Comments

1

How about you don't post on slog because you are worth a few million yet this paper laid off 20+ people dude

3

It's good to hear from the Leader of the Free World.

4

Imagine how different things would be right now if Hillary Clinton were POTUS. We know for certain the pandemic response organizations and protocols put in place would not have been destroyed and when made aware of the threat in December 2019/January 2020, she would not have shrugged it of and ignored it. Fuck every single motherfucker that voted for Trump.

5

@3, not only is it good to hear from the Leader of the Free World, it's good to hear from Dan Savage. I thought the guy had checked out, other than his advice column.

@4, I have no doubt Hillary's response would have been far better, but I'm sure a Hillary Clinton administration would have had its own exasperating failings. I don't know that the whole testing fiasco (where they put all their eggs in the basket of a test that proved to be inaccurate while tests elsewhere in the world were providing effective) wouldn't have followed the same track in that alternate reality. I just caught Jeh Johnson, Obama's former Homeland Security secretary on cable TV, and he seemed somewhat clueless, I hate to say.

It's the easiest thing in the world for us to focus our energy on Trump as the nexus of everything going wrong, and sure, he's been doing a horrible job in all this. But there are so many things we could have been doing better regardless of Trump two weeks ago or two months ago, or even back to a time when reasonable people controlled our federal government. I think we need to be keeping an open mind to what we should be doing better now, and going forward, regardless of Trump, so that six months from now we're not kicking ourselves.

6

@4, although on the other hand the conservative half of the country's compliance with social distancing, etc has been lukewarm as is, I can't freakin' imagine how bad it would have been if it were an Obama or Hillary Clinton CDC telling them to do it instead of a Trump one. Ditto if a Democratic president were trying to push through congress the sorts of astronomically expensive big government stuff that's going to have to happen.

7

Thank you Dan, and Danke, German Chancellor Angele Merkel, for telling it like it is. Bless you.

@3 Will in Seattle and @4 xina: Agreed and seconded. It is a true crime that the U.S. has no president since January 20, 2017.

8

https://youtu.be/xuZA6qiJVfU

9

@5 The entire reason Trump and co. refused the WHO test and are saying (lying) that it is unreliable is that the WHO does not provide those tests to first world countries like the United States, it requires them to purchase them. Trump and co. refused. Trump and co. want to make sure that corporations here (preferably ones they have a stake in) make the tests. They're also trying to patent the tests in their name so they can profit. They also tried to extort German scientists into giving them the vaccine so they could own that, too. There is no bottom to their corruption and everything they do is about making money, as much money as they can, before they are forcibly removed from power.

@6 you miss the point entirely. We wouldn't be shutting down our society and facing what we are facing if the problem had been addressed in December 2019 instead if NOW (as in TOO LATE). And stupid people are stupid no matter who is telling them what to do. The cons who are refusing to do it because they think they're owning the libs - they are science deniers and dumber than dirt and by the time they give a shit they will have killed their own (and more importantly, killed others, innocents, who are not as dumb as they are).

10

OH and PS there does not seem to be any age or political affiliation that is ignoring the directive to isolate, quarantine, and engage in social distancing. The minute you tell a person what to do they automatically want to do the opposite. It seems to be a fatal flaw in the so-called survival instinct humans are supposed to have.

11

xina @9, thanks for filling in the extra details I was not aware of. I'd heard that the German tests that had proven effective were being refused here, but I wasn't aware that it was the Trump administration in particular that was refusing them.

Can you share a link to the best story you found exposing this?

12

@11 I looked for links and found a few that addressed the issue (no one link explained it all). It's not as simple as I stated. It's more complex. WHO does not typically provide first world countries with testing as they are able to manufacture their own (though they often use the WHO test as the template or "recipe"). The German test has been recognized as the best, but the U.S. refused it stating it wanted to make it's own and it's test (developed by the CDC) is more complicated than the German test. Trump still had his bobblehead lie when she said the WHO test was not reliable.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/health/coronavirus-tests-who.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/why-coronavirus-testing-us-so-delayed/607954/

https://khn.org/news/biden-falsely-blames-trump-administration-for-rejecting-who-coronavirus-test-kits-that-were-never-offered/

As for Trump trying to purchase the vaccine:

https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-confirms-that-donald-trump-tried-to-buy-firm-working-on-coronavirus-vaccine/

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/trump-tried-poaching-german-coronavirus-vaccine-for-us-only-report-says/

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-germany-covid-19-vaccine-not-for-sale-donald-trump-2020-3

13

I love the waving German flag in the background video to her right.
At least there is one country on Planet Earth where a head of state can speak responsibly to all citizens of that state.
How I wish we had that here - but that will likely not happen in my lifetime!

