IDBillzFan Posted April 5, 2020 Posted April 5, 2020 3 minutes ago, Chef Jim said: Potatoes?!?! Talk about “coals to Newcastle”. ? Yes and no. I know I'm in Idaho, but it's not like potatoes are growing on the side of the road. You still have to go to the store, farm or market to get them. The idea is to be able to eat our as much as we can from our own property. They're really easy to grow, so it just makes sense to add it to everything else we're growing. 10 minutes ago, Chef Jim said: I’m a big peppers guy. The hotter the better. They grow like crazy here. I wish I could eat spicy, but I'm just not built for it. Two lessons I learned the hard way in college: don't chug a half bottle of Jack to impress a chick, and ask before you sneak one of your friend's wings.
daz28 Posted April 5, 2020 Posted April 5, 2020 1 minute ago, Doc said: Because coups always work... Even if it was properly executed, it would still leave them with Mike Pence who they feel is the second least qualified person for the job. There is absolutely no logic to any of it. 1
GG Posted April 5, 2020 Posted April 5, 2020 3 minutes ago, Chef Jim said: 150 diagnosed cases. I bet the biggest reason for the spike in diagnosed cases is due to testing. I imagine a ***** ton more had the virus back then but due to lack of testing it wasn’t reported. But people weren't symptomatic either and few hospitalizations. It took 10 days to go from overhyped to oh-*****.
Chef Jim Posted April 5, 2020 Posted April 5, 2020 5 minutes ago, IDBillzFan said: Yes and no. I know I'm in Idaho, but it's not like potatoes are growing on the side of the road. You still have to go to the store, farm or market to get them. The idea is to be able to eat our as much as we can from our own property. They're really easy to grow, so it just makes sense to add it to everything else we're growing. I wish I could eat spicy, but I'm just not built for it. Two lessons I learned the hard way in college: don't chug a half bottle of Jack to impress a chick, and ask before you sneak one of your friend's wings. I eat Serrano peppers like carrot sticks. It’s the endorphins. Burn baby burn but when it subsides you just need more.
Boatdrinks Posted April 5, 2020 Posted April 5, 2020 33 minutes ago, Tiberius said: Gees.. Woman assaulted in anti-Asian hate crime in New York, police say A 51-year-old Asian woman was assaulted on a New York City bus last week in an apparent hate crime, representing one of the growing number of attacks nationwide targeting people of Asian descent because of bias and scapegoating over the novel coronavirus, which originated in China. The woman, who was not identified, was hospitalized and received stitches after four teenage girls allegedly attacked her on a Bronx bus on March 28, hitting her on the head with an umbrella and making anti-Asian comments before exiting the bus and fleeing, according to CBS New York. Police apprehended three 15-year-old girls shortly after the incident on hate crime assault, menacing and harassment charges. The NYPD Crime Stoppers issued an alert early Sunday seeking tips on the fourth suspect, accused of striking the woman with the umbrella. The NYPD said it has seen a “surge” in attacks on Asians and Asian Americans lately, with nearly a dozen reported attacks since March 10. Big deal, these are isolated incidents. . There’s been a general crime surge in NYC since the misguided bail reform went through. The first quarter numbers are in and compared to the same quarter last year show burglary and robbery up 20+% and car thefts are up a mind boggling 61%. That’s with a few weeks of March lockdown baked in . Incredible and there would be a massive public outcry if not for the corona crisis. 2
Unforgiven Posted April 5, 2020 Posted April 5, 2020 People must be running out of their meds...or mixing them with alcohol... I'm astonished how 5-6 posters here are trying to overwhelm this board with their intense hatred of the US, the President, and the American people. 4
Chef Jim Posted April 5, 2020 Posted April 5, 2020 Just now, Unforgiven said: People must be running out of their meds...or mixing them with alcohol... I'm astonished how 5-6 posters here are trying to overwhelm this board with their intense hatred of the US, the President, and the American people. You new here? ? 9
Kevbeau Posted April 5, 2020 Posted April 5, 2020 2 hours ago, Taro T said: Have always had excellent luck w/ potatoes and never any w/ corn. Not sure of the soil pH or nutrient levels (the garden is decent sized for a home garden (1,200 sq ft) but working it is a hobby so don't go too crazy on it) but have the rest of that. Corn is one of only 2 crops I've tried that haven't been successful with. Was always told by corn farmers that it was because the plots were too small. And not too concerned about the soil conditions as we literally have corn field within a block of us in all 4 directions and pretty much any other crop does well in our little garden. If you're able to grow corn successfully on a 8' xv6' plot, then congrats. That is quite impressive. My experience with corn is that it also needs a ton of water. Obviously depending on rainfall can/won’t be an issue.
