.This is the thread for non-political news and events.
German police detain suspect after deadly shooting outside synagogue
Two people were killed in a shooting in the eastern German city of Halle on Wednesday and police said they had detained one person.
Mass-selling daily Bild said the shooting took place in front of a synagogue, and that a hand grenade was also thrown into a Jewish cemetery. An eyewitness told n-tv television that a perpetrator had also fired shots into a kebab shop in Halle.
Obviously, we have a choice. I’m not that worried about the dystopian authoritarian scenarios because really it is the people forcing the politicians to put in the restrictions, not the other way around. That was even true in China where the draconian measures of the government were welcomed by the people who saw their friends and family dying and thought the government were taking too long.
This is the irony of the Libertarians and other people fearful of the “authority” government has who argue against the measures or try to refuse quarantine when they test positive for the virus because of their rights. It just demonstrates that these people are simply selfish, not self-interested. They don’t naturally act in their own interest or the public interest, and the government needs central authority to handle crises.
It’s ironic because in the ideal libertarian society (just read a lot of A. E. Van Vogt for that), once the virus hit, people would have naturally of their own volition stayed home and physically distanced themselves from everyone else, essential businesses would have stayed open and companies with the capability would have independently begun producing the proper medicine and medical equipment to deal with the virus. No government order required. However, in this case, it’s the people who aren’t libertarians who naturally do that while the libertarians argue against it or try to slow the response down.
I think you’re all missing my point.
If your point is that the flu is ALSO serious, then most of us are going to agree with you on that. Unfortunately, your earlier posts SEEMED to suggest that we shouldn’t react so aggressively to the current pandemic because we never did so for the flu. You don’t have to defend this, because I understand now that you didn’t intend to suggest this.
I think we are all on the same page here: COVID-19 is serious shit, Covidiots need to be strapped to their beds for the safety of everyone else, and if we all take this seriously there will be an end to this sooner rather than later.
Fuck COVID; fuck the flu; fuck cancer.
I think you’re all missing my point. This is obviously serious, you would have to be stupid to think otherwise, and the preventative measures are obviously necessary and helping. Now let’s do this next flu season too, because 26,000 deaths is still 26,000 deaths, and we now know how to cut those numbers down. Or, is there an acceptable limit where we will cross our fingers and don’t care about deaths that aren’t us because it’s too difficult/expensive to stop them? (For me, as my posting history shows, I’ll freely admit I was like, meh at six people. The rest of the UK seems to routinely be the same at 26,000 every single year.)
People aren’t dying from the flu because there aren’t enough ventilators, hospital beds or a vaccine available, and people aren’t dying from other things because the flu is taking resources from their care. I actually see plenty of news about the flu and flu shots are constantly advertised in flu season. It’s not like we just figured out how to deal with the flu, it’s something medical services prepare for annually, everyone already knows what they are supposed to do about it (get a flu shot, stay home if you are sick) and so we rely on everyone to do what they are supposed to.
The fact that so many people still die from it again kinda shows the flaws in the idea of relying on individuals to behave responsibly without government intervention. Honestly, we can barely rely on our politicians to behave responsibly which is another strike against people who think there is a “Deep State” with the real power who work against elected politicians. This crisis points out that a civil service with reliable functions independent of elected governments is probably a good thing.
Five years from now, we’ll probably have Flu season and Rona season, and we’ll probably have a similar number of deaths from both, but we won’t lock down for either because our health system will have adapted. The only positive side will be that people are going to be more likely to behave responsibly and businesses will probably be stricter on sick policies with better solutions for sick pay possibly subsidized by a more liberal government.
Or, is there an acceptable limit where we will cross our fingers and don’t care about deaths that aren’t us because it’s too difficult/expensive to stop them?
Sort of, yeah. I mean, if we didn’t use any cars at all, there would be no traffic deaths. If we all stayed at home and did nothing, there would be less risk of dying in an accident (yes, I know, most of those happen at home, but still…). People die of all kinds of viruses and communicable diseases; it does happen all the time, and it’s the price of being a social animal. We cannot suspend everything forever unless we want to live isolated in environmental bubbles. We do it now because we would be overwhelmed by deaths, but it is not something we can always do.
And let’s remember, we are doing this to flatten the curve so we won’t be overwhelmed; this isn’t a problem, with the flu, because it doesn’t spread as quickly. We are not trying to entirely stop Corona; we do have to accept that there will be a number of deaths with this, no matter what we do. Remember that two thirds of us will probably become infected until it all turns around.
On the other hand, I do think that in a past-Corona world, some things will have changed. Handshakes may not be coming back. Washing your hands will stay a thing, and the vampire sneeze. There will be more, I am sure. Lots of stuff that will help with the flu, as well.
https://www.dw.com/en/german-state-finance-minister-thomas-sch%C3%A4fer-found-dead/a-52948976
General request for those posting in this thread – with C19 hogging the news, be good to have some context on links that are to stories not about it.
Some positive news over here in the UK:
My wife’s hoping she can be included on the latter.
EDIT: 30 March – The local pharmacy can’t do delivery but they will allow carer pick-up, which works too.
This is fucked up. I’ve sometimes defended people like Putin and Orban, but this is bad.
