Kuya 808 comments

What's the military going to do? Shoot people?

Probably, especially if some people start shooting at them. But you have to remember, the US military is not only about shooting people. They possess one of the most sophisticated intelligence gathering apparatuses on earth. These are the folks that can, and do, tap into cell signals, operate data collection platforms that can read a news paper headline from 25,000 feet. All they have to do is watch the events on the ground, listen in on phone conversations, run their very capable facial and voice recognition software in their very capable computer systems and start the process of identifying, locating and apprehending. Really all they have to do is run the thousands of videos posted online and they would be taking care of most of the data gathering right there.

If some LARPing wanna be revolutionary decides it would be cool to take to the streets and get a little wild they would be running the risk of having their image running through the system. Ever had a drivers licence.... busted. Ever had a college ID....busted. Bank account? Credit card? Forget about that, use it....busted.

But you shouldn't be worried about the military. The real danger is the suburbanites who are gunning up big time, as we speak. Over 6 million guns purchased in the past 3 months, 40% first time buyers and of those 40% women. With governors, mayors and police chiefs across the country standing back and letting the rioting, arson, looting and killing go on (pretty much telling people they are on their own) sooner or later regular folks are going to take things in their own hands. Picture if you will almost a million suburban Karens each armed with a gun and scared out of their minds. Scary, huh?

The country has been beset by angry demonstrations for the past week in some of the most widespread racial unrest in the U.S. since the 1960s

Ah.... the sixties. Anybody here old enough to remember them? If you do, and were paying attention, you might recall that the race based riots back then didn't do much of anything to usher in a wave of progressive policies. In fact, they were probably one of the driving forces behind the election and then reelection of one Richard Milhous Nixon. Nixon carried 49 states in 1972 as American voters shifted their political alignment solidly to the right, this as a direct result of the social and racial unrest that was unleashed on the American public by violent activists.

This is not a theory (conspiracy or otherwise) but the result of numerous studies examining the problem. A very recent study out of Princeton University ( as reported in the NewYorker Magazine) reports that, historically, race riots in America have not resulted in a shift in public opinion towards a more liberal progressive attitude but have, in fact, had the opposite effect with a clear backlash in public opinion and a major shift to the right. This study found that non-violent demonstrations did not have this effect. It's the rioting and looting that set the attitude shift in motion. It should be noted that neither Princeton nor the NewYorker are bastions of right wing ideology and this report was issued as a warning of what could happen in November.

If history can tell us anything about what is happening now, it might just be that the antifa and BLM activist passing out bricks and hit lists of who and what is to be attacked might as well be passing out red pills and MAGA hats.

maybe he was even driving down an unblocked multi-lane expressway, doing his job, driving his work truck.

Maybe this driver was thinking about Reginald Denny. Remember him?

Unfortunately it looks like they jumped the gun.

Did you read the whole article, or just the headline?

I don't know why they did not keep the course for another month they were so close to the end.

As of May 27 2020, South Korea has reported administering a total of 852,876 tests or 16,637 tests per million of population. Of those, 11,265 proved positive. Among those who tested positive 10,295 have recovered and 269 have succumbed to Covid 19 related complications.

To put that in perspective, 98.7% percent of the tests were negative with 1.3% positive. In the 1.3% positive cases the reported recovery rate is 91.4% and the death rate is 3.8% with remaining cases still active.

Applying those numbers to the total population of South Korea, the average South Korean has a 0.022% chance of contracting the virus and a 0.0005% chance of dying from it. Those are the risk factors you need to consider when weighing the pluses and minuses of a continued suppression of the normal functions of everyday life for the overwhelming majority of the Korean people.

Trump wearing a mask. Why does it remind me of the "Silence of the Lambs" so much?

Imagine if Trump was to bring out a line of "MAGA Masks". Lots of red, white and blue and all with a bold MAGA logo printed on the front. Men's, women's and children's sizes and styles available. Now imagine Trump wearing his "MAGA Mask" at every presser and corona update, extolling the use of proper masks (especially MAGA Masks") as the "perfect" solution for this pandemic. And then there's Twitter. Just imagine what he do there.

