I’m not going to be a pious hypocrite about this. And if anyone who has been saying that Trump’s a fascist dictator planning a coup if the election doesn’t go his way claims to not want him to die, well, that’s beyond pathetic. (The only argument is if you think Pence would be worse, but why not pray for them both to die?)
Moreover, Trump buggered up America’s Covid response beyond belief. If he dies now, well, he sure didn’t care about other people dying.
Probably this is another thing polite, sanctimonious hypocritical middle class society won’t allow you to say, and I’ll get emails and comments telling me I’m a Baaaaddddd person.
Oh well. Trump hurt tons of people, even before he was President. It’s a pity that Boris Johnson recovered. Trump’ll probably make it, despite being high risk, because he’ll get the very best care, the sort of treatment he’s never cared (despite saying he did) if other Americans have. Won’t go bankrupt paying for it either.
(None of this has much to do with empathy or sympathy. I feel empathy and sympathy for Trump and have for a long time. He’s clearly a miserable and damaged person.)
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Ten Bears
I do not for one single minute believe Donald J Drumpf uck, Jenious, and his second Russian hooker have contracted the Trump Virus. “Sleepy” Joe isn’t backing out of the debates, isn’t backing down; the Retards (look it up) are losing all across the country and have practically admitted to and begged for more Russian interference in this election … It’s time for a distraction, a Grand Illusion.
It’s a campaign stunt, a public relations move. Gives him time out of the limelight for a week or two, at which point he can claim it wasn’t so bad, just like the flu – the Trump Flu – and only losers die.
Now drink you fish-tank cleanser and get back to work!
Plague Species
Same here, Ten Bears. This very well could be a Save Face strategy. He and his handlers, despite his contrarian bluster and bloviating, have figured they are going to get thumped in this election and this is a way for him to go down with a little of his face remaining. He will blame it on COVFEFE-19. No way this guy announces this on his Twitter like he has. It’s a sign of weakness and Trump doesn’t like to look weak. If he and Mesopotamia truly have COVFEFE-19, Trump would do everything in his power to squash that news and prevent the public from ever knowing. Remember, he’s a liar. A con artist. Everything is a con with this guy. It stands to reason this is too. I would love to be proven wrong and he dies from this as that proof, but that ain’t gonna happen, much to my chagrin.
I have to laugh though. The so-called “liberal” faction of the press is feigning concern over this and praying for Trump and his wife, all the while giggling during the commercials. Trump will have the last laugh, though. The Gaslighter In Chief always does. Also, Joe & Mika, or Mika & Joe if you prefer, are all giddy about this because Trump will have to be quarantined which in effect means his campaign will have to be shelved. News for you, Mika & Joe, Biden should have to do the same. He was in the same room with them, so he’s substantially at risk. He can’t be traveling to various locales by train and meeting and greeting any longer. It’s criminally negligent, not to mention highly hypocritical, that he keeps doing it if he had/has knowledge about Trump’s potential latest ruse. If this is in fact true, and not a ruse, Biden must halt his campaign too.
metamars
My biggest problem with Trump’s handling of the virus is that he didn’t, and doesn’t, go full throated into supporting prophylactics like vitamin D, zinc, and hydroxychloroquine. He may not know about the recent report (Sophia Reina Hospital) involving quick-assimilating vitamin D calcifediol, but if he does, he’s stupid/cowardly for not singing it’s praises, also. He should also at least have tried shaming the establishment into rapidly funding RCT’s of these substances. (Though I’m not sure that he knew, or knows, how the game is played, regarding “evidence based science”. )
In light of the fact that we were misled by WHO (as far as I can tell; I still keep reading contradictory things about how the virus is spread), and that serial liar Fauci is in a leadership position (according to Tucker Carlson, Trump can’t just fire him, as he’s protected by civil service regulation), it’s hard to justify blaming him more than the bureaucracy, and the Medical Mafia with which they maintain their corrupt, revolving door practice. Trump did himself and us no favors by lying about how quickly PPE could be spun up, or inartfully describing the eventual termination of the epidemic as a sure thing, and at least implying it would happen quickly. (The data out of Sweden sure looks to me like Trump was generally right, though serial liar Fauci won’t admit to it. Fauci’s recent interchange with Rand Paul, regarding herd immunity, was dissected by Chris Martenson in “Fauci Places Politics Over Science (and your health)”, which is currently uncensored on youtube.)
Though I’d generally rate him as “fail”, that’s because I’m comparing him to what an ideal President would have done, even given his legal constraints. (His rhetorical blunders are mostly self-inflicted wounds. The question of his leadership as President, from the perspective of his DECISIONS, is distinct from his endlessly self-congratulatory claims of faultless leadership. Trump may have pretended he could shut down and open up individual states, but my understanding is, he did no such thing, and never had legal authority to do so.) I don’t blame him for every lie coming from WHO, or every lie coming from Fauci. I also count allowing states to bid against each other for PPE as a big fail.
Although Martenson didn’t provide enough details, and so I’m not confident that his blue curve applies to EVERY country that did a very hard lockdown, apparently the general experience is that these countries got large spikes as soon as they began to relax their restrictions. See 17:00 – 20:00. (The smoothness of his curves also suggests that they’re just pedagogical. He probably didn’t actually average out data from hard lockdown countries, say on a per capita basis, after aligning their peaks. I’m guessing he just eyeballed the data from a few such countries.)
==============
I highly recommend the talk on prn.fm by molecular geneticist Professor Cahill. https://prn.fm/progressive-commentary-hour-prof-cahill/
She goes into the extraodinarily large amount of deaths blamed on covid, in Ireland, which were actually due to something else. She is adamantly against further lockdowns.
metamars
Forgot to quote from Martenson’s “Fauci Places Politics Over Science (and your health)” transcript:
“look at the stunning similarity in all
of these particular
charts right here every one of these has
basically the same shape
and so the idea is that
given that these countries are all
running different sorts of programs
the best explanation the best hypothesis
you could do to fit to this data would
be
that there’s herd immunity actually
running
and afoot and so their basic inclusion
sums up in this figure here
where they basically said look if you’re
uh just runnings uh letting the herd
immunity sort of come through you would
get
a this typical red curve right here the
timing and width of the peak is kind of
uncertain
but if you push on that and you flatten
the curve a little bit you get the r
naught still
higher than one but less than it was
you get this uh you get this curve sort
of spread out a little bit
that’s the only difference between the
red and the green the red it just spikes
through your population you did
nothing the green is well we tried some
things we wore some masks people caught
on they had some social distancing that
happened
and then the green came out but it’s
just spread
the curve a little bit what’s
interesting is they say if you had a
really aggressive
social distancing and and program you
did lockdowns
then you get the blue curve where you
really smash this thing down but then
a little bit later you get a a second
blob of these things of infections
coming along why
because you got to get to herd immunity
one way or the other so
by really suppressing the overall
outbreak of this
all you’ve done is pushed it out to
later now i’m not saying that’s a bad
thing that’s actually a good thing i was
very much in support of pushing that
curve out why
because what were we doing in march we
were throwing people in ventilators and
they had a 50 to 80
death rate we didn’t know about some of
the frontline treatments we have now
uh we you know we needed science we
needed medicine to be able to catch up
with this
new disease that we were facing right
and
because of that again i think it was
totally appropriate to flatten the curve
and push
push things out as far to the right as
possible
but the experience of these countries
says
over here which i got to get my mouse to
come back says
hey there’s a first wave and maybe
that’s it
maybe you know you’re kind of done and
then you have immunity again this
doesn’t suggest
let me be clear this doesn’t suggest
that we won’t see a case where
because it’s a coronavirus people are
going to have their initial immunity and
that that will wear off and that maybe
we see this thing
come around year after year or every six
months or whatever the cadence is
between people catching that first wave
proportion of them
losing their immunity to that over time
and then catching it again
and again we don’t have a lot of data to
say whether that second time is going to
be worse or
easier than the first time all of that i
get that but this is really presenting a
strong case that herd immunity has been
achieved in these very disparate
and mostly poor countries
these are all countries that have um we
might call them third world right
and by the way uh turns out might be the
third being in the third world was
actually an advantage in this story
and let’s get to talking about why that”
Ché Pasa
False? Could be. With this outfit you never know. But he and Malaria will no doubt weather the storm whatever comes. That’s what they do. It’s who they are. Their buddy Boris got over it after all. If they happen to have it, they’ll get over it too. If I’m recalling correctly, all their staff who have had the bug got better. All of them.