This is fucked up. I’ve sometimes defended people like Putin and Orban, but this is bad.
Well I didn’t crack open anyone’s skull
So you say.
Do you have any witnesses to prove that?
Yes! My friend Pip was there when I didnt crack anyone’s skull open!
I think that’s been relatively obvious for a while. Germany are testing 70,000 a day while the UK has tested just over 140,000 in total.
I wouldn’t say they are completely useless, they give an indication of the rate of spread within that testing regime but when comparing countries there’s too many apples and oranges for it to be of too much use.
It also indicates how much better organised the Germans are. Testing could be a very important part of getting things moving again, where despite some unclear claims of people getting it twice it should be safe for those who’ve come out the other side to start getting back to normal.
Once again, we’re all overlooking the big questions.
Polyamory in a pandemic: who do you quarantine with when you’re not monogamous?
I’m currently mistrusting any stats we’re being fed. There’s a graphic on the BBC site now showing that Germany has three times the number of cases as the UK, which sounds horrible for Germany, until you realise we are not routinely testing people in the UK so how the hell do they know how many cases we have? When figures are based on guesswork, what’s the point of paying any attention to them?
Well, the saddest answer to this is, you can go by the number of deaths. Because those don’t have to be tested; you know when people have died of covid-19. Of course, there are a number of other factors that play into the deaths (especially how well intensive care units are doing, and how many respirators are available, and also there’s the question of at what point in the sickness people are when there’s a wave of it, because the deaths will be somewhere between week 2 and 3 after infection), but it’s still probably the most realistic indicator we have.
So, um , the UK has more than twice the number of dead than Germany. So that’s probably what we can guess the number of infections to be, as well. So you’d be talking abut 150.000 people, provided the German number is broadly correct (but of course even in Germany, you can also assume that there are more infected than we know). That number is currently doubling every three days.
It also indicates how much better organised the Germans are.
FINALLY we’re living up to the cliché again!
I told you guys I was visited by Kiel recently, right? Germany was a hefty disappointment to him where the myths of efficiency and organisation are concerned. Well, at least the corona virus is good for one thing, which is Germany’s reputation!
you know when people have died of covid-19
I think you only actually know that people have died, period.
I think you only actually know that people have died, period.
There is a pretty high likelihood that who died of covid-19 in the hospital have been correctly classified as such though. At least the accuracy of that number is a lot higher and more certain than that of most others in the current situation…
Sweden has been doing its own thing, we haven’t really discussed that yet, have we? It’ll be interesting to see how that turns out. I hope they made the right decision there, but personally I am glad that we are not relying on the ability of every single person to make the right decision in this situation.
The precautions that Swedes have been advised to adopt – no gatherings of more than 50 people (revised down from 500 last Friday), avoid social contact if over 70 or ill, try to work from home, table service only in bars and restaurants – seem to have allayed public fears that the shocking images from hospitals in Italy and Spain could be repeated here.
The prime minister, Stefan Löfven, has urged Swedes to behave “as adults” and not to spread “panic or rumours”.
Panic, though, is exactly what many within Sweden’s scientific and medical community are starting to feel. A petition signed by more than 2,000 doctors, scientists, and professors last week – including the chairman of the Nobel Foundation, Prof Carl-Henrik Heldin – called on the government to introduce more stringent containment measures. “We’re not testing enough, we’re not tracking, we’re not isolating enough – we have let the virus loose,” said Prof Cecilia Söderberg-Nauclér, a virus immunology researcher at the Karolinska Institute. “They are leading us to catastrophe.”
Meanwhile …
Some good news about the hydroxychloroquine trials:
Not really, at this point. This is a small study that hasn’t been reviewed yet; the other studies that are supposed to have shown it having some kind of effect have been shown to not be very robust. And the problem with Trump already praising these drugs as miracle cures are that people are trying to get their hands on them and the supply is dwindling, which is a problem because there are people who actually need them.
There is a chance that hydroxychloroquine or one of the other already established drugs that they are going to study in proper clinical trials now will have an effect, but it is not all that high, and none of them are likely to suddenly be a cure. The pressure of the media and the public on seeing them as such is far too high, and counter-productive (and of course, mostly Trump’s fault).
We are not going to survive this. I’m not sure why this isn’t been shouted out on national news — well, they’re trying to avoid a panic — but the evidence suggests that we are not going to survive this. Most of us will live through it, but society as we know it will not survive.
One million people claimed Universal Credit in the UK in the last two weeks. That’s one million jobs lost. In two weeks. That’s an order of magnitude higher than any recession I have lived through, and probably higher than the depression of the 30s. And it will only get worse from here, we’ve just scraped the tip of the iceberg. We are destroying our economy, and regardless of whether you’re a capitalist or a socialist, you have to recognize that our way of life depends on the economy functioning as it does now. We are killing our world.
That’s where I am in my quarantine life today 
How are you all doing?
.
.
The problem is looking at the alternatives. Speaking to a couple of physicians in the field they are not as simple as the likes of Toby Young are making out of letting some pensioners go a little early.
