Just to put that into perspective: China isolated it in a single province - they had a starting point that they could lock down. They are a communist country , much easier to lock them down than the US. Our freedom of movement played against us here - Also have to consider that this stuff came into the country at multiple points on the map making it much more difficult to isolate. Honestly I don't believe China has it under control nor their death numbers / total cases - they threw reporters out and will do anything to keep the money flowing. The US (327m) has the same population as Italy , Spain , UK , Germany , France and Switzerland combined (331m). Those countries have a combined 238,417 cases compared to the US 85,749. Maybe cases per M population is a better measuring stick than total numbers.
excuse , more excuse, baseless denying, blatant manipulation.... yeah, keep winning. soon there will be data of cases per skin color. .. MAGA.
CNN, MSNBC Bosses Ignore Staff Pleas to Cut Trump Coronavirus Pressers The nation’s television news outlets, especially the three major cable-news networks, are grappling with a nagging paradox as President Donald Trump continues to orchestrate his White House briefings on the novel coronavirus pandemic. On the one hand, their ratings have never been higher, and viewers’ appetites for the live sessions have shown no signs of dwindling. On the other hand, journalists and executives at MSNBC, CNN, and the often Trump-friendly Fox News—which scored an impressive 6.2 million viewers for Sunday’s installment of the Trump show, according to Nielsen—are increasingly facing the likelihood that they are becoming an uncritical and unvetted transmission belt for propaganda and misinformation. Despite internal handwringing among producers and journalists as the week unfolded, however, the bosses at MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News once again decided on Thursday to broadcast every moment of Trump’s self-congratulatory and largely fact-free cheerleading live as the United States achieved the dubious milestone of becoming the world’s No. 1 coronavirus-infected country—surpassing even China’s 81,000-plus cases by more than 2,000, with twice China’s death rate. “These White House sessions—ostensibly meant to give the public critical and truthful information about this frightening crisis—are in fact working against that end,” wrote Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan, summarizing such concerns. “Rather, they have become a daily stage for Trump to play his greatest hits to captive audience members. They come in search of life-or-death information, but here’s what they get from him instead: Self-aggrandizement… Media-bashing… Exaggeration and outright lies.” In an echo of the self-criticism expressed during the 2016 presidential race, when the cable networks repeatedly broadcast Trump’s campaign rallies live and unexpurgated, top MSNBC anchors have already argued publicly that their own network should not air the president’s pandemic musings in full. Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough tweeted during Trump’s briefing on Monday that there was “no public benefit to this briefing,” and the cable news networks should “cut away.” MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, who anchors the network’s most highly rated program, also repeatedly called for news networks to stop carrying Trump’s statements live, saying that the president’s daily comments contribute to the spread of misinformation. “If it were up to me, and it’s not, I would stop putting those briefings on live TV,” Maddow said on her show earlier this week. “Not out of spite, but because it’s misinformation. If the president does end up saying anything true, you can run it as tape. But if he keeps lying like he has been every day on stuff this important, we should, all of us should stop broadcasting it. Honestly, it’s going to cost lives.” Privately, several staffers at CNN and MSNBC have acknowledged that airing Trump’s pressers live and in full likely amplifies the spread of misinformation about the disease and its potential cure. In one instance, Trump’s enthusiastic promotion of a malaria medicine, chloroquine, as therapy for COVID-19, reportedly prompted an elderly couple to take a poisonous version of the chemical, resulting in the wife being placed in an intensive-care unit while her husband died. An NBC News insider, however, said the White House briefings should be not be ignored, but instead thoroughly covered and aired, albeit with journalistic vetting and fact checking. “I completely get the criticism of the performance,” this person said. “But let’s remember that the White House press corps absolutely torched the Trump White House for eliminating the daily briefings. Now there’s a high-profile daily press briefing that often includes the president and vice president, so you can’t have it both ways.” Acknowledging that Trump is frequently a source of misstatement, the NBC News insider added: “I think the best way to handle the president in the briefing is that you handle the president like you handle the virus. He has to be contained and quarantined and his falsehoods have to be scrubbed so that they don’t rub off on you.” On Thursday evening, as the U.S. death and infection toll mounted and health care first responders coped with inadequate hospital facilities and medical equipment, Trump began the White House briefing by complaining about a Washington Post story quoting Washington state’s Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee as exhorting the president on a conference call to step up and act like leader in the tradition of quarterback Tom Brady. “Somebody in the fake news said that one of the governors said, ‘Oh, we need Tom Brady.’ Yeah. He meant it in a positive way,” Trump claimed as he launched into a defensive rant. “We need Tom Brady, we can do everything positively, but they took it differently. They think Tom Brady should be leading the effort. That’s only fake news. And I like Tom Brady. I spoke to him the other day. He’s a great guy. But I wish the news could be real. I wish it could be honest. I wish it weren’t corrupt. So much of it is, it’s so sad to see. We had a great meeting."
I've said it before but we should take the PRC numbers with healthy skepticism that said if they are really far off from what they say it is it would be hard to hide. They've been kicking out reporters but there still are a lot of people getting info out as there are a lot of ways around The Great Firewall.
CDC is reporting 68K CV+ cases. The COVID Tracking Project is reporting 82K CV+ case. Curious as to why the CDC is under-reporting.
I want to know which busn are asking for these relaxation. E.P.A., Citing Coronavirus, Drastically Relaxes Rules for Polluters WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday announced a sweeping relaxation of environmental rules in response to the coronavirus pandemic, allowing power plants, factories and other facilities to determine for themselves if they are able to meet legal requirements on reporting air and water pollution. The move comes amid an influx of requests from businesses for a relaxation of regulations as they face layoffs, personnel restrictions and other problems related to the coronavirus outbreak. Issued by the E.P.A.’s top compliance official, Susan P. Bodine, the policy sets new guidelines for companies to monitor themselves for an undetermined period of time during the outbreak and says that the agency will not issue fines for violations of certain air, water and hazardous-waste-reporting requirements. Companies are normally required to report when their factories discharge certain levels of pollution into the air or water. “In general, the E.P.A. does not expect to seek penalties for violations of routine compliance monitoring, integrity testing, sampling, laboratory analysis, training, and reporting or certification obligations in situations where the E.P.A. agrees that Covid-19 was the cause of the noncompliance and the entity provides supporting documentation to the E.P.A. upon request,” the order states. It said the agency’s focus during the outbreak would be “on situations that may create an acute risk or imminent threat to public health or the environment” and said it would exercise “discretion” in enforcing other environmental rules. ...
Last Thursday (3-19-2020) the US has ~10K CV+ cases. Yesterday (3-26-2020) the US had ~80K CV+ cases. That is a 8x increase in one week. If we have a 8x increase by next Thursday, that would mean 640K CV+ cases ... a 8x increase in the number of people showing up in the ER ... a 8x increase in the people needing ventilators ... etc. This is going to be a real wrecking ball.
Beside that, official cases may just be a fraction of actual cases. According to Nate Silver, he said the experts they surveyed think the under-reporting is anywhere from 3x to 50x. LOL, okay, that's anywhere from 300k to 4m.