If they don’t have it, ha ha, fooled you!
These people are children, very bad children. Seems to be a lot of them these days.
Z
I hope the Tinpot Mussolini dies. And I hope it is a horrible death. I hope Melania survives.
And I hope a super powerful strain of COVID rages through Congress and kills the 90% of trash politicians that infest Capitol Hill. I also hope Sloppy Joe, the doddering scumbag presidential candidate from the other side of the aisle, dies as well.
They all deserve it and this country would be in much better shape without these life-long bribed and blackmailed political enemies of the working class being alive to sell our asses out. I hope they all die coughing on their own blood, they’ve surely taken enough of ours.
Che:
What they are are amphetamine addicts, which is often the same thing.
Z
StewartM
What Ten Bears said. The first thing I thought was “is it really so?” Despite Trump encouraging his rabid base to flout wearing masks and social distancing rules, he was always very careful to maintain distancing for himself and tested everyone he came into contact with. Reportedly he flew into a rage when someone he met tested positive, screaming at his staff they weren’t doing enough to protect him. The Woodward tapes prove beyond all doubt he knew CoVID’s dangers. The man lies about everything, even things unimportant or trivial, so you can’t trust anything coming from him or his team (even his doctor, remember?) that’s unverified.
So is this a gambit for him to be able to say “Hey, I had it, CoVID is just a case of the sniffles, no more” and validate his supposed point? (Plus the possible other political advantages to be gained). Even most “mild” cases are not “mild” to experience; they’re very unpleasant and you get sick as a dog. And Trump has several pre-existing conditions that would put him at higher risk. If I see him on the ventilator (or even not that, just if he’s too sick to Tweet for a week or two) then I’ll believe it. This is simply the consequence of him being a habitual liar.
Hugh
In our Trumpian world, reality is treated like an unwanted intruder. Irony, on the other hand, is everywhere, but it has a hard, brutal quality to it. There is no joy or humor in it. So after having totally botched the US response to the coronavirus, getting more than 200,000 Americans killed by it, lying constantly about it, –as he lies about everything else– Trump comes down with it. And we do not even have the solace of seeing this as poetic justice. Rather it is just another stupid, senseless event in the life of a stupid, senseless man.
BlizzardOfOzzz
If I understand Current Science behind the Commie Cold, it spreads like wildfire at Trump rallies, and kills almost everyone (which is good, but we still can’t allow that for some reason). Conversely, communist rallies/riots are fine, because the virus can’t spread there. If this really is Settled Science, then Trump might be in trouble. This will be like an old-fashioned witch trial: give him Covid, and if he dies it will prove his innocence, since the virus cannot kill communists.
S Brennan
If you want to believe silly nonsense…then listen to Ten Feathers;
Here is an example that I pulled up yesterday:
“Gabbard, she’s a Russian stooge.” -Ten Feathers – October 20, 2019
https://www.ianwelsh.net/open-thread-26/
When you agree with Ten Feathers, you’re agreeing with the Hillaryites/Deep-Staters/DNCers. For those of you who don’t use your real names, agreeing with bullshit is not a problem. Once your pen name is sufficiently tarnished you’ll just adopt another. “Ten Bears” what a ridiculous pen name, the equivalent of calling yourself “Super-Ultra-Macho-Man”.
Hugh
No, BlizzardoO, you do not understand the science.
Willy
God just told me that the scientists wanted to create yet another hoax, but are so incompetent they actually created a disease.
God also told me that sodium hypochlorite is the answer, preferably mixed into a manly cocktail called the Borax Bomb.
BlizzardOfOzzz
Tsk, tsk, Hugh, it sounds like someone has not been Trusting to the Experts. Here is a free education for you, comrade:
Are Protests Dangerous? What Experts Say May Depend on Who’s Protesting What
… and …
Willy
Actually, the science proves that communism offers some protection against the coronavirus.
Freedom Iowa has nearly as many cases as communist Washington which has twice the population.
Freedom Nebraska has more cases than communist Oregon which has twice the population.
Freedom Arkansas has more cases than communist Colorado which has twice the population.
And finally, freedom North and South Dakota have triple the cases as does communist Hawaii (Tulsi’s Hawaii), with the same population.
Could Bliz actually be a scientist?
Plague Species
Con or not, Trump has proven he is a criminal psychopathic mass murderer by virtue of his announcement that he, the BLOATUS, and the First Lady, or FLOTUS if you will, tested positive for COVFEFE-19. John Meacham, the go-to presidential biographer for the mainstream press, was just on MSNBC speaking to the issue of presidents and their health. He underscored that historically presidents without exception have been less than transparent about their health issues because they wanted to present an image of strength versus weakness and because they didn’t want the public to panic that their president may be compromised from a health perspective. Take that valid yardstick of measurement and measure Trump’s behavior in tweeting that he tested positive. He clearly doesn’t care about being seen as weak and he clearly doesn’t care about creating a panic. Yet he told Woodward that is why he played, and plays, down the virus, in order not to create a panic. I always knew he was lying in his explanation of playing down the virus and purposefully and criminally lying about it, but now he’s validated my conclusion. He has admitted, by virtue of the implication of his tweet, that he played down the virus and criminally lied about it for his own selfish reasons and not because he had any concern for the American people or the people of the world. He is an admitted psychopathic mass murderer and his tweet combined with what he told Woodward is the smoking gun. But here’s the thing. The Dems don’t care about any smoking gun. They will never administer justice to Trump. This is why they’re so quick to wish him well now that he allegedly has COVFEFE-19. All will be forgiven. And the precedent is further set for the the next Monster In Chief who is slouching towards Bethlehem as we type. The next Monster In Chief will make Trump look like an innocent choir boy and the Dems are as much responsible as are Trump and his criminally insane supporters.
Ten Bears
For the record, Ten Bears was assigned to me by some third Louie in Hawaii who apparently thought that my Metis ancestry and its rhythm with my “Christian” name made it a good call sign for the helicopter unit I was attached to in Vietnam not quite fifty years ago. Eat shit and die, pig-fucker.
Blizzzz! Haven’t seen you in a while, how are ya’!? You never answered my question: do you still maintain as you have here in the past that those dead children and teachers and the grieving parents, first responders and community members of Sandy Hook are crisis actors, and that those dead children and teachers are in fact not dead?
Jesus H Christ on a popcycle stick, it’s not even noon.