I wonder how long it would take for the act of wearing a mask to become a bad thing.

Russia 165,000 cases , 1500 deaths

Don't let facts get in your way.

Russia reports to have administered 4,633,731 tests for covid 19 with positive results in 165,929 (3.58%) tests and negative results in 4,467,802 (96.42%).

With the total number of cases at 165,929 and a total number of deaths at 1537 the death rate among those with a positive test result is 0.93%. The infection rate per million of population is 0.1137% and the death rate per million of population is 0.0011%

The daily number of new deaths in the U.S. declined noticeably in recent weeks. But if the New York area is left out, deaths have essentially plateaued. The rolling five-day average outside the metro region for new deaths dropped slightly from 1.86 per 500,000 people on April 20 to 1.82 on Monday.

So according to this article if you live outside the metro region, on April 20 you would have had a 0.000372% chance of dying from Covid and on Monday your chances would have been 0.000364%.

So far the Russians have reportedly conducted just shy of 4 million tests or about a rate of 27,000 tests per million of their population.

According to the article 114,431 of those tests were positive for the Covid 19 virus, with the article going on to report a death toll of 1,169. Those numbers are outdated, the latest update shows 124,054 total cases with 1,222 total deaths. That's an increase of 9,623 cases and 53 deaths since the numbers in the article were published, one day ago.

So, 3,945,518 tests resulted in 124,054 positives and 3,821,464 negatives. That's roughly 3.14% positive and 96.86% negative. Of the 124,054 confirmed cases 1,222 people have succumbed to Covid related complications with 122,832 either recovered or in treatment. That's a death rate among confirmed cases of 0.985%.

Given Russia's population of around 146 million, there have been roughly 850 confirmed cases per million and 8 deaths. Going just by the numbers, Russians have a .085% chance of infection and a .0008% chance at death from the Covid 19 virus.

Except that day one wasn’t mid March.

We know because it was January.

@Silvafan

The quote you included from January 14 states that the WHO reported that there was no evidence of human to human transmission. Hardly a dire warning to the world.

Taking a look at what was going on between the CCP and WHO back at the genesis of this mess, is not such a bad idea. If everything is cool, then no harm no foul. If something cheeky was going on then I think most people would want to know. After all, it's much easier to form an educated opinion if you have all the facts, right?

Most countries, regardless of where they are on the political spectrum, were caught with their pants down on this one. And likewise most countries don't have the capacity, or will, to embed their own observers within the CCP medical research apparatus to keep tabs on potential problems. That's where the WHO comes in. Countries around the world have relied on that organization to lead the way and tell them what to do. Just how well placed that trust was will eventually come out in the wash.

As a side note, in the US the FBI is looking into a sizable grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology specifically for coronavirus research. Years back, it was determined by US health officials that research in these types of viruses posed a serious risk. The primary concern was the potential for accidental release of a novel strain which could potentially cause a global pandemic. For this reason the US placed a moratorium on this type research. Not everybody was happy about that, there were doctors and scientist that wanted to continue in spite of the potential danger. Among the dissenters was the US National Institute of Health. To circumvent the moratorium the NIH took money that they had budgeted for domestic coronavirus research and gave it to the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a grant. Essentially outsourcing this potentially dangerous research to the CCP.

Maybe if something fishy was going on with the WHO and CCP, it will show up when the FBI puts this whole thing under their microscope.

BTW: The US moratorium on coronavirus research went into effect in 2014, the grant from the NIH was awarded in 2015.

So can we get back to the actual topic now?

Been there for awhile. It doesn't matter what subject is reported in the story. The real topic is, and will always be "Orange Man Bad"

"The federal government has passed three bills to address this crisis. Of those three bills the state governments have gotten precisely zero, zilch, nada in unrestricted aid," 

The key to that sentence is "unrestricted aid". Back in late March, Congress passed a $2.2 trillion stimulus package that allocated just shy of $400 billion to state and local governments for coronavirus relief efforts. New York's cut was a little over $7.5 billion. New york also got a share of the $60 billion specifically allocated to support state education institutions, mass transit infrastructure and community development block grants.