Without social distancing the health services will be overrun, they already are in Italy and Spain. That means we start making more radical triage choices, like one place in Italy that decided they were no longer able to treat people over 60. So the victims become younger. It means that other treatments cease, increasing the death counts for patients because heart bypasses and cancer surgeries will be postponed. Ambulances won’t be able to attend road traffic accidents in time.
Even without death it means a large amount of the workforce will be incapacitated anyway, we have accounts that the ‘mild’ cases are pretty debilitating with people unable to breathe freely or get out of bed for 7 or 8 days. A recession was happening anyway because flights and hotels would be cancelled and work disrupted by illness without calling a lockdown.
In the UK and US the free market lovers in charge are inherently ideologically opposed to this path, they are doing it anyway because there is no way of avoiding an economic crisis and this could ensure it is as short lived as possible. A lot of those UC claimants will be able to pretty much start up where they left off in the case of hairdressers or taxi drivers or bar staff and roles like that. A few countries that have operated lockdown are already easing them.
It’s not guaranteed that will pan out that way though, I think it’s very valid to question it but I think many that are doing so are simplifying the argument by creating a scenario where not much bad happens beyond 2% of the over 80s passing away peacefully and everything else carries on as normal. This will all be much analysed in retrospect.
To be fair this is a question in many deaths. You may have obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes and then suffer a heart attack and you could choose any of them as a direct cause. The audit in the UK found that 70% of those in intensive care with Covid-19 were overweight to morbidly obese on the BMI scale.
There’s a new wrinkle this morning. NYC has told its EMS workers that if they are called to assist someone who is having a heart attack, and that person has already gone into cardiac arrest, they should just declare that person dead on the scene rather than rush him to a hospital for resuscitation. Hospitals in the city are just too overburdened and cannot spare their doctors and nurses to try to revive such a patient. So while the victim dies of a heart attack, is it a COVID-19 related death?
Also, telling EMTs not to try to revive a heart attack victim?! That’s huge. That’s scary.
Yup and that’s part of what I was mentioning above. It’s not as simple as comparing raw numbers and statistics. Each medical case needs to be treated by a trained professional and all that training takes years, not just at specialist doctor level but for nurses and paramedics. It needs hospital places and equipment. It needs drugs so right now people with lupus may die because everyone is stocking up on the hydroxychloroquine they need to treat their condition. Viral load means that 4 doctors, not in the 70+ risk range, have died already of Covid-19 in the UK.
If they are overwhelmed because of a rapid rise in patients and their own vulnerability to sickness then these decisions will start to be made, there’s no other choice. It’s like dominoes being knocked over.
A friend is a nurse who is working with COVID-19 patients. He is so mentally overwhelmed right now. He said the hospital is making sure his physical needs are being taken care of (hydration, rest, etc). But he really needs someone to talk to. He talked to Christel last night which helped him. She told him to see if his hospital has an employee assistance program.
I truly cannot imagine what it’s like being in the front lines like they are, to see and experience what they do. I salute them.
Get ready for Elon Musk to call a qualified person a paedophile. Turns out the 1,000 ventilators he pledged to donate are for sleep apnea and not only are they not suitable for respiratory issues, they’re not rated for any life support usage at all.
the likes of Toby Young
Why the fuck is anyone paying attention to Toby Young?
In other news: People are shits:
Changing tack, what will seriously impede vaccine development? Easy answer – Big Pharma:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/02/coronavirus-vaccine-big-pharma-data
This is a pretty good explanation of why comparisons to seasonal flu are incorrect:
I wonder how they know so confidently that it has an infection rate of 2-2.5? Considering that the rate of spread in each country is actually unknown: nobody is testing with any consistent methodology, there isn’t a single country (even South Korea) that has tested every single person, apparently there are huge numbers of asymptomatic carriers (they think, they’re not actually testing enough to know this), this disease is brand new so there is no historical data, and there are absolutely zero controlled tests for obvious reasons. They have a lot of wildly varying guesses as to the number of infections, and from that data they’ve fairly reliably calculated how infectious it is? Is this maths or wizardry?
Or it’s a conservative estimate based on the internationally collected data. The fact of the matter asymptomatic cases are only going to drive that number up, which lessens further the comparison to the flu (which is the point of the video).
Why the fuck is anyone paying attention to Toby Young?
A good question but he’s one of the latest in a line of those pushing the – we’re destroying the economy for the sake of some over 80s that will die soon anyway – line. He’s far from alone.
Whether him or anyone else I was hoping to explain why that’s an inherently flawed idea, whichever approach you take from strict lockdown to no measures at all the economy is going to enter a recession. If health services are overwhelmed then the section of people who will die expands from the most vulnerable and includes those without Covid-19 at all. As Jerry says in NYC it already includes heart attack victims. In Italy it became everyone over 60, not 80.
That’s where I am in my quarantine life today How are you all doing?
Nah… cheer up we’ll be fine, look at it this way: the rich and powerful won’t let it get that far, otherwise they won’t be able to get more rich and more powerful…
Anyways, it’s gonna start getting ugly here in Mexico very soon… so far it’s been okay-ish, but it’s inevitable. They just imposed a 30 day national lockdown for non-essential activities, so I guess we’re about to start the rough patch. It’s probably gonna get particularly ugly here in Mexico city, considering the sheer amout of people living/working in here, plus the fact that there’s still waaaay too many people not taking this seriously enough.
