NSR: Coronavirus: A global Pandemic.

Went to target this morning and found toilet paper, water and hand sanitizer. Does this mean the crisis is over?

 

I'll start the bidding at $10 a roll.

 

TL.DR with an interesting take on the different approaches of various governments, including my own...

 

Perhaps, but consider there are only 3 flu vaccine producers in the US and they currently produce about 180 million doses in a 6 month period. Considering how popular the coronavirus vaccine is going to be, they are going to want to get as many of those produced as quickly as possible, which means locking up as many early production spots as they can.. I can guarantee you that other countries are doing the exact same thing. This was just Germany's way of saying "Hands off our vaccine, damnit!!"

 

As they should.

Additionally a small profit is ok, but I don’t trust our system to do the right thing.

 

I'm not talking about health care decisions by/for individuals. I'm talking about innovation - the basic research that creates medicines, diagnostic tests and vaccines. You don't often hear about great scientific breakthroughs in countries where research is controlled by the government.

 

I don't disagree. They also used a world figure that is extremely unpopular, yet well known. So they can do it without having to worry about a backlash of any sort.

In this case, I highly doubt the flu vaccine manufacturers want the backlash that would be aimed at them should they try and price gouge.

 

And to add insult to injury, he was going to name it the Jenny McCarthy COVID19 X-treme Vaccine.

 

Pretty much. Everyone keeps saying we're on pace with Italy because our infection count matches theirs. The problem is, our per capita infection is 1/5 of Italy's. If we were at 20k confirmed cases, maybe?

 

That's the one organ that still works, the old bellows. Lottsa walking in the sand dunes with the puppy.

 

Just a timeline recap on the lies and bullshit.

January 22 was Trump’s first public comment on coronavirus, when, asked if there were concerns about a pandemic (concerns that have been fully realized), he answered, “No. Not at all. And we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”

He didn’t stop there.

January 24: “It will all work out well.”

January 28: Trump retweeted One America News claiming Johnson & Johnson was creating a vaccine.

January 30: “We have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment—five. And those people are all recuperating successfully.”

January 31, Trump limited air travel by foreigners who had recently traveled to China. He’s endlessly bragged about that move, but he didn’t accompany it with any other serious measures to contain COVID-19 in the U.S.

February 2: “Well, we pretty much shut it down coming in from China,” Trump claims in an interview with Sean Hannity.

February 10, with the U.S. drastically behind on testing: “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”

February 19: “I think the numbers are going to get progressively better as we go along.”

February 23: “We have [coronavirus] very much under control in this country.” And “We had 12 [people with the disease], at one point. And now they’ve gotten very much better. Many of them are fully recovered.”

A few days later, Trump seemingly started to realize there was a problem he couldn’t handle by simply denying it existed. So he started lashing out at others. On February 25 he was ranting about “Cryin’ Chuck Schumer.” The media was “panicking markets” by reporting on coronavirus, he tweeted on February 26. At a February 28 rally, he blamed “The Democrat policy of open borders.”

But that doesn’t mean he stopped also pretending everything was just fine. In the same period, he claimed “we’re going down, not up. We’re going very substantially down, not up” and “It’s going to disappear. One day—it’s like a miracle—it will disappear.”

On February 29, Trump claimed a vaccine would be available “very quickly” and that “my administration has taken the most aggressive action in modern history to confront the spread of this disease.” False and false.

March 2: Trump discovers that the flu also kills people, and tries to change the subject to the flu.

March 4: Trump tells Hannity that the fatality rate is lower than the World Health Organization’s latest number.

March 7: Asked if he’s concerned that the virus is getting closer to the White House, Trump responds “No, I’m not concerned at all. No, I’m not. No, we’ve done a great job.” This remark is made at Mar-a-Lago, before dinner with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Three people at Mar-a-Lago that night have tested positive for coronavirus.

March 10: “It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”

The amount of denial and deception and misinformation Trump has produced about coronavirus, even as the disease spreads and its threat increases, has been a serious danger to the people of the United States. And with the number of people infected rising daily—not that we know how high the number is, thanks to a lack of testing due to Trump administration mismanagement—we’re just now starting to learn how high a price we’ll all pay for his failure of leadership.

 

Where do you get off giving advice?

 

I'm not either. Could you give me an example of such a country? I believe it is disingenuous of you to basically call universities as not part of the government - most research done there is done by government employees funded by government money. I really recommend reading Maria Mazzucato's book on the entrepreneurial state on this issue (see for a TED talk)

 

Did somebody advocate that? The federal government should have coordinated, from the top down, the U.S. response to the coronavirus if and when it arrived. The government had plenty of advance notice, in the form of the Chinese and then South Korean experiences. That is logistical planning ... and no surprise, a Trump led regime utterly failed. But I wouldn't expect the government necessarily to come with the vaccine ... although I would also ask, why not? Private enterprise didn't develop the atomic bomb. Government employees can do some damn fine work if you run the project correctly.

 

Not sure about The Manhattan Project, but NASA was chock full of contractors, labor all provided by private enterprises.

That's a colossal "if".

 

Stopped at the local gas station and saw the beer delivery guy. Gave him a one man standing ovation and told him he was a hero. Doing my part to get us all through this.

 

The top countries in terms of reported new cases would show that those countries with a low "recovered" number (e.g., Germany, France, or USA) will tend to also have a lower 'death' number, meaning that many of their cases are still in the early stages of their progress. I tried to do a chart to show the underlying figures for different countries (Italy, Iran, Spain, Germany, USA, France etc) but I don't know how to post charts here.

 

Senators will eventually stab it to death.

 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau just announced that Canada is closing its borders to all non Canadian residents

• Trudeau says only 4 Canadian airports will receive international flights.

1. Toronto
2. Montreal
3. Vancouver
4. Calgary

US flights exempt

• Travel restrictions won’t affect commerce and trade in goods/supplies.

• Trudeau says airlines are ordered to ban those with symptoms from boarding flights. There will be an assistance program to help Canadians abroad.

 

Sometimes I truly wonder who is the biggest imbecile, Boris or Donald....

Boris Johnson says the government will no longer support mass gatherings in the UK.
Mass gatherings are something “we are now moving emphatically away from”, he said.
He also urged people to stay at home for 14 days if any member of the household is ill.

 

Ahem.

 

There is almost zero chance this is true, but can't leave it to chance.