daz28 Posted April 5, 2020 Posted April 5, 2020 2 minutes ago, Unforgiven said: People must be running out of their meds...or mixing them with alcohol... I'm astonished how 5-6 posters here are trying to overwhelm this board with their intense hatred of the US, the President, and the American people. If that's how you feel, you're going to love it here. Usually it's just Tiberius getting wrecked by like 12 people. I'm just bored, and basically trying to make some light comedy
3rdnlng Posted April 5, 2020 Posted April 5, 2020 10 minutes ago, Boatdrinks said: Big deal, these are isolated incidents. . There’s been a general crime surge in NYC since the misguided bail reform went through. The first quarter numbers are in and compared to the same quarter last year show burglary and robbery up 20+% and car thefts are up a mind boggling 61%. That’s with a few weeks of March lockdown baked in . Incredible and there would be a massive public outcry if not for the corona crisis. BREAKING NEWS: 4th assailant found: 2 minutes ago, daz28 said: If that's how you feel, you're going to love it here. Usually it's just Tiberius getting wrecked by like 12 people. I'm just bored, and basically trying to make some light comedy Are you here to align yourself with Tiberius or just be one of his minions? 1 1
Kevbeau Posted April 5, 2020 Posted April 5, 2020 (edited) 3 hours ago, B-Man said: . So my team builds analytic models. Primarily what we’re doing now is to determine short/long term impact to our business via shifts in buying behavior, lack of access, economic tightening, etc... we are making A LOT of assumptions based in the most educated way possible, using similar (maybe) instances in the past. We are providing best/worst/most probable scenarios to our Company leadership because the error range is enormous. The virus models are no different. I think B-Man had a quote in one of his posts “All models are wrong, some are useful” (George Box I believe) which is so true. Edited April 5, 2020 by Kevbeau 1 2
Taro T Posted April 5, 2020 Posted April 5, 2020 7 minutes ago, Kevbeau said: My experience with corn is that it also needs a ton of water. Obviously depending on rainfall can/won’t be an issue. Yes, it does. Watering (lack of or over) were not the issue.
transplantbillsfan Posted April 5, 2020 Posted April 5, 2020 34 minutes ago, billsfan1959 said: I Already did. Numerous times in this thread. This is starting to feel like Groundhog Day; however, I will pose to you the questions I posed to others like you. Below is a timeline. 1. At which point in January and February (most of that 70 day timeframe) should the administration and other leaders around the world have reasonably known the magnitude of what was coming worlwide? 2. What specific information are you basing your answer on? If you want to have an honest dialogue, then, please, answer the questions in your own words and be specific. TIMELINE - On December 31, China alerted the WHO to several cases of unusual pneumonia in Wuhan- On January 7, the WHO reported that China had identified a new virus, named 2019-nCoV, and that it was identified as belonging to the coronavirus family, which includes SARS and the common cold.- On Jan 11, China announced its first death from the virus released the genetic sequence. However, it was also accompanied with the information that they had only experienced 41 cases and that there was no obvious evidence of human-to-human spread yet. - By Jan 17, China had reported only 2 deaths and only two cases had been identified outside of China- On Jan 20, First US case is reported- On Jan 20, Trump forms coronavirus task force- On January 23, The WHO reported that the outbreak did not yet constitute a public emergency of international concern and there was "no evidence" of the virus spreading between humans outside of China.- On January 30, the WHO declared the virus a global emergency and reported the death toll in China at 170, with 7,711 cases.- On Jan 31, President Trump bans foreign nationals from entering the US if they were in China within the prior two weeks.- By Feb 3, new cases had been confirmed in at least 7 countries, including the US; however, there had been only 1 death reported outside of China. That was in the Phillipines and it was a man from Wuhan.- By Feb 6, only 30 people in Europe had been identified with the virus and all had ties to China. This is also the date of the first identified human to human transmission of the virus in Malasia.- On Feb 12, cases start to spike in South Korea- Through the end of Feb, there had been 88,000 confirmed cases - but only 8000 confirmed cases outside of China. There were 2977 deaths - but only 142 outside of China- Between Mar 1 - Mar 10 approx 35,000 new cases identified outside of China, and 1,319 deaths world-wide outside of China- On Mar 11, the WHO officiallly declares a pandemic- On Mar 11, President Trump bans all travel from 26 European countries for non-US citizens and non-green card holders- By Mar 11, There were 32,000 confirmed cases and 1,400 deaths, world-wide, outside of China and South Korea - with both China and Korea reporting stabilazation of the virus.- On Mar 13, Trump declares a US national emergency with 2,183 confirmed cases and 48 deaths More Red Herrings So irritating. You made a claim that the article was bull####, so I asked you to prove it. Your timeline does not disprove what's in the article. So again, you made that statement, the onus is on you to prove the article itself is bull####, please do. Here, I will pull out most of the major points for you to read since I'm sure you didn't: Which points are incorrect and do you have proof? https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2020/04/04/coronavirus-government-dysfunction/ The most consequential failure involved a breakdown in efforts to develop a diagnostic test that could be mass produced and distributed across the United States, enabling agencies to map early outbreaks of the disease, and impose quarantine measures to contain them. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2020/04/04/coronavirus-government-dysfunction/ Protracted arguments between the White House and public health agencies over funding, combined with a meager existing stockpile of emergency supplies, left vast stretches of the country’s health-care system without protective gear until the outbreak had become a pandemic. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2020/04/04/coronavirus-government-dysfunction/ ... The poll showed that far more Republicans than Democrats were being influenced by Trump’s dismissive depictions of the virus and the comparably scornful coverage on Fox News and other conservative networks. As a result, Republicans were in distressingly large numbers refusing to change travel plans, follow “social distancing” guidelines, stock up on supplies or otherwise take the coronavirus threat seriously. ... By mid-January, Robert Kadlec, an Air Force officer and physician who serves as assistant secretary for preparedness and response at HHS, had instructed subordinates to draw up contingency plans for enforcing the Defense Production Act, a measure that enables the government to compel private companies to produce equipment or devices critical to the country’s security. Aides were bitterly divided over whether to implement the act, and nothing happened for many weeks. On Jan. 14, Kadlec scribbled a single word in a notebook he carries: “Coronavirus!!!” Despite the flurry of activity at lower levels of his administration, Trump was not substantially briefed by health officials about the coronavirus until Jan.18, when, while spending the weekend at Mar-a-Lago, he took a call from Azar. Even before the heath secretary could get a word in about the virus, Trump cut him off and began criticizing Azar for his handling of an aborted federal ban on vaping products, a matter that vexed the president. ... But the secretary, who had a strained relationship with Trump and many others in the administration, assured the president that those responsible were working on and monitoring the issue. Azar told several associates that the president believed he was “alarmist” and Azar struggled to get Trump’s attention to focus on the issue, even asking one confidant for advice. ... In other ways, though, the situation was already spinning out of control, with multiplying cases in Seattle, intransigence by the Chinese, mounting questions from the public, and nothing in place to stop infected travelers from arriving from abroad. Trump was out of the country for this critical stretch, taking part in the annual global economic forum in Davos, Switzerland. ... On Jan. 22, Trump received his first question about the coronavirus in an interview on CNBC while in Davos. Asked whether he was worried about a potential pandemic, Trump said, “No. Not at all. And we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. . . . It’s going to be just fine.” ... The group, which included Azar, Pottinger and Fauci, as well as nine others across the administration, formed the core of what would become the administration’s coronavirus task force. But it primarily focused on efforts to keep infected people in China from traveling to the United States even while evacuating thousands of U.S. citizens. The meetings did not seriously focus on testing or supplies, which have since become the administration’s most challenging problems. The task force was formally announced on Jan. 29. “The genesis of this group was around border control and repatriation,” said a senior official involved in the meetings. “It wasn’t a comprehensive, whole-of-government group to run everything.” ... On Jan. 29, Mulvaney chaired a meeting in the White House Situation Room in which officials debated moving travel restrictions to “Level 4,” meaning a “do not travel” advisory from the State Department. Then, the next day, China took the draconian step of locking down the entire Hubei province, which encompasses Wuhan. That move by Beijing finally prompted a commensurate action by the Trump administration. On Jan. 31, Azar announced restrictions barring any non-U.S. citizen who had been in China during the preceding two weeks from entering the United States. ... But by that point, 300,000 people had come into the United States from China over the previous month. There were only 7,818 confirmed cases around the world at the end of January, according to figures released by the World Health Organization — but it is now clear that the virus was spreading uncontrollably. Pottinger was by then pushing for another travel ban, this time restricting the flow of travelers from Italy and other nations in the European Union that were rapidly emerging as major new nodes of the outbreak. Pottinger’s proposal was endorsed by key health-care officials, including Fauci, who argued that it was critical to close off any path the virus might take into the country. This time, the plan met with resistance from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and others who worried about the impact on the U.S. economy. It was an early sign of tension in an area that would split the administration, pitting those who prioritized public health against those determined to avoid any disruption in an election year to the run of expansion and employment growth. Those backing the economy prevailed with the president. And it was more than a month before the administration issued a belated and confusing ban on flights into the United States from Europe. Hundreds of thousands of people crossed the Atlantic during that interval. ... A national stockpile of N95 protective masks, gowns, gloves and other supplies was already woefully inadequate after years of underfunding. ... Azar then spoke to Russell Vought, the acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, during Trump’s State of the Union speech on Feb. 4. Vought seemed amenable, and told Azar to submit a proposal. Azar