Cornyn doing this is just...wow...House and Mnuchin worked on a bill and pushed it up...McConnell and Republicans then decided to huddle by themselves and then push their own bill out without bipartisan support even though it needs 60 votes to pass. Now, they're complaining that the Dems aren't working with them?
Take it for what you will...hopefully, he's right https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-03-22/coronavirus-outbreak-nobel-laureate Why this Nobel laureate predicts a quicker coronavirus recovery: ‘We’re going to be fine’ Michael Levitt, a Nobel laureate and Stanford biophysicist, began analyzing the number of COVID-19 cases worldwide in January and correctly calculated that China would get through the worst of its coronavirus outbreak long before many health experts had predicted. Now he foresees a similar outcome in the United States and the rest of the world. While many epidemiologists are warning of months, or even years, of massive social disruption and millions of deaths, Levitt says the data simply don’t support such a dire scenario — especially in areas where reasonable social distancing measures are in place. “What we need is to control the panic,” he said. In the grand scheme, “we’re going to be fine.” Here’s what Levitt noticed in China: On Jan. 31, the country had 46 new deaths due to the novel coronavirus, compared with 42 new deaths the day before. Although the number of daily deaths had increased, the rate of that increase had begun to ease off. Essentially, although the car was still speeding up, it was not accelerating as rapidly as before. “This suggests that the rate of increase in number of the deaths will slow down even more over the next week,” Levitt wrote in a report he sent to friends Feb. 1 that was widely shared on Chinese social media. And soon, he predicted, the number of deaths would be decreasing every day. Three weeks later, Levitt told the China Daily News that the virus’ rate of growth had peaked. He predicted that the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in China would end up around 80,000, with about 3,250 deaths. This forecast turned out to be remarkably accurate: As of March 16, China had counted a total of 80,298 cases and 3,245 deaths — in a nation of nearly 1.4 billion people where roughly 10 million die every year. The number of newly diagnosed patients has dropped to around 25 a day, with no cases of community spread reported since Wednesday. Now Levitt, who received the 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing complex models of chemical systems, is seeing similar turning points in other nations, even ones that did not instill the draconian isolation measures that China did. He analyzed 78 countries with more than 50 reported cases of COVID-19 every day and sees “signs of recovery.” He’s not looking at cumulative cases, but the number of new cases every day — and the percentage growth in that number from one day to the next. “Numbers are still noisy but there are clear signs of slowed growth.” In Iran, for instance, the number of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases remained relatively flat last week, from 1,133 on Monday to 1,148 on Friday. Of course, recovering from an initial outbreak doesn’t mean the virus won’t come back: China is now fighting to stop new waves of infection coming in from places where the virus is spreading out of control. Other countries are bound to face the same problem as well. Levitt acknowledges that his figures are messy, and that the official case counts in many areas are too low because testing is spotty. But even with incomplete data, “a consistent decline means there’s some factor at work that is not just noise in the numbers,” he said. The trajectory of deaths backs up his findings, he said. So do data from outbreaks in confined environments, such as the one on the Diamond Princess cruise ship. Out of 3,711 people on board, 712 were infected and eight died. In his view, this unintended experiment in coronavirus spread will help researchers estimate the number of fatalities that would occur in a fully infected population. Levitt said the social-distancing mandates are critical — particularly the ban on large gatherings — because the virus is so new that the population has no immunity to it and a vaccine is still many months away. “This is not the time to go out drinking with your buddies.” Getting vaccinated against the flu is important because a coronavirus outbreak that strikes in the middle of a flu epidemic is much more likely to overwhelm hospitals and increases the odds that the coronavirus goes undetected. This was probably a factor in Italy, a country with a strong anti-vaccine movement, he said. But he also blames the media for causing unnecessary panic by focusing on the relentless increase in the cumulative number of cases and spotlighting celebrities who contract the virus. By contrast, the flu has sickened 36 million Americans since September and killed an estimated 22,000, according to the CDC, but those deaths are largely unreported. He fears the public health measures that have shut down large swaths of the economy could cause their own health catastrophe, as lost jobs lead to poverty and hopelessness. Time and again, researchers have seen that suicide rates go up when the economy spirals down. The virus can grow exponentially only when it is undetected and no one is acting to control it, Levitt said. That’s what happened in South Korea, when it ripped through a closed-off cult that refused to report the illness. “People need to be considered heroes for announcing they have this virus,” he said. The goal needs to be better early detection — not just through testing but perhaps with body temperature surveillance, which China is implementing — and immediate social isolation. While the COVID-19 fatality rate appears to be significantly higher than that of the flu, Levitt says it is quite simply put, “not the end of the world.” Based on the experience of the Diamond Princess, he estimates that being exposed to the new coronavirus doubles a person’s risk of dying in the next two months. However, most people have an extremely low risk of death in a two-month period, and that risk remains extremely low even when doubled. “The real situation is not as nearly as terrible as they make it out to be,” he said.