Ironically enough, I’m probably one of those people extremely well prepared for this, since I’ve been practising “social isolation” for about 15 years, so for me it’s my regular life… so I’m not too worried about that much at least, buuuut I hope we don’t start seeing a rise of crime and violence, ’cause that’d kinda suck.
And the crazy grows. That person who thinks they KNOWS the truth and now they are the only ones who can stop teh evil!
And then they try to drive a train into a fucking hospital ship. No, this isn’t a movie.
I saw that just before I shut it down last night, Hank. I am having a terrible time processing it. Hitting a ship with a train is simply such a bizarre idea. I worked with many floridly psychotic people for many years, and to a person they would read that and say “That’s nuts!” (They were temporarily crazy, not a bit stupid.)
I may just have to nose into this one. With any luck this particular lunatic is in a facility I might still have a tendril. I’m really interested in how this person came up with this particular idea. And IQ. I’d live to see the Stanford-Binet (Adult).
A loco motive.
This might be the best pun I have ever seen.
Anyways, it’s gonna start getting ugly here in Mexico very soon… so far it’s been okay-ish, but it’s inevitable. They just imposed a 30 day national lockdown for non-essential activities, so I guess we’re about to start the rough patch. It’s probably gonna get particularly ugly here in Mexico city, considering the sheer amout of people living/working in here, plus the fact that there’s still waaaay too many people not taking this seriously enough.
This is going to be so much worse in countries with less-than-great medical infrastructure, and a big poverty problem. Mexica and some other South American countries will be hit hard, not to mention India and African countries…
And I am currently constantly pissed off that our media are not reporting on the situation on Lesbos, in Moria. This is making a terrible situation so much worse.
I hope you’ll be okay, Jon.
I hope you’ll be okay, Jon.
Thanks! You too… all you guys! I should be fine… unless the whole city descends into chaos that is… let’s hope not. My mom told me to go and buy some food reserves… and ehhhh… I’m not really into the idea of falling into that kind of paranoia, but hey, I might just buy a couple of things just in case…
I hope I don’t get infected though, ’cause if I get I’ll probably bite it… so, well at least you’ll know what happened if I suddenly stop bitching and moaning about the Snyder Cut… =P
if I suddenly stop bitching and moaning about the Snyder Cut…
I would be disappointed if you didn’t make the effort to continue that from beyond the grave.
Oh don’t worry, if that’s an option, I won’t just “make the effort”
Ask our recent spammer bot if he has tips on flooding the board with Snyder Cut posts from beyond the grave.
Yeah I was reading about India yesterday and a case had been found in the Dharavi slum in Mumbai. It has a population density of 870,000 people per square mile. To put that into context even a bustling city like London is around 5,000, Wales as a mixed urban and rural country is 172.
How do you even begin to contain something in conditions like that?
I got notification today that a lot of the call centres in India are massively understaffed on account of new restrictions that just went in place.
I think this is an interesting article that examines some of the statistics that I feel are generally being poorly reported: Coronavirus: How to understand the death toll. It talks about “excess deaths” rather than absolute numbers, which to me makes a lot more sense (and is apparently how seasonal flu deaths are tracked).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51979654
This is also a good one. It looks at the problems we have because the data is so sketchy.
The lack of data is to some degree understandable, all this is being done on the hoof by everyone, but also needs to be fixed so they can better manage everything. The county of Gwent in SE Wales is badly hit right now with much higher contraction rate than most of the UK. People are scratching around in the dark speculating why. Could it have been a rugby match between Gwent Dragons and Italy’s Benetton Treviso? Not sure as away fans were asked to stay away. Could have been a concert or commuter patterns or….nobody knows.
Contrast that to a few Asian countries where they categorically know, it was religious events in South Korea and Malaysia for example. In the UK and US nobody has a clue because they are only able to test at the most severe level of people hospitalised.
Ask our recent spammer bot if he has tips on flooding the board with Snyder Cut posts from beyond the grave.
I pinky swear it wasn’t me =(
Ask our recent spammer bot if he has tips on flooding the board with Snyder Cut posts from beyond the grave.
I pinky swear it wasn’t me =(
Mobster and now pirates, yes, the US government acting in a spectacularly short-sighted way that has seen it be accused of modern-day piracy:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/03/mask-wars-coronavirus-outbidding-demand
The American 3M company, which makes the N95 mask (commonly known as a respirator, which provides better protection than an ordinary surgical mask) said on Friday that the Trump administration had asked it to increase shipments to the US from its factories overseas, and it had secured agreement from China to ship 10mmasks from 3M plants.
But 3M said the administration had also told the company to stop exporting masks from US production sites to Canada and Latin America. The company said the demand raises “significant humanitarian implications” from stopping shipments intended for healthcare workers, and warned it would backfire by triggering retaliation from other countries.
“If that were to occur, the net number of respirators being made available to the US would actually decrease,” the statement said. “That is the opposite of what we and the administration, on behalf of the American people, both seek.”
Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said the US move was a “mistake”, noting that the US also imports medical supplies from Canada.
