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CR: COVID-19 --Political Talk


Mrs Whiggins

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I had exposure to a confirmed covid positive last week, so decided to get tested. Finding a place with the rapid test in Dallas was not easy. I imagined I'd be able to pull up a list of the places offering it, but where's the sport in that? 

I finally found it at an a standalone ER place. I called and made sure you didn't need a Dr note or meet some criteria to be tested. They told me to come in any time. I decided to wait until late at night to avoid a long wait, and that worked - I was the only person there. 

They asked me if I had any symptoms and I said no. They said I had to come back on specific days during the middle of the day. I kind of lost my shit at this point bc I'm the only person there. Yadda yadda not getting tested there.

Then there was fuckery with my insurance company in regard to where I could get the test covered and what kind. My insurer is dumb as shit. 

Decided to get a regular test. Everywhete I looked said results in a couple days. Went to get the test this evening, and they tell me I'll hear back in 7-10 days. What the fuck? That kind of diminishes the value of getting tested. They said their lab, Quest, has a big backlog. 

This is an anecdote but I suspect it's fairly emblematic of the state of testing. It's now been 5 fucking months or whatever, and we still can't get testing streamlined. It is a God damn crime how ineptly this country is handling the pandemic. There should be rapid tests on every street corner by now. I'm pissed and ashamed for us all. 

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8 minutes ago, Hookah Horns said:

I had exposure to a confirmed covid positive last week, so decided to get tested. Finding a place with the rapid test in Dallas was not easy. I imagined I'd be able to pull up a list of the places offering it, but where's the sport in that? 

I finally found it at an a standalone ER place. I called and made sure you didn't need a Dr note or meet some criteria to be tested. They told me to come in any time. I decided to wait until late at night to avoid a long wait, and that worked - I was the only person there. 

They asked me if I had any symptoms and I said no. They said I had to come back on specific days during the middle of the day. I kind of lost my shit at this point bc I'm the only person there. Yadda yadda not getting tested there.

Then there was fuckery with my insurance company in regard to where I could get the test covered and what kind. My insurer is dumb as shit. 

Decided to get a regular test. Everywhete I looked said results in a couple days. Went to get the test this evening, and they tell me I'll hear back in 7-10 days. What the fuck? That kind of diminishes the value of getting tested. They said their lab, Quest, has a big backlog. 

This is an anecdote but I suspect it's fairly emblematic of the state of testing. It's now been 5 fucking months or whatever, and we still can't get testing streamlined. It is a God damn crime how ineptly this country is handling the pandemic. There should be rapid tests on every street corner by now. I'm pissed and ashamed for us all. 

Trump America. 

Its only going to get worse. It won’t get better until trump is gone.

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1 hour ago, Anastasis said:

Twitter is at its core a tool of psychological manipulation.   

Twitter's character limit and its domination by media celebs stimulates our basest instincts - regardless of gender, race, class, or Idiot level. Easy to read. But primarily opinion, not fact. It is not a substitute for research. The problem is a large audience that sometime mistakes opinion for fact. 

We all have blind spots. Twitter provides simple answers authored by simpletons all genders, race, class, or Idoit level. Sourced Twitter is awesome, by the way. The problem is across the hall in facebook. And it is not even close. FB=Radio goo-goo. Twitter: Radio Gaga.  

We lost our groove around 1984. Pity. 

Edited by washparkhorn
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3 hours ago, RPM said:

Erin Burnett 15 years ago was total smoke. She's MILF smoke now.

With all due respect to anyone's inner surly, and not in anyway aimed at @RPM, but does nothing for me.

Erin Burnett is an actress. And a Goldman Sachs alum. Perhaps she has an inner-surly that's awesome, but . . . no.

Thank you for the indulgence. 

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34 minutes ago, Hookah Horns said:

I had exposure to a confirmed covid positive last week, so decided to get tested. Finding a place with the rapid test in Dallas was not easy. I imagined I'd be able to pull up a list of the places offering it, but where's the sport in that? 

I finally found it at an a standalone ER place. I called and made sure you didn't need a Dr note or meet some criteria to be tested. They told me to come in any time. I decided to wait until late at night to avoid a long wait, and that worked - I was the only person there. 

They asked me if I had any symptoms and I said no. They said I had to come back on specific days during the middle of the day. I kind of lost my shit at this point bc I'm the only person there. Yadda yadda not getting tested there.

Then there was fuckery with my insurance company in regard to where I could get the test covered and what kind. My insurer is dumb as shit. 

