Where's the petri dish thread?

[ousdahl]

[Shirley]

Yay!

[Geezer]

Kudos to Minnesota and Vermont.

[Deleted User 289]

Grandma Downer here.
The fact that so many doctors and medical personnel are testing positive is a VERY BAD thing.
These are people we clearly need to help battle the virus.
As "protected" as they may have been when they were seeing "patients", some/many?/most? who have tested positive very well may have actually been contributing to the spread of the virus.
It's a vicious circle.

[jfish26]

Hope you can't die from smug exposure:



Seriously - billionaires who sit idly by right now are not making a very good argument against a wealth tax and/or an estate tax.

I'm not even suggesting they donate; go make money producing needed materiel, or opening triage centers and non-ICU temporary hospitals.

[Shirley]

This is what President Trump said on Feb. 26th. President Trump, the guy who said a couple of days ago that he has considered this a "Pandemic" since before he was dodging the draft, and who is now asking for a trillion dollars, not 0.0025% of that:

...We were asking for two and a half billion, and we think that’s a lot, but the Democrats, and, I guess, Senator Schumer wants us to have much more than that. And normally, in life, I’d say, “We’ll take it. We’ll take it.”

If they want to give more, we’ll do more. We’re going to spend whatever is appropriate. Hopefully, we’re not going to have to spend so much because we really think we’ve done a great job in keeping it down to a minimum. And again, we’ve had tremendous success — tremendous success — beyond what people would have thought...


This man is so inadequate, so over his head and below what we need and deserve to handle a situation like this, it's beyond gobsmacking. Feb. 26th is long after he should have realized we're facing a crises of unbelievable proportions.

[Soklous]

What’s really awesome is that Feral trashes the once informative Petri dish thread with her obsession with Republicans.

Some of us were interested in the science and reality of the pandemic.

[TDub]

The politicalizing of the pandemic is exacerbating the problem.

I see some Democrats using it as a battering ram to "prove" theyre right. I see some republicans downplaying it and using it to "prove" their point. Lets throw that shit away for the next 2 years and focus on surviving and then we can get back to bickering.


I wouldnt want to be president right now, its a no win position.

Do too much and people yell at you and call you stupid, dont do enough and people die.

[ousdahl]

I don’t think anyone would call potus stupid for doing “too much,” assuming that too much was well intended, well informed, and not simply self-serving.

But there’s the rub...

[jfish26]

If it's too hard, he is welcome to resign.

[seahawk]

So, Soklous, here are two science and reality things about the pandemic that I heard last night on Rachel Maddow, which I rarely watch but she had a long time science reporter on last night.

1. That one of the thermometer manufacturers has thermometers that feed temperatures back to a database. They have already mapped this to look at flu and according to the reporter, since high temps are an indicator could indicate where the virus has a large outbreak so that supplies could be sent there.

2. That in some hospital system (I don't remember which) the accounting and administrative types are making vinyl masks with tape and vinyl supplies they've gotten from places like Home Depot and Hobby Lobby.

Here's the reporter talking about how in Asia, they isolated cases in different wings of hospitals, or even different hospitals for the CV and non-CV cases.

[DCHawk1]

I don’t think anyone would call potus stupid for doing “too much,” assuming that too much was well intended, well informed, and not simply self-serving.

But there’s the rub...

That's dumb.

If he did what is necessary -- and what some posters seem to demand -- you'd all be shitting rings around yourself now.

He fucked up. There is no argument about that. But to insist now that "if we'd just been like South Korea, everything would be great" is the worst kind of revisionism.

There is no chance -- none -- that Americans would allow their government to use their data and track them in the ways that would be necessary to follow in SK's footsteps.

And the post hoc "EEEK! Why won't Trumphitler be more like Hitler!" laments are as transparent as they are unhelpful.

Trump SHOULD pay a price for his stubbornness and self-absorption. But you go to war with the army you have, and right now, he's the army we have.

[CrimsonNBlue]

I think both of these statements can be, and are true: 1. US could have (and did) learned a lot from Korea. 2. US could not have done everything Korea did successfully, for a lot of reasons that aren't failures by the US, per se.

And, let's not do any celebrations. Korea, maybe even China might be in the 3rd quarter, and the US in the 1st quarter, but the virus isn't waving the white flag.