Meanwhile, over here I’m a bit irritated by this reportage by the Guardian and it will likely be reflected by the right-wing press too:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/03/nightingale-emergency-coronavirus-hospital-london
In a highly praised high-speed build involving an unprecedented partnership between the NHS and the Ministry of Defence, the vast ExCeL conference centre in east London has been converted into a hospital, ready to take up to 500 patients in the first wave.
But while the emergency capacity had been expected to be required as soon as last Wednesday, the first patients are now likely to arrive early next week – a tentative sign that the coronavirus outbreak in the capital may not be as bad as expected.
An NHS spokesperson said: “Nightingale London is ready to accept patients from today, but London is currently coping with demand. We obviously can’t predict when it will be needed but it’s there if and when it is.”
One of the points made over the last couple of weeks is that one failure of NHS planning was in not enabling enough spare capacity, so the Nightingale builds are particularly key in creating that capacity for when its needed and then there’s reporting like this with a headline that undermines the entire idea:
Nightingale emergency coronavirus hospital may not be needed as urgently as expected
Meanwhile, popular brewery Brewdog has been making hand sanistiser instead of booze – great idea, right? Yeah, but they haven’t quite nailed it, not that you’d know it from this headline:
First batch of BrewDog hand sanitiser turned down by local hospital
https://www.theguardian.com/busines…anitiser-turned-down-local-hospitals-scotland
The actual story?
A spokesman for NHS Grampian, which includes the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, said: “We are very grateful for the offer from many local businesses, including BrewDog, to support the NHS at this time.
“Our supplies and equipment have to reach clinical standards before they can be put into use in healthcare settings and we have worked closely with the team at BrewDog to overcome some of these technical issues. This has been a really successful collaboration with the BrewDog team and we look forward to getting the gel fully operational in health and care settings right across Grampian. We at no time ‘rejected’ the offer, we instead chose to work together on finding a solution.”
BrewDog’s founder, James Watt, said it had distributed 100,000 bottles of sanitiser to groups including the Archie Foundation and Aberlour children’s charities and would continue to supply frontline workers and charities.
He said: “We started making hand sanitiser at our distillery in Ellon, Aberdeenshire, in response to the national shortage and are doing everything we can to help.
“The production of sanitiser is completely new for us, we are working closely with the NHS to understand how we can best meet their requirements for clinical care.”
BrewDog began producing sanitiser last month amid shortages of the alcohol-based hand cleaner, which has been flagged as an important tool in combatting coronavirus.
Of course, had the NHS taken supplies that were below standard, you just know some reporter would have been waiting to pounce on them too.
Couple minutes ago our Colorado Governor requested all Coloradans wear masks (non-medical, cloth or bandanas) when going out. He had barely gotten the words out when the right-wingers barraged him with “We’re not following your orders!”
Welcome to the Planet of the Capes.
Welcome to the Planet of the Capes.
Welcome to Asia. I have to wear a mask to exit the house, everyone said it was silly until about the last day or two and now articles are refuting that and advice changing.
He had barely gotten the words out when the right-wingers barraged him with “We’re not following your orders!”
Goddammit! Why do people think differently?
If they tell us to wear masks, we’ve simultaneously got a face covering ban (the “burqa ban”) and a mask requirement. Wonder how people are going to deal with that.
Fuck Hobby Lobby, a supposedly “Christian” company:
Hobby Lobby closing all stores, issuing mass furloughs
After quietly reopening stores across the country in defiance of coronavirus-related state lockdown orders, Hobby Lobby is closing all stores nationally and furloughing employees without pay.
In a statement posted on the company website on Friday afternoon, Hobby Lobby announced it will furlough “nearly all store employees” without pay and “is ending emergency leave pay and suspending use of company provided paid time off benefits and vacation.”
“As the country continues efforts to manage and mitigate the devastating health and economic impacts of the COVID-19 virus, Hobby Lobby will, after careful consideration, close the remainder of its stores, and furlough nearly all store employees and a large portion of corporate and distribution employees, effective Friday, April 3rd, at 8:00 p.m,” Hobby Lobby posted on its website. “The stores will remain closed until further notice.”
According to three employees, each speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, managers at their stores called teams into a meeting to deliver the news on Friday afternoon.
“The line our manager gave us was, ‘The employees got what the employees wanted, the stores were closed,'” a Hobby Lobby employee in Indiana said. “My question was did God tell them they needed to closed the stores and not pay us?” ‘
So this is how a “Christian” takes care of its people?
After all this is over, I will avoid this chain like the plague.
Couple minutes ago our Colorado Governor requested all Coloradans wear masks (non-medical, cloth or bandanas) when going out. He had barely gotten the words out when the right-wingers barraged him with “We’re not following your orders!”
Welcome to the Planet of the Capes.
Trump announces new face mask recommendations after heated internal debate
President Donald Trump said Friday his administration was now recommending Americans wear “non-medical cloth” face coverings, a reversal of previous guidance that suggested masks were unnecessary for people who weren’t sick.
Trump said the recommendations, which came after a week of heated deliberations inside the White House, were voluntary and that he would not partake.
“I don’t think I’m going to be doing it,” he said.