So it looks like New York received a bit more than "zero, zilch, nada". Apparently, Cuomo objects to the fact that the funds his state received were specifically for coronavirus relief efforts and not a blank check to spend on whatever he sees fit. In other words, "unrestricted"

This pandemic is having a very corrosive effect on a number of ideological institutions. The egalitarian underpinnings of the CCP have definitely been challenged. Now we see the Party, as well as, economic elites utilizing their disproportionate resources to protect themselves by any means with the regular folks bearing the brunt of the hardship. At the same time, individual cities across China are either becoming fortresses of their own or pariahs to be shunned. All kind of conflict is arising, with town against town, country folk against city slickers and so on and so forth. Things are getting pretty tribal.

I guess it boils down to ideology versus human nature. Marxism is not a natural condition for humans, it requires the suppression of naturally occuring tendencies and the continued maintenance of that suppression to insure the masses don't stray. Because if they are left to their own devices, they'll go feral. In this situation it appears that the Chinese have shaken off some of their ideological restraints and are returning to a more natural state.

Are these re-infected or re-activated cases resulting in the pattern of disease progression that was seen in the initial outbreak? Are these patients re-developing symptoms, as well? The article reports the positive test results but doesn't say if the individuals involved are following a similar statistical trajectory in regards to hospital admissions, ICU admissions or mortality.

Three weeks ago New Yorkers were being told to by their mayor to go about their lives in a normal fashion. Ride the subway, take the bus, go out with the family, catch a movie while your at it.

Something has come home to roost, but it sure ain't chickens.

@PTownsend

Thanks for the link. I checked it out but I didn't see Carlson "telling Trump followers that it's the medical community who are at fault for saying more physical distancing is needed."

I did see him saying “Once the coronavirus reached our shores the CDC couldn’t seem to produce working tests, Those were disasters. Many people died because the people we trusted to protect our health didn’t do it.” 

Criticizing the CDC's actions at the beginning of this crisis is a legitimate complaint. And that's who Carlson was talking about, not the medical community as a whole. And for sure, no where in the article did Carlson say anything about medical community being at fault for saying more social distancing is needed.

So I guess that part is a matter of interpretation and projection.

Thats socialism

How? I always thought that socialism was a political and economic theory in which the means of production, distribution and exchange of goods are owned and controlled by the members of a society through direct action.

America is a Constitutional Republic where the citizens can express their interests by electing representatives at the local, state, and federal levels. And each of those levels has a responsibility to their constituents.

If an individual state determines that their economies can continue to provide goods and services due to their specific situation and in doing so provide those good and services to people who need them then they are not practicing socialism. They are practicing what a Republic is all about and be assured there will be a lot of capitalism involved.

@PTownsend

What are you talking about? Carlson was sounding the alarm about the Covid 19 threat to the US in January while the likes of CNN, MSNBC were breathlessly covering impeachment. In early February Calson did a long segment on his show about the situation in China and again reiterated the message that people were not paying attention to the problem. On March 7 Carlson went to Mar-a-lago to have a private meeting with Trump to push his message of the danger of this virus and the need to be prepared. On March 9 Carlson went on his show and in stark contrast to some of his FOX colleagues said, “People you know will get sick, Some may die. This is real. That's the point of this script — to tell you that.”

Meanwhile on February 1 from the Washington Post

“Clearly, the flu poses the bigger and more pressing peril; a handful of cases of the new respiratory illness have been reported in the United States, none of them fatal or apparently even life-threatening,” 

One day before that (01/31) VOX told it's readers "Is this going to be a deadly pandemic? No!"

Interestingly this was 2 days after the White House announced the formation of the Coronavirus taskforce and expanded travel restrictions for China.