I was VERY glad to see Trump show the courage to note that we cannot have the results of the cure worse than the results of the virus. This is the leadership we need. We cannot simply outsource all our actions to medical experts - they play a key role and should have crucial input into the process, but we need to balance their input with the costs to the public and to the economy. There likely is a middle ground to where we can prevent deaths (the TRUE goal), avoid overwhelming the medical system, and keeping the economic disaster to a minimum. Relying SOLELY on the medical experts could result in a risk tolerance that is skewed to minimize the number of cases, and actually result in a worse outcome since the economy and costs to the public would be devastated, perhaps unnecessarily. I'm glad Trump will review after the 15 day push is over.
It is the only way that Trump can guarantee that Trump wins the 24 hr news cycle. Get you priorities straight, man!
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/23/poli...s-politics-economy-congress-stocks/index.html This is what happens when you let PROFIT be the main thing over human beings.....watch this video about the situation NY is in....they think they have some equipment or masks coming in and get out bid...... This is a fundamental problem with Runaway Capitalism - this is why we need to have the government step in ...and create a plan based upon need. DD
We can all thx Italy for waking up politician to take social distancing mandate seriously. talking about temp, here is an interesting read on that... something is not right with Florida https://www.ozy.com/news-and-politics/the-man-mapping-coronavirus-with-smart-thermometers/290739/
It's so frustrating that every one of his press conferences is the same. He blusters and lies to "win the day," his aides go up there and praise dear leader and then experts get up there and correct all of it lol.
I think it's perfectly fair to evaluate the costs of what is being done here personally, but I don't think it makes sense to assume that just letting people die means the economy will be ok.
I mean, how many million Americans are uninsured and/or have skeleton health insurance policies that would barely mitigate hospital bills in lieu of this? How many people are going to have file for bankruptcy that don't die but require healthcare and live from this? What of the working class father of 4 children with a loving wife that dies, and leaves his family with tens to hundreds of thousands of medical debt? What of the economic impact of letting people just die from this while overwhelming hospitals for at least the following year? How many people with chronic illnesses that require hospital stays won't receive the care they need because healthcare workers are overwhelmed dealing with this virus? If there are only 4,000 ventilators in Texas alone and it's worst case suspected that hundreds of thousands of people will require ventilators to survive this, how many people with lung cancer, but not covid, aren't going to receive ventilators because a healthier 30 year old with no pre-existing conditions but has Covid and needs a ventilator to survive will get it instead, because statistically that 30 year old is likely to survive their illness over a lung cancer patient? And if that lung cancer patient dies because all of a sudden healthcare workers are overwhelmed and medical equipment isn't available for them, will that be a mortality because of Covid? Or just another cancer statistic to muddle up the death statistics that will come from this epidemic? Nevermind the PTSD healthcare workers are going to have to live with helplessly watching patients around them die. At the same time and I'm borrowing this statistic from a movie clip, but if every 1% gain in unemployment equates to 40,000 American lives lost from poverty, then what plans are there in place to mitigate loss of life from that? This is why we need an honest, transparent administration that is capable of facing tough truths, because there will be lives lost no matter what happens and this administration will take the blame for it, right or wrong. This is truly a no win situation for any administration, but having a competent administration that is less concerned with polling numbers, TV ratings and their re-election bid and instead is focused on answering hard truths is what we need. We're not getting that right now. We need responsible adults at the helm. Not conmen.
