Where's the petri dish thread?

[Shirley]

I strongly encourage you to read the source article at the NY Times, (see link in first tweet), which goes into much, much greater detail.

[Deleted User 62]

can we still call the 1918 pandemic the spanish flu? Or is that racist too?




Disliking chinese or spanish people because of it would be racist. Naming it or referring to it because of its origin site is not.

Spain was the only country to admit and face it. They suffered dearly for it.

[Shirley]

Did someone slip Ezra a copy of the script for the upcoming WH Coronavirus briefing?

And it's stoopid shit like this that ensures that nothing good will come of this.

Sigh.

...With respect to the Ezra Klein's "xenophobia" bullshit, it should be apparent to anyone who has paid even the slightest bit of attention that Ezra Klein is insane and that some sort of hard decoupling from China, particularly with respect to supply chains and ESPECIALLY with respect to pharmaceutical supply chains, is not only necessary, but inevitable. As of last week, Chinese state media has declared that the "world owes China a thank you" for stopping the disease and that the nation should/could impose export restrictions on pharmaceutical ingredients, which would lead to the United States being "plunged into the mighty sea of coronavirus." And they're right. EIGHTY PERCENT of American prescription drug ingredients are manufactured overseas, mostly in India and China. Noting this and noting that it is incredibly dangerous does NOT constitute xenophobia. But Ezra and the rest, who are currently shitting their knickers about "racists" calling it the "Wuhan coronavirus," will insist otherwise...

No doubt, this is just a coincidence:



Or, maybe not:









I don't think anyone could have predicted this:

[CrimsonNBlue]

can we still call the 1918 pandemic the spanish flu? Or is that racist too?




Disliking chinese or spanish people because of it would be racist. Naming it or referring to it because of its origin site is not.

Pretty sure it should have been called the Kentucky flu, if we're using the origin site.

[DCHawk1]

Got 'im.

[CrimsonNBlue]

Well shit, it if was mancrappin', how the hell did old balls live through it?

[TDub]

can we still call the 1918 pandemic the spanish flu? Or is that racist too?




Disliking chinese or spanish people because of it would be racist. Naming it or referring to it because of its origin site is not.

Spain was the only country to admit and face it. They suffered dearly for it.

Did not know that, also didnt know the first case was in kansas. Learn something everyday. I did find this when briefly looking at the origin. Damn you China!


"More recently, experts have proposed a third hypothesis: The Spanish flu originated somewhere in northern China in late 1917 and swiftly moved to western Europe with the 140,000 Chinese laborers the French and British governments recruited to perform manual labor to free up troops for wartime duty"

[DCHawk1]

I strongly encourage you to read the source article at the NY Times, (see link in first tweet), which goes into much, much greater detail.

Thanks for this. The story is BRUTAL.

When fully developed, bureaucracy stands . . . under the principle of sine ira ac studio (without scorn and bias). Its specific nature which is welcomed by capitalism develops the more perfectly the more bureaucracy is ‘dehumanized,’ the more completely it succeeds in eliminating from official business love, hatred, and all purely personal, irrational and emotional elements which escape calculation. This is the specific nature of bureaucracy and it is appraised as its special virtue.

[jfish26]

In your view, is the Trump administration's slash-and-burn approach to those agencies, specifically, and to the idea of administrative agencies, generally, a significant contributor?

Just to clarify: are you suggesting that opposition to federal bureaucratic bloat is a "slash-and-burn" approach? Or do you have something else specifically in mind?

This is the AP (https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104)

MIKE BLOOMBERG: “There’s nobody here to figure out what the hell we should be doing. And he’s defunded — he’s defunded Centers for Disease Control, CDC, so we don’t have the organization we need. This is a very serious thing.” — debate Tuesday night.

JOE BIDEN, comparing the Obama-Biden administration with now: “We increased the budget of the CDC. We increased the NIH budget. ... He’s wiped all that out. ... He cut the funding for the entire effort.”

THE FACTS: They’re both wrong to say the agencies have seen their money cut. Bloomberg is repeating the false allegation in a new ad that states the U.S. is unprepared for the virus because of “reckless cuts” to the CDC. Trump’s budgets have proposed cuts to public health, only to be overruled by Congress, where there’s strong bipartisan support for agencies such as the CDC and NIH. Instead, financing has increased.

Indeed, the money that government disease detectives first tapped to fight the latest outbreak was a congressional fund created for health emergencies.

Some public health experts say a bigger concern than White House budgets is the steady erosion of a CDC grant program for state and local public health emergency preparedness — the front lines in detecting and battling new disease. But that decline was set in motion by a congressional budget measure that predates Trump.

The broader point about there being “nobody here” to coordinate the response sells short what’s in place to handle an outbreak.

The public health system has a playbook to follow for pandemic preparation — regardless of who’s president or whether specific instructions are coming from the White House. Those plans were put into place in anticipation of another flu pandemic, but are designed to work for any respiratory-borne disease.

Among the health authorities overseeing the work are Dr. Anne Schuchat, CDC’s principal deputy director and a veteran of previous outbreaks, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, NIH’s infectious disease chief who has advised six presidents.

This is The Washington Post on budget cut proposals (not yet enacted) and the fact that the budget targets cuts and consolidation in CHRONIC disease matters: (https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/ ... story.html)

The budget request would trim funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by almost 16 percent. HHS officials said they want the CDC to focus on its core mission of preventing and controlling infectious diseases and on other emerging public health issues, such as opioid abuse.

Officials propose to take the money that would normally go to fund individual disease prevention activities and funnel it into a single block grant to states. The budget says chronic diseases such as heart disease, stroke and diabetes have common risk factors, and thus consolidating funds “can help magnify the public health impact.”...