Plague Species
Speaking of Ten bears, I love this scene from this famous movie. Wise words, indeed. And pertinent, I’d say, all things considered.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp7cc-goVnA
Z
House of “Representatives”:
357 seats (D)
78 seats (ND)
Senate:
91 seats (D)
9 seats (ND)
U.S. President (D)
Democratic Party Presidential candidate (D)
Key:
D – Drugged daily with amphetamines
ND – Not drugged
Z
js
Here is to hoping that: The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward poetic justice.
Super spreadator that he is, Trump may also have infected a bunch of his rich donors. No tears but those of joy. No war but class war.
DMC
Now if we can just get Biden and Pence and Harris infected before November, we might have something. bringing up the whole Russia gate thing is flogging a horse that was dead two and a half years ago. It’s not a good look. there’s plenty of sticks to beat Trump with that are actually sticks. You don’t need to use the made up ones.
different clue
I didn’t find myself wishing/hoping he would die. I found myself wishing/hoping he would/will spend the rest of his life . . . . hopefully a few decades yet . . . . on a ventilator. With terminal cancer level pain wishing he could die, but not able to die.
And why not extend those wishes to every Major Political Presidential Wannabe except Sanders and Gabbard? Wouldn’t that be a beautiful magical outcome? That Sanders and Gabbard would be the last viable candidates standing? ” Well, looks like its you and me, toots. Sorry about having let you down on several key occasions. Hope all is forgiven.”
And it would be, with Sanders elected President and Gabbard just a stented heartbeat away from the White House.
Does that make me a bad person?
S Brennan
What pathetic story Ten Feathers;
You lie like a whore in a cathedral; you’re heaping one bullshit story upon another. Go ahead, spew that bullshit about how, Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian spy…now spin the tale that Trump is faking Covid-19. Whats next? No wonder you like Biden, same type of self-aggrandizing bullshit, the same people who rightfully call out Trump for that stupid shit can’t say a word about Biden’s daily set of lies. You and I both know you are going to vote for a guy who squirreled out service by claiming he had damaged lungs, but only, after what…was it 6 deferments? My brother used a faked x-ray to avoid the draft, so I know the drill.
If anybody pulled a “Jussie Smollett” it was Chris Coumo. Show some dignity Mr “Super-Ultra-Macho-Man”.
StewartM
Well, Trump hasn’t tweeted in 13 hours. So either he’s sick, or exhibiting massive and unprecedented self-control.
Plague Species
That is odd, Stew. Maybe they have him in a straight jacket or sedated. There is no way Trump has that degree of self-control. Maybe everyone should panic and jump off bridges en masse. This may be for real. Stampede. Trump is dying. The world is going to end. How can we go on? What will we do without a president? We look so weak now. China\’s going to invade us. This is terrible. Let\’s all pray he recovers quickly so he can put a final knife in Obamacare and murder another 20 million or so on top of the millions he will have murdered via his purposeful spreading of COVFEFE-19. He can still beat Hitler\’s and Stalin\’s and Mao\’s and Pol Pots\’ records. Maybe all four combined. He\’s the best mass murderer of all time. A strong mass murderer. Nobody has ever been a better mass murderer.
NR
“You and I both know you are going to vote for a guy who squirreled out service by claiming he had damaged lungs, but only, after what…was it 6 deferments?”
Whereas you’re going to vote for a guy who said that avoiding STDs while sleeping around was his “personal Vietnam.” Glass houses, etc.
Plague Species
That is bizarre, Stew. Maybe they have him in a straight jacket or sedated. There is no way Trump has that degree of self-control. Maybe everyone should panic and jump off bridges en masse. This may be for real. Stampede. Trump is dying. The world is going to end. How can we go on? What will we do without a president? We look so weak now. China’s going to invade us. This is terrible. Let’s all pray he recovers quickly so he can put a final knife in Obamacare and murder another 20 million or so on top of the millions he will have murdered via his purposeful spreading of COVFEFE-19. He can still beat Hitler’s and Stalin’s and Mao’s and Pol Pots’ records. Maybe all four combined. He’s the best mass murderer of all time. A strong mass murderer. Nobody has ever been a better mass murderer.
metamars
Trump should calm down, and ivermectin on. (Plus hydroxychloroquine, zinc, vit D, and the rest of the stuff Chris Martenson has been looking into for months.) Martenson sings the scientific praises of ivermectin in his latest youtube, “I DON’T FEAR COVID 19 (ANYMORE)”. It can reduce a typical hospital stay of 15 days to 10 days. It can also turn hospitalized patients SARS-COVE-2 negative after 4 days, instead of 15 days.
It’s sad that the posters here who are freely expressing their death and suffering wishes towards Trump, don’t say a word about Fauci. You can’t give a correct answer to a question that you don’t understand. The malice expressed towards Trump is a sin, in itself, but if you’re going to sin, why not sin in the direction of the most culpable? I think Fauci should spend the rest of his miserable life in jail, as a matter of justice (frankly not sure about the law) but I don’t want him to suffer, much less croak.
If you think Trump is more responsible for the covid mess than Fauci, I would suggest you don’t know what you’re talking about. (If you disagree, feel free to tell us what you would have done, as President, that would have saved more lives than inexpensive treatments and prophylactics, that Fauci helped suppressed and lied about, would have saved. Don’t waste our time claiming abilities to shut down states that you, as President, wouldn’t have, any more than Trump had.) More details about Fauci’s ugly past given in another Gary Null interview I started listening to, today, “Progressive Commentary Hour – the Plan behind Plandemic w/ Mikki Willis”. (Includes very interesting stuff about what he self-censored in his “plandemic” videos, because he didn’t want to lose possibly connecting to the un-initiated.)
Unfortunately, for the Trump = Demon crowd, you may get your world view confirmed, yet, if Trump helps shoves a vaccine down our throats. (I note that Laura Ingraham tried to pin Trump down on whether he would try to force the taking of vaccines, and Trump evaded an answer – TWICE.) In the Cahill interview, she talks about the military taking a flu vaccine, that utilized dog pancreas cells that had coronavirus. This resulted in an over-reaction to an eventual coronavirus infection, that quickly led to sepsis. Imagine a back-firing vaccine, administered to 100’s of millions….
Cahill didn’t say so, but what if a rushed coronavirus super-sensitizes us to influenza? I NEVER take the flu vaccine; nor have I gotten the flu (that I can recall) since I was a kid.
S Brennan
NR,
My 1st pick was Tulsi Gabbard; who has an outstanding military service record, the only candidate that has that. And no, Pete Buttigieg does not, he got a flyby theater ribbon, no match for Tulsi’s time in theater doing important [and God-awful] work. But further, Pete Buttigieg sucks on foreign and domestic policy, he’s a Gilded-Age-econ guy and neocolonialist to boot, a Bush the 3rd.
No NR, it was Ten Feathers who threw the first stone saying Tulsi Gabbard was not a loyal American Soldier, Tulsi was an evil Russian spy. Not that you care about being truthful, as you already know. So yeah, I am going to denigrate somebody who pulls disgusting shit like Ten Feathers did…glass houses or whatever other banality you can come up with.
And another thing NR, while I’ve defended Trump from the ridiculous shit, [which I did for Obama and Clinton], I am also perfectly happy to criticize Trump for his tax policies and that loose cannon Pompeo* at state. The problem I have with Trump’s critics is the nonspecific verbal garbage they spew out.
*I note that the D’s are responsible for the latter as Gen [ret] Flynn would be running foriegn policy if the D’s hadn’t lied their collective asses off in a sting operation that failed until they falsely altered the 501’s.