After weeks of insisting Americans should not wear face masks to prevent the spread of coronavirus — and even suggesting their use could increase the chance of infection — administration officials this week engaged in an internal debate over reversing course, according to people familiar with the matter.
Behind the scenes, officials were divided about the wisdom of advising Americans to cover their faces in public, which some fear could cause a lapse in the social distancing efforts that remain officials’ best hope of preventing further spread.
At stake was another turnabout for a White House that has sown confusion with its response to the coronavirus pandemic sweeping the nation. The debate over masks has come to encapsulate a federal effort marked by repeated reversals, conflicting recommendations, low stockpiles and competing internal interests that often lead to muddled messaging.
Senior officials at the CDC told the White House that stronger guidelines were necessary to prevent the virus from spreading between asymptomatic people, according to people familiar with the internal discussions. They were spurred by new information suggesting people without symptoms may account for a significant amount of transmission.
The CDC sent memos to the White House outlining their recommended guidance this week, people familiar with the documents said. They made clear that cloth face coverings — not medical-grade masks — were being recommended.
But after receiving them, some of Trump’s advisers cautioned a nationwide recommendation might have negative side effects and advocated something more limited in scope, potentially only in areas that are hardest hit.
The debate played out in meetings of the coronavirus task force in the White House Situation Room, where the issue first arose again early this week. Officials engaged in a “serious discussion” of the topic, according to a source close to the conversations.
“That is being discussed really very actively. We were discussing it actively today in the task force and I can assure you, it’s going to be on the agenda tomorrow,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said on CNN on Thursday evening. “Given the fact that we know that asymptomatic people are clearly transmitting infection, it just makes commonsense that it’s not a bad idea to do that.”
Underpinning the internal back-and-forth was the persistent shortage of medical grade masks for front-line hospital workers, which states and the federal government have scrambled to resolve through patchwork shipments and appeals to the private sector. Some White House officials feared a blanket recommendation for Americans to use face coverings might cause a rush on the badly needed medical masks, aggravating the already-grave situation for hospital workers and first responders.
While the CDC guidelines advocate something short of a medical mask, there was still a fear among some officials that any kind of guidance on face coverings could lead to Americans seeking out the type of masks still needed in hospitals.
And while Trump has publicly suggested using alternatives, the White House has not issued guidelines on which fabrics are best or how to properly tie loose cloth so that it covers the mouth and nose.
The debate spilled into public view on Thursday as Trump offered his thoughts on mask-wearing followed by words of caution from the White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx, who has been a leading internal opponent of nationwide mask recommendations on the President’s task force.
“If people wanted to wear them, they can,” Trump said when asked about potential new guidelines on wearing masks in public. “If people wanted to use scarves, which they have, many people have them, they can.”
Birx stepped to the podium afterward to offer a more guarded view, saying she had concerns that masks could lull some people into a false sense of security, leading them to ignore other guidelines.
“We don’t want people to feel like, ‘Oh, I’m wearing a mask, I’m protected and I’m protecting others,’ ” she said. “You may be protecting others. But don’t get a false sense of security that that mask is protecting you exclusively from getting infected, because there are other ways that you can get infected, because of the number of asymptomatic and mild cases that are out there.”
She said a debate was “continuing” about masks, and added whenever a new advisory is issued it would be “additive” to the social distancing guidelines, which Trump this week extended to April 30.The notion of the general public wearing masks had appeared a settled matter as recently as last weekend after the administration spent days earlier in the crisis insisting they were unnecessary for most Americans.
The CDC said on its website as of last month that it “does not recommend that people who are well wear a face mask to protect themselves from respiratory diseases, including Covid-19.”
And officials were vocal that Americans not go out to purchase masks.
“It is not necessary for Americans to go out and buy masks,” Vice President Mike Pence said during an appearance on CNN on March 1. In late February, the US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams tweeted: “Seriously people — STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if health care providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”
Officials said those entreaties reflected a concern inside the administration that average Americans would begin stockpiling surgical masks or N95 respirators, making it difficult for hospital workers to access necessary gear.
In other instances, some administration officials went as far as suggesting wearing a mask could increase the risk of infection for the wearer.
“You can increase your risk of getting it (coronavirus) by wearing a mask if you are not a health care provider,” Adams said during an interview on Fox & Friends on March 2. “Folks who don’t know how to wear them properly tend to touch their faces a lot and actually can increase the spread of coronavirus.”
Those concerns about hoarding masks haven’t necessarily changed, officials said, and the risks of infection to wearers remain. What has changed is new information suggesting higher levels of asymptomatic spread, which CDC Director Robert Redfield said this week had led to the new look into mask-wearing recommendations.
The previous guidance, Redfield said, was “being critically re-reviewed, to see if there’s potential additional value for individuals that are infected or individuals that may be asymptomatically infected.”
The White House was also moved to reexamine the mask issue after the American Enterprise Institute published a white paper last weekend offering a “road map to reopening” the country after the outbreak, including a recommendation on masks.
“People will initially be asked to wear fabric nonmedical face masks while in the community to reduce their risk of asymptomatic spread,” stated the paper, which was co-authored by Dr. Scott Gottlieb, Trump’s former Food and Drug Administration commissioner who has continued to informally advise the White House during the coronavirus outbreak.