14

@12, I'll catch up on these. I'm sure the Biden campaign is too. As they should.

One thing I'd also like to learn about is what the heck Italy did wrong. Was there a correct response that Italy failed to take that would have prevented the death toll there?

15

@6, how exactly would we have "addressed" the issue without shutting down society? Are you imaging a situation where somehow a Clinton administration comes up with a vaccine or what? The failure of leadership was that we didn't shut things down earlier. Clinton or virtually any other sane human would have made the decision earlier than Trump, but in a democracy making the decisions and getting people to go along with them are two different things.

16

Meanwhile, the Orange Menace in the White House thinks we should hide unemployment figures. Because fuck transparency, everything's fine.

17

MIT has created a rapid response test. Needs FDA approval and patient testing to see if it works (I think this means they test in on people who tested positive, but I am not clear on that).

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-future-brain/202003/mit-spinout-creates-rapid-covid-19-diagnostic-test

This could be good news! It would be great if MIT also told Donald Trump to go fuck himself when he asks to buy it outright and put his name on it. Maybe they'll name it the Trump Virus Test Kit.

18

Wonderful, humbling stuff. All very sensible, and full of empathy too. Thanks for posting, Dan. As a New Zealander, I am so relieved we have the lovely Jacinda in charge. I feel for the British and the Americans right now, being stuck with such poor leaders.

19

Gods, how refreshing.

20

@4: Or if Mitt had won in 2012.

21

@14. This may provide some insight about the Italian response:

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2005492?query=featured_home

22

It is better to be accused of being overprepared than actually being underprepared.

23

@14. Also, this is further credible info in a sea of bullshit.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30627-9/fulltext

24

Is anyone else uncomfortable about the need for German unity during WWII?

25

Merkel has been the leader of the Free World since about February 2017.

26

@24 Yes, that gave me pause. It would've been different if she'd said the aftermath of the second world war, but yeah...

27

@ 24 & 26 - I noticed that. I wonder if it was a bit of an error, and was supposed to be the aftermath of the Second World War? That bit of her delivery seemed slightly rushed, unlike the rest of the speech. Merkle is certainly no apologist for the Nazis, and has talked about how Germany must acknowledge their war crimes.

28

Actually the subtitles seem to be at fault. She just said Germany has never faced such a challenge since the country was re-united (post fall of the berlin WALL IN 1989), or even since WWII.

29

@1: Fuck off please.

30

@1 the stranger's layoffs point to the need for a US-wide federal government money-to-laid-off-workers and to small-businesses plan so the businesses can pay their rent, workers can eat, landlords can make their mortgage payments... Even crazy-Boris UK is talking about paying all laid off people directly 80% of their salary, then we tax the 0.01% and 0.0001% to pay for it all. Turning on the 1% like Dan isn't the solution, there isn't enough wealth there to take care of everyone. The top 1,000 families have grabbed 50% of the wealth - the only way to cross the economic abyss is radical change back to a 1950s style distribution of wealth and income. A reason we are so unprepared in the US right now is our economy and government have become structured like a banana republic, a few oligarchs taking 50% and then whining 40% don't pay any tax at all (well duh, half the population has no assets and lives paycheck to paycheck).

31

@30 myself "40% lives paycheck to paycheck" --> 40% lived paycheck to paycheck, now they've been laid off.

4 decades of phenomenal economic growth going mostly to 1,000 families -- and a gutting of public services, some crumbs for the 1%, flat for the middle, and impoverishment for the poor. and americans keep voting for more of the same. sigh.


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