The Trump Pandemic

[Cunt]

Whistleblower? Shouldn't they be protecting his identity? Starting a new impeachment?

[Tero]

With the same senate?

Trump will be removed by election.

[Cunt]

Trump will be removed by election.

Whew! Great news!

Who are they running?

[Tero]

Trump will be removed by election.

Whew! Great news!

Who are they running?

Does it matter? Trump has been campaigning against himself since day 1. Being inept at politics, he even got impeached. Saved only by Senate from guvment hating red states.

[pErvinalia]

[Cunt]

Does it matter? Trump has been campaigning against himself since day 1. Being inept at politics, he even got impeached. Saved only by Senate from guvment hating red states.

You are right, of course. Plus, the Dem rep just admitted Biden isn't their nominee, so that's good.

I was worried there. Trump may be campaiging for the Dems, but Biden wasn't helping anyway. They need a harder worker in the Dem leadership.

By the way, thought of you on the way out. I tried to grab a photo of a local raven for you, but these pricks must have chased them out of the grocery store parking lot...
(spoilered because who wants to see THAT?)

Trigger Warning!!!1! :

[rainbow]

It's a sweet thought, but at my advanced age, I should save up for tonight. (hot date)

Left or right hand?

No, and I'm glad I did.

Held my sweetheart, told her I loved her and was happy she was here with me. Damn I love night-time.

How long did it take for her to inflate?
Did she go down on you?

[Scot Dutchy]

Who calls any one these days "sweetheart"? Very 1940's.

[Cunt]

Who calls any one these days "sweetheart"? Very 1940's.

I have for our whole decade or two. I don't like 'partner', or 'spouse' or most of the usual terms. I don't want to say 'wife' because we aren't married.

She is sweet. She still affects my heart.

I would answer rainbow thusly: this girl is amazing, and part of the deal is that you don't get to know some stuff. Just imagine whatever would make me blissfully happy with our relationship for years, and you are probably right.

[Seabass]

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/1 ... ers-259524

President Donald Trump on Thursday said testing for coronavirus might be “overrated,” revisiting his concern early in the outbreak that testing for the disease would raise the nation’s case count.

After touring the medical supply distributor Owens and Minor in Allentown, Pa., the president — he and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows were the only members of the tour group not wearing masks — talked about his plans for expanding the Strategic National Stockpile and lauded his administration for its coronavirus response, including increased testing.

“America has now conducted its 10 millionth test. That’s as of yesterday afternoon. Ten million tests we gave. Ten million,” Trump said from a stage at the warehouse event, which had the trappings of a campaign-style rally. “And CVS has just committed to establish up to 1,000 new coronavirus testing sites by the end of this month, and the 10 millionth will go up very, very rapidly.”

“And don’t forget, we have more cases than anybody in the world,” he added. “But why? Because we do more testing. When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases.”

Trump said the news media had refused to report his “common sense” explanation for the country’s high case numbers. He repeated the misleading claim that the U.S. has tested more people than other countries, sidestepping the reality that testing as a share of the population is lower than in other countries.

“So we have the best testing in the world,” Trump said. “It could be the testing’s, frankly, overrated? Maybe it is overrated. But whatever they start yelling, we want more, we want more. You know, they always say we want more, we want more because they don’t want to give you credit.”

43%. Fuck.

[Cunt]

Can you summarize the opposing view honestly? Ben Shapiro could help you with it, if you want someone who is a better speaker than Trump...I mean, if you just want to keep attacking the laughing orange troll, go to it...

[NineBerry]

The more people have an infection, the more you have to test to be able to say that you have enough tests. One important value to judge this is how many of the tests are positive.

At the height of our curve, Germany had 9% positive test rate and is now down to below 3% positive tests. The US had 21% positive tests a month ago and is still at 8% currently. A clear sign that there aren't enough tests performed yet.

[Seabass]

Oh no! The Lancet has Trump Derangement Syndrome!

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanc ... 5/fulltext

Reviving the US CDC

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to worsen in the USA with 1·3 million cases and an estimated death toll of 80 684 as of May 12. States that were initially the hardest hit, such as New York and New Jersey, have decelerated the rate of infections and deaths after the implementation of 2 months of lockdown. However, the emergence of new outbreaks in Minnesota, where the stay-at-home order is set to lift in mid-May, and Iowa, which did not enact any restrictions on movement or commerce, has prompted pointed new questions about the inconsistent and incoherent national response to the COVID-19 crisis.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the flagship agency for the nation's public health, has seen its role minimised and become an ineffective and nominal adviser in the response to contain the spread of the virus. The strained relationship between the CDC and the federal government was further laid bare when, according to The Washington Post, Deborah Birx, the head of the US COVID-19 Task Force and a former director of the CDC's Global HIV/AIDS Division, cast doubt on the CDC's COVID-19 mortality and case data by reportedly saying: “There is nothing from the CDC that I can trust”. This is an unhelpful statement, but also a shocking indictment of an agency that was once regarded as the gold standard for global disease detection and control. How did an agency that was the first point of contact for many national health authorities facing a public health threat become so ill-prepared to protect the public's health?

In the decades following its founding in 1946, the CDC became a national pillar of public health and globally respected. It trained cadres of applied epidemiologists to be deployed in the USA and abroad. CDC scientists have helped to discover new viruses and develop accurate tests for them. CDC support was instrumental in helping WHO to eradicate smallpox. However, funding to the CDC for a long time has been subject to conservative politics that have increasingly eroded the agency's ability to mount effective, evidence-based public health responses. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration resisted providing the sufficient budget that the CDC needed to fight the HIV/AIDS crisis. The George W Bush administration put restrictions on global and domestic HIV prevention and reproductive health programming.

The Trump administration further chipped away at the CDC's capacity to combat infectious diseases. CDC staff in China were cut back with the last remaining CDC officer recalled home from the China CDC in July, 2019, leaving an intelligence vacuum when COVID-19 began to emerge. In a press conference on Feb 25, Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, warned US citizens to prepare for major disruptions to movement and everyday life. Messonnier subsequently no longer appeared at White House briefings on COVID-19. More recently, the Trump administration has questioned guidelines that the CDC has provided. These actions have undermined the CDC's leadership and its work during the COVID-19 pandemic.

There is no doubt that the CDC has made mistakes, especially on testing in the early stages of the pandemic. The agency was so convinced that it had contained the virus that it retained control of all diagnostic testing for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, but this was followed by the admission on Feb 12 that the CDC had developed faulty test kits. The USA is still nowhere near able to provide the basic surveillance or laboratory testing infrastructure needed to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

But punishing the agency by marginalising and hobbling it is not the solution. The Administration is obsessed with magic bullets—vaccines, new medicines, or a hope that the virus will simply disappear. But only a steadfast reliance on basic public health principles, like test, trace, and isolate, will see the emergency brought to an end, and this requires an effective national public health agency. The CDC needs a director who can provide leadership without the threat of being silenced and who has the technical capacity to lead today's complicated effort.

The Trump administration's further erosion of the CDC will harm global cooperation in science and public health, as it is trying to do by defunding WHO. A strong CDC is needed to respond to public health threats, both domestic and international, and to help prevent the next inevitable pandemic. Americans must put a president in the White House come January, 2021, who will understand that public health should not be guided by partisan politics.

[Joe]

Yeahbut OBAMAGATE!

[laklak]

We all gonna die anyway, so quit worrying.