Buffalo_Gal Posted May 7, 2020 Posted May 7, 2020 1 hour ago, Koko78 said: Warsaw Hospital opened for elective surgeries this past Monday. https://www.thedailynewsonline.com/top_story/wcchs-plans-to-resume-elective-surgeries-on-monday/article_0304f278-b332-515b-871d-d0286d343f75.html Yeah, I had that in an earlier post (most counties opened for elective surgery). I am simply wondering why the rest of WNY will not open up on May 15th with most of "upstate" (and maybe they will?) I cannot come up with a reason why they need to be lumped in with Erie county. Heck, I cannot figure out why Erie county will not be opening with the rest of "upstate."
Boatdrinks Posted May 7, 2020 Posted May 7, 2020 26 minutes ago, Buffalo_Gal said: I cannot come up with a reason why they need to be lumped in with Erie county. Heck, I cannot figure out why Erie county will not be opening with the rest of "upstate." Its Poloncarz ; he keeps moving those goalposts. 1 1
B-Man Posted May 8, 2020 Posted May 8, 2020 FIGHT THE POWER: University of Michigan law students devise legal challenge to governor’s stay-at-home order. It’s fairly rare to see law students taking on Democrats’ policies. And this seems quite a fair description of Whitmer’s work in general: “The more we assessed the executive order, the more irrational it looked.” IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: Democratic congressman said opening California beaches was ‘reckless.’ Then he was seen at a private beach. HARD TRUTHS: Rand Paul Has a Frightening Reality Check for States Keeping Their Residents in Lockdown. “We have no money, we have no rainy day account, we have no savings account. The three trillion that we’ve already passed out is imaginary money,” said Paul. “It’s being borrowed, basically, from China. So the irony is we got the virus from China and now we’re going to be more dependent by borrowing more money from China,” continued Paul. “The only thing that recovers our economy is opening the economy,” said Paul. “It’s not a lack of money, it’s a lack of commerce. If you let people have commerce, if you let them trade, if you take them out from forcible home arrest, our economy will recover. But if you keep everybody under home arrest and say you cannot practice your business, you cannot sell your goods, there will continue to be economic calamity.” Let’s get back to work.
B-Man Posted May 8, 2020 Posted May 8, 2020 TIM CARNEY: If you want people to keep being okay with lockdowns, don’t make them feel lied to. Those of us outside of the New York area have done exactly what we were told we had to do. We “flattened the curve,” and now we’re being told that this flattened curve is a sign of our failure and a reason we need to stay in lockdown. Unless you want to demolish all faith in public health authorities, don’t make them into liars by moving the goalposts and declaring that a flattened curve is a sign of failure. It would be even worse to poison this with partisan politics by asserting that the government leaders who totally failed to flatten the curve, and then who spread the virus to the rest of the country, are success stories. It reeks of culture-war politics against Middle America. This chart at Axios seems to make the point that New York state and the Europeans have turned their ship around, while the rest of America hasn’t. . . . The data actually suggest, however, that the rest of the United States has succeeded at the assigned task, while New York has failed. That is, the U.S. minus New York has flattened the curve. Both of those above charts mislead by not adjusting for population. The rest of the U.S. (not every single part, but the country, in aggregate, minus New York) has had a much slower rise. We may or may not have hit a peak. The peak will be later than in New York, Italy, or Spain, precisely because we flattened it. . . . Even if you assume that the rest of the U.S. is really on the rise, it still looks like New York is what happens when you don’t mitigate the spread, and that the rest of the country is a flattened curve. Read the whole thing. And remember that the biggest public health resource is trust. And here. Andrew Cuomo’s Morally Grotesque Rationale for Maintaining COVID-19 Lockdowns. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo continues to show that he cannot be trusted to properly weigh the costs and benefits of COVID-19 lockdowns. While conceding the unavoidable tradeoff between lives and livelihoods, he insists that preventing even one death is worth any amount of economic pain. “The faster we reopen,” Cuomo told reporters this week, “the lower the economic cost, but the higher the human cost, because the more lives lost. That, my friends, is the decision we are really making.” Cuomo misleadingly implies that the economic burden of lockdowns—lost jobs, shuttered businesses, a precipitous drop in spending and output, unemployment at a level not seen since the Great Depression, tens of millions of Americans struggling to pay their bills and feed their children—is not a “human cost.” Who is hurt by this suppression of economic activity? Robots? 1
