fault or responsibility.
When Trump implemented the travel ban he was criticized. Now he’s not doing enough. Seems like the news media might be a little biased in its “orange man bad ” rhetoric.
If you want to read about a truly evil President.
https://www.unz.com/article/collusion-franklin-roosevelt-british-intelligence-and-the-secret-campaign-to-push-the-us-into-war/
Hi Mish. Any ideas for put options? Travel, hospitality, supply chain impaired manufacturers, retail stores, banks? Thx
Pence?
Thoughts and prayers.
Pence? Really? Hes an idiot even some Indiana republicans were ecstatic about him becoming the VP in that he was out of Indiana!
Tapping Pence proves that Trump doesn’t consider this serious.
Just the setting showed the President, top government officials from CDC and NIH and the media have no understanding of what the problem is. The virus is in the USA yet here are the medical, political and media elites crowded together in a small room in the White House. Hello!. May as well has the press conference on board the Diamond Princess for all the Public Health protocols they were violating yet both the President and Vice President were within a ‘cough’ or sneeze of anyone in the room. What the hell is going on. Can they be this retarded?
What is your recommendation to halt the spread in the US?
Because they all have healthcare
They are retarded….The owner of the circus appoints a clown (vice) to spearhead the fight against the virus….an old clown that cannot even operate his smartphone?
I am beginning to sense they all have vaccines ready and prepped somewhere. China’s Xi is still going ahead to visit Japan. How is he so confident that he will not get infected?
In a word…Yes
I believe the tale will be told by the actual Wuhan numbers in the coming two weeks. If they can’t stop it there, in a dictatorship, the odds of us doing it here in an open society are nil.
All the models I’ve seen look suspiciously like our climate models, floating double point precision of wild-assed guesses.
If I can believe the data, roughly one half of one percent of those deemed critical outside China are now dying per day. That’s not a China lie; this damn thing kills, and we’ve only had 17 years to prepare. We pissed it away.
“…the odds of us doing it here in an open society are nil”
I wonder how much better we would fare a pandemic had we recruited the best doctors/health care professionals from around the world the last 30 years instead of just H1B folks. Regardless, our healthcare system would be better had we taken that course. We are now reaping what we (intentionally by those in power) sowed.
We didn’t need the best doctors in the world then.
The effort to mask the danger of the coronavirus from the American people may be in play to protect Trump’s all-important stock market rally. This can be seen by what appears an attempt to deny the threat of how easily and rapidly this often deadly virus can spread. The article below questions if the economy and politics are pushing common sense aside.
Well it’s down another 271 points in the after hours. This is just the beginning… wait till the bonds start folding.
Interest rates fall. Bonds rise.
“Because of all we’ve done, the risk to the American people remains very low.”
Yeah, dude. Because of all we’ve done…….
If “we” hadn’t “done” all that (what exactly???), the risk would have been so much greater!
Not that these clowns are competent enough to do anything of value even if they did try, but man, talk about delusions of grandeur and having an exalted opinion of your own importance in this world….
You guys are kidding right? We can’t even stop illegal immigration in this country what makes you think we could stop this?
POTUS the Clown is out of touch with reality.