Decided to get a regular test. Everywhete I looked said results in a couple days. Went to get the test this evening, and they tell me I'll hear back in 7-10 days. What the fuck? That kind of diminishes the value of getting tested. They said their lab, Quest, has a big backlog. 

This is an anecdote but I suspect it's fairly emblematic of the state of testing. It's now been 5 fucking months or whatever, and we still can't get testing streamlined. It is a God damn crime how ineptly this country is handling the pandemic. There should be rapid tests on every street corner by now. I'm pissed and ashamed for us all. 

This is~ 90% of all the stories I hear from folks who need, want, or have to get tested.

My in-laws are the only ones who got a rapid test and their results back quickly.

But they're rich AF and have one of those concierge docs.... which is pretty cool if you can afford it.

[Narrarator: But DNAguy most certainly cannot afford the services he recommends.]

 

But I'd also like to add that everyone person in Texas who complains about testing seems to somehow give the President a pass.

"Why don't we have testing?" "The President said we had it"

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

MAGA!!!!!!!

Edited by Dnaguy
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We are spiking in California. No panic. Just disappointing. 

I believe the lack of leadership ability shown in handling the federal response to Covid will doom Trump's campaign for reelection. He could have just relied on experts and looked like a Gerald Ford during the crisis. Hell - he could have had an epiphany and switched sides on major issues fostering unity.

He has no ideology. The Trump movement is shrinking. At its core is a cult of personality with nihilist undertones.  Or maybe just a memester somewhere having a laugh. 

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44 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

. Sourced Twitter is awesome, by the way.

If I read you right, yes it’s great for that.  But when someone chooses to ignore the source by attacking the twitterer, it’s a different kind of red herring all together. lol

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9 minutes ago, triplehorn said:

If I read you right, yes it’s great for that.  But when someone chooses to ignore the source by attacking the twitterer, it’s a different kind of red herring all together. lol

I look for a thread unroll and read the author's work. Well sourced and cited tweets have shields around them. But duckduckgo is an express elevator; twitter is hit or miss. 

The petty sniping tweets are garbage. Don't give them your business. Block the authors. Irrelevant. 

 

Edited by washparkhorn
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14 minutes ago, LABEVO said:

 

Trump response multiple choice:

A) Fake news

B) It's no worse than the flu

C) It's China's fault

D) Too much testing

E) We're doing an amazing job

He's like one of those dolls from the 80s where you'd pull the string in its back and it would say one of a few recordings, if that doll was fat and a rapist.

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I'm lucky that mine are all 10 and under.  We can put their shit on lock without an overwhelming amount of bitching and moaning.  They can be easily distracted with a day trip to pedernales falls or the like. Fuck me if we were dumping a bunch of teenager hormones into this shit. 

Dude it’s awful and frankly not good for them. I’m trying to find families that take this shit seriously and allow my teen, and preteen to have some time with a friend. But it’s hard. You can’t go to the park, you gotta buy a fucking fifth wheel and drive to Colorado and shit. Kidding aside you don’t need to do that but social development is a major factor and they aren’t getting much of it. It’s a fucking nightmare.
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This is~ 90% of all the stories I hear from folks who need, want, or have to get tested.
My in-laws are the only ones who got a rapid test and their results back quickly.
But they're rich AF and have one of those concierge docs.... which is pretty cool if you can afford it.
[Narrarator: But DNAguy most certainly cannot afford the services he recommends.]
 
But I'd also like to add that everyone person in Texas who complains about testing seems to somehow give the President a pass.
"Why don't we have testing?" "The President said we had it"
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
MAGA!!!!!!!

My brother in Austin went to a walk in clinic, waited about an hour so so, got tested, and got the results (negative) a couple of hours later.

He is most certainly not rich and who knows what his bill will be. I am not arguing with you, though. Being the radical socialist that I am I happen to think that if we aren’t going to get MfA we could all at least get free testing.

They told him that the quicker test results are more accurate than the mutlti-day test results but I have no idea of the veracity of that statement.
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Like this was a surprise.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/white-house-ordered-nih-to-cancel-coronavirus-research-funding-fauci-says/

 

Quote

The National Institutes of Health abruptly cut off funding to a long-standing, well-regarded research project on bat coronaviruses only after the White House specifically told it to do so, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Fauci made the revelation Tuesday at a Congressional hearing on the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which is caused by a coronavirus that is genetically linked to those found in bats. Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas) asked Fauci why the NIH abruptly canceled funding for the project, which specifically worked to understand the risk of bat coronaviruses jumping to humans and causing devastating disease.

 

Quote

Fauci responded to Veasey saying: “It was cancelled because the NIH was told to cancel it.”

