Magox

Maybe. But it’s not that easy with the surveillance state they have and the strict laws to adhere to. I’m not sure what you are suggesting, have the CIA place a plant in one of the Wuhan hospitals after the doctors were silenced by their government? Can we just stop pointing fingers at the opposing political party and just for a second come to a reasonable conclusion that maybe, just maybe China is largely to blame for this.

Partially because of this:

It is relevant but you are right that there are countries on different curves. So those numbers will continue to adjust. In regards to Trump's words, they were not helpful. But there was a major difference between his words and the government's actions. Behind the scenes they were doing things, the China travel ban for some reason is dismissed by a lot of you folks as if it was meaningless. They created this task force in January. If we are going to be reasonable about this, I think it was everyone's hopes that there weren't going to be hardly any community spread infections and if so that the hopes that there would be some successful contact tracing. The reality is that when we first heard about it in Washington, the fact of the matter was that it was already deep in the U.S at that time. That Washington case was just the canary in the coal mine. And if you listen to what Dr. Birx says, she explicitly makes the case that the reason why the U.S response was slow was because: If you take Dr. Birx word at it's face, then I think reasonable people can agree that the U.S's efforts were greatly hampered by the lack of transparency and honesty from China.

This is a pretty cool tool that shows the projections of all of the 50 states, their peak points and estimated death per capita predictions. I think some of their states are off, but I suppose we'll soon find out.

Yes, pretty much. No country was truly prepared for this in the Northern Hemisphere. Germany comes closest and even their rate of deaths and infections per capita is not all that much better than the U.S If we are going to rely on facts and data, then the U.S was one of the best major countries to have coped with the Virus on a per capita basis. You can see that right here. The deaths per Million population is the single best indicator on how a country is coping with the Virus. Also look at the TOTAL TESTS column. On a per capita basis, out of the major countries, the US is certainly faring well. And considering the U.S's size, it pushes that up further. Sorry, but those are the facts and if you believe that they should have had the system in place ready to go after how everything developed, then I just think you are being completely unreasonable about this.

That may be true but a number of countries in Europe had nearly as bad if not worse numbers per capita as Italy. Spain even worse. UK, France Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands didn't fare too much better.

Major medical group endorses hydroxychloroquine They basically make the case that I was making in that there are some promising signs and since we are in a major pandemic scourge, doctors would be wise to consider it.

I don't think you understood what I was saying. I don't believe it should be viewed as a gamble but here we are, the media has basically taken an explicit position against the president on this matter. I think that's stupid and reckless and shows how broken of an institution that they are. Trump understands this and he is gambling that the clinical trials are going to come in saying that it is effective. It's not been proven without doubt that it does work, even though there is strong anecdotal and uncontrolled environment tests that say that it does. I think he is 100% right to try to get this drug out in the supply chains as much as possible to at least try to save as many lives as possible. Trump knowing that the media is making a big deal of this, he is basically doubling, tripling and quadrupling down on it that it will work, knowing that the media will continue to rail against him. He believes it will work, and he believes that from his view, once it works he will be able to claim major victory on several different fronts. What I don't understand is the media's stake in this. It appears to me that there is a decent likelihood that it will be proven to assist patients with the virus. Don't they understand that they will take yet another major hit against their credibility and help boost Trump if turns out that it does help people? They don't know more about the efficacy of it than Trump and his team. It's just a bizarre position that they are staking on. It's bizarre because they very well may turn out to have taken the wrong side of this debate and that on a drug that is proven to be pretty safe, is out there possibly helping many people during the middle of a raging pandemic, it's common sense to have doctors use this drug if they deem it to be safe. The media's hate for Trump, trumps their desire to see him be right about this. It's pathetic.

I kind of view this as a poker game. On one hand you have Trump and the other you have the media. Trump looks at his hand and he thinks he has the winning hand. Whatever he is seeing, he believes he can win with. The media, not really knowing exactly what they have, other than they believe that Trump is full sh*t and lies all the time, believe that whatever Trump believes is wrong. This is truly one of the biggest gambles that Trump is making, and every time he touts Hydroxychloroquine as a possible savior, he keeps upping up the ante, and the media keeps calling him. If Trump ends up being right on this, it vastly improves his chances at winning the November elections because he could then say that: A) I banned China Travel that saved thousands of lives, when Biden and everyone else was against it. B) I promoted Hydroxychloroquine despite all the negative press. And I was right, they were wrong. I saved thousands and thousands of lives. Thank God that doctors listened to me. It will be a powerful fact that he will be able to weaponize against Biden and the media. On the other hand, if he is wrong. The amount of criticism he will get from the press will be almost unbearable. It will be played on loop all the way till the day of the elections. He can recover, but it will hurt. With all that said, this is a sad state of affairs that this is a political matter. It's only political because Trump is promoting it and the media hates him. At a time when there is a pandemic raging throughout the world, prescribing a relatively safe drug that has shown strong anecdotal instances of helping people, I don't see how anyone could be against doctors prescribing a potentially life-saving drug that has minimal health risks on an off-label prescription. This is up to doctors and their relationship with their patients. It's mind boggling, and it truly is yet another example of the corporate establishment media being a broken entity.

