Posts Made By: James Lacey

Originally Posted by Darian Rachal

James, it looks like your TDS is flaring up again. I hope you are at least preparing yourself mentally for his reelection in November.

Darian,

Trump's re-election will now rise and fall on the outcome of the coronavirus crisis. And so far, I don't see any evidence that it will end well. Our society will be shut-down for at least another 6-10 weeks until the infection rate burns itself out. In the meantime, what is happening in NYC today will play out in major cities around the country. Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, Houston, Phoenix, Denver, Boston, etc. are all poised for significant outbreaks. It won't happen tidily either. Flareups will repeat all over and overlap. Look at any of the state data from the COVID tracking project or any other site that provides reliable data. We are all only a few weeks behind NY. The rural areas will not escape either, and some will have it worse since their health-care options are limited, and residents are often of less economic means and underinsured. Don't believe me? Consider this; the CDC is about to revise its prevention guidelines and recommend that we all start wearing masks in our everyday lives. In Italy, 51 doctors have died during their outbreak, and all available data shows we are on track to be worse than Italy. There is no data anywhere that shows the infection rate slowing or that we have things under control.

Even now, Trump refuses to take ownership of the crisis. Instead, he whines about not being treated fairly by the media, or by the female governor of Michigan, or even worse blames it on his predecessors despite having been President for over three years now. Trump is failing on every measure, and the crisis worsens by the day. He continues to talk mostly about himself and demands people kiss the ring to receive federal aid, and agitates and promotes unproven treatments. He refuses to nationalize the supply chain and has forced 50 states to all fend for themselves for limited resources. Some states are refusing to institute stay at home orders because of domestic politics, and their misplaced pride to prove they are not like California. Our overcrowded prison systems are death traps for prisoners and staff that will leak contagion into their communities, and ignoring them seems to be the current strategy.

We need mass testing and isolation on a scale never seen. We need a war-time mobilization of health workers and supplies. None of it is happening on the timeline or size we need.

The worst of it won't be behind us until at least August. The aftermath will take months if not years to recover from, and while voters have short memories, they are not that short. I see little evidence that Trump will change or that this crisis will improve under his leadership. Therefore, he's going to lose in an electoral landslide.

Originally Posted by Darian Rachal

He definitely needs to wean himself from CNN. Doesn't it have about 600,000 viewers during prime time? He'd be better off sitting in a dark room reflecting on the circumstances of his life than getting a daily dose of the mindless drivel that CNN pumps out 24/7.

I don't watch CNN, or MSNBC, or FOX News. I do read a lot and look at as many independent sources of information as I can.

And you would do better than just to offer little more than tweaks or digs about how Trump is going win re-election while ignoring what is on fire around you.

Originally Posted by Mel Maki

Presidents can be wrong. Biden is worse than wrong.

I'm no Biden fan-boy; believe me. However, it's hard to imagine any breathing functioning adult doing a worse job than Trump is doing right now. For example, without any preparation or consultation with governors, he just announced he is considering a quarantine of NY, NJ, and CT. What? This impulsive announcement is foolish and will trigger a panic, not unlike the one triggered when he similarly uni-laterally announced the EU travel ban. Thousands of people who don't want to be trapped by the quarantine are now going to flee en masse. Trump is an absolute moron.

Originally Posted by Richard Davis

Why is it impulsive?  He hasn't even issued it yet, he just mentioned it, so it appears he's NOT impulsive is he, or are you also now redefining the word "impulsive"?

Is there anything you cannot avoid the point of by nit-picking? Just mentioning it in bypassing during the launching of the USNS comfort is the impulsive part. Impulsive - acting or doing something without forethought. Get it? He impulsively mentioned it in bypassing during what is supposed to be a somber ceremony. This off-hand remark, followed by a Tweet about it, followed by more off-hard comments at another speech, followed by hours of bewilderment among governors, officials, and the public, followed by yet more Tweets that walk back the whole thing is beyond impulsive and reckless. The man is a moron and is the worst person possible to be in charge right now. I mean, I always thought he'd get us into a war with Iran or North Korea, little did I know he would recklessly destroy his own country.

The way to properly implement such an order, even if it were in his purview to do so, would be to consult and prepare with local and federal officials to achieve it in as controlled a manner as possible. Not just impulsively announce it without any forethought, planning or consultation!

Originally Posted by Richard Davis

Get off the Huff post, that's a lie.  They took snippets of his interview with Hannity. He said nothing of the sort.

You might want to check w/ somebody besides the Huff Po.

