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CR: COVID-19 --Political Talk


Mrs Whiggins

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19 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

I’m supposed to be there right fucking now. Fuck this administration for making our passports useless. 

Shit, for the first time in god knows how long, I don't even HAVE a valid passport.  I was literally prepping it to send in for renewal in March....when the passport office shut down.  My passport expired in June.  No idea when/how I'll be able to get it renewed.  I can apparently send it in now to be done, but who knows how long it will take to process, as operations are scaled WAY back.

In almost every possible way, this country is a failed state.  Just chew on that.  On the most basic level, compared with every other nation in the world not named "North Korea," we fail: our citizens are dying in droves, many of those who survive will be bankrupted by medical debt, we can't take the most basic of public health measures which are necessary to getting back to some reasonable level of economic activity, armed gangs (the police) hold our cities hostage (fund us and support us, or we won't protect you), our citizens are pariahs who can't even travel outside our borders in many cases (and becoming even less so as you can't get a passport -- a basic gov't function in a functioning state), we're descending into nativist fascism, all while our executive fiddles through the flames, worshipped and adored and sucked off by the very people who are charged with holding him accountable.

The USA in 2020 is a failed state.  Fucking pathetic.

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4 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Shit, for the first time in god knows how long, I don't even HAVE a valid passport.  I was literally prepping it to send in for renewal in March....when the passport office shut down.  My passport expired in June.  No idea when/how I'll be able to get it renewed.  I can apparently send it in now to be done, but who knows how long it will take to process, as operations are scaled WAY back.

In almost every possible way, this country is a failed state.  Just chew on that.  On the most basic level, compared with every other nation in the world not named "North Korea," we fail: our citizens are dying in droves, many of those who survive will be bankrupted by medical debt, we can't take the most basic of public health measures which are necessary to getting back to some reasonable level of economic activity, armed gangs (the police) hold our cities hostage (fund us and support us, or we won't protect you), our citizens are pariahs who can't even travel outside our borders in many cases (and becoming even less so as you can't get a passport -- a basic gov't function in a functioning state), we're descending into nativist fascism, all while our executive fiddles through the flames, worshipped and adored and sucked off by the very people who are charged with holding him accountable.

The USA in 2020 is a failed state.  Fucking pathetic.

Unlike Brisket, I retain some optimism here and there. 

That said, yes, the US is a failed state.

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12 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

Somebody needs to lock Bob up for naming his shitty KC BBQ joint "Bob-Be-Que".

And yes, I know it's shitty.  It's in Kansas City.

Kansas City has the worst barbecue.  Saint Louis has the worst pizza.  Hard to get a decent meal in that state.

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10 hours ago, InkaUtexas said:

She did not understand I have no desire to go to her cousins, hang out with her friends, who I know do not take this seriously, and add to the problem. I want the nation to open up dammit, but people need to be smart. And a lot of our fellow citizens are dumb, selfish and full of shit. 

Pussy. She already told you she thought the gun was unloaded. Why are you so scared to play Russian Roulette?

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9 minutes ago, Bama Chick said:

Awww, they suddenly get religion once it actually impacts them.

Sorry you’re having to wait for your daughter’s test results.

 

He’s not really mad about having to wait for a test result.  He’s mad that his status as a Republican county whatever-the-fuck-he-is does not guarantee him a spot at the front of the line.

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20 minutes ago, FondrenRoad said:

Kansas City has the worst barbecue.  Saint Louis has the worst pizza.  Hard to get a decent meal in that state.

You have to avoid the provel cheese.  That stuff is not only weird but usually nuclear hot and the roof of your mouth will not forgive you.

This joint is in my grandparent's old neighborhood (Clayton) and makes very legit pizza:

A classic margherita shows Louie's way with a pizza. - MABEL SUEN

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18 hours ago, RDCanecutter said:

It's 1915 on the Western Front, and we've still got all this Horse Cavalry. There must be some way to use it.

I expect this Industrial-Age mass schooling to break down, and we revert back to what came before. The rich kids get tutors for Greek, fencing, and horseback riding. The poor learn to lay bricks and study furiously by mail (online) at night.

I think this is dead on.  BTW, I enjoy your posting style.  You seem like a person who enjoys literature and history.  

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The most polite people in the western hemisphere just told United States to go get fucking bent.  
 

any Of you fucking Trump idiots want to chime in here?