Willy
So Trumps “experimental antibody treatment” sounds different from what he or any of his house fanboys have been prescribing. And now he’s been taken to Walter Reed, a well known Fauci cesspool of deep state medicine. Could this be yet another conspiracy? I’ve gone to Alex Jones and Qnon but have found no answers to this latest development. Where’s Lou Dobbs when we need him?
StewartM
Just read this: Trump has been airlifted to Walter Reed ‘out of an abundance of caution’.
First his symptoms were ‘mild’. Then he as treated with a Regeneron antibody cocktail. Now he’s off to Walter Reed.
StewartM
Willy:
Where’s Lou Dobbs when we need him?
Lou’s off getting an early start to his weekend. You know, the thing we didn’t have before he was president:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/lou-dobbs-heaps-praise-on-trump-for-making-weekends-possible-for-us-all
Ten Bears
Folks, I’m starting to think S Brennan is Tulsi.
A Russian stooge.
Z
Ten Bears and Brennan,
Get a room!
Oh, you’re already in the same room.
Sorry …
Z
Hugh
Because of Trump’s age, symptoms, obesity, and position transferring him to Walter Reed was appropriate. Walter Reed has both the staff and facilities to do what it can for him. It is not so much the transfer but its timing and how it was handled that indicate Trump’s symptoms are progressing faster than expected, which from a clinical point of view is concerning.
Willy
Which leads us back to Lou Dobbs.
I remember times long ago, when Lou Dobbs was a trusted pundit on the old Financial News Network. Whatever Lou said was considered plausible and respectable, even the obscure stuff. It was sorta like when an ESPN panelist of today proclaims that Mahomes throwing more first downs over 4 1/2 games without ever going to the bathroom is an NFL record. Nobody questions the veracity. Such it was with Lou Dobbs.
But that was before the dark times. Before the corporate money.
Today I see Lou Dobbs as a body tied to a chair, hopped up on drugs of some kind, and kinda-sorta reading a teleprompter. Or could this be a deep fake perpetrated by a couple of giggling interns? Perhaps. I remember the time when they were gonna ‘force croon’ Sinatras corpse because his fans might not mind, or notice, just because there might be some money in it.
Where have our institutions gone? My, how far we have fallen.
Zachary Smith
The LGM site is one I haven’t yet ditched because every now and then they still produce something interesting. (By way of contrast, the other day I removed the bookmark for the Zero Hedge site because it has become totally useless) The blogger tosses in a “by the way” reminder of the time last year when Trump made an unscheduled visit to Walter Reed.
Speaking of Walter Reed
Adding something else to the “elderly” and “badly overweight” issues might be a problem for the Orange POTUS.
bruce wilder
I remember watching Lou Dobbs once, most probably 30(!) years ago now and he was spinning out an argument cum rant for why workers should accept low wages to make business competitive and even as he was speaking, trying I suppose to anticipate counterarguments I could see him falter. He was actually listening to his own argument and for a moment he could see the issue from the worker’s point of view. Not something one sees very often nowadays when everyone is as scripted as a TikTok dance.
spring texan
Really like what Ian said and I agree.
But the comments are wild, delusional and horrible by turns.
Does it make you a bad person if you want Trump tortured on a ventilator for ages? Yes, just like Christians who want ppl tortured in hell.
I\’m with Ian. Want him dead. But despicable as he is he\’s a pitiable product of a horrible family and I do have sympathy. But I don\’t condemn anyone who doesn\’t have sympathy given the damage he\’s done.
No tolerance for wanting him tortured though.
alyosha
I’m not sure about wanting him to die, but I will say that when I first read the news of Trump getting COVID, a smile broke out on my face.
Let nature take it’s course.
Zachary Smith
Here is a story about misinformation sources for the Covid epidemic:
Cornell study claims Trump is the single largest driver of coronavirus misinformation
Didn’t examine more than the headline, but later in the day came news of Trump’s catching Covid.
I seem to live in a particularly backward area – one where most people don’t bother with masks. It’s like they don’t view the disease as any kind of threat to themselves. By sheer luck I was “out” both yesterday and today, and one difference was immediately obvious. A hell of a lot more people were wearing masks today. At a farm store where a mask had previously been a novelty, today I saw at least 2/3 compliance. At a chain grocery store more than 90% of shoppers were wearing one. Only at the car parts store was I the only person in sight with a face covering. (Real Men aren’t afraid of anything!)
Don’t know if the trend will hold up, but Trump may have finally made some kind of positive contribution to fighting the epidemic.
Thomas B Golladay
“Looks up from reading Dune”
Our main problem it appears, is that we place our trust in Charismatic Messianic Leaders who prove all too often to be only mortal men with flaws that are hazardous to our health.
“Goes back to reading Dune”
Mark Pontin
“Looks up from reading Dune”
I think the applicable Dune-derived line is more Lambert Strether’s: “We are are ruled by Harkonnens”
Thomas B Golladay
@Mark Pontin
The Baron was a Charismatic Genius and high functioning sociopath. Don’t place Trump on his level.He is more like David Lynch’s version of the Baron minus the antigravity suit.
Ché Pasa
It’s as if there’s an end game in play now. I’ve seen what looks like some real panic among newsreaders and members of the punditocracy. Understand we don’t have cable so the bloviating hairdos and makeup jobs at on the cable “news” don’t penetrate this household. Instead we see stodgy old-school broadcast news like PBS and read online mostly in depth reporting and commentary — though partisan more often than not, favoring one side or the other. There’s something going on. No doubt about it. The backchannels must be buzzing like mad.
An end game of some sort has apparently been activated. Our rulers have been here or near here several times during Trump’s reign and always backed off. But this time, I don’t know. We’ve been prepped so many times with stories of Our Democracy being in some sort of terminal state not solely because of Trump but pivoting around his constant misbehavior and contempt for ‘norms’ and the supposed rule of law. Therefore an intervention is called for, no? And with Trump sick or apparently so, maybe now is the time.
All I can say is that the script has been written. Will the players do their parts? If they do, will they do them well or poorly?
More and more systems are breaking down if not collapsing. Things we might have taken for granted aren’t working or are barely functioning. We went over that cliff we’re always supposed to be approaching years ago. Crashed at the bottom and have been making do in the ruins ever since. Now whatever has been salvaged is falling to pieces.
What’s next?
Plague Species
I agree, wanting Trump to die a torturous death is immoral. Wanting him to die, is not. If he doesn’t die, he lives to murder more people one way or another. Wanting him to live then, all things considered, is immoral. Wanting him to suffer a torturous death is sadistic. He’s a malevolent person who does not belong in this realm. Many more just like him must also be removed from the realm. The sooner that happens, the better for all humanity. A torturous suffering death is not in accordance with “sooner.” By comparison, Kennedy was dispatched, removed from the realm, sans undue suffering and torture. The people who removed Kennedy from the realm at least thought enough about him to not have him suffer a torturous death. It was over in a matter of seconds. No pain. Much gain. For some. A very few.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CJvHUZcaS8
bruce wilder
Re: Charismatic Messianic Leaders
This is actually a fairly common scenario in business bureaucracies. Only there they are not usually elevated to positions of ultimate authority. Instead they are chosen and sponsored by executives higher up to be change agents. When internal resistance to the change and resentments associated with that resistance build up, they are sacrificed (fired often dramatically), which then allows a more regular manager to come in and consolidate and conciliate.
The trouble is that given the limitations of human storytelling, the Messiah story we have the instinct to understand, but in all our parks in all our cities there are no statues of committees. What we need are not Messiahs or citizens who can only understand politics as an epic novel playing out, but well-functioning deliberation by committee.
bruce wilder
I see that Trump seems to have been near the center of a super spreading event — perhaps even the party to nominate the termagant virago to the Supreme Court.
