Moar COVID 19 talk.

[Clyde_Style]

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[HarthorneWingo]

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?s=20

[thebuzzardman]

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Trump's condition is worsening contrary to the chest thumping absurdist comedy of MAGA cultists.

A good part of his team is now convalescing and he's on his own with Jared and Ivanka whispering in his ear while the roid rage kicks in.

I'm pretty sure the GOP leadership is going to be leaning on anyone they know who has Trump's ear to get them to call him up to advise him to resign. They want to salvage the down ticket even if they are losing the WH.

But if Trump clings to power, which of these toadies that have never shown a spine now will step up to challenge him? NONE, because they don't want to infuriate the MAGA fanatics

Devils advocate: Was this piece of information put out to put pressure on Trump?

It sounds true enough, just a thought

[thebuzzardman]

WH staff leaking they think Trump's drug cocktail has him totally unhinged. This is dangerous. The man killed relief for the nation today. He's making decisions when he is incapable of making them even more so than his usual compromised self

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?s=20

He's lost his **** tonight more than usual.

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I know that for me, personally, the one or two times I was on prednisone brought back certain teeth knashing club memories. With a hint more aggression mixed in.

[Fat Kat]

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[Clyde_Style]

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I knew they were coming. I was just waiting for the first one. Thanks

[j4remi]

Pretty sure this is the hardest NEJM has ever gone at an administration in 200+ years. This journal is among the most cited scientific journals period (I'm tempted to say it's right at the top but there are a couple of others that always track top 3 or 4 in Journal Citation Rate)...bold for the haymakers, italics for some explanations about how leadership has failed so miserably.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2029812

Covid-19 has created a crisis throughout the world. This crisis has produced a test of leadership. With no good options to combat a novel pathogen, countries were forced to make hard choices about how to respond. Here in the United States, our leaders have failed that test. They have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy.

The magnitude of this failure is astonishing. According to the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering, the United States leads the world in Covid-19 cases and in deaths due to the disease, far exceeding the numbers in much larger countries, such as China. The death rate in this country is more than double that of Canada, exceeds that of Japan, a country with a vulnerable and elderly population, by a factor of almost 50, and even dwarfs the rates in lower-middle-income countries, such as Vietnam, by a factor of almost 2000. Covid-19 is an overwhelming challenge, and many factors contribute to its severity. But the one we can control is how we behave. And in the United States we have consistently behaved poorly.

We know that we could have done better. China, faced with the first outbreak, chose strict quarantine and isolation after an initial delay. These measures were severe but effective, essentially eliminating transmission at the point where the outbreak began and reducing the death rate to a reported 3 per million, as compared with more than 500 per million in the United States. Countries that had far more exchange with China, such as Singapore and South Korea, began intensive testing early, along with aggressive contact tracing and appropriate isolation, and have had relatively small outbreaks. And New Zealand has used these same measures, together with its geographic advantages, to come close to eliminating the disease, something that has allowed that country to limit the time of closure and to largely reopen society to a prepandemic level. In general, not only have many democracies done better than the United States, but they have also outperformed us by orders of magnitude.

Why has the United States handled this pandemic so badly? We have failed at almost every step. We had ample warning, but when the disease first arrived, we were incapable of testing effectively and couldn’t provide even the most basic personal protective equipment to health care workers and the general public. And we continue to be way behind the curve in testing. While the absolute numbers of tests have increased substantially, the more useful metric is the number of tests performed per infected person, a rate that puts us far down the international list, below such places as Kazakhstan, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia, countries that cannot boast the biomedical infrastructure or the manufacturing capacity that we have. Moreover, a lack of emphasis on developing capacity has meant that U.S. test results are often long delayed, rendering the results useless for disease control.

Although we tend to focus on technology, most of the interventions that have large effects are not complicated. The United States instituted quarantine and isolation measures late and inconsistently, often without any effort to enforce them, after the disease had spread substantially in many communities. Our rules on social distancing have in many places been lackadaisical at best, with loosening of restrictions long before adequate disease control had been achieved. And in much of the country, people simply don’t wear masks, largely because our leaders have stated outright that masks are political tools rather than effective infection control measures. The government has appropriately invested heavily in vaccine development, but its rhetoric has politicized the development process and led to growing public distrust.

The United States came into this crisis with enormous advantages. Along with tremendous manufacturing capacity, we have a biomedical research system that is the envy of the world. We have enormous expertise in public health, health policy, and basic biology and have consistently been able to turn that expertise into new therapies and preventive measures. And much of that national expertise resides in government institutions. Yet our leaders have largely chosen to ignore and even denigrate experts.