did so the next day, drafting a supplemental request for more than $4 billion, a sum that OMB officials and others at the White House greeted as an outrage. Azar arrived at the White House that day for a tense meeting in the Situation Room that erupted in a shouting match, according to three people familiar with the incident. A deputy in the budget office accused Azar of preemptively lobbying Congress for a gigantic sum that White House officials had no interest in granting. Azar bristled at the criticism and defended the need for an emergency infusion. But his standing with White House officials, already shaky before the coronavirus crisis began, was damaged further. White House officials relented to a degree weeks later as the feared coronavirus surge in the United States began to materialize. The OMB team whittled Azar’s demands down to $2.5 billion, money that would be available only in the current fiscal year. Congress ignored that figure, approving an $8 billion supplemental bill that Trump signed into law March 6. But again, delays proved costly. The disputes meant that the United States missed a narrow window to stockpile ventilators, masks and other protective gear before the administration was bidding against many other desperate nations, and state officials fed up with federal failures began scouring for supplies themselves. In late March, the administration ordered 10,000 ventilators — far short of what public health officials and governors said was needed. And many will not arrive until the summer or fall, when models expect the pandemic to be receding. “It’s actually kind of a joke,” said one administration official involved in deliberations about the belated purchase. ... Although viruses travel unseen, public health officials have developed elaborate ways of mapping and tracking their movements. Stemming an outbreak or slowing a pandemic in many ways comes down to the ability to quickly divide the population into those who are infected and those who are not. Doing so, however, hinges on having an accurate test to diagnose patients and deploy it rapidly to labs across the country. The time it took to accomplish that in the United States may have been more costly to American efforts than any other failing. ... Among the costliest errors was a misplaced assessment by top health officials that the outbreak would probably be limited in scale inside the United States — as had been the case with every other infection for decades — and that the CDC could be trusted on its own to develop a coronavirus diagnostic test. ... the CDC was not built to mass-produce tests. ... The effort collapsed when the CDC failed its basic assignment to create a working test and the task force rejected Azar’s plan. On Feb. 6, when the World Health Organization reported that it was shipping 250,000 test kits to labs around the world, the CDC began distributing 90 kits to a smattering of state-run health labs. Almost immediately, the state facilities encountered problems. The results were inconclusive in trial runs at more than half the labs, meaning they couldn’t be relied upon to diagnose actual patients. The CDC issued a stopgap measure, instructing labs to send tests to its headquarters in Atlanta, a practice that would delay results for days. The scarcity of effective tests led officials to impose constraints on when and how to use them, and delayed surveillance testing. Initial guidelines were so restrictive that states were discouraged from testing patients exhibiting symptoms unless they had traveled to China and come into contact with a confirmed case, when the pathogen had by that point almost certainly spread more broadly into the general population. The limits left top officials largely blind to the true dimensions of the outbreak. In a meeting in the Situation Room in mid-February, Fauci and Redfield told White House officials that there was no evidence yet of worrisome person-to-person transmission in the United States. In hindsight, it appears almost certain that the virus was taking hold in communities at that point. But even the country’s top experts had little meaningful data about the domestic dimensions of the threat. Fauci later conceded that as they learned more their views changed. ... On Feb. 10, he held a political rally in New Hampshire attended by thousands where he declared that “by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.” The New Hampshire rally was one of eight that Trump held after he had been told by Azar about the coronavirus, a period when he also went to his golf courses six times. A day earlier, on Feb. 9, a group of governors in town for a black-tie gala at the White House secured a private meeting with Fauci and Redfield. The briefing rattled many of the governors, bearing little resemblance to the words of the president. “The doctors and the scientists, they were telling us then exactly what they are saying now,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said. ... Later in February, U.S. officials discovered indications that the CDC laboratory was failing to meet basic quality-control standards. On a Feb. 27 conference call with a range of health officials, a senior FDA official lashed out at the CDC for its repeated lapses. Jeffrey Shuren, the FDA’s director for devices and radiological health, told the CDC that if it were subjected to the same scrutiny as a privately run lab, “I would shut you down.” ... One week later, on March 6, Trump toured the facilities at the CDC wearing a red “Keep America Great” hat. He boasted that the CDC tests were nearly perfect and that “anybody who wants a test will get a test,” a promise that nearly a month later remains unmet. ... For weeks, he had barely uttered a word about the crisis that didn’t downplay its severity or propagate demonstrably false information. He dismissed the warnings of intelligence officials and top public health officials in his administration. At times, he voiced far more authentic