 

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11 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Utterly expected, and just fucking great:

We are a fucking failed state.

Daughter goes to college in Quebec.  Her current plan: she will return in mid-August (she has an apartment, that's where her life is).  She will be required to isolate at the apartment for 14 days, under threat of significant penalty.  Once she has cleared that period, she can live her life.  Which she may have to do there for the foreseeable future, because if she comes back here, she'd have to isolate for ANOTHER 14 days on her return.  So, on Sunday (after conversation with all of her friends), she broke it to us that we just may not get to see her for Christmas this year.

The tradeoff would be that my daughter gets to live her life (as we've raised her to do), and she gets to do so in a relatively safe, functional locale.

Breaks my fucking heart.  My country is a fucking disaster and a failure.  And it matters.

But dammit, you have the right to not wear a mask, and that's all that matters. USA, USA, USA!

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21 hours ago, Wanker Bob said:

Isolation is very difficult indeed but these risks are what parents and children have had to deal with through all of human history up until our last couple of generations. We've become extremely spoiled and have been chasing self actualization in Maslow's Hierachy in this society for all our lives. 

Well now that shit is gone. We dropped way to the bottom with this pandemic and now are scrambling to satisfy physiological and safety needs. I'm sure parents and kids during the London Blitzkrieg wanted to go out and play and go to school and pretend everything was safe too. Same for every location in every society that deals with widespread disaster, war, famine, and disease outbreaks. But it's not a luxury to be afforded when mere survival is the front most pressing need and we are smack in it right now in the USA. 

Your kids' isolation issues can be managed and overcome. Their permanent brain/lung/heart damage and/or living with the guilt that their school activities led directly to mom/dad/grandma/grandpa's deaths cannot. 

 

This !

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Just now, Steamboat1874 said:

This !

Cool.  We get to comfort ourselves with "hey, it's a lot like the Blitz!"....while the rest of the western world gets to say "we figured this shit out enough to restore our economy and systems to basic functionality, and we don't have to make such shitty choices."

Again, we're looking at "it's just like the Blitz!"....and calling that a fucking win?  Jesus, we fucking suck.

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Dr. Mark Escott (Austin Public Health) is not pulling punches.  His group estimates between 40 and 1,370 student fatalities in Travis County if better protective measures and a vaccine are not in place before students return to on-campus classes.  This assumes 70% infection rate across 192,000 students, with fatalities ranging from 0.03% to 1.02%.  The higher end of that range won't happen -- schools would just shut down if significant numbers of students started dying, or even getting sick, but it still puts a sharp point on the issue.  People need to think in terms of death kids, not percentages.

Travis County schools & Covid-19

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12 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Cool.  We get to comfort ourselves with "hey, it's a lot like the Blitz!"....while the rest of the western world gets to say "we figured this shit out enough to restore our economy and systems to basic functionality, and we don't have to make such shitty choices."

Again, we're looking at "it's just like the Blitz!"....and calling that a fucking win?  Jesus, we fucking suck.

Fourth Turnings have resulted from tremendous (the best, you wouldn't believe the) stupidity before, why should this one be any different?

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4 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Dr. Mark Escott (Austin Public Health) is not pulling punches.  His group estimates between 40 and 1,370 student fatalities in Travis County if better protective measures and a vaccine are not in place before students return to on-campus classes.  This assumes 70% infection rate across 192,000 students, with fatalities ranging from 0.03% to 1.02%.  The higher end of that range won't happen -- schools would just shut down if significant numbers of students started dying, or even getting sick, but it still puts a sharp point on the issue.  People need to think in terms of death kids, not percentages.

Travis County schools & Covid-19

And it'll be poorer children doing the bulk of the initial dying, and probably all of the dying.

We should have been having the reopening schools discussion in March, with rotations and "quaranteaming" and other ideas heavily considered. Telelearning isn't optimal, but a mix of in-person instruction with at-home parent chaperone video conferencing could very well have allowed us to muddle through to the other side. As it is now, poors will die and get left behind.

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53 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Utterly expected, and just fucking great:

We are a fucking failed state.

Daughter goes to college in Quebec.  Her current plan: she will return in mid-August (she has an apartment, that's where her life is).  She will be required to isolate at the apartment for 14 days, under threat of significant penalty.  Once she has cleared that period, she can live her life.  Which she may have to do there for the foreseeable future, because if she comes back here, she'd have to isolate for ANOTHER 14 days on her return.  So, on Sunday (after conversation with all of her friends), she broke it to us that we just may not get to see her for Christmas this year.

