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BBC: China pneumonia outbreak: COVID-19 Global Pandemic


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2 hours ago, FanboyOf91 said:
Another point that makes you wonder about the Chinese numbers.

 

I don't think you have to wonder.  There are videos of swamped waiting rooms with people dying from obvious Covid cases that continue to come in.

 

From what I understand, doctors have been told that they will be held accountable (i.e. dissapeared) if they diagnose any new Covid cases.

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Desperate for medical equipment, states encounter a beleaguered national stockpile

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...034_story.html

I personally found it shocking how incompetent this and last administration have been in terms of managing the stockpile since creation of this medical equipment allocation. As such the recent move of it to FEMA makes a lot of sense. (A side note and maybe I missed it or maybe it was just confusing due to the poor writing - why was this emergency stock not created for a pandemic?). I personally think there are lots of lessons learned here for an honest conversation after this blows over - but that is assuming an after action does not get politicized. What is more likely is some sound piece that says “there is no individual who did anything wrong but instead a lot of “systemic issues” were identified and we promise the American people these will be resolved.

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Matt Bai posits that Trump's seeming cluelessness about how government works during his daily briefings actually helps with his base - for now- who still see him as an outsider in the midst of government hacks and lifers.

 

This is Trump’s Daily Show

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/28/this-is-trumps-daily-show/

Matt Bai

March 28, 2020

 

Like plenty of other Americans stuck in their homes these days, I find myself riveted to President Trump’s daily briefings on the coronavirus.

 

That’s not simply because I find the briefings entertaining on some level and terrifying on another, although I do. (More the latter than the former.) It’s because, if you carefully watch what’s going on in the briefing room, you can start to understand why Trump retains the support of a strong plurality of the electorate, and why even the current crisis may not quickly erode it.

 

If you haven’t watched Trump’s daily show, here’s how it works. Sometime around 5:30, when the normal American workday used to end, the president dramatically enters the briefing room, flanked by a rotating posse of career politicians and government experts.

 

Trump then starts with my favorite part of the briefing, which is the recitation of the day’s talking points. What I love about this is that Trump doesn’t even make a pretense of having seen the actual content before this minute.

 

Rather, he reads from the document haltingly, his head buried in the text, his shoulders lurching violently with the effort of trying to pronounce some of the words. And then, after reciting each point, he looks up and offers some bit of commentary or surprised reaction, in much the same way my mother mutters to herself while reading the morning paper.

FEMA will be sending 6,000 masks to states where the crisis is most acute. [Pause.] Huh. That’s a lot of masks. Many, many masks. Just incredible. We’re doing an incredible job, really amazing.

 

And so on.

Then, when he’s finished reciting and reacting, the president takes questions. Sometimes he calls on reporters by name, although often he’ll interrupt himself to ask, “Where are you from?,” as if he suspects they may be a plant.

 

About once a day, he does the whole “fake news” bit, or goes off on a tangent about how the previous administration left him such a morass. These riffs seem less like responses to any specific questions than tracks on a shuffled playlist.

 

With any other president, the goal of these briefings would have been to demonstrate mastery of the machine. Trump has his moments of managerial lucidity, but mostly he seems to be going for something else — a sense that he’s coming to all of this as cold as we are, and we just wouldn’t believe how complicated it all is.

There’s something profound on display here, whether Trump understands the nature of his own appeal or not

 

The modern presidency, at least going back to the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976, is essentially the same story told multiple times, with only slight variations: An outsider comes to Washington promising to reform or dismantle a governing apparatus in which large numbers of Americans have lost all faith, and eventually ends up another symbol of a capital gone awry.

 

The popularity of every president comes down to the question of how long he can retain the status of outsider. Because once the president is considered a part of the system, he has to own its myriad failures, just like the guy before him. Inevitably, he disappoints the very people who sent him there.

 

But no president has put as much distance between himself and the government he controls as Trump has, and no one has managed to pull off the illusion for quite this long.

When you watch these daily briefings, you have the visual sense that Trump, like some guy we plucked from the set of his erstwhile reality show, isn’t really running the government so much as trying just to comprehend and corral it.

 

The rest:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/28/this-is-trumps-daily-show/

 

 

Edited by Dan T.
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3 hours ago, KDawg said:

 

The same Cuomo who just released dozens of parolees, 4 of which are sex offenders and put them in hotels near schools/highly populated areas under his bull**** bail reform act? That same Cuomo? 

 

This is just a few miles away from me. I have two children. 

 

I have nothing positive to say about that guy.

 

 

 

 

that's fine, dawg

 

but you brought in a lot of off topic material that could generate even more off topic (and contentious) digression and that's not ok in these threads so watch that moving forward

 

thanks :)

 

to other folks, don't extend this into  unrelated cuomo issues up for debate

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