concern about the trajectory of the stock market than the spread of the virus in the United States, railing at the chairman of the Federal Reserve and others with an intensity that he never seemed to exhibit about the possible human toll of the outbreak. In March, as state after state imposed sweeping new restrictions on their citizens’ daily lives to protect them — triggering severe shudders in the economy — Trump second-guessed the lockdowns. The common flu kills tens of thousands each year and “nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on,” he tweeted March 9. A day later, he pledged that the virus would “go away. Just stay calm.” Two days later, Trump finally ordered the halt to incoming travel from Europe that his deputy national security adviser had been advocating for weeks. But Trump botched the Oval Office announcement so badly that White House officials spent days trying to correct erroneous statements that triggered a stampede by U.S. citizens overseas to get home. “There was some coming to grips with the problem and the true nature of it — the 13th of March is when I saw him really turn the corner. It took a while to realize you’re at war,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said. “That’s when he took decisive action that set in motion some real payoffs.” ... The Kushner initiatives have, however, often interrupted the work of those under immense pressure to manage the U.S. response. Current and former officials said that Kadlec, Fauci, Redfield and others have repeatedly had to divert their attentions from core operations to contend with ill-conceived requests from the White House they don’t believe they can ignore. And Azar, who once ran the response, has since been sidelined, with his agency disempowered in decision-making and his performance pilloried by a range of White House officials, including Kushner. “Right now Fauci is trying to roll out the most ambitious clinical trial ever implemented” to hasten the development of a vaccine, said a former senior administration official in frequent touch with former colleagues. And yet, the nation’s top health officials “are getting calls from the White House or Jared’s team asking, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to do this with Oracle?’ ” If the coronavirus has exposed the country’s misplaced confidence in its ability to handle a crisis, it also has cast harsh light on the limits of Trump’s approach to the presidency — his disdain for facts, science and experience. 1 1 1
transplantbillsfan Posted April 5, 2020 Posted April 5, 2020 1 hour ago, billsfan1959 said: @transplantbillsfan I gave you a timeline and posed two questions.... You did. Clearly you did it because you were too afraid to actually address the points made in the article and instead hoped your Red Herring of an argument would distract your Trump loving PPP pals enough to make you look like a hero. They love Trump, so of course it worked... because they wanted it to you. Again, back to the question I asked you initially that you are apparently afraid to address point by point: You claimed the article was bull####... prove that the details in the article are bull#### 1
MILFHUNTER#518 Posted April 5, 2020 Posted April 5, 2020 39 minutes ago, daz28 said: You do realize that when a coup occurs, the main idea of the whole thing is to put your person in power after the takeover right?? Maybe Mike Pence was in on it too?? Mike Pence would be a lame duck President at that point, ensuring a Democrat win in November you and I both know that. 1
Nanker Posted April 5, 2020 Posted April 5, 2020 2 hours ago, Buffalo Bills Fan said: Thanks Buffalo_Gal and everyone. Glad you're uncle is alright. Just not sure if lyme. Heard she is on a ventilator. Getting different things from everyone. Heard affected the heart. unconscious. I think i'll wait for sure right thing on doctor says (professional). Trying to tell my mother sometimes there is no symptoms. Sometimes it is one or two with covid-19 symptoms. As well said symptoms are all over the place incubation sometimes 14 days (she thinks 14 days) but mostly 1-7 days. Unsure how long for Buffalo Covid-19 test kits? If it is the 24 hour one or the short one? Too many question's to be answered. 7 hours ago, Buffalo_Gal said: I hope she recovers quickly and completely. My uncle had to have the Lyme treatment last year. He's over 65. He's fine now. (anecdotal, but the treatment works) I should have posted this earlier. Totally anecdotal but here’s my story. I was bitten by a deer tick a little over two years ago and just after returning from China. Oddly enough, Wuhan was the city we visited after landing in Shanghai. I had the bullseye rash, swelling, and pain. The tick was still in me and I went to emergent care here on The Cape. The Doc pulled the rest of it out (I got most of it out) but the head was still burrowed deep. Bottom line - we “Sent a tick to college” which is a program here that lets you send your biting bug to a lab for analysis of several diseases -Lyme being the main one -BUT not the ONLY one. My results came back positive for Lyme and another nasty little f ***** r. The Doc had already given me a script for Doxycycline and I was on it for a few weeks. Doxy rips up your stomach, but you have to take the full regimen because Lyme is line syphilis- if you don’t knock it out, it can leave bugs in your blood that will turn your brain into sauerkraut in about 30 years. BG, I’m older than your uncle. I’m a symptomatic (for Lyme) lots of other symptoms, but that out of scope right now. But the key to controlling the disease is getting treatment ASAP and sticking with the regimen. Let me introduce you to Larry The Tick Guy I’ve met and talked with him several times (before and after the bite). If you want to know more about these little nasty bastages, he’s a great source. Hope the OP’s relative is doing well. That said, getting out on a respirator so quickly doesn’t sound like Lyme disease. Hope it’s overreaction by the MDs. 3