 I don't read the Huffington Post, and I don't read the Daily Caller either. It wasn't during a Sean Hannity interview. It was during a daily White House press briefing, and I quote, "I say, Mike, don't call the governor in Washington, I say, Mike, don't call the woman in Michigan. You know what I say, if they don't treat you right, I don't call."

Originally Posted by Rod Kaufman

As per Jim Acosta, who attended the WH briefing today, "This is a different kind of Donald Trump" "He is scared" "He gets It" This is the same Jim Acosta that the WH distains and Acosta has been critical of Trump in the past. That changed tonight. This is entirely different. 
Mask up/glove up if you have to go to the market or similar. Protect others and yourselves. This is life and death...

Trump hasn't changed. A change of tone in one briefing campaign rally is not proof of that. Besides, he was claiming that he saved us all from the do-nothing crowd when he was the do-nothing President! I'm sorry, but you don't get to measure your success against what would have happened if you had done nothing.

By the way, remember that Google corona-virus testing website that Trump promised on March 13th? He even had Dr. Birx stand up in front of the nation with a simple poster size flow-chart showing us how it would work. It turns out it was not being created by Google, but by a team of engineers at Oscar Health. Jared Kushner's younger brother Josh is co-founder, and the Kushner family are significant investors in Oscar Health. The website has suddenly, and mysteriously disappeared. The congressional investigative committee into the incompetent corona-virus response by this administration is going to make impeachment look pleasant.

Originally Posted by Richard Davis

James told us all that when they downgraded the assessment to 20,000 Dead from 500,000 Dead in the UK, that I was lying, and they never downgraded their initial assessment.  

That is still true; they did not downgrade their initial assessment. Again, the report by Neil Ferguson included a wide range of possible outcomes based on how much mitigation took place. With no social isolation, the model predicted 500K deaths, and with extreme mitigations practices, it predicted as few as 2,600 deaths. Those numbers, and many others in-between, were always part of the initial model. Anyone who looks at the report for themselves can see this fact for themselves. The number he testified to in front of Parliament is a number from his model, and in his words regarding this subject:

"I think it would be helpful if I cleared up some confusion that has emerged in recent days. Some have interpreted my evidence to a UK parliamentary committee as indicating we have substantially revised our assessments of the potential mortality impact of COVID-19. This is not the case. Indeed, if anything, our latest estimates suggest that the virus is slightly more transmissible than we previously thought. Our lethality estimates remain unchanged. My evidence to Parliament referred to the deaths we assess might occur in the UK in the presence of the very intensive social distancing and other public health interventions now in place. Without those controls, our assessment remains that the UK would see the scale of deaths reported in our study (namely, up to approximately 500 thousand)."

Originally Posted by James Brown

"As many as 240,000 Americans could die during the coronavirus pandemic, top health officials said on Tuesday, despite the measures that have closed schools, limited travel and forced people to stay home.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, and Dr. Deborah Birx, who is coordinating the White House’s response, encouraged people to adhere to distancing guidelines, noting that more than 2.2 million Americans could have died if nothing had been done."

These numbers are coming from a model out of the University of Washington IHME. It's here if anyone cares: https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections

They adjust the model and take into account what states are doing in real-time, so expect it to change some as time goes by. They are assuming though that social distancing measures will continue at least until the end of May. 

This model predicted 899 deaths for April 01, and today we had 954 deaths. For March 31, prediction 874 and actual 807. For March 30, prediction 519 and actual 511. The daily death rate will peak just in time for my birthday around mid-April, with around 2,600 deaths. By June 01, we will be closing in on 100K deaths, unless even more mitigation measures are activated. The people that put together these models are not partisan, and they are extremely good at what they do. They are epidemiologists and mathematical biologists who specialize in the patterns of and the predictions of the spread of infectious disease. They are more often than not entirely correct. If we choose to ignore their inputs, then we do so at our peril.

Originally Posted by Rod Kaufman

Now they gotta protect Fauci because the Trumptoids are after him...
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/490725-fauci-given-security-detail-after-receiving-threats

The press asked him about this today during the briefing, and he passed the question off to the HHS inspector general.

By the way, Rod, that UW IHME model also shows predictions for each state. It's interesting to see.

Originally Posted by Rod Kaufman

Who's in charge of the federal coronavirus response?
Now we know:

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/01/jared-kushner-coronavirus-response-160553

We're screwed...

Is there anything the pallid princeling Jared cannot not accomplish? Middle East Peace? Check. COVID 19 testing website? Check. Build the border wall? Check. Infrastructure week? Check.