Comments

1

Riveting Testimony right now @
https://www.nytimes.com/

4

Speaking of Life Jackets
didn't trump barely excape Prison
for selling Defective ones to Children?

6

@2
Why does health care has to be a for profit enterprise? (Hint - Bernie Sanders)

8

@5
Aaaah the good old days of the Metro bus routes 174 and 359 are gone - but don't worry, there are so many other routes to choose from - when you want to ride with your deranged neighbors.
I was almost attacked on the #33 en route to Magnolia! And you thought they were all Seattle yuppies!

9

Trump is really hanging no so he won't face prison for being a co-conspirator in the Michael Cohen case, as the statute of limitations would run out if he is re-elected. The time has come for Barr and Pence to work out a deal for a full pardon for Trump provided he resign and give Pence the presidency and the run against Biden.

11

All of the needless suffering and death experienced in this country due to COVID-19 could have been prevented if we didn't have Donnie Dumb Ass sitting on his gold throne, shitting and tweeting and flushing 20 times a day. The needless suffering and death is a FEATURE, not a bug. Trump and his enablers (all, whoever they are, wherever they may be) WANT people to die. They are literally demanding that people do so.

So what's it going to be? Will you die for Trumpty Dumpty?

I fucking refuse to draw my last breath until that motherfucker is dead.

12

@9: So?

13

@2:

Do you have any idea how a for-profit healthcare system operates? Naw, didn't think so, but here's a little 101 primer: because the U.S. healthcare industry operates in a for-profit market environment providers and facilities are expected to not only meet their operational overhead costs, but to generate a PROFIT for their shareholders. With roughly 80% of their business curtailed due to the current pandemic that's not happening, and so shareholders are demanding either that costs be cut and service reduced while at the same time they're pressuring governing authorities to allow more elective surgeries to take place, which is where they make most of their income/profit..

Now, if hospitals, clinics, and medical care facilities operated in a non-profit environment - which is the case in literally every other major industrialized nation around the globe - profit wouldn't drive the system and it would be a moot point. But, apparently we think it's better to pay a lot for demonstrably lower standards of service and outcomes than those other countries because - well, actually I have no idea why we believe that except CAPITALISM.

Hope that clears things up for you...

14

Not sure what I think about proposed restaurant logs.
I certainly hope that my favorite restaurants will be able to re-open asap, and this does seem like a path forward, but... this seems heavy-handed.
I wonder why they ruled out just having one person being responsible for each party.
A family goes into a restaurant and dad has to give up his kid's email address? That won't work.
I'm maybe misreading this.

16

@Comte -- expecting dialogue
w/trollingtrollytrolleyTroll?

Good. Luck.

17

"The economic crisis is 100% man-made and needless.
the virus is not a threat to society's economic or medical well being."
--@trollingtrollytrolleyTroll

MORE Nonsense?
Ignorance or
Willful blindness?

18

In some parts where there is damned fine coffee, it's the Log Lady that keeps the logs for the reopened cafe.

And those who are in denial of this disease are putting everyone else at risk

21

"Needless Suffering and Death" has been the unofficial motto of the Republican party since at least the age of Reagan. It's what the cretins vote for.

22

Virus Advisers, at Odds With Trump,
Warn Senators Against Hasty Reopening

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/12/us/coronavirus-updates.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

FREE CV-19 Reporting at the New York Times

Remember:
Decent Healthcare
IS National Security

23

@9 A presidential pardon won't protect Trump from New York State prosecutors hot on his trail for financial crimes. He remains vulnerable to prosecution at the state level.

26

@25: "Not even South Korea can contain the virus with it's extensive testing system."

Never mind the bad grammar, this is nice, little bit of disinformation that's untethered from reality. The original outbreak in Korea happened with a massive church gathering. They managed to get that under control. Now there was a carrier exposing people at a nightclub (no idea why they're allowing nightclubs to be open at this stage in their recovery), and you know what, they'll get that under control too.

The Koreans aren't stupid, and what they've learned is, it's always easier to nip these things in the bud. Yeah, it ain't perfect, but near-perfect sure beats all the other alternatives.

Hey Dadddy, feel free to keep your own fount of stupid flowing. I realize it's only hope.

27

Re. @26, if I'm going to ding people for bad grammar, I need to do my own proofreading before clicking Send.

And no, still a firm no on an edit button feature.

29

Oh, and whenever anyone says Korea can't contain the virus, all we have to do is look at the numbers:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-korea/

Their idea of an outbreak was having 35 new cases yesterday and 34 the day before.

And unlike corrupt regimes like China, Russia, and Florida, you know the Koreans aren't lying about their numbers.

30

Dadddy @28: "It's obvious you NEED Sweden to fail or you'll be revealed as a panicked and cowardly idiot."

Dadddy-oh, it's obvious you need Korea to fail. I mean, why else would you be misrepresenting Korea's experience?

I do believe Sweden is conducting an interesting experiment that we can all learn from. And at least Sweden is an open enough society that we can trust their numbers. Just, I'm glad at least our governor here in WA is not interesting in making us the guinea pigs in the same experiment.

37

Sincere question, if anyone (other than the trolls) are interested in responding...