MILFHUNTER#518 Posted April 5, 2020 Posted April 5, 2020 7 minutes ago, transplantbillsfan said: More Red Herrings So irritating. You made a claim that the article was bull####, so I asked you to prove it. Your timeline does not disprove what's in the article. So again, you made that statement, the onus is on you to prove the article itself is bull####, please do. Here, I will pull out most of the major points for you to read since I'm sure you didn't: Which points are incorrect and do you have proof? https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2020/04/04/coronavirus-government-dysfunction/ The most consequential failure involved a breakdown in efforts to develop a diagnostic test that could be mass produced and distributed across the United States, enabling agencies to map early outbreaks of the disease, and impose quarantine measures to contain them. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2020/04/04/coronavirus-government-dysfunction/ Protracted arguments between the White House and public health agencies over funding, combined with a meager existing stockpile of emergency supplies, left vast stretches of the country’s health-care system without protective gear until the outbreak had become a pandemic. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2020/04/04/coronavirus-government-dysfunction/ ... The poll showed that far more Republicans than Democrats were being influenced by Trump’s dismissive depictions of the virus and the comparably scornful coverage on Fox News and other conservative networks. As a result, Republicans were in distressingly large numbers refusing to change travel plans, follow “social distancing” guidelines, stock up on supplies or otherwise take the coronavirus threat seriously. ... By mid-January, Robert Kadlec, an Air Force officer and physician who serves as assistant secretary for preparedness and response at HHS, had instructed subordinates to draw up contingency plans for enforcing the Defense Production Act, a measure that enables the government to compel private companies to produce equipment or devices critical to the country’s security. Aides were bitterly divided over whether to implement the act, and nothing happened for many weeks. On Jan. 14, Kadlec scribbled a single word in a notebook he carries: “Coronavirus!!!” Despite the flurry of activity at lower levels of his administration, Trump was not substantially briefed by health officials about the coronavirus until Jan.18, when, while spending the weekend at Mar-a-Lago, he took a call from Azar. Even before the heath secretary could get a word in about the virus, Trump cut him off and began criticizing Azar for his handling of an aborted federal ban on vaping products, a matter that vexed the president. ... But the secretary, who had a strained relationship with Trump and many others in the administration, assured the president that those responsible were working on and monitoring the issue. Azar told several associates that the president believed he was “alarmist” and Azar struggled to get Trump’s attention to focus on the issue, even asking one confidant for advice. ... In other ways, though, the situation was already spinning out of control, with multiplying cases in Seattle, intransigence by the Chinese, mounting questions from the public, and nothing in place to stop infected travelers from arriving from abroad. Trump was out of the country for this critical stretch, taking part in the annual global economic forum in Davos, Switzerland. ... On Jan. 22, Trump received his first question about the coronavirus in an interview on CNBC while in Davos. Asked whether he was worried about a potential pandemic, Trump said, “No. Not at all. And we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. . . . It’s going to be just fine.” ... The group, which included Azar, Pottinger and Fauci, as well as nine others across the administration, formed the core of what would become the administration’s coronavirus task force. But it primarily focused on efforts to keep infected people in China from traveling to the United States even while evacuating thousands of U.S. citizens. The meetings did not seriously focus on testing or supplies, which have since become the administration’s most challenging problems. The task force was formally announced on Jan. 29. “The genesis of this group was around border control and repatriation,” said a senior official involved in the meetings. “It wasn’t a comprehensive, whole-of-government group to run everything.” ... On Jan. 29, Mulvaney chaired a meeting in the White House Situation Room in which officials debated moving travel restrictions to “Level 4,” meaning a “do not travel” advisory from the State Department. Then, the next day, China took the draconian step of locking down the entire Hubei province, which encompasses Wuhan. That move by Beijing finally prompted a commensurate action by the Trump administration. On Jan. 31, Azar announced restrictions barring any non-U.S. citizen who had been in China during the preceding two weeks from entering the United States. ... But by that point, 300,000 people had come into the United States from China over the previous month. There were only 7,818 confirmed cases around the world at the end of January, according to figures released by the World Health Organization — but it is now clear that the virus was spreading uncontrollably. Pottinger was by then pushing for another travel ban, this time restricting the flow of travelers from Italy and other nations in the European Union that were rapidly emerging as major new nodes of the outbreak. Pottinger’s proposal was endorsed by key health-care officials, including Fauci, who argued that it was critical to close off any path the virus might take into the country. This time, the plan met with resistance from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and others who worried about the impact on the U.S. economy. It