The response of our nation’s leaders has been consistently inadequate. The federal government has largely abandoned disease control to the states. Governors have varied in their responses, not so much by party as by competence. But whatever their competence, governors do not have the tools that Washington controls.Instead of using those tools, the federal government has undermined them. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was the world’s leading disease response organization, has been eviscerated and has suffered dramatic testing and policy failures. The National Institutes of Health have played a key role in vaccine development but have been excluded from much crucial government decision making. And the Food and Drug Administration has been shamefully politicized, appearing to respond to pressure from the administration rather than scientific evidence. Our current leaders have undercut trust in science and in government, causing damage that will certainly outlast them. Instead of relying on expertise, the administration has turned to uninformed “opinion leaders” and charlatans who obscure the truth and facilitate the promulgation of outright lies.

Let’s be clear about the cost of not taking even simple measures. An outbreak that has disproportionately affected communities of color has exacerbated the tensions associated with inequality. Many of our children are missing school at critical times in their social and intellectual development. The hard work of health care professionals, who have put their lives on the line, has not been used wisely. Our current leadership takes pride in the economy, but while most of the world has opened up to some extent, the United States still suffers from disease rates that have prevented many businesses from reopening, with a resultant loss of hundreds of billions of dollars and millions of jobs. And more than 200,000 Americans have died. Some deaths from Covid-19 were unavoidable. But, although it is impossible to project the precise number of additional American lives lost because of weak and inappropriate government policies, it is at least in the tens of thousands in a pandemic that has already killed more Americans than any conflict since World War II.

Anyone else who recklessly squandered lives and money in this way would be suffering legal consequences. Our leaders have largely claimed immunity for their actions. But this election gives us the power to render judgment. Reasonable people will certainly disagree about the many political positions taken by candidates. But truth is neither liberal nor conservative. When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs.

[HarthorneWingo]

Hmmm, tested on fetal tissue you say?

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[HarthorneWingo]

Pretty sure this is the hardest NEJM has ever gone at an administration in 200+ years. This journal is among the most cited scientific journals period (I'm tempted to say it's right at the top but there are a couple of others that always track top 3 or 4 in Journal Citation Rate)...bold for the haymakers, italics for some explanations about how leadership has failed so miserably.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2029812

Spoiler:

Covid-19 has created a crisis throughout the world. This crisis has produced a test of leadership. With no good options to combat a novel pathogen, countries were forced to make hard choices about how to respond. Here in the United States, our leaders have failed that test. They have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy.

The magnitude of this failure is astonishing. According to the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering, the United States leads the world in Covid-19 cases and in deaths due to the disease, far exceeding the numbers in much larger countries, such as China. The death rate in this country is more than double that of Canada, exceeds that of Japan, a country with a vulnerable and elderly population, by a factor of almost 50, and even dwarfs the rates in lower-middle-income countries, such as Vietnam, by a factor of almost 2000. Covid-19 is an overwhelming challenge, and many factors contribute to its severity. But the one we can control is how we behave. And in the United States we have consistently behaved poorly.

We know that we could have done better. China, faced with the first outbreak, chose strict quarantine and isolation after an initial delay. These measures were severe but effective, essentially eliminating transmission at the point where the outbreak began and reducing the death rate to a reported 3 per million, as compared with more than 500 per million in the United States. Countries that had far more exchange with China, such as Singapore and South Korea, began intensive testing early, along with aggressive contact tracing and appropriate isolation, and have had relatively small outbreaks. And New Zealand has used these same measures, together with its geographic advantages, to come close to eliminating the disease, something that has allowed that country to limit the time of closure and to largely reopen society to a prepandemic level. In general, not only have many democracies done better than the United States, but they have also outperformed us by orders of magnitude.

Why has the United States handled this pandemic so badly? We have failed at almost every step. We had ample warning, but when the disease first arrived, we were incapable of testing effectively and couldn’t provide even the most basic personal protective equipment to health care workers and the general public. And we continue to be way behind the curve in testing. While the absolute numbers of tests have increased substantially, the more useful metric is the number of tests performed per infected person, a rate that puts us far down the international list, below such places as Kazakhstan, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia, countries that cannot boast the biomedical infrastructure or the manufacturing capacity that we have. Moreover, a lack of emphasis on developing capacity has meant that U.S. test results are often long delayed, rendering the results useless for disease control.

Although we tend to focus on technology, most of the interventions that have large effects are not complicated. The United States instituted quarantine and isolation measures late and inconsistently, often without any effort to enforce them, after the disease had spread substantially in many communities. Our rules on social distancing have in many places been lackadaisical at best, with loosening of restrictions long before adequate disease control had been achieved. And in much of the country, people simply don’t wear masks, largely because our leaders have stated outright that masks are political tools rather than effective infection control measures. The government has appropriately invested heavily in vaccine development, but its rhetoric has politicized the development process and led to growing public distrust.

The United States came into this crisis with enormous advantages. Along with tremendous manufacturing capacity, we have a biomedical research system that is the envy of the world. We have enormous expertise in public health, health policy, and basic biology and have consistently been able to turn that expertise into new therapies and preventive measures. And much of that national expertise resides in government institutions. Yet our leaders have largely chosen to ignore and even denigrate experts.