Among the issues discussed by the task force this week have been how best to teach Americans to wear masks and how to calibrate the public messaging to prevent a rush on medical-grade equipment.
There has been some consideration of whether to call the recommended face coverings “masks.” Some have suggested referring to them simply as “face coverings” or “courtesy masks” to distinguish them from the medical masks needed by professionals.
And officials have weighed of the cultural shift that recommending masks would represent, since Americans (unlike citizens of some Asian countries) are not accustomed to wearing masks in public.
So far, officials haven’t said whether Trump or his advisers would don face coverings in public as an example. Months into the crisis, Trump still regularly appears within six feet of his aides, despite White House guidelines on distancing.
I get the very clear feeling that Jesus would get thrown out of Hobby Lobby by security for smashing up the place.
Looking into my crystal ball, I see “fires of suspicious origin” needing investigating at Hobby Lobby’s former locations.
They stepped right in it this time. Bloody bunch of heretics, anyhow; claiming to be “Christian”. Anal-retentive capitalist pigs lying behind a corporate mask. May they die in misery/
(I’m getting towards a mood. Gonna eat pasta and have a bowl. Oh Happy FryYay!)
If they tell us to wear masks, we’ve simultaneously got a face covering ban (the “burqa ban”) and a mask requirement. Wonder how people are going to deal with that.
One of the things that bothers me with these bans is that somehow, they do end up applying mainly to burquas and never seem to hit people who go running using this kind of thing:
However, one of those does come in handy now, I suppose. I’ve already got a mask (a cotton one) and I’m wearing it when I go shopping, but those things are probably more comfortable really.
We are not going to survive this. I’m not sure why this isn’t been shouted out on national news — well, they’re trying to avoid a panic — but the evidence suggests that we are not going to survive this. Most of us will live through it, but society as we know it will not survive.
One million people claimed Universal Credit in the UK in the last two weeks. That’s one million jobs lost. In two weeks. That’s an order of magnitude higher than any recession I have lived through, and probably higher than the depression of the 30s. And it will only get worse from here, we’ve just scraped the tip of the iceberg. We are destroying our economy, and regardless of whether you’re a capitalist or a socialist, you have to recognize that our way of life depends on the economy functioning as it does now. We are killing our world.
That’s where I am in my quarantine life today
The quarantine will last for a while, but they can’t make it last longer than maybe until september. After that people will set the country on fire. At some point people will realize life must go on. The economy will take a hit, but that will happen the world over. So everybody suffers a bit, and everybody will get back on the horse in september.
Yes a lot of people are claiming unemployment benefits. That’s just how it is. I am not doing the arithmetics, but people say UBI is possible. If a country can afford UBI, then a couple of million extra on unemployment is a breeze.
I hope it doesn’t seem I’m belittling the concerns, it is all very troubling, my own concerns are very much with draconian control measures and emergency rule. That scares me more than anything. But I think if we keep the ship steady there is no reason we will not emerge on the other side of the storm.
£13bn of NHS debt has vanished overnight, just because the system was set one way doesn’t stop it changing.
A whole lot of what has been deemed political orthodoxy for the last 20 years has gone up in smoke over the last 3-4 weeks.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-test-kits-contaminated-covid-19-a4403021.html
<p style=”box-sizing: inherit; margin: 20px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-weight: bold; font-stretch: inherit; font-size: 19px; line-height: 28px; font-family: ‘Standard Text’, serif; vertical-align: baseline; color: #000000;”>Testing kits which were headed to the UK have been found to be contaminated with coronavirus.</p>
<p style=”box-sizing: inherit; margin: 20px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-size: 19px; line-height: 28px; font-family: ‘Standard Text’, serif; vertical-align: baseline; color: #000000;”>The Government has said that it aims to boost the rate of tests to 25,000 every day by the end of April at the latest and has asked private companies to help drive up test production.</p>
<p style=”box-sizing: inherit; margin: 20px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-size: 19px; line-height: 28px; font-family: ‘Standard Text’, serif; vertical-align: baseline; color: #000000;”>But one production firm, Luxembourg-based manufacturer Eurofins, told UK labs on Monday that deliveries would be delayed as core parts had been contaminated with coronavirus, the Telegraph reported.</p>
One of the things that bothers me with these bans is that somehow, they do end up applying mainly to burquas and never seem to hit people who go running using this kind of thing:
The whole burqa ban is nonsense. I don’t think anyone has been arrested on account of it, the police refuse to enforce the law last I heard and there are hardly any women who wear them anyway.
I do think technically anyone with any face covering thingy could be arrested though, it is not only aimed at burqas.
There’s a few things I don’t like about certain forms of Islam, but fuck this, everybody should be allowed to wear what they want. Unless they are forced to wear them by their relatives or by some imam, or if there is some practical need to remove it, everybody should be able to wear a burqa or a niqab.
(I checked on wiki, it seems for health reasons face coverings are allowed. So if it is deemed necessary by the government, obviously the burqa law wouldn’t be an obstacle.)