was an early sign of tension in an area that would split the administration, pitting those who prioritized public health against those determined to avoid any disruption in an election year to the run of expansion and employment growth. Those backing the economy prevailed with the president. And it was more than a month before the administration issued a belated and confusing ban on flights into the United States from Europe. Hundreds of thousands of people crossed the Atlantic during that interval. ... A national stockpile of N95 protective masks, gowns, gloves and other supplies was already woefully inadequate after years of underfunding. ... Azar then spoke to Russell Vought, the acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, during Trump’s State of the Union speech on Feb. 4. Vought seemed amenable, and told Azar to submit a proposal. Azar did so the next day, drafting a supplemental request for more than $4 billion, a sum that OMB officials and others at the White House greeted as an outrage. Azar arrived at the White House that day for a tense meeting in the Situation Room that erupted in a shouting match, according to three people familiar with the incident. A deputy in the budget office accused Azar of preemptively lobbying Congress for a gigantic sum that White House officials had no interest in granting. Azar bristled at the criticism and defended the need for an emergency infusion. But his standing with White House officials, already shaky before the coronavirus crisis began, was damaged further. White House officials relented to a degree weeks later as the feared coronavirus surge in the United States began to materialize. The OMB team whittled Azar’s demands down to $2.5 billion, money that would be available only in the current fiscal year. Congress ignored that figure, approving an $8 billion supplemental bill that Trump signed into law March 6. But again, delays proved costly. The disputes meant that the United States missed a narrow window to stockpile ventilators, masks and other protective gear before the administration was bidding against many other desperate nations, and state officials fed up with federal failures began scouring for supplies themselves. In late March, the administration ordered 10,000 ventilators — far short of what public health officials and governors said was needed. And many will not arrive until the summer or fall, when models expect the pandemic to be receding. “It’s actually kind of a joke,” said one administration official involved in deliberations about the belated purchase. ... Although viruses travel unseen, public health officials have developed elaborate ways of mapping and tracking their movements. Stemming an outbreak or slowing a pandemic in many ways comes down to the ability to quickly divide the population into those who are infected and those who are not. Doing so, however, hinges on having an accurate test to diagnose patients and deploy it rapidly to labs across the country. The time it took to accomplish that in the United States may have been more costly to American efforts than any other failing. ... Among the costliest errors was a misplaced assessment by top health officials that the outbreak would probably be limited in scale inside the United States — as had been the case with every other infection for decades — and that the CDC could be trusted on its own to develop a coronavirus diagnostic test. ... the CDC was not built to mass-produce tests. ... The effort collapsed when the CDC failed its basic assignment to create a working test and the task force rejected Azar’s plan. On Feb. 6, when the World Health Organization reported that it was shipping 250,000 test kits to labs around the world, the CDC began distributing 90 kits to a smattering of state-run health labs. Almost immediately, the state facilities encountered problems. The results were inconclusive in trial runs at more than half the labs, meaning they couldn’t be relied upon to diagnose actual patients. The CDC issued a stopgap measure, instructing labs to send tests to its headquarters in Atlanta, a practice that would delay results for days. The scarcity of effective tests led officials to impose constraints on when and how to use them, and delayed surveillance testing. Initial guidelines were so restrictive that states were discouraged from testing patients exhibiting symptoms unless they had traveled to China and come into contact with a confirmed case, when the pathogen had by that point almost certainly spread more broadly into the general population. The limits left top officials largely blind to the true dimensions of the outbreak. In a meeting in the Situation Room in mid-February, Fauci and Redfield told White House officials that there was no evidence yet of worrisome person-to-person transmission in the United States. In hindsight, it appears almost certain that the virus was taking hold in communities at that point. But even the country’s top experts had little meaningful data about the domestic dimensions of the threat. Fauci later conceded that as they learned more their views changed. ... On Feb. 10, he held a political rally in New Hampshire attended by thousands where he declared that “by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.” The New Hampshire rally was one of eight that Trump held after he had been told by Azar about the coronavirus, a period when he also went to his golf courses six times. A day earlier, on Feb. 9, a group of governors in town for a black-tie gala at the White House secured a private meeting with Fauci and Redfield. The briefing rattled many of the governors, bearing little resemblance to the words of the president. “The doctors and the scientists, they were telling us then exactly what they are saying now,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said. ... Later in February, U.S. officials discovered indications that the CDC laboratory was failing to meet basic quality-control standards. On a Feb. 