B-Man Posted May 8, 2020 Posted May 8, 2020 Trump Administration Short Circuits a Power Grab by CDC Bureaucrats Yesterday, the Associated Press reported that the Trump administration was blocking the release of CDC prepared guidelines for states to use in re-opening. The Trump administration shelved a document created by the nation’s top disease investigators with step-by-step advice to local authorities on how and when to reopen restaurants and other public places during the still-raging coronavirus outbreak. The 17-page report by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team, titled “Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework,” was researched and written to help faith leaders, business owners, educators and state and local officials as they begin to reopen. It was supposed to be published last Friday, but agency scientists were told the guidance “would never see the light of day,” according to a CDC official. The official was not authorized to talk to reporters and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity. The AP obtained a copy from a second federal official who was not authorized to release it. The guidance was described in AP stories last week, prior to the White House decision to shelve it. The AP, being a loyal member of the #Resistance, is playing this up as some kind of major scandal. In fact, it is just the opposite. The guidelines are typical CDC bumf that are long on bureaucratic ass-covering and short on practicality. As the CDC does in everything, it adopts a one-size-fits-all policy that is focused on incompetently run places like Michigan and New Jersey and New York and seeks to apply those same policies to places where they are wildly inappropriate. It uses wholly made up ‘gates’ or ‘phases’ it demands states pass through. This is not the role of the CDC. The article goes on to bellyache: Traditionally, it’s been the CDC’s role to give the public and local officials guidance and science-based information during public health crises. During this one, however, the CDC has not had a regular, pandemic-related news briefing in nearly two months. CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield has been a member of the White House coronavirus task force, but largely absent from public appearances. The dearth of real-time, public information from the nation’s experts has struck many current and former government health officials as dangerous. “CDC has always been the public health agency Americans turn to in a time of crisis,” said Dr. Howard Koh, a Harvard professor and former health official in the Obama administration during the H1N1 swine flu pandemic in 2009. “The standard in a crisis is to turn to them for the latest data and latest guidance and the latest press briefing. That has not occurred, and everyone sees that.” This is utter bullsh**. When an entire nation has its economy shuttered, no one wants some pencil neck Ph.D. who has lived his entire life on the government teat telling them what to do. That is why we elect a president and elect governors. Real-time information from actual experts and the policymakers has been constant. If you haven’t heard it, it is because you are too busy trying to dunk on President Trump on Twitter to report it. The real objection is that the White House is controlling the messaging and the policy and relegating the Stage 5 TDS sufferers and Deep Staters at the CDC to irrelevance. These sh**canned guidelines were a direct effort by someone, or some group of people, in the CDC to do an end-run around the administration’s re-opening strategy by strait-jacketing state governments with guidelines that would hinder, if not outright prevent, them from getting people back to work. More at the link: 1 1
Buffalo_Gal Posted May 8, 2020 Posted May 8, 2020 Gov. Tom Wolf To Announce 13 Western Pa. Counties Moving Into Coronavirus ‘Yellow Phase’ Gov. Tom Wolf is set to announce that 13 western Pennsylvania counties, including the heavily populated Pittsburgh metropolitan area, can shed his most restrictive Coronavirus pandemic orders on movement and businesses. The counties to be announced Friday for reopening in a week are Allegheny, Armstrong, Bedford, Blair, Butler, Cambria, Fayette, Fulton, Greene, Indiana, Somerset, Washington and Westmoreland counties. Those comprise nearly 2.7 million residents. </snip> 1 1
Buffalo_Gal Posted May 8, 2020 Posted May 8, 2020 Transition to Greatness group meeting today (they named it this off the cuff) 1 2
B-Man Posted May 8, 2020 Posted May 8, 2020 Today was the day Shelley Luther and other hair salon owners in the great state of Texas were able to get back to work serving their clients. Senator Ted Cruz was among the first to show up at Luther’s salon for a haircut, as Fox News reports: U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz showed his support for recently jailed stylist Shelley Luther by getting a haircut at her now controversial Salon à la Mode. “We’re thrilled to be with you and know the whole State of Texas is standing with you, so thank you for your courage,” Cruz told Luther. Cruz told Luther he hasn’t had a hair cut in about three months, and that his wife Heidi even warned he would “start bringing mullets back,” if he didn’t do something soon. At one point during his visit, Luther started crying, thanking Cruz for his support, “When people reach out with true authenticity, it’s huge,” she said. Luther told CBS 11 News, “It’s a nice gesture. His family actually called my boyfriend and prayed for him for 20 minutes while I was in jail. To me that’s not political… that’s just really nice people reaching out and making sure that our family is okay.” Cruz’s trip to Luther’s salon, and his haircut, was livestreamed by local news outlets: 1