“And why were they told to cancel it?” Veasey pressed.

“I don’t know the reason, but we were told to cancel it,” Fauci said.

 

Quote

After the hearing, Fauci clarified to Politico that it was the White House that told the NIH to cancel the funding. An unnamed White House official told Politico that the White House did encourage the funding cut, but ultimately it was the Department of Health and Human Services—of which the NIH is a part—that made the final decision. An HHS spokesperson said only that the funding was cut because "the grantee was not in compliance with NIH's grant policy."

In an emailed statement to Ars Wednesday, the NIH did not respond to questions about the cancellation, saying only that “NIH does not discuss internal deliberations on grant terminations.”

 

Spoiler

The involvement of the White House is a new wrinkle in a story that has appalled and angered scientists. Since the grant was nixed in late April, scientists had speculated that politics and a conspiracy theory played a role in canceling funding for the research, which was in good scientific standing and seen as critical work. The grant, titled “Understanding the risk of bat coronavirus emergence,” was originally funded by the NIH in 2014 and renewed for another five years in 2019 after receiving an outstanding peer-review score.

The research is run by EcoHealth Alliance Inc., a nonprofit based in New York, but it collaborates with a virologist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China, who works with bat coronaviruses. The WIV became the center of a conspiracy theory that suggested that the pandemic coronavirus originated in or escaped from a lab at the institute.

On April 17, a reporter brought up that conspiracy theory and EcoHealth’s grant to President Trump during a press conference. The reporter asked “Why would the US give a grant like that to China?” Trump responded that “We will end that grant very quickly.”

In an email to EcoHealth on April 19—two days later—Dr. Michael Lauer, NIH deputy director for Extramural Research, reportedly wrote:

The scientific community believes that the coronavirus causing COVID-19 jumped from bats to humans likely in Wuhan where the COVID-19 pandemic began. There are now allegations that the current crisis was precipitated by the release from Wuhan Institute of Virology of the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19. Given these concerns, we are pursuing suspension of Wuhan Institute of Virology from participation in federal programs.

The funding was terminated on April 24. In a termination letter to EcoHealth, the NIH wrote that “At this time, NIH does not believe that the current project outcomes align with the program goals and agency priorities.

Following Dr. Fauci’s revelations Tuesday, EcoHealth President Peter Daszak tweeted that it was an “obvious case of political interference.”

“Eventually, we’ll all know the shoddy truth of how a conspiracy theory pushed by this administration led @NIHDirector to block the only US research group still working in China to analyze COVID origins,” he wrote. “Thanks to this China can now do the research, we can’t!”

Scientists, meanwhile, have roundly refuted claims that the WIV was the source of the new coronavirus, noting that natural spillover from animals is the most likely source.

In an April 18 comment to ScienceInsider, the WIV virologist working with EcoHealth— Shi Zhengli—also disputed the link, saying that “the closest progenitor of COVID-19 virus is still mysterious and it’s definitely not from my lab or any other labs... It’s a shame to make the science so complicated.”

Scientists also continue to express dismay at the apparent political interference. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) released a statement Wednesday saying that such orders to cancel funding “will undermine the integrity of science funding and public trust. We urge Congress to use its oversight authority to ensure that the integrity of government science agencies is not compromised.”

 

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No words.  People are fucking stupid.

https://www.ftbagency.com

 

Quote

We are a movement of proud American citizens who are dedicated to protecting their freedom and liberty. 

Our team consists of people from all walks of life from attorneys, doctors, business owners, CEOs, moms and dads who want to make a difference in this world and create a promising future for our children. 

 

Quote

IMPORTANCE OF BREATHING  1IMPO

Breathing is a vital biological activity to physical and emotional well being. 

 

OXYGEN IS No.1 NUTRIENT for every living organism including humans. 

 

Wearing a face mask is an unhealthy obstruction of oxygen flow that can lead to hypoxemia (low oxygen level in the blood) and hypoxia (low oxygen level in the tissue). Both of these conditions are health threatening and can permanently damage the brain, lungs, heart and about any other organ. 

Wearing a face mask has also very important effect on our psychology. It is a psychological anchor for suppression, enslavement and cognitive obedience. When you wear a mask you are complicit in declaring all humans as dangerous, infectious and threats. How long do you think it will be before your social engineers tell you that talking spreads the virus farther ....and they forbid talking? 

How long before your human farmers trick you into believing that it is better you stop breathing altogether....as to stop the spread of a virus? 

