Nah, man, the federal government is being run by people who explicitly want to disassemble it, who manifestly are trying to sabotage and even destroy it.
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US just blew through 200,000 cases without batting an eye. Now at 215,000 as of close of the day on 4/1. 26,000 new cases in that one day, and over 1,000 new deaths. Texas starting to climb the charts, adding 400 new cases to pass the 4,000 mark. The world count is going to clear 1 million cases tomorrow (4/2).
One thing that has been disturbing me of late is how few cases are resolved. Texas has 3,901 active cases out of 4,068 total. So thatâs 167 resolved cases, subtract the 60 deaths and you have only 107 people who are cleared as having recovered. Everyone else is at some stage of the progression of the disease, from being asymptomatic but positive to being intubated in ICU and everywhere in between.
This is going to stress everyoneâs hospital capacity beyond its limits, because patients donât rotate out quickly and conveniently.
True, because itâs what got them elected. But look how fast everyone ran terrified and screaming into the arms of âsocialismâ the moment something bad happened.
Donât worry, Jared is apparently on it now. From the Politico article:
Kushner, who, alongside a kitchen cabinet of outside experts including his former roommate and a suite of McKinsey consultants, has taken charge of the most important challenges facing the federal government: Expanding test access, ramping up industry production of needed medical supplies, and figuring out how to get those supplies to key locations.
This is a supply chain and logistics problem. I doubt Jared can make himself a cup of coffee without help.
This is also a leadership problem because, while there are plenty of government departments who can and should be able to help here, someone at the top needs to drive the urgency of decision-making. Trump clearly is disengaged and more focused on his own press and ratings than he is about fixing the matter at hand (which, ironically, would improve his press and ratings).
Yesterday Trump was asked by a reporter from Fox News about that and the dismantling of the pandemic response team. He immediately jumped on the reporter and adamantly denied that it actually happened. That reports of him dismantling the response team were categorically false. He did not clarify whether a) he did not dismantle the department, or b) that there never really was one in the first place. He basically just shouted âThatâs a lie!!â over and over.
while it is a supply and logistics issue, theyâre most concerned about how much money they can make off of it.
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His reply to the same question a couple weeks ago.
âWe can get money, we can increase staffâwe know all the people. This is a question I asked the doctors before. Some of the people we cut, they havenât used for many, many years, and if we have ever need them we can get them very, very quickly. And rather than spending the moneyâIâm a business person. I donât like having thousands of people around when you donât need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.â
Seems like an outrageous statement, but likely true. I mean, itâs their nature and in a crisis, people do whatâs in their nature.
If there is ever a study on what they did, some of this will be uncovered. For example, Iâd look closely at GM and ventilators. Iâm no expert in ventilators, but looking at them, I wonder if GM is the most logical manufacturer for these. Seems like a lot of other manufacturers could retool their process quicker and more efficiently, but hey, letâs just throw huge amounts at a huge company. A scenario ripe for corruption.
Of course in a rational administration, the most optimal process would have been outlined years ago: determine which manufacturers are most capable of quickly changing, ramping up to scale, having contingency contracts in place with them, etc. Then, you just press the button. Same logic would apply for masks, which we are almost out of.
Long winded response, but sadly, I suspect that you are correct: supremely corrupt people never fail to let an opportunity go to waste.
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I would be charitable to say that theyâre looking at it from the perspective of businessmen who want to allow the market to do its thing. Theyâre coming at it from the perspective of crooks and grifters, who want to get a piece of all the money flying around.
Meanwhile, people die.
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GM came under fire from Trump, not because theyâre the logical choice to make ventilators, but because he has an axe to grind with them because they closed and sold the plant that he crowed about saving. The same closed and sold plant that he told them to re-open for ventilator manufacture.
Nothing he he says or does if for the benefit of anyone but himself. Itâs quite a study in toxic narcissism; he bats 1.000 for himself and Blutarsky for anyone or anything thing else.
For those pondering the vagaries of this disease, for example, how there can be a significant portion who donât develop symptoms or how some get it mildly, while others sadly donât, this article might shed a bit of light. I thought it was interesting at least:
I have now seen multiple reports that a loss of taste and/or smell could be the canary in this particular coal mine, foreshadowing the onset of the other symptoms.
A friend of mine who had it has barely begun to have her sense of taste or smell return 10 days after all other symptoms subsided.
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A friend of ours - who is a beast and never sick - was laid low by âfluâ earlier this year, before people were widely aware of COVID19. She was hospitalized with breathing problems but recovered just fine. She lost her sense of taste and smell at the time, which makes us think she may have had it.
I had a friend whose father died earlier this year. He had lung issues and he started having breathing problems and a cough and they couldnât figure out why. My friend thinks her dad had COVID19.
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There is a lot of wild ass speculation going around that anyone that was laid low at the end of last year/beginning of this year probably had it.
I had my usual allergies > sinus infection/bronchitis bullshit during December, and it knocked me out pretty good for 2 weeks. Iâd love to find out that was COVID19 and Iâve already gone through it, but Iâm not holding my breath.
Never lost my sense of taste/smell though.
Stephen Miller has tested positive for COVID19. If you donât know who he is, do yourself a favor and donât look him up.
UPDATE: This appears to be a hoax.
I got hit hard by something at the very end of November/beginning of December: high fever that persisted for three or four days, no energy at all. I basically didnât get out of bed for five days, and it took almost a week to get my energy back. Iâd like to think I had it and got over it, but given what we now know about how contagious it is, I donât think it could have just hung around for three months and then taken off.