The tradeoff would be that my daughter gets to live her life (as we've raised her to do), and she gets to do so in a relatively safe, functional locale.

Breaks my fucking heart.  My country is a fucking disaster and a failure.  And it matters.

 

My turn to offer sympathy to you.  All kinds of grief to go around these days, grief that compounds the anger.  

I am still leaning heavily towards all virtual all the time for my kids come this fall.  Like, 99% sure that's what we'll be doing.  I hold out wishfully for some kind of rapid decline in positive test results in my area within the next month.  But that's about it. And I grieve for the emotional and educational wreckage I'll be putting my kids through, but better than the even worse possibilities.  Like Bama said, we have no good choices, only least bad choices. 

On the flip side, I get to work from home, and my wife does part time work from home as well.  We're lucky in that regard compared to many.  Especially around here where the tourism industry is so large.  It could always be worse, I suppose.  My fear is what it will be worse, and soon.

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19 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Dr. Mark Escott (Austin Public Health) is not pulling punches.  His group estimates between 40 and 1,370 student fatalities in Travis County if better protective measures and a vaccine are not in place before students return to on-campus classes.  This assumes 70% infection rate across 192,000 students, with fatalities ranging from 0.03% to 1.02%.  The higher end of that range won't happen -- schools would just shut down if significant numbers of students started dying, or even getting sick, but it still puts a sharp point on the issue.  People need to think in terms of death kids, not percentages.

Travis County schools & Covid-19

If this happens, Texas GOP would just crow about successfully reducing class sizes.

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1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

Utterly expected, and just fucking great:

We are a fucking failed state.

Daughter goes to college in Quebec.  Her current plan: she will return in mid-August (she has an apartment, that's where her life is).  She will be required to isolate at the apartment for 14 days, under threat of significant penalty.  Once she has cleared that period, she can live her life.  Which she may have to do there for the foreseeable future, because if she comes back here, she'd have to isolate for ANOTHER 14 days on her return.  So, on Sunday (after conversation with all of her friends), she broke it to us that we just may not get to see her for Christmas this year.

The tradeoff would be that my daughter gets to live her life (as we've raised her to do), and she gets to do so in a relatively safe, functional locale.

Breaks my fucking heart.  My country is a fucking disaster and a failure.  And it matters.

Your daughter is smart.  I fucking love Quebec.  It's on my short list of places to look to move should that idiot get re-elected. On the other hand, my parents are in Midland and Houston.  Already told both of them that their Republican pals have shown such a lack of leadership that it means I won't be there for Christmas this year unless there is a massive change of direction.  Told them I'm not going to put them at risk by bringing something into their house, though that will hold less weight with my dad now that he's got it. 

I understand how much this sucks for you though, man.  Sorry your daughter is having to make such tough decisions at this age.  Glad you are prioritizing her living her life though.

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3 minutes ago, NameAlreadyInUse said:

Your daughter is smart.  I fucking love Quebec.  It's on my short list of places to look to move should that idiot get re-elected. On the other hand, my parents are in Midland and Houston.  Already told both of them that their Republican pals have shown such a lack of leadership that it means I won't be there for Christmas this year unless there is a massive change of direction.  Told them I'm not going to put them at risk by bringing something into their house, though that will hold less weight with my dad now that he's got it. 

I understand how much this sucks for you though, man.  Sorry your daughter is having to make such tough decisions at this age.  Glad you are prioritizing her living her life though.

Makes me want to puke/cry....but what are you gonna do?  It's the right call.

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4 hours ago, InkaUtexas said:

I work daily with an epidemiologist who lives in Prague. He is from Texas, based there. And yep. The sucked it up, stayed the fuck home and wore masks. Asshole was at a brewery Saturday sending me pictures. I might charge him double. 

Speaking of Prague, we haven't heard from @DixonHurin quite a while. At the beginning of this thing, he had recently relocated there from the States and was reporting back that everyone was masked up and taking it seriously while voicing his pleasure about getting away from all the Covidiots here in 'Murica.

Edited by bolverk
there, they're, their
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2 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Utterly expected, and just fucking great:

We are a fucking failed state.