Irony lives!
And a bonus: I got to use termagant virago in a sentence!
ricardo2000
I keep hearing the talking heads ask one another for an update on the ‘President’s condition’.
I have the definitive version below.
He is still a loudmouthed, stupid racist narcissist.
So Trump is normal, for him: SNAFU.
Z
To those who don’t wish Trump a horrible death like I did, you are morally right. In truth, it is not what I really feel in an ambient state but I am also someone in which justice pulses hot in my blood.
I hope he dies, but not horribly. And I hope that much of Congress dies from it as well, though I realize that is not likely to happen. I will also say this though: that if Trump does survive, I do hope he feels some significant pain along the way. Why? Because then maybe it will change his perspective on the matter and his actions taken from here on in will greater benefit the powerless and relatively innocent. As Ian has pointed out, only when our rulers start feeling the pain of COVID, the consequences of their actions/inactions, when they don’t feel they are immune from the dangers of COVID will they actually do something about it that will take into consideration the welfare of the general population.
Z
ricardo2000
I don’t agree with the posters who claim wishing Trump serious COVID symptoms is ‘sadistic’. I agree with noted science philosopher Karl Popper:
“If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”
After dismissing COVID causing more than 100,000 deaths, environmental devastation, corrupting the Supreme Court, and encouraging the worst racist assholes on the planet, he deserves to experience the full menu of symptoms. Myself, I hope the creep hears the words, ‘double lung transplant’, followed by his accountant telling him he is bankrupt due to medical bills and ACA repeal, Ivanka publicly announces she is leaving him because he has a limp, tiny dick and no skill, but only after an epic election defeat.
I hope he doesn’t peacefully leave the White House. It would be most amusing to see him running around on the East Lawn in his wife beater screaming his demented little head off. A trio of big, black, hugely grinning, Secret Service agents blindside him with NFL quality high, low, and head tackles. They stand him up, and quickly skip back in disgust. Trump has pissed himself at the thought of black justice. He calls them, ‘Niggers’, and they soak him with pepper spray, taser him into a quivering ball, and swing their retractable batons while chanting, ‘Stop resisting’ and ‘Can you breathe’. When Trump is suitably limp, they bang his head on the gates and fire him into a pile of junk surrounding his family.
Some might call this sadistic, but I would call it a warning to any ignorant racist creep. We all know he and his family deserve to be stripped of everything including their clothes, as the ‘proceeds of crime’, and whipped from one end of the earth to the other.
somecomputerguy
For those interested in religious inspiration, I would direct you to the Daily Beast article “Praying for Obama’s Death”.
The relevant bible passage is Psalm 109:8.
Willy
What we need are not Messiahs or citizens who can only understand politics as an epic novel playing out, but well-functioning deliberation by committee.
Exactly. Even if I, simple old me, had some brilliantly beneficial idea, at the very least I’d want a devils advocate or two on my team looking for possible pitfalls, errors, and ways to avoid perversion by nefariosity.
People remember the Elizabeth Holmes fiasco. She conned even some of the wealthiest and most power people with her…. whatever…. bullshit charm? The fault was actually that the insatiable greed of these mover-shaker George Schultz’s and Rupert Murdochs overcame any common sense, that it should be insane to think that a single 19 year old can outcompete an entire industry. This is a goofball video, but describes the level of insanity which even the most successful individuals can be led to believe by their own greedy little monkey brains:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBV7HRGM7ns
js
I have my doubts pain would change Trump, maybe some out of touch rich person who has an ability to feel empathy in the right situation (maybe only after they feel pain and suffering themselves and then extend it to others, that might even be most common in most adults in the U.S. anyway). But I don’t think Trump even has the capacity in him due to his narcissism.
StewartM
Metamars:
(If you disagree, feel free to tell us what you would have done, as President, that would have saved more lives
Go here:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Click on sort by deaths/1 million”
USA: 645
The world average is 132.
Now look at the countries much lower than that:
Germany: 113
Denmark: 112
Finland: 92
Norway: 51
Thailand: 51
Australia: 35
Japan: 15
Hong Kong: 14
New Zealand: 5
Vietnam: 0.4
Taiwan: 0.3
The short answer is “do what they did”. These are all countries that vary widely in forms of government and culture, but they did the right things. Enforce quarantines, mandate mask wearing, enforce social distancing, place travel restrictions, close likely super-spreading businesses, and more.
Looking at the data this way also informs one to “not do it this way” when looking at countries which have much higher-than-average death rates. This includes one country you apparently think is ‘doing it right’, Sweden:
Sweden: 583
This is despite Sweden having good, universal, health care plus also having a larger fraction of people living in low-density homes (say, one person or two-person homes). Contrast that with Vietnam or Taiwan or Hong Kong, where people are far more packed together (one of my friends in Vietnam shares a house with four people and the total living space is like 650 square feet). So the DATA seems to say “don’t do it like Sweden”.
Z
JS,
You’re probably right. He’ll pop his daily dosage of amphetamines and then the most rewarding emotional aspect everyday becomes all about the dopamine pings, baby. Just like almost all of other politicians. F’ everything that doesn’t facilitate that dopamine ping because it doesn’t make them feel as good and they have no greater concerns personally as long as they’re healthy. They’re flush.
Z
Z
StewartM,
Many of those countries also provided financial assistance to their citizens instead of forcing so many of them to compete with each other in a corporate jungle in order to afford shelter and food in the middle of a pandemic.
Z
anon
If all of them were to die from COVID it would be fitting. Trump, FLOTUS, Chris Christie, Hope Hicks…everyone infected associated with his administration. It would make me believe that karma exists. If there is an afterlife, the half a million Americans who have died from this pandemic will finally see some form of justice if Trump ends up on a ventilator.
Willy
@StewartM
Like it. Data not even a scientist hating conspiracy theorist can deny.
StewartM
Z
No issues with what I said, and I’m happily chastised. Yes, providing income security is also a vital part of the solution. We didn’t do that very well either (hardly at all, really).
edmondo
I find it amazing that the same people who scolded me for mentioning Joe Biden’s stutter (dementia) now find it perfectly acceptable to root for the death of a sick person because ….Trump.
Willy
How many deaths has Biden helped cause? Maybe Biden just shields himself from that truth better ? Hopefully we’d all think that such an accusation would need to be proven.
metamars
@StewartM
No, not good enough. You’ve sort of regurgitated the main stream media “analysis”. Also, you didn’t mention any specifics about what you, AS PRESIDENT, would have done, given the framework of what is actually possible. (BTW, the Michigan state supreme court has now struck down their emergency powers law, so it’s not clear that even the governor could now institute a lockdown as strict as, say, parts of Australia.).
For a fair comparison between countries, I think you’d definitely have to consider population densities and climates (so, immediately there is a complication because different regions of the US have qualities analogous to very different countries; Ivor Cummins has gone through regional differences.). You’d also have to consider differences in the hydroxychloroquine prophylaxis adoption (recalling the Trump had ZERO authority to authorize hydroxychloroquine; nor to officially recommend it. I blame Trump for not waging a rhetorical and propaganda war against the CDC/FDA on this score, but frankly how many of Trump’s lefty and/or Democratic critics would have him go down this route? They prefer blaming Trump for idiots that swallow fish tank cleaner.) You’d also have to look at co-morbidities (the US is one of the fattest, if not the fattest, nation on earth. The hyperinsulinemia this implies leads to more co-morbidities.) You also have to factor in the “dried tinder effect”, which explains an estimated 25-50% of the difference in mortality between Sweden and other Nordic countries. Finally, you’d have to factor in the “Cuomo effect”, whereby sick people were sent back into nursing homes.