And then here was Oxiris Barbot NYC Health commissioner who on February 2 told New Yorkers “There is no reason not to take the subway, not to take the bus, not to go out to your favorite restaurant, and certainly not to miss the parade next Sunday.” And then on February 7 “We’re telling New Yorkers, go about your lives, take the subway, go out, enjoy life”

Or Bill de Blasio reassuring New Yorkers on February 10 with “If you’re under 50 & you’re healthy, which is most NYers, there’s very little threat here. This disease, even if you were to get it, basically acts like a common cold or flu. And transmission is not that easy,”

To be honest I've been looking for the source for your statements but I just can't find them, could you please provide a link?

" Intimate Partner and Family Violence, across the lifetime". That was my major in college, pretty heavy. I went on to work in a number of social service nonprofits focused on enhanced family outcomes and a very big part of that was addressing the effects of IPV, child and elder abuse and neglect. From my perspective, borne of personal experience, any and all fears that people are having about the negative possibilities presented by this situation are well founded.

My wife and I have been together 24/7 for nearly 30 years. We spent most days together. Doing stuff together, laughing, playing, and we also go to our own parts of the house to do what we want or need to do.*

Thats inspiring, honestly. Something like what you and your wife have, just doesn't happen by itself. It might seem like it to you, but it just doesn't. What you have accomplished together is a wonderful testament to a level of commitment and devotion that is sadly missing in many relationships in today's world. Well done.

Too many people dying due to his incompetent response to the pandemic. It's hard to distract people from that.

Something must be working because 60% of Americans approve of the incompetent response. And in the spirit of better understanding, what exactly is the incompetence that is responsible for too many people dying?

Donny’s administration is responsible for this.

Any details on that? What exactly is Trump responsible for? The indictment or the drug smuggling?

How do conservatives get that Dems obstructed the passage when the article clearly states it was four republican senators?

The article does not clearly state that four Republican senators obstructed the passage of the bill, because the vote has not been taken yet. All the article says is four Republicans raised concerns about some provisions in the bill. While on the other hand, you have the article clearly stating that Bernard Sanders (D) has vowed to block the bill if those Republicans don't drop their concerns. In other words, shut up and go along or I'll vote to kill the whole thing.

In the last two tries the bill failed to be moved forward because every single one of the Democrats voted it down. Every single one, and that's 47 to be exact, voted to block this bill. It should also be noted in those votes every single Republican Senator voted for it. Every single one.

Maybe that's that's how somebody would get the idea that it's the Democrats that have been the obstructors in this emergency situation.

@Bjorn Tomention

You probably should have left the gun thing out on this one. The article is about PM Ardern's announcing a nation wide lockdown in response to the Covid 19 threat. Bringing the gun issue into it comes off as using the Coronavirus situation to promote your agenda, or in other words politicizing it. All it achieved was for you to be labeled, demeaned and dismissed. That's too bad, because your observations (if true) about the lax security at NZ airports, are definitely pertinent to this conversation.

Based on direct observation of clinical cases it was observed that the average time between infection and the onset of symptoms was eleven and a half days, with ninety nine percent of the patients becoming symptomatic within a period of nine to fifteen days. The numbers we are seeing now are a result of what was happening two weeks ago. And it is almost certain that the numbers will continue to rise until the hoped for effect of the lockdown begins to manifest itself.

Right now the responsibility of the government is to take all possible steps to protect its citizens and address the health, economic, and societal challenges that are looming in the near future. But it is the people of New Zealand that hold the key to whether those efforts are successful or not. If New Zealanders get on board and follow the guidelines to reduce possible infection, then hopefully in a month or so we could see some light at the end of the tunnel. If not, well.....

 Competent people don’t do this.

That may very well be the case, but I would need to see examples of what "competent" people have done so far before I could make that judgment. Apparently Trump's messaging at the beginning of this event is a major point of contention, but in the context of the warpspeed timeline of this pandemic that was a long time ago. And a lot of water has gone under the bridge. The question is; is Trump downplaying this now?

A Serbian leader publicly stated to the effect that China is better and more helpful savior, or brother than its neighboring EU.

The EU's primary response to the Covid outbreak was to call for a unified, coordinated effort on the part of the member states. This was to be achieved by each member state living up to its "responsibilities". To assist in that endeavor the EU loosened up some of their fiscal regulations and redirected some of its budget so that the member states could have a little extra cash to invest in their economies. That way each member state could be better equipped to respond to the growing problem.