Looks like the NY times decided to finally lay a glove on Cuomo and Deblasio. I actually was in New York city from the 16th-18th. The restaurants were still open and there was no stay-at-home order yet that was in place. I don't post this to blame them. No one was truly prepared for this. Not Europe, not W.H.O, not the CDC, not the federal government etc etc. The only ones who truly handled this well that were in the Northern Hemisphere were the Asians and that was because of their history with H1N1. If you are someone who is constantly bashing the Federal government, then I think this article I think pretty much squashes the idea that this was just a "Bad Orange man" issue. With that said, I don't expect the NY times to follow up with this story and that this story will not be played throughout cable news networks, and if they do it will be just a brief mention with very little follow up. If the media was even handed, there would be LOTS to go after Cuomo and DeBlasio with. But of course they won't because the national corporate media is a broken institution.

Like I said, reasonable people can understand the logistical challenges.

There was no system in place for mass testing for this sort of pandemic, Fauci even makes the case after the infamous day that Trump said he didn't take responsibility. The logistics between testing centers, hospitals, medical providers, test kits, distribution, public awareness etc etc wasn't setup for this. Reasonable people can see that that there was nothing setup for such a mass level of testing. Everyone from government to the private sector are working overdrive to increase the level of testing, and to my understanding in the month of May they expect over 20 million tests to be conducted in that month alone.

We have been doing it in our household for about a year now. The company that I work for, my entire team works remotely except one call center in which we have move them all remotely and are considering permanently making that transition. All the trainings, meetings, meeting with vendors etc are all done via Zoom. Thankfully our business is not going to get impacted at all from this, most likely will even benefit not just from a revenue standpoint but even recruiting standpoint. I do think that this Virus will change human behavior along with business practices. Even for the environmentalists, I do think that the demand for gasoline will drop post Covid 19, as more and more people will work out of home.

It will happen. I guarantee it. Specially with these beefed up unemployment benefits

Well, it should be a concern. And we will have to see what plan they come up with. But keep in mind, and i have said this probably like 10 times here already. The Federal government will only provide guidance. Ultimately it will be up to the states to put in their rules based around the guidance but they actually have enforcement mechanisms. Then it's up to the companies if they feel comfortable enough to open up. Then, it will be up to the citizens if they want to show up to work. If the populous doesn't feel somewhat comfortable with it, then you will see a lot of people staying home. But a one-size-fits-all strategy is not prudent. Every state has their own internal dynamics and they will be the ones laying it out more so in detail.

I just provided the numbers. They can say whatever they want to say, the facts are the facts.

Right, but that is assuming we do nothing...Which is not what happened anywhere. Some places may have been late to the game (NY) and I don't blame NY because who could have truly made the decision to shut down the entire city off of just a few community infection cases? But, I thought you were making the argument that if the Virus were to spread more in the U.S that it would end up being like Italy and Spain? With the heightened awareness that there now exists, I would put the odds of the rest of the U.S looking like Italy and Spain's mortality, infection and fatality rate per capita at below 1%.

Of course it's benefiting. But there are many roadblocks that would have most likely prevented that from happening. I don't see that at all, population density being the main reason. You can say that it happened in small towns in Italy and make your case, but that would be for individual communities. US land mass is 35 times greater than Italy. So the odds that there would have been Italian style outbreak throughout the US is highly unlikely. Maybe if they decided to not shut down at all, but even if they would have began shutting down the same time as NY, it most likely wouldn't have even reached NY and NJ's levels. I don't think so GG.

Well if you were to transport Southern African Americans to New York and they were all huddled up together in the city you'd be closer to being right. But that isn't going to happen. And I will go out on a limb to say that won't end up being the case. Maybe you have a certain particular area such as New Orleans where that could happen but that isn't what you said. You said the rest of the country will be like Italy and Spain. Keep in mind, that 900% lesser infection and death rate on a per capita basis was relative to NY and NJ. In order for it to be like Italy and Spain, then the infection and death rate on a per capita basis for the rest of the country to catch up to those European countries woulld have to increase at about 1700% rate. That's not going to happen GG.

Population of the United states is about 327 Million. Population of New York and New Jersey is about 28 million. Population of US without High Infection zone is roughly about 300 Million. 149k infections NY 47 K infections NJ Total infections = 196k Infections for all 50 states is approximately 420k Subtract NY and NJ, the rest of the US has about 224k If you extrapolate the infection rate for NY and NJ and calculate it on a per capita basis, NY and NJ have a X 9 higher ratio....In other words 900% higher infection rate per capita than the rest of the U.S. And if you were to take out the NY metro area, the numbers become much more daunting than that. In regards to fatalities it's even worse. NY has 6200 fatalities NJ has 1500 fatalities Total of 7700 fatalities in NY/NJ area The entire US has 14300 fatalities. Rest of the country has 6600 fatalities There are more fatalities in NY and NJ than there are in the entire rest of the country. Meaning that the mortality rate is significantly lower in the rest of the country than it is in the NY/NJ area. Those are the facts. No denying it https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

That's not the case...By a long shot. I have crunched the numbers

Biden is now crafting out his strategy in how he can get Biden to drop out so that he can wrap up the nomination.

Then we have much bigger problems than anyone could possibly fathom.

He's saying even no to Restaurants over the next 18 months. He can GFH

If that is what Biden is going with then he loses. I have a hard time believing that will be his message.