Let's presume that among reasonable folks, it's agreed that some amount of "stay in place" was required to stave off millions of people dying.

Do you think Inslee/Wa got it just about right, or too much, or too little, and don't bother answering that unless you can share how you arrived at that conclusion.

Are there any significant ways in which you think it should have been handled differently?

39

Dadddy @32: "Thank you for making my point - South Korea is having REPEATED outbreaks and lockdowns, even with their sophisticated testing system..."

Again, I don't quite see the need misrepresent events. South Korea had one minor outbreak, out of which they decided--God forbid--to shut down nightclubs indefinitely. Oh, the horror!

If anything, their ability to jump on this one small cluster and get going on snuffing it out with "Minority Report" efficiency is an indication that their approach is working. And I'm sure there's nobody in Korea right now who's going, "Oh dear God, all is lost. It's time we just gave up and let nature take its course."

Over the coming years, we're going to see the public health and economic results of two approaches:
A. Let the virus just wash over us.
B. Nip it in the bud.

I believe what we're going to find is that, in terms of both public health and economic recovery, B is going to prove far more successful.

43

@37 There's no way to know. We have to go back farther. What if Trump had not destroyed the pandemic response team and protocol? What if Trump had not fired the CDC personnel working in China? What if we had a president that put a full stop to COVID-19 the way President Obama put a full stop to Ebola in this country? There are too many what ifs. And the CDC has not helped because they had been gutted in so many ways prior to this happening that their response was half-assed from the get go (for instance telling people they did not have to wear masks). What if the nursing home in WA that was the first hot spot had been shut down over any of the number of years it was solely fined for not following proper protocol for sanitizing and keeping things clean? We could what if ourselves to death.

Now the what ifs are:
What if we keep everything locked down?
What if we don't keep everything locked down?

Because the federal government chose to do nothing and left governor twisting in the wind on how to respond, we're all going to find out the hard way just how much pain and suffering this country is going to have to go through before this is over. It's only just begun.

45

@9 a president Pence could only pardon federal crimes, there are plenty of state charges out there, I'm not sure they are enough for him to die in prison, but at least there may be some real photos of him in an orange jumpsuit.

47

Dadddy @41: "I'd love to hear our plan for doing that." It's all a variation on what Korea, Germany, Norway, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia, and New Zealand have been doing successfully:
* Testing.
* Contact tracing and isolation.
* Travel restrictions.
* Masks.

You do all this well enough, you get the number of cases down low enough that you effectively can trace all of them, and you can start to reopen with confidence. Is it going to be life as we knew it before? Certainly not. But it's not going to be stay-at-home either.

One enormous deadline we have for opening things up with the new quasi-normal is the new school year. Students have to go back to school, even if it's socially distanced school. We pretty much have the summer to get a handle on this, and it all would have gone so much faster if the feds hadn't been dragging their heels on the testing and contact tracing.

Thankfully, it looks like WA, OR, and CA are all thinking along these lines, as limited as state governments are in deploying these levels of resources.

48

facts2supportURpoint @44, totally agreed on Cuomo and De Blasio's disastrous failure. It gobsmackingly galling to me that somehow Andrew Cuomo is supposed to be emerging from this with his reputation burnished. As if being good at giving press conferences is the same as effectively governing. There's a story in The New Yorker I've been meaning to read about how Seattle and WA responded effectively at the beginning (and saved lives) and NY and NY didn't.

Oh, and while we in WA responded well, we could have responded better. That March 7 Sounders game should never have been played. If you want to see who really kicked ass, it's Gavin Newsom in CA (as you say) and SF Mayor London Breed.

50

@16:

Dialog? Not even remotely my expectation because I know they're not interested in that - they just want someone to acknowledge their sad, impotent, completely unexceptional existence.

51

A big fuck you to everyone saying "all those people who would be dying anyway." Every day there are between 1000 and 2000 deaths here in the U.S. Donald Trump should be held accountable for every single one of them.

31-year-old postal worker and mom of 3 dies from COVID-19 one week after giving birth
https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Wellness/31-year-postal-worker-mom-dies-covid-19/story?id=70633771&cid=clicksource_4380645_7_heads_posts_headlines_hed

52

*deaths from COVID-19

56

@43 xina & @46 Sargon, I appreciate your thoughts on this, and generally agree with everything you're saying.

I was looking a little more for what folks would do if they were in Inslee’s shoes (based on the information that’s been publicly reported), but maybe that’s too far out there as a thought experiment.

I think my larger point of thinking about it is that it’s easy to argue to keep things the way they are vs going back to the way it was, but obviously there’s “lines” for everything. Inslee (and of course all the experts that surround him) didn’t just wake up one day with the answers of how much to close things down - they’ve determined the “lines” that we are now living by, and whether you largely agree with them or not, it’s still important to question which side of the line you're on - did we go too far or are we not going far enough with the stay-in-place orders, and why you feel that way.

I don’t have a great answer either, other than I think they’ve got it about right, and I think that because they’ve done about as much as they can do with the reality of the infrastructure that’s in place (e.g. people still need to be able to acquire food & household good, they still need emergency services, they still need to be able to get a plumber to fix their broken toilet, etc.).

58

@profHiz -- most plumbers
moonlight as midwives. I
thought everyone knew...


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