MILFHUNTER#518 Posted May 8, 2020 Posted May 8, 2020 On 5/7/2020 at 11:46 AM, Buffalo_Gal said: Cuomo should be opening some counties soon. He did that to a lesser extent with elective surgeries (all the counties except the ones with major cities could have elective surgeries). This is a good map, although I am not sure about any of the WNY counties (other than Erie) having any type of problem? Maybe lack of hospital beds? On a NYSADA webinar that is discussing this. They have a slide detailing how close ALL regions in NY are to reopening by complying with Sugar Nipple's decree. Not one region is ready. The one area that not a single region can comply with is the contact tracing requirement. They also told us a bit of good news. Sugar Nipples is getting so much heat from county executives about the outlandish requirements that they are hinting that he may allow single counties to reopen. Steve McLoughlin, Rensselaer County Executive said when his county alone meets the requirements, he will just reopen. He was elected, the unelected bureaucrat Sugar Nipples puts in to oversee region wasn't. Onondaga County's Executive earlier this week gave car dealers permission to reopen showrooms in defiance of Sugar Nipple's shutdown order to generate sales tax revenue. Last night, Sugar Nipple's let all car dealers statewide do the same. 3 2
Koko78 Posted May 8, 2020 Posted May 8, 2020 7 minutes ago, MILFHUNTER#518 said: On a NYSADA webinar that is discussing this. They have a slide detailing how close ALL regions in NY are to reopening by complying with Sugar Nipple's decree. Not one region is ready. The one area that not a single region can comply with is the contact tracing requirement. They also told us a bit of good news. Sugar Nipples is getting so much heat from county executives about the outlandish requirements that they are hinting that he may allow single counties to reopen. Steve McLoughlin, Rensselaer County Executive said when his county alone meets the requirements, he will just reopen. He was elected, the unelected bureaucrat Sugar Nipples puts in to oversee region wasn't. Onondaga County's Executive earlier this week gave car dealers permission to reopen showrooms in defiance of Sugar Nipple's shutdown order to generate sales tax revenue. Last night, Sugar Nipple's let all car dealers statewide do the same. Good to see some of the counties are starting to revolt. 3
Boatdrinks Posted May 8, 2020 Posted May 8, 2020 1 hour ago, Koko78 said: Good to see some of the counties are starting to revolt. They should. To meet Lord Cuomo’s requirements, Erie County needs to test 27,500 people a month. That’s the Covid 19 test, not the antibody test - the antibody test isn’t part of Cuomo’s plan. They’re about 300 people a day short of that right now. They also need 280 contact tracers - to be hired by the State I think ,when they decide to get around to it. The county currently has 20 , so they need to hire another 260. These numbers are ridiculous, and the contact tracing is probably not even the right tool to use at this point as the virus is too widespread. At this rate, Erie county will be shut down until some time next year. There is already a 200 million deficit from being shut down a month and a half. 3 1
B-Man Posted May 9, 2020 Posted May 9, 2020 Reopen Society And Shut Down Moral Narcissism. Moral narcissists are helping to make sure America’s COVID-19 lockdown continues in full force, shaming anyone who objects, refuses, questions, or even simply voices concerns or complaints. I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn’t Already is the title of Roger Simon’s fascinating 2016 book on the subject of moral narcissism. Simon described this particular kind of narcissism as a “far more lethal form” that is destroying “our families, friendships, workplace atmosphere, and democratic republic.” That kind of lethality infecting the “cure” for a pandemic could certainly produce an outcome much worse than that of the virus itself. Simon describes the feelings of the moral narcissist this way: What you believe, or claim to believe or say you believe—not what you do or how you act or what the results of your actions may be—defines you as a person and makes you “good.” It is how your life will be judged by others and by yourself… If your intentions are good, if they conform to the general received values of your friends, family, and co-workers, what a person of your class and social milieu is supposed to think, everything is fine. You are that “good” person. You are ratified. You can do anything you wish. It doesn’t matter in the slightest what the results of those ideas and beliefs