27 conference call with a range of health officials, a senior FDA official lashed out at the CDC for its repeated lapses. Jeffrey Shuren, the FDA’s director for devices and radiological health, told the CDC that if it were subjected to the same scrutiny as a privately run lab, “I would shut you down.” ... One week later, on March 6, Trump toured the facilities at the CDC wearing a red “Keep America Great” hat. He boasted that the CDC tests were nearly perfect and that “anybody who wants a test will get a test,” a promise that nearly a month later remains unmet. ... For weeks, he had barely uttered a word about the crisis that didn’t downplay its severity or propagate demonstrably false information. He dismissed the warnings of intelligence officials and top public health officials in his administration. At times, he voiced far more authentic concern about the trajectory of the stock market than the spread of the virus in the United States, railing at the chairman of the Federal Reserve and others with an intensity that he never seemed to exhibit about the possible human toll of the outbreak. In March, as state after state imposed sweeping new restrictions on their citizens’ daily lives to protect them — triggering severe shudders in the economy — Trump second-guessed the lockdowns. The common flu kills tens of thousands each year and “nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on,” he tweeted March 9. A day later, he pledged that the virus would “go away. Just stay calm.” Two days later, Trump finally ordered the halt to incoming travel from Europe that his deputy national security adviser had been advocating for weeks. But Trump botched the Oval Office announcement so badly that White House officials spent days trying to correct erroneous statements that triggered a stampede by U.S. citizens overseas to get home. “There was some coming to grips with the problem and the true nature of it — the 13th of March is when I saw him really turn the corner. It took a while to realize you’re at war,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said. “That’s when he took decisive action that set in motion some real payoffs.” ... The Kushner initiatives have, however, often interrupted the work of those under immense pressure to manage the U.S. response. Current and former officials said that Kadlec, Fauci, Redfield and others have repeatedly had to divert their attentions from core operations to contend with ill-conceived requests from the White House they don’t believe they can ignore. And Azar, who once ran the response, has since been sidelined, with his agency disempowered in decision-making and his performance pilloried by a range of White House officials, including Kushner. “Right now Fauci is trying to roll out the most ambitious clinical trial ever implemented” to hasten the development of a vaccine, said a former senior administration official in frequent touch with former colleagues. And yet, the nation’s top health officials “are getting calls from the White House or Jared’s team asking, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to do this with Oracle?’ ” If the coronavirus has exposed the country’s misplaced confidence in its ability to handle a crisis, it also has cast harsh light on the limits of Trump’s approach to the presidency — his disdain for facts, science and experience. Wow, that was a LONG post. 4
daz28 Posted April 5, 2020 Posted April 5, 2020 1 minute ago, MILFHUNTER#518 said: Mike Pence would be a lame duck President at that point, ensuring a Democrat win in November you and I both know that. Yes that is most likely true, but Fox is REALLY good at getting people to hate the Democrat, so it's no guarantee he'd lose. As for you saying earlier you're upset no one went to jail, well if they started putting people in government away, they'd be doing it a LOT, so they kinda give each other a pass. Also, remember in this country the more you steal the less the punishment. 18 minutes ago, 3rdnlng said: BREAKING NEWS: 4th assailant found: Are you here to align yourself with Tiberius or just be one of his minions? I think for myself, and yes I'd shoot granny too if she swung that at me.
Buffalo_Gal Posted April 5, 2020 Posted April 5, 2020 6 minutes ago, Nanker said: I should have posted this earlier. Totally anecdotal but here’s my story. I was bitten by a deer tick a little over two years ago and just after returning from China. Oddly enough, Wuhan was the city we visited after landing in Shanghai. I had the bullseye rash, swelling, and pain. The tick was still in me and I went to emergent care here on The Cape. The Doc pulled the rest of it out (I got most of it out) but the head was still burrowed deep. Bottom line - we “Sent a tick to college” which is a program here that lets you send your biting bug to a lab for analysis of several diseases -Lyme being the main one -BUT not the ONLY one. My results came back positive for Lyme and another nasty little f ***** r. The Doc had already given me a script for Doxycycline and I was on it for a few weeks. Doxy rips up your stomach, but you have to take the full regimen because Lyme is line syphilis- if you don’t knock it out, it can leave bugs in your blood that will turn your brain into sauerkraut in about 30 years. BG, I’m older than your uncle. I’m a symptomatic (for Lyme) lots of other symptoms, but that out of scope right now. But the key to controlling the disease is getting treatment ASAP and sticking with the regimen. Let me introduce you to Larry The Tick Guy I’ve met and talked with him several times (before and after the bite). If you want to know more about these little nasty bastages, he’s a great source. Hope the OP’s relative is doing well. That said, getting out on a respirator so quickly doesn’t sound like Lyme disease. Hope it’s overreaction by the MDs. I hope all turns out well for you, @Nanker It sounds like you have had a rough go of it. 2 1
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