[DCHawk1]

I think both of these statements can be, and are true: 1. US could have (and did) learned a lot from Korea. 2. US could not have done everything Korea did successfully, for a lot of reasons that aren't failures by the US, per se.

And, let's not do any celebrations. Korea, maybe even China might be in the 3rd quarter, and the US in the 1st quarter, but the virus isn't waving the white flag.

Paragraph 1: Agreed.

Paragraph 2: Here's where I worry. If Taleb, et al. are right, then suppression can be done severely and more or less permanently, meaning that the virus will be largely eliminated by short-term measures. But if they're wrong, and the Imperial College model is right, meaning that suppression must be done more or less continually until a cure/vaccine can be developed, then China and South Korea are headed for a serious and seriously deadly relapse. Key bit from the report:

Once interventions are relaxed…infections begin to rise, resulting in a predicted peak epidemic later in the year. The more successful a strategy is at temporary suppression, the larger the later epidemic is predicted to be in the absence of vaccination, due to lesser build-up of herd immunity.

[CrimsonNBlue]

We will see as both societies are gradually, but definitely, returning to "normal," wrongly or rightly.

Just so many unknowns. Also can't ignore what's going on in Taiwan and Singapore.

[Shirley]

What’s really awesome is that Feral trashes the once informative Petri dish thread with her obsession with Republicans.

Some of us were interested in the science and reality of the pandemic.

I feel you, Sokulous.

Like you, I too am "interested in the science and reality of the pandemic". But instead, I'm sitting here at this very moment watching our president, the person upon whom we rely the most to protect us in situations like this, open the WH Coronavirus Task Force briefing by telling us lies and distorting "reality" to pat himself on the back and try to cover his ass politically. If only Trump had the same high regard for "science and reality" that you do, perhaps we wouldn't find ourselves weeks and weeks behind where we should be, facing a very uncertain, possibly dark future in the near term for ourselves, our families, and our country?

You truly have to wonder how anyone who isn't a malignant narcissist could possibly think it serves any purpose to have him stand up there and stumble through and mispronounce the names of the medications that might have the potential to treat the coronavirus. People would likely feel more confident if he would leave the medicine and "science" to the doctors and scientists, and stop twisting "reality" on an hour-to-hour basis.

[seahawk]

What’s really awesome is that Feral trashes the once informative Petri dish thread with her obsession with Republicans.

Some of us were interested in the science and reality of the pandemic.

I feel you, Sokulous.

Like you, I too am "interested in the science and reality of the pandemic". But instead, I'm sitting here at this very moment watching our president, the person upon whom we rely the most to protect us in situations like this, open the WH Coronavirus Task Force briefing by telling us lies and distorting "reality" to pat himself on the back and try to cover his ass politically. If only Trump had the same high regard for "science and reality" that you do, perhaps we wouldn't find ourselves weeks and weeks behind where we should be, facing a very uncertain, possibly dark future in the near term for ourselves, our families, and our country?

You truly have to wonder how anyone who isn't a malignant narcissist could possibly think it serves any purpose to have him stand up there and stumble through and mispronounce the names of the medications that might have the potential to treat the coronavirus. People would likely feel more confident if he would leave the medicine and "science" to the doctors and scientists, and stop twisting "reality" on an hour-to-hour basis.

Watching Cuomo talk about this is such a contrast to Trump. I listened to a little bit of Trump's bumbling press conference and it makes one feel like it weakens your immune system just to hear him.

It's like, can't anyone shut him up and let the scientists and physicians speak? Maybe they could pay Craig Fugate whatever it would cost to come back and be in charge.

[Deleted User 289]

Nothing like adding confusion.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2020/3/19/ ... l-breaking

[Shirley]

Also, Amazon hiring 10,000 temporary drivers/warehouse workers.

Thought I read 100,000.

Maybe.

I saw both numbers and assumed the bigger was a typo.

Hope I'm wrong.

[jfish26]

What in the FUCK is it going to take for anyone of influence to say enough is enough? We desperately need China right now, for so many reasons. This nonsense gains him nothing but some good ol' fashioned racism feel-goods, the admiration of racists, and the general sense of being a tough guy.

And it could very well cost us dearly.