are, or how society, the country, and in some cases, the world suffers from them. It doesn’t matter that they misfire completely, cause terror attacks, illness, death, riots in the inner city, or national bankruptcy. You will be applauded and approved of. We’re supposed to think that the continued shutdowns over the coronavirus are good. Those who dare to ask about the science and models behind lockdown orders, the increasing collateral damage to our economy, or the difference between dying with or dying of the virus, much less the deaths that are happening because of the shutdown—receive swift judgment from the moral narcissists. Not in the form of factual or intelligent answers, but rather, questions framed to shame: Don’t you care about granny? Do you want more people to die? Is the economy more important to you than people’s lives? For the moral narcissist, Simon quipped, “A trip to Whole Foods in a Tesla became the equivalent of striking a blow against world hunger.” Today, wearing a mask while you shop (and only for “essentials”)—plus making sure everyone else wears one and also stays 6 feet away—has become the equivalent of saving people from dying. These moral narcissists don’t trouble themselves with facts, such as the reality that everyone dies, eventually, or that even before COVID-19 most people who died were elderly, and that most residents who moved into nursing homes were well over the age of average life expectancy and stayed less than six months (and that wasn’t because they checked out and decided to move instead to a condo in Florida). Neither “quarantine the healthy” nor “social distancing” are even remotely considered oxymoronic phrases by the moral narcissists, who also don’t seem to worry about the psychological impacts of it all (especially) on our children and our nation’s social cohesion and psyche. Even though one-size-fits-all versions of anything rarely fit anyone at all, the narcissists still insist on this style of sweeping, draconian strategies to combat the virus. The individuals suffering from lack of proper medical care for other conditions, unemployment, etc., are but specks in the narcissist’s imagined grand picture of the greater good for the collective. If the call to action in the name of public health has revealed the inner dictator in many of our government officials, they’ve found their own army of volunteer enforcers—the moral narcissists not only in the media but in our own neighborhoods. Their shutdown orders may not be constitutional, but by golly, they are moral! If it only saves one life! And if you disagree with that precept, you could go to jail—not for being guilty of what used to be considered an actual crime, but for failing to comply with these do-gooders’ conceptions of morality. More at the link: 3 2 1
shoshin Posted May 9, 2020 Posted May 9, 2020 (edited) 16 hours ago, MILFHUNTER#518 said: On a NYSADA webinar that is discussing this. They have a slide detailing how close ALL regions in NY are to reopening by complying with Sugar Nipple's decree. Not one region is ready. The one area that not a single region can comply with is the contact tracing requirement. That’s a Trump/CDC requirement too. Other states are pretty much ignoring it but it originated from the top and is an important piece to have in place. @B-Man the Roger Simon piece is an interesting social commentary. I didn’t want to quote it al but I just wanted to thank you for sharing it. It is meta to post it in a place like this where the moral lecturers are the dominant breed. Quote Edited May 9, 2020 by shoshin 1
Pine Barrens Mafia Posted May 9, 2020 Posted May 9, 2020 14 minutes ago, shoshin said: That’s a Trump/CDC requirement too. Other states are pretty much ignoring it but it originated from the top and is an important piece to have in place. @B-Man the Roger Simon piece is an interesting social commentary. I didn’t want to quote it al but I just wanted to thank you for sharing it. It is meta to post it in a place like this where the moral lecturers are the dominant breed. I love flipping the bird to virtue signallers and shamers. ***** them and their feelings. 1 1
B-Man Posted May 9, 2020 Posted May 9, 2020 RESISTANCE: Two central Pa. counties say they plan to reopen ahead of Gov. Wolf’s schedule. A small but growing number of county officials are challenging Gov. Tom Wolf’s control of the state’s staged, regional reopening from the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns, with majority commissioners in two midstate counties unilaterally declaring Friday that they will consider their counties in the “yellow” phase of the state’s reopening plan effective May 15. Letters from a group of Lebanon County officials and Dauphin County Commissioner Jeff Haste echoed a similar protest from Beaver County, the only county in western Pennsylvania to be excluded from Wolf’s announced extension of first-phase reopening steps in southwestern Pennsylvania next Friday. In addition, sheriffs in Perry and Cumberland posted Facebook notices stating that they would not be a part of enforcing business shutdown orders. More at the link. 1 2
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