I actually made an attempt to look up excess death figures from various countries, a few days ago, going back 2 1/2 years, which is 2 flu seasons (following Cummins). This was after reading a nakedcapitalism article on excess mortality between the US and EU. I’D GREATLY APPRECIATE ANYBODY PROVIDING REFERENCES. I basically failed. You need this information, to get a handle on the “dried tinder effect” between countries. (BTW, Cummins thinks it’s more than 50%, in the case of Sweden vs. Nordics).
Then, of course, one should also look at facemask policies, social distancing, etc. IIRC from Cummins, data overall shows lockdowns are probably bad, facemasks are kind of a wash, and social distancing definitely helps.
Absent oodles of time, and/or a research budget, I suppose one could look at 2 scenarios.
One is US Tri-State area vs. France. (I think 60% of covid deaths were in the tri-State). I know France had similar discrimination against hydroxychloroquine, as was found in the US. (Probably worse, actually.) Eyeballing the map, Spain is a better match for latitude, but I think the same Atlantic current that warms the UK will also warm France. France is an advanced country, so a dried tinder effect could be calculated (guessing, here). Also, I’d be shocked if one couldn’t track down co-morbidity figures.
An analysis of Sweden vs. Nordic countries has already been done. “16 Possible Factors for Sweden’s High COVID Death Rate among the Nordics”. There was actually a large number of factors considered. “dried tinder” was the most important factor. I never read the paper, and it wasn’t gone into THAT deeply by Cummins, but there were 16 factors. (I just looked at the first page of this paper, and unfortunately, no attempt to look at social distancing, facemasks, etc., as discriminators. Sigh. That much more research to do, which I won’t be attempting.)
To people who are just so SURE that Trump is to blame for the high US deaths, they should explain to us exactly how this happened. Viz., whatever specific policies they think Trump a)COULD and b)SHOULD have instituted, the evidence for same would be found by comparing equivalent countries and US regions with similar climates and population densities, as well as demographic factors. And no, AFAIK, he could not force us all to wear masks.
Another thing I’m not going to discuss, but should be considered, is vitamin D levels. Blacks have horrific rates of vit D deficiency, in the US. And obese individuals burn through whatever vitamin D they have, faster. Latinos have very bad levels of vitamin D, closer to blacks than to whites. Well, what is the black population in South Korea, or Japan? Not much of a factor, right? I think the natives’ skin is darker than whites, but lighter than Latinos.
I’m going to guess – I promise you, I haven’t looked at the data – that the US had a higher per capita rate of heart attacks than 95% of other countries, in 2019. I say this because I know that the US is one of the fattest in the world. Was this Trump’s fault? If so, tell us what he could have done, other than jawboning and, oh, setting an example? Say, by losing 50 pounds? And even if he had done so, would this have been as effective as the government funding public awareness campaigns (which you need Congress for), and the cretins in the CDC/FDA putting out the right messages? Remember, these are the same bozos that EVEN NOW aren’t telling the American public to get their vitamin D blood levels tested, and up to snuff.
Willy
Maybe Covid was part of a sinister Jared Fogle plot?
Speaking of sinister plots, is the deep state (along with Jared) trying to kill Trump?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/hydroxychloroquine-doctor-is-furious-donald-trump-took-experimental-antibody-stupidness/ar-BB19ETJD
StewartM
Metamars
AS PRESIDENT, would have done, given the framework of what is actually possible. (BTW, the Michigan state supreme court has now struck down their emergency powers law, so it’s not clear that even the governor could now institute a lockdown as strict as, say, parts of Australia.).
It was not struck down on legal merits, it was struck down on party lines (4-3), due to tribaism. If Trump had not been telling militiamen to ‘liberate’ the state I’d doubt the conservative justices would have invented bogus reasons to stop it.
Why do I say that? Because we used to have similar restrictions go into place during previous pandemics. When polio hit during summers, public officials shut down all sorts of things, from swimming pools to schools to restricting travel, and the courts did not see a reason to interfere. Here Trump stood far better than any Democratic president, as if he had blessed such closings, his partisan allies on the courts would not have intervened.
And yes, countries are different. But here again most of the differences would *favor* the US, not disadvantage it. Our living conditions are far less crowded than Asia’s, or even parts of Europe. Our population isn’t as old as Japan’s, or most of Europe’s or even Taiwan’s (yet lookie how well Taiwan did!). The biggest disadvantage the US has, IMHO, is the lack of universal health coverage.
But still, before the pandemic, health experts had reckoned that the US and the UK were the *best-prepared* to withstand a global pandemic like CoVID:
https://time.com/5861697/us-uk-failed-coronavirus-response/
But what went wrong is that they both had idiots in charge. Boris Johnson’s administration toyed with the stupid idea of “herd immunity” (which never stopped any disease or pandemic) initially, which meant the UK had a misstep at the start they’re still paying for. Meanwhile, the Trump administration threw into the trash can preparations and recommendations that previous administrations had made (even before the pandemic) and then–despite knowing its deadliness–decided quite consciously to let it kill large numbers of Americans without even attempting to do anything meaningful and worse, fighting the people who *were* trying to do this (see Michigan’s supreme court ruling again). Consult James Fallow’s article in the Atlantic on how the Trump administration blew up our pandemic policy even before CoVID hit.
No, CoVID-19 is bad in the US because Trump’s administration has been, for all purposes, pro-CoVID, and he’s gotten millions of his supporters doing likewise. If you don’t believe the latter, just come to my neck of the woods in Appalachia and you’ll see lots of people still ignoring and expressing disdan and hostility towards simple public health measures that are designed to save their very fucking lives. In one way, if Trump became seriously ill or died that might shake their faith; we’ll wait to see.
metamars
” When polio hit during summers, public officials shut down all sorts of things, from swimming pools to schools to restricting travel, and the courts did not see a reason to interfere. ”
Did these “public officials” include US presidents? I thought the discussion was about what Trump did and didn’t do….
“But what went wrong is that they both had idiots in charge. Boris Johnson’s administration toyed with the stupid idea of “herd immunity” (which never stopped any disease or pandemic) ”
I don’t see anything “stupid” about the phenomenonological observation of precipitous decline of symptomatic expressions of disease, once a certain percentage of the population has gotten over the illness. What’s “stupid” is pretending that it’s well understood. What’s stupid is taking Fauci at face value, which Chris Martenson did not, when he basically spent most of his program deconstructing Fauci’s blather in “Fauci Places Politics Over Science (and your health)”. What’s stupid is identifying herd immunity with merely aggregate anti-body type immunity.
It’s a too early to make any definitive pronouncements on “permanent” herd immunity vs. covid, but so far, it sure looks to me like Sweden has achieved it. To what do you ascribe their miniscule level of covid patients? Even as cases have increased?
If herd immunity did not stop the Spanish flu, please tell us what did.
I get the feeling that you don’t know of anything specific that Trump could have done, that carried legal authority; and instead are blaming him for not publicly pushing guidance from “public officials” ( who did have legal authority ) to do whatever the likes of Fauci blessed, at any particular moment. (So, masks bad earlier, good later.)
I ask, again, what you would have done as President, different from Trump? I mean, specifically. Anything besides say “amen” to whatever Fauci and Birx were saying?