Although the budget reduces overall funding for global health, from $571 million to $532 million in 2021, officials carved out an extra $50 million for global health security, which are measures aimed at disease detection and emergencies. That bump comes at the expense of international HIV/AIDS programs, which is being cut by about $58 million.

I’m going to try to answer the question that was asked, and not try to aim at the rest.

I think these two things can both be, and that both are, true: (1) the agencies were bloated (and, indeed, performing functions that belonged to states/industries), and (2) the Trump administration took a flamethrower to a problem that demanded, if not a machete, then many scalpels.

[Deleted User 89]

i’d like to know whose decision it was for the US to go it alone, going against WHO recommendations?

[jfish26]

i’d like to know whose decision it was for the US to go it alone, going against WHO recommendations?

Whose, specifically? I'm sure there's some mid-level person on whom a light can be shined. But all roads lead back to a person who, very very stupidly, prioritized (and continues to prioritize) artificially suppressing the number of positives.

[jfish26]

[Deleted User 303]

i’d like to know whose decision it was for the US to go it alone, going against WHO recommendations?

Whose, specifically? I'm sure there's some mid-level person on whom a light can be shined. But all roads lead back to a person who, very very stupidly, prioritized (and continues to prioritize) artificially suppressing the number of positives.

Can't test positive if you don't test.

[Deleted User 89]

i’d like to know whose decision it was for the US to go it alone, going against WHO recommendations?

Whose, specifically? I'm sure there's some mid-level person on whom a light can be shined. But all roads lead back to a person who, very very stupidly, prioritized (and continues to prioritize) artificially suppressing the number of positives.

believe me, i agree that he foots a significant portion of the bill for our response.

i guess i’m wondering if it’s standard protocol for the CDC/FDA/HHS to refuse to seek international assistance, or if that was a directive from above

yes, trump or azar, or someone should have thought it wise to get tests from abroad, but did they deliberately say NOT to do so?

[Shirley]

I've been sitting on this thread for ~ 2 weeks but haven't posted it because this problem is real, and it didn't feel right. And, as almost everyone already knows, Trump is merely a showman, a carnival barker, an empty suit whose election to be our president says much more about us, than him. But, just to give you some perspective, the following are only a few of the ~ 100 tweets Trump made about the Ebola threat when the nation faced it only a few years ago.











For reference:

Ebola cases throughout the U.S.:

Cases first diagnosed in U.S. 4

Cases evacuated to U.S. from other countries 7

Total cases 11

Deaths 2

[DCHawk1]

i’d like to know whose decision it was for the US to go it alone, going against WHO recommendations?

That's one of a handful of key questions.

[jfish26]

i’d like to know whose decision it was for the US to go it alone, going against WHO recommendations?

That's one of a handful of key questions.

Sort of. But there's been no shortage, in other matters, of "not a mob boss but I play one on low-budget TV" behavior from the top, hamhandedly isolating himself from being the trigger man.

[DCHawk1]

i’d like to know whose decision it was for the US to go it alone, going against WHO recommendations?

That's one of a handful of key questions.

Sort of. But there's been no shortage, in other matters, of "not a mob boss but I play one on low-budget TV" behavior from the top, hamhandedly isolating himself from being the trigger man.

I'll be blunt: I think you're fixating. Trump is a problem, maybe the biggest problem. But he is NOT the only problem. And if we all fixate on the political problem exclusively, ignoring the administrative problem, we guarantee that it will happen again. And again. And again.

[Deleted User 141]

That's one of a handful of key questions.

Sort of. But there's been no shortage, in other matters, of "not a mob boss but I play one on low-budget TV" behavior from the top, hamhandedly isolating himself from being the trigger man.

I'll be blunt: I think you're fixating. Trump is a problem, maybe the biggest problem. But he is NOT the only problem. And if we all fixate on the political problem exclusively, ignoring the administrative problem, we guarantee that it will happen again. And again. And again.

Fact. But it’s chicken and egg at this point isn’t it?

Tribalism runs too deep I’m afraid. See:pdub’s concerns about KU potentially not having ability to attain championship.

Or see: my personal al reaction when I realized I very specifically fall in the elevated risk category as someone with heart disease.

The FACT that perceived smart people are being ‘overly’ cautious at the moment has caused in me, at least, a sense to become aware of realities set forth by trusted (and that’s a huge problem in finding) authority.

[jfish26]

That's one of a handful of key questions.

Sort of. But there's been no shortage, in other matters, of "not a mob boss but I play one on low-budget TV" behavior from the top, hamhandedly isolating himself from being the trigger man.

I'll be blunt: I think you're fixating. Trump is a problem, maybe the biggest problem. But he is NOT the only problem. And if we all fixate on the political problem exclusively, ignoring the administrative problem, we guarantee that it will happen again. And again. And again.

No doubt.

But, bluntly, I'm responding to what I perceive as a high-minded constitutional conservative stance that seeks, to a degree, to whitewash the role likeminded people played in things getting to where we're at, generally.

Which is: god fucking damn, did the GOP let some truly crazy shit happen because they were making a lot of policy hay in the vacuum that exists because Trump doesn't have a policy bone in his body.

And now the bill is coming due. We have a reactionary, shallow, narcissistic, can't-see-past-tomorrow know-nothing executive leading a consortium of crippled agencies, which executive has not two months ago been given the legislative seal of approval to use the powers of his office in furtherance of personal gain.

To be very clear - my reaction is not intended to be specific to or an indictment of you, DC. It is a reaction to a school of thought that I encounter frequently, and that I find highly objectionable for its selectivity of memory and lack of introspection.