When Italy was getting hammered, with over 20,000 infections and 1400 deaths, they went to the EU for help. They requested medical supplies and equipment to bolster their seriously overburdened health care apparatus. The EU responded by dutifully informing each member state of Italy's situation and request. Not one member state answered Italy's call, but China did.

It really looks like, that when the chips are down, there isn't really much unity in the European Union.

This virus gonna stay longer in North America and Europe. The governance systems and civil disobedience of these two regions will make it harder to curb the spreading.

Clearly the freedom of movement afforded to the members of the Schengen Area has played a major role in the spread of the virus within Europe. The lack of a coordinated EU response led to most member states implementing a variety of protocols based on their own specific take on the situation and overall the response was slow and erratic. Maybe one incident best illustrates the issues in Europe. When Italy first started getting pounded, they appealed to the EU's Emergency Response Coordination Centre for assistance with medical supplies and equipment. The ERCC then passed on the appeal to the member states. Not a single member state responded to the appeal. The only outside aid Italy has received is from the Chinese.

In the US the testing was delayed, a definite setback. But it's cranking up now. National guard units trained in emergency response are being activated in a number of states to assist in the local response. The number of test sites have been increased with drive through testing available at a number of locations. The US has incredible resources to bring to bear and once they get their act together they can achieve a lot. Unfortunately the combined effects of social media and the sensationalizing of the situation by broadcast media have led to a disturbing level of mass hysteria that is scary to see. A significant number of Americans have a really high sense of entitlement and what is important to them is all that is important. These are the people that will make everything way more difficult than it has to be and make recovery that much harder for everybody else.

But there are millions of people who haven't got the immediate access that the elite have*

There are more than 1250 federally funded public health clinics across the US with over 8000 service sites. Cost for services is usually is based on a sliding scale and those who can not pay don't.

A 1985 federal law requires all emergency medical facilities in the US to treat anyone that comes through their doors. Regardless of their ability to pay. The Feds also give tax breaks and other incentives to hospitals that provide free or low cost services to low income families and individuals. There are around 6000 hospitals in the US.

Every US state has some form of Medicaid that provides services for the economically disadvantaged and disabled.

Then there are the thousands of free, community health centers operating on private donations and government grants. Many of these are set up to serve undocumented individuals and other at risk groups.

Bottom line is if you live in America, whether your a citizen or not, documented or not, rich or poor you have access. And in this situation it will most likely be as immediate as possible.

But what of the 11 million illegals and the 27 million who can't affrod healthcare or millions who only have limited healthcare that does not cover this virus.

All US health insurance companies cover this virus and have waived patient copay for Covid-19 related treatment and testing. As it stands right now, each and every one of those 27 million uninsured as well as the 11 million undocumented can walk right into any one of the tens of thousands of available health care facilities and get tested and treated if necessary. And if they can't pay? They won't have to.

Can't be that much of a bonehead if he put Fauci up front and center. Seems like a sensible move.

There is no way to tell if the spread had not already started all over.

That's for sure. We didn't really see any numbers about infection rates until people started looking for it. The chances of the virus spreading undetected are pretty good because the initial symptoms of Covid 19 are similar to the flu and the group of illnesses caused by other strains of coronavirus, rhinovirus, parainfluenza virus and a couple hundred other bugs that are responsible what is referred to as the "common cold".

During the flu season, people who exhibit flu symptoms are regularly told to get rest, stay hydrated and take something for symptomatic relief. When there isn't an ongoing flu outbreak people exhibiting similar symptoms are given the same basic diagnosis and treatment advice. Ordinarily, testing for a specific pathogen does not occur unless there is a reason to look. Until information started coming out of Wuhan and the virus revealed itself to the world most people weren't looking for it. Now everybody is looking and we see the spike in the numbers.

Covid-19 could have, and probably did, hide among its symptomatic cousins for quite a while and only came out in the open after the world became aware of it and started looking. Up until that point this little beastie was free to roam.