(The bidding mess between the states for PPE was a big fail, I assume because Trump did NOT use his legal authority. But I don’t see any great effect on the lethality of the virus due to price gouging, though I suppose one could argue that poor states that were so outbid that they ended up having hospital employees reuse PPE X times as much as richer states, resulted in Y times as much fatalities amongst hospital staff. Plus, more nocosomial spread amongst patients. )
Joan
If this experience motivates Trump to try to turn things around, then a lot of people in the US could avoiding having to catch it. Maybe he could push the MAGA masks thing after all, and other things like Vitamin D etc as mentioned above.
The moratorium on evictions was extended to the end of the year, correct? He could do monthly Trump checks until next summer or something. *sigh* I’m just hoping he sees the suffering of Americans and acts on it. Paint it red, white and blue, sign it personally, I don’t care: maga stamps, sure, go ahead, but just send help to your people.
Plague Species
Susan Collins, is that you?
https://bangordailynews.com/2020/09/01/opinion/contributors/the-lesson-susan-collins-taught-donald-trump/
Trump is a malignant, malevolent psychopathic criminal narcissist. He will never be what anyone projecting upon him wants him to be. Just as his murderous COVFEFE-19 death toll “is what it is,” Donald Jackass Trump is what he is. There’s no changing that absent a serious head injury or a debilitating stroke.
Plague Species
Imo, this is proof this is all a ruse. What should the penalty be if it’s determined Trump is gaslighting America and the world yet again? My vote would be death by hanging just as America did to Saddam.
https://nypost.com/2020/10/03/trump-tells-rudy-giuliani-im-going-to-beat-covid-19/
Ten Bears was spot on. The Forked Tongues in Washington D.C.. It’s scripted to transparent perfection.
Plague Species
This is the key takeaway from the above blockquote.
Just as Jesus is God become Man to die for Man’s sins, Donald, the Second Coming of the Messiah, must contract COVFEFE-19 to show Americans and the world that there is nothing to fear but fear itself. This is absolutely the worst thing that can happen in regard to America and this pandemic. When Trump says “so we could deal with it responsibly” he means we can ignore it like it’s the flu and go about our normal business as usual. “See everyone, I contracted it and I didn’t die. It’s no big whoop. Screw the masks. Screw the social distancing. Let’s get back to destroying the living planet at breakneck speed. Go out and shop. Go out to sporting events. To bars. To concerts. To all manner of public events and share and swap spit and all and every manner of bodily fluids. Make America Great Again Again (MAGAA).”
Ché Pasa
Are we on our way to the 2,000,000+ US covid deaths that were predicted at the outset of the pandemic — if nothing were done? Some say yes, and there’s nothing that can be done at this point to stop the inevitable. In other words, no matter what, there will be 2,000,000+ US dead from covid before the virus is curbed through vaccine and mutation.
Much of the continued spread is due to the idiocracy who believe they are immune — and probably immortal. It’s not just the Trump White House and the selfish fools that inhabit that place. It’s a whole constellation of idiots who have or want the power to control others.
I doubt that very many of those who have acquired the disease from the various “super-spreader” events conducted by the White House and the Trump campaign will die. I doubt that Trump or his wife will die — because in the US evil tends to survive no matter what.
Still, there are those who will claim that even 2,000,000 deaths isn’t enough.
Hugh
The Trump Administration is still not taking the pandemic seriously. Pence had serious exposure to covid just like many of those who caught it recently. Yet he isn’t under quarantine, continues campaign events, and is scheduled for a Vice Presidential debate in a few days.
Re the Spanish flu, from the wiki on it:
“Another study by He et al. (2013) used a simple epidemic model incorporating three factors to infer the cause of the three waves of the 1918 influenza pandemic. These factors were school opening and closing, temperature changes throughout the outbreak, and human behavioral changes in response to the outbreak. Their modeling results showed that all three factors are important, but human behavioral responses showed the most significant effect.”
Also
“The Spanish flu infected around 500 million people, about one-third of the world’s population.”
This is way below the 70% minimum for herd immunity.
metamars
“This is way below the 70% minimum for herd immunity.”, channeling Fauci on covid-19 herd immunity….
And yet, the “herd” became immune to spreading symptomatic Spanish flu disease. Why is that? If you can’t answer the question with any surety, welcome to the club.
In my world, observable facts trump theory, and theoretical definitions. Ah, but then again, I don’t have friends who will make a killing selling vaccines.
In the case of Sweden, new cases of covid have appeared with the passage of summer, but the actual fatalities have dropped to about a case a day. Seroprevalence studies in no way satisfy a 70%, or even 50%, herd immunity threshold definition.
In my world, also, it’s no shame at all so say, “we just don’t know” and/or “we don’t understand a lot of what is going on”.
—————————————–
A (frustrated) epidemiologist, Gabriela Gomes, thinks she understands a large part of the mystery of what I would call de facto, or real, herd immunity. See “Ep 140 Gabriela Gomes on COVID-19 Herd Immunity”
Mark Pontin
Metamars wrote: ‘I don’t see anything “stupid” about the phenomenonological observation of precipitous decline of symptomatic expressions of disease, once a certain percentage of the population has gotten over the illness. What’s “stupid” is pretending that it’s well understood.’
Eh. What’s stupid is assuming herd immunity is even possible with every pathogen. You only have to think for a second to realize there are pathogens like the Ebola virus to which no immunity seems to be possible, then ask the next question. In which case …
What’s stupid then is not glancing through and applying some critical intelligence to the scientific literature on the other coronaviruses, and therefore not knowing that herd immunity is in fact *not* possible with two of the coronaviruses because they mutate too fast and, in at least one case, exploit ADE (antibody derived enhancement, which basically means they hitch a ride on certain antibodies and thereby exploit the immune system’s reaction against them). The jury’s still out on the mutation rate on COVID19, though things are looking more hopeful there.
What’s stupid, finally, is taking the MSM- and politico-derived echo-chamber propaganda about ‘herd immunity’ as knowledge-based fact, and then coming here issuing fact-free opinions about ‘herd immunity’ based on that propaganda.
Seriously. While many scientific papers’ main bodies may be too technical and/or behind paywalls, anybody can read the papers’ abstracts (well, except a Trump-level moron) and they’re almost all available through the miracle of the internet these days
Willy
I love it when somebody can take an Occams Razor and hack it to bits with a Popeils Pocket Fisherman. Or imagine they did. Meta, those pieces on the floor came from your tool.
IMHO, the rest of StewartM’s data story should involve the economics of the mentioned countries. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m hearing that Wuhan’s water parks are back to business as usual.
metamars
@Mark Pontin
“What’s stupid is assuming herd immunity is even possible with every pathogen. ”
Being that herd immunity is not well understood, in fact it’d be doubly stupid to assume it’s “even possible with every pathogen”
Perhaps you’d be humble enough to climb down from your high horse and point out where I’ve ever said or implied that. If you can’t do that, you should trample your strawman, letting your horse do all the work.
It’s evident by looking at the data that Sweden has crushed it’s hospitalization(ICU) and fatality curves. It’s also evident by looking at the data that infections are on the rise, even as the seriousness of the disease remains crushed (statistically speaking; if you’re the one dying, or even having a non-fatal bout or long-tail condition, that fact may not be of much comfort). Although I’m not expecting a 2nd wave of any public health significance, I’ve made no such prediction, as I have little rational basis for such a prediction. That’s why I wrote:
“It’s a too early to make any definitive pronouncements on “permanent” herd immunity vs. covid, but so far, it sure looks to me like Sweden has achieved it.”