Daughter goes to college in Quebec.  Her current plan: she will return in mid-August (she has an apartment, that's where her life is).  She will be required to isolate at the apartment for 14 days, under threat of significant penalty.  Once she has cleared that period, she can live her life.  Which she may have to do there for the foreseeable future, because if she comes back here, she'd have to isolate for ANOTHER 14 days on her return.  So, on Sunday (after conversation with all of her friends), she broke it to us that we just may not get to see her for Christmas this year.

The tradeoff would be that my daughter gets to live her life (as we've raised her to do), and she gets to do so in a relatively safe, functional locale.

Breaks my fucking heart.  My country is a fucking disaster and a failure.  And it matters.

I feel your pain, but clearly the situation with my daughter is a little better. I've been meaning to ask if yours would be allowed back into Canada. Mine goes to school in Rochester and I finally gave up any fantasies to drive her up there leaving her with my old car and flying back as I'm sure I'd get stuck in quarantine as well due to having a Texas ID and trying to rent a hotel room or pass through security at the airport. Just too many risks. So, she's flying up their on her own to arrive there by August 5th so she can quarantine herself for two weeks before the start of class. I'm hoping to see her again when they shut down at the end of the semester, but we'll see. 

Edited by bolverk
there, they're, their godammit!
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I fundamentally distrust this admin's capacity and willingness to see the pandemic through anything other than a political prism. Does shifting to HHS from CDC truly benefit the American people? Possibly - but you can be sure that it is intended to benefit Trump.

I would like to know more about this:

Quote

The shift grew out of a tense conference call several weeks ago between hospital executives and Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator.

After Dr. Birx complained that hospitals were not adequately reporting their data, she convened a working group of government and hospital officials who devised the new plan, according to Janis Orlowski, chief health care officer of the Association of American Medical Colleges, who participated.

 

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History will be very, very unkind to Trump and all those that assisted his personal political aspirations, but trying to undercount and minimize the treat to the American taxpayers.   

History will look back and see the obvious and clear methodology used to fool the citizens into a false sense of security by PURPOSELY undercounting deaths and infections, and the data will be damning.  You will see massive increases in death rates, that are inexplicable other than they were non-reported covid related deaths.  In GOP governed states the gaps will be enormous due to the purposeful desire NOT TO COUNT the dead, much less the cause of death.  

We are seeing a minor decrease in infection rates, due to a lack of testing (same story since well forever) and an extremely slow turnaround on testing. Now that the testing results will bypass the career folks at CDC, who actually WANT to protect us, the rate will fall even further... do to specific misrepresentation of facts by the Trump administration.

What an endless fucking, clusterfuck our President has worked so hard to give us.

 

 

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i'm sure they'll be able to convince people their loved ones aren't really dead.  it takes more effort for these assholes to fudge the numbers than it would to just fix this.  almost every country is ahead of us.  we know how to do it but fucktard can't admit he was wrong about it going away.

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47 minutes ago, Pancho said:

wtf?

 

From the article:

Quote

Officials said the change should help ease data gathering and assist the White House coronavirus task force in allocating scarce supplies like personal protective gear and the drug remdesivir.

That's a threat to withhold remdesivir from any hospitals that don't comply. They're just so fucking evil.

Edited by wildcat09
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7 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

From the article:

That's a threat to withhold remdesivir from any hospitals that don't comply. They're just so fucking evil.

Why is PPE still scarce 6 months in?  Who do we complain to about that? 

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3 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

This is our Chernobyl, except much worse. 

you know.....this analogy is not off-target.  We've eclipsed that death toll by far, and the bulk of it is due to complete mismanagement of the situation (again, spot-on analogy).

The effects of this pandemic on our human population, on our economy, on our culture, on our long-term well-being as a nation, are going to be fucking horrific.  We are going to be talking about this 20 years from now, because we'll still be dealing with the fallout.

We wanted to take a flyer, and "elect an outsider!  He's a BIDNESS MAN!"......and this is exactly how that fucking turns out.  It was never going to turn out any way OTHER than this.

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7 minutes ago, Satchel said:

Why is PPE still scarce 6 months in?

I can answer this.  We didn’t have enough to begin with and that astronomical sudden increase in demand created an astronomical back log that still hasn’t caught up.  Combine that with the explosion in covid cases that wasn’t anticipated by suppliers and you get another round of demand that cannot be supplied.  The supply chain never fully recovered from March nor could it predict this amount of demand without taking on some very risky business investments. 

Edited by Hugo Stiglitz
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