 

 

And they have a PDF you can print out so you can have your very own card exempting you from ever wearing a mask.  They also have state by state PDF's so you can shove it in the face of a jackbooted government official, or the barista at Starbucks when you are asked to wear a mask:

 

Quote

Wearing a mask or any other "face covering" is NOT a law. Protect your freedom and personal liberty by knowing your rights. Use the below resources to understand any unlawful conduct. Memorize it and print the .pdf version to have it with you to be presented as necessary. 

 

I%20am%20exempt%20from%20any%20ordinance

 

 

Screen%20Shot%202020-06-16%20at%204_33_0

 

 

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I bet the bitch I saw the other day at Total Wine, unmasked, wearing cut off jean shorts and a tank top she had no business wearing, strolling down the aisle with a cart full of vodka while smoking a cigarette had one of those cards.  I mentioned it to the manager on my way out.  I wish I had a picture of the look on his face.

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1 hour ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

No words.  People are fucking stupid.

https://www.ftbagency.com

 

 

 

 

And they have a PDF you can print out so you can have your very own card exempting you from ever wearing a mask.  They also have state by state PDF's so you can shove it in the face of a jackbooted government official, or the barista at Starbucks when you are asked to wear a mask:

 

 

I%20am%20exempt%20from%20any%20ordinance

 

 

Screen%20Shot%202020-06-16%20at%204_33_0

 

 

This is kinda like those signs that say "property owner/trucking company isn't liable for [something they're liable for]." As if some magic words can always exempt you from following the rules or law. 

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My son's first girlfriend came over for the first time today.  Holy Jesus.  My son is the classic late-blooming, nice guy, "no game" kind of kid.
Kid has game.
Total smoke.  First one out of the gate?  Well done, my boy, well done.
You can probably expect to meet Chris Hansen in your kitchen sometime next week.
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This all flows from having a liar and cretin in the White House. He generates doubt. His constant stream of lies confuses. His actions to cut testing and research are crimes of commission.

The greatest country in the world. The envy of the world. 

The most self-congratulatory people in history are about to vanish from history. The USA went down embracing plague.

Idiot World.

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6 hours ago, RomaVicta said:

This all flows from having a liar and cretin in the White House. He generates doubt. His constant stream of lies confuses. His actions to cut testing and research are crimes of commission.

The greatest country in the world. The envy of the world. 

The most self-congratulatory people in history are about to vanish from history. The USA went down embracing plague.

Idiot World.

Chumpster Fire sucks but hyperbole much?

Christ the fatality rate on this thing is still incredibly low.

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3 hours ago, Pimphand said:

Chumpster Fire sucks but hyperbole much?

Christ the fatality rate on this thing is still incredibly low.

If you can't see what appears to be a vast majority of people in this country not complying with common sense precautions and a huge plurality of the people actually protesting against wearing a mask to protect themselves and others as some kind of Idiot/Insane World, I don't know what to say.

If you don't see this as a symptom of a republic is dire trouble, I envy the calmness with which you will experience the next ten years. The post-Trump world will be a shitshow extraordinaire as cynics fight to take the lead with his bloc using whatever rabble-rousing techniques they must.

We are handling this plague worse than just about every other civilized country in the world. If we suddenly shifted to full on competent leadership with national compliance, we'd still reach 200k dead and likely millions with permanent lung damage. We're not going to do that.

The president doesn't know what to do other than what he thinks will help his ratings. He kills funding to science and medical action. The governor of Texas says he needs another month of spiking data to make a move.

Is it really hyperbole to see the real possibility that this kind of situation where leadership and a large plurality actually embrace the obvioiusly wrong, most self-destructive policy could lead to dire ends for a country that scorns self-anlysis? 

We're a nation of USC cheerleaders leaping in the air as Vlad and the GOP destroy the republic.

spacer.png

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One of the great ironies about this whole mess is that, had Trump just listened to the experts and tackled this problem with authority, he would have gone a long way towards offsetting 3 years of abject malfeasance in office.  He's not wired that way, though.

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11 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

One of the great ironies about this whole mess is that, had Trump just listened to the experts and tackled this problem with authority, he would have gone a long way towards offsetting 3 years of abject malfeasance in office.  He's not wired that way, though.

seen on his golf cart bumper

st,small,215x235-pad,210x230,f8f8f8.lite

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14 hours ago, LABEVO said:

 

“I believe by early June we’re going to see our nation largely past this epidemic. I think honestly, if you look at the trends today, that I think by Memorial Day weekend we will have this coronavirus epidemic behind us.”

Mike Pence - April 24, 2020

Get Smart Missed It By That Much GIFs | Tenor

Edited by yoladu
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