Do grace us with your prediction for Sweden, won’t you? And what will you say if Sweden goes another year with an average of less than 1 covid death, per day, for that year? Will you say the Swedes have achieved herd immunity from covid? Or that it’s still too soon to know, we’ll have to wait X years? Or will you say, “seroprevalence studies indicate less than 70% have antibodies, so no herd immunity. Who cares if Swedes can lead normal lives, and focus on far more pressing health issues?”
Oh, and if you predict a significant 2nd wave, why don’t you tell us your prediction of whether that would occur with vitamin D sufficiency present in the population.
There’s a sort of obvious middling scenario: what if covid19 becomes something akin to a seasonal flu, that kills about the same number of people as a middling flu year? I think a source I heard recently stated a “cadence” for coronavirus of 4 times per 10 years. Of whatever cadence, suppose covid-19 moves through the population with the same lethality as expected of an average flu. What then? Shut down society, and keep kids out of school?
Well, I don’t think anybody would call this an example of herd immunity, but’s it’s not the end of the herd, either. It’d just be something we’d have to learn to live with, whether or not a vaccine is developed. We don’t shut down the world economy from a standard flu, nor try and force everybody to wear a mask. In this middling scenario, the damage is assumed to be the same as from a middling flu, so on what rational basis would we treat it differently? (Well, I’m ignoring differences in long term damage. That’s not a nothingburger, but rational public policy should be based on cost/benefit. Dr. Campbell had a segment on youtube about dogs that are trained to sniff out humans with covid-19, quicker than existing tests. I we could only spin up enough such dogs, fast enough, …..)
metamars
@Willy
Oh, Willy, as you and Mark Pontin are cut from the same, superior, intellectual cloth, why don’t you also answer my Pontin questions:
“Do grace us with your prediction for Sweden, won’t you? And what will you say if Sweden goes another year with an average of less than 1 covid death, per day, for that year? Will you say the Swedes have achieved herd immunity from covid? Or that it’s still too soon to know, we’ll have to wait X years? Or will you say, “seroprevalence studies indicate less than 70% have antibodies, so no herd immunity. Who cares if Swedes can lead normal lives, and focus on far more pressing health issues?”
Oh, and if you predict a significant 2nd wave, why don’t you tell us your prediction of whether that would occur with vitamin D sufficiency present in the population.”
Also, you may deign to answer my middling, flu-like scenario questions.
metamars
Sweden has now put the US in its rear-view mirror:
From “Sweden Now Has a Lower COVID-19 Death Rate Than the US. Here’s Why It Matters”
” While countries around the world are experiencing a resurgence of COVID-19 outbreaks, Sweden’s COVID-19 deaths have slowed to a crawl.
As a result, many nations are catching up to Sweden in per capita deaths, and some are passing it. Italy recently popped back ahead of Sweden. Chile passed the Swedes next. Then came Brazil, which surpassed Sweden in per capita deaths on Wednesday.
Finally, on Thursday, the United States joined the group. The United States currently has 578 COVID-19 deaths per million compared to Sweden’s 577 per million, according to the global statistics web site Worldometers.
…..
Indeed, if you subtract three lockdown states from the US totals—New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts, which account for 31 percent of all COVID-19 deaths in the US—the United States’s numbers suddenly plummet to 399 per million, below Bolivia and slightly above Columbia.”
Willy
I never once said that I was superior to any naked emperors. I just said they have no clothes on, because that’s what I’m seeing.
On the positive, as a medical layman I do believe it when qualified experts tell me that covid will eventually mutate into something far less deadly, because killing the host is counterproductive for the genetic propagation of parasitic organisms. Makes reasonable horse sense. But that doesn’t change the fact that after all this time, the USA still leads the world in cases and deaths. Could it be that Sweden already has one of those less deadly mutations?
Hugh
So it turns out that Trump’s current White House physician Sean Connelly, remember all the white coats coming out of Walter Reed? was lying like a rug. He rationalized his acting completely unprofessionally as him trying to be part of the team. It’s kind of amazing how these guys throw a grenade into their credibility without missing a beat. But the take home is don’t believe anything that comes out of the White House until it has been verified and re-verified a few more times.
metamars
@Willy
“On the positive, as a medical layman I do believe it when qualified experts tell me that covid will eventually mutate into something far less deadly, because killing the host is counterproductive for the genetic propagation of parasitic organisms.”
You sound like Laura Ingraham, telling us the virus will “burn out”. Here are covid19 survival rates, as per CDC:
0-19: 99.997%
20-49: 99.98%
50-69: 99.5%
70 & over: 94.6%
(obviously, the figures, particularly for oldsters benefit from modern therapeutics)
My own non-expert opinion is that such a failed killer as the current strains of SARS-COV-2 are facing essentially zero evolutionary selection pressure to be less lethal.
On the other hand, I expect the “herd”, including it’s collective microbiome, to have residual ability, due to experience with prior viruses, to make the surviving herd robust. Survival may be relatively easy, in modern society, but go back just 100 years, or so, and it was far less easy, both in terms of work for sufficient calories, and in terms of infectious diseases. In general, human evolution is primed to make survivors robust through the age of 30 or so, which is long enough to have had children and raised them. I think this is covered in the book “The Selfish Gene”, but it’s been decades since I read it. If the herd doesn’t recover from disease, sufficiently to allow it to succeed with respect to other evolutionary challenges, pitiless Nature brings about extinction.
Would our cavemen ancestors have survived, if they suffered endlessly from flu-like symptoms? I think not.
Hugh
Sorry, that should read Sean Conley.
BlizzardOfOzzz
Well, Willy, I’m sure you’ve seen the bad news (for you). It seems that the Reverend Doctor Trump converted to communism, just in time to grant himself immunity from the once-a-millennium virus that is killing six million people every minute. Now, here unfortunately is where my woeful ignorance of the latest scientific findings really hinders me, but maybe you can help — can Dr. Trump now reverse course and again start promoting nationalism, or would the commie virus then say “no takesies backsies!” and strike him dead on the spot? Please advise.
Willy
Blizz,
first off, this is your lucky day. I normally don’t scroll this far back with these posts but I have a brand new mouse that’s really sensitive and so here I am purely by accident. Plus I’ve got time.
Could this be a miracle? I think so. But since it’s still a free country, you decide.
Well, Willy, I’m sure you’ve seen the bad news (for you). It seems that the Reverend Doctor Trump converted to communism, just in time to grant himself immunity from the once-a-millennium virus that is killing six million people every minute.
I heard that car was shot at by Proud Boys. But fortunately, not “Proud Boys” but “#Proud Boys”. It was just rainbow colored paint balls and silly string. Could’ve been a lot worse. Even POTUS needs to be more careful with such a controversial vehicle sticker.
Now, here unfortunately is where my woeful ignorance of the latest scientific findings really hinders me, but maybe you can help — can Dr. Trump now reverse course and again start promoting nationalism, or would the commie virus then say “no takesies backsies!” and strike him dead on the spot?
I’ve long wanted Trump to promote nationalism (not naziism or nationalizm or Qanon or anything even remotely conspiracy look-over-there-grifter sounding). It’s gotta be the real deal.
If you’re a corporation or billionaire then even you too, have gotta be an economic patriot. Just wrapping yourself in a flag aint good enough, even if it’s got a picture of Jesus on it, goddammit! You try ducking out to the Caymans or the Netherlands or to Putin-topia or wherever the hell, and we’re gonna double tariff-tax whatever business you try doing here in the states.
We’ve all gotta be in this together, Proud Boy Americans!!