The response of our nation’s leaders has been consistently inadequate. The federal government has largely abandoned disease control to the states. Governors have varied in their responses, not so much by party as by competence. But whatever their competence, governors do not have the tools that Washington controls.Instead of using those tools, the federal government has undermined them. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was the world’s leading disease response organization, has been eviscerated and has suffered dramatic testing and policy failures. The National Institutes of Health have played a key role in vaccine development but have been excluded from much crucial government decision making. And the Food and Drug Administration has been shamefully politicized, appearing to respond to pressure from the administration rather than scientific evidence. Our current leaders have undercut trust in science and in government, causing damage that will certainly outlast them. Instead of relying on expertise, the administration has turned to uninformed “opinion leaders” and charlatans who obscure the truth and facilitate the promulgation of outright lies.

Let’s be clear about the cost of not taking even simple measures. An outbreak that has disproportionately affected communities of color has exacerbated the tensions associated with inequality. Many of our children are missing school at critical times in their social and intellectual development. The hard work of health care professionals, who have put their lives on the line, has not been used wisely. Our current leadership takes pride in the economy, but while most of the world has opened up to some extent, the United States still suffers from disease rates that have prevented many businesses from reopening, with a resultant loss of hundreds of billions of dollars and millions of jobs. And more than 200,000 Americans have died. Some deaths from Covid-19 were unavoidable. But, although it is impossible to project the precise number of additional American lives lost because of weak and inappropriate government policies, it is at least in the tens of thousands in a pandemic that has already killed more Americans than any conflict since World War II.

Anyone else who recklessly squandered lives and money in this way would be suffering legal consequences. Our leaders have largely claimed immunity for their actions. But this election gives us the power to render judgment. Reasonable people will certainly disagree about the many political positions taken by candidates. But truth is neither liberal nor conservative. When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs.

Listen up to the medical knowledge laid down by my man, Remi



The NEJM stands for The New England Journal of Medicine. In legal parlance, we call this "an authoritative text."

[GONYK]

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[j4remi]

I’m not sure you could find a better illustration of how politicization has caused disparate results...

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June 1 was chosen as it was around that time that countries worldwide that had been sucker-punched months before had the opportunity to apply proven preventative measures. It also provided an opportunity to contrast the resulting data with states' political affiliations, using the Cook Partisan Voting Index. The results suggest a strong correlation between a state's political leanings and its ability to employ proven science to slow the spread of COVID.

[stuporman]

"About 75,000 more Americans died from COVID-19 pandemic than reported in spring and summer, study finds"

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/10/12/us-covid-deaths-75-k-more-americans-died-than-previously-recorded-excess-deaths/5935813002/

[HarthorneWingo]

This is heartbreaking.

"One in seven Americans would not seek treatment due to medical costs if they contracted the virus."

Watch on YouTube

[Dantares]

Great news! the antibody results are shown to be effective in mild and moderate cases and also for people at high risk.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/28/health/eli-lilly-regeneron-antibody-therapy-trial-results/index.html

this is going to save a lot of lives.

[E86]

Obese and elderly Diet Coke and McDonald’s eating Trump beats covid and people are still afraid of it?

[E86]

I got covid, my girls family got covid. Everyone got through it like the flu. I’m sorry the elderly are dying but the future can’t be jeopardized for those on the way out.

Aren’t boomers tired of constantly destroying the future yet?

[CharlesOakley]

I got covid, my girls family got covid. Everyone got through it like the flu. I’m sorry the elderly are dying but the future can’t be jeopardized for those on the way out.

Aren’t boomers tired of constantly destroying the future yet?

The long-term impact of covid isn't clear. While you and your family have gotten through the initial disease, you may have medical issues for years to come. Covid 19 could be a comorbidity factor in many other diseases. Around 20% of covid deaths are from people below the retirement age.

Is it so **** hard to wear a mask in public?

[Pointgod]

I got covid, my girls family got covid. Everyone got through it like the flu. I’m sorry the elderly are dying but the future can’t be jeopardized for those on the way out.

Aren’t boomers tired of constantly destroying the future yet?

The long-term impact of covid isn't clear. While you and your family have gotten through the initial disease, you may have medical issues for years to come. Covid 19 could be a comorbidity factor in many other diseases. Around 20% of covid deaths are from people below the retirement age.

Is it so **** hard to wear a mask in public?

I’m pretty sure dude is lying.

[robillionaire]

Obese and elderly Diet Coke and McDonald’s eating Trump beats covid and people are still afraid of it?

he had the best health care and doctors available in the world for free. other people don't

[thebuzzardman]

Obese and elderly Diet Coke and McDonald’s eating Trump beats covid and people are still afraid of it?

he had the best health care and doctors available in the world for free. other people don't

I'm glad at least one right winger fell for that trope a few years ago that greedy Boomers were ruining life for them etc.

I mean, there are so few legit ways for the party to attract younger voters, outside of Ben Shapiro etc, so glad this one tact worked out for them.

I mean, since tossing around generalities are okay, and everything.