The whole burqa ban is nonsense. I don’t think anyone has been arrested on account of it, the police refuse to enforce the law last I heard and there are hardly any women who wear them anyway.
Yup always has been nonsense. I remember the fuss with one being passed in France and the number of women who actually wore a full face covering in the country was estimated to be 55. Number of crimes committed by them was zero.
It always was some kind of xenophobic gesture politics and it doesn’t surprise me the police can’t be bothered to enforce it when they have genuine problems to deal with.
The number of burqas in the Netherlands is probably zero, and the niqabs maybe a hundred in the whole country. I’ve seen two niqabs here in all the years of my life, one was in Amsterdam, the other here in Alphen aan den Rijn. Could have been a tourist though, I’ve never seen that perso again.
Trump said the recommendations, which came after a week of heated deliberations inside the White House, were voluntary and that he would not partake.
“I don’t think I’m going to be doing it,” he said.
Proof that he still doesn’t get it. Trump is probably thinking “I’m not afraid of getting this virus”; instead, he should be thinking “If I’m already a carrier, and don’t wear a facemask, I may spread this to Anthony Fauci, and Mike Pence, and Deborah Birx, and Ivanka, and…”
I really miss Barack Obama this week. 
Goddammit, Jimmy Dore really lost his mind.
On that topic, Bill Burr on his podcast now calls for the military to shoot people on the street who stand too close together. Now he is a comedian, but…
I of course also lost my mind some time ago. I’m not gloating.
I reallymiss Barack Obama this week.
We could use him to drone a bunch of these not-socially-distancing morons. He was good at that.
On that topic, Bill Burr on his podcast now calls for the military to shoot people on the street who stand too close together. Now he is a comedian, but…
This, though, is part of a political and media diversion. The governments, health officials and news media were responsible for not preparing for the epidemic when it was clearly a serious risk in China even after China’s own cover-ups at the beginning fell apart. When it finally hit our borders, it was regular people and businesses – not officials – calling for severe action, and the government kept underplaying it and the news media went along with it.
Now, we’re seeing more reports about how regular people are not behaving responsibly – when whenever we do go out, I see the vast majority of people actually obeying the rules. However, they can point to any random case as if it is widespread BECAUSE most people are staying home and can’t fact check the reality.
Meanwhile, politicians and health officials are now getting glowing accolades from newspeople for working hard to fight a pandemic that they let get this bad and a couple months ago were telling us that it would not be so bad. They want us to disperse our anger individually at each other for not wearing masks, not staying home all the time or not washing our hands 50 times a day so we won’t collectively direct our anger at the poor preparation and leadership that has had far more impact on making the problems worse.
I’m not angry at people just like me who have no real way to curb this pandemic individually – I’m mad at the people who could’ve taken and had the authority to order significant action and didn’t.
Editorial Cartoon Time!
He had barely gotten the words out when the right-wingers barraged him with “We’re not following your orders!”
Goddammit! Why do people think differently?
If they tell us to wear masks, we’ve simultaneously got a face covering ban (the “burqa ban”) and a mask requirement. Wonder how people are going to deal with that.
Seriously, they should be examining if the disease is spreading more slowly among orthodox Muslim women.
It’s a weird one because the media fuss about Muslim women with full face coverings is totally out of proportion with how many actually wear them, which is very few. Outside of a couple of Arab countries you’d be looking at a subset so small it’s hard to measure if you then have to factor in cultural and geographical elements. (i.e. that country may not have many cases, in those countries women tend to not go out unaccompanied or shake hands anyway so would be socially distancing by default). It sticks in the mind if you see one at a train station in London or New York but you passed 7,000 people that didn’t on the way.
Even in Iran which is a Muslim theocracy almost no women wear full face coverings, it is common in Saudi Arabia but not compulsory, they don’t in the most populous Muslim countries of Indonesia, Egypt etc.
So I think in theory it would be an interesting thing to look at but in practice probably pretty worthless, especially as what we’re looking at is the value of face coverings in not spreading the virus rather than directly protecting against contracting it.
Speaking of religion though it is notable that in South Korea, Indonesia and Malaysia with better contact tracing than most they have shown that mass religious gatherings have been a major factor in the spread of Covid-19. Just one has accounted for 25% of the cases traced in Malaysia.
This was initially an idea rejected by the likes of Boris Johnson with regard to things like sporting events but the evidence now is pointing the other way.
I am seeing in the US a lot of mega churches insisting on continuing even though in some states it has been prohibited. That does not bode well for the US numbers to come.
CNN: “Aren’t you concerned you could go infect other people who don’t go to this church?”
OHIO WOMAN: “No. I’m covered in Jesus’ blood.” pic.twitter.com/KBsnJyZWxJ
— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) April 5, 2020
I think they play different games to be fair.
Putin’s strategy has always been about disruption and confusion. Right from day one when he bombed his own people, pretending it was someone else, to justify a populist war.
China is really about appearing open and playing by the social democratic rules, while not doing that at all. If you work closely with China, like I have for a dozen years or so, if you set them a target they will deliver it. Half the time that is through genuinely being very efficient and effective, the other half through finding ways to make it appear they are.
Bozza is in hospital.
It’s sounding far from being a mild case anymore.
