Oh here it fucking comes, Trumpās criticism of Fauciās testimony. People are dying by the thousands and he still wonāt listen to his own fucking team.
Heās just going to let the virus rip through every community, across the country. Doesnāt even fucking care about American lives! I really hope he goes through some things karma-wise.
Jared Kushner is pushing the idea of postponing the election, sparking long-held fears. This is pure distraction, designed to prey on our fears to help distract from the things Trump himself fears right now.
Watch Thursday 5.14.20 7a PST/10aEST
https://www.c-span.org/video/?471986-1/dr-rick-bright-testifies-coronavirus-pandemic-response
Dr. Rick Bright Testimony on Coronavirus Pandemic Response
Dr. Rick Bright, the recent director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority who says he was removed from his job, testified before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee.
KELLY: Tell us a little bit more about Rick Bright. I know you have read his complaint, all 63 pages of it, and you have verified a lot of it. Give us the gist.
DIAMOND: Rick Bright, who was abruptly transferred about three weeks ago to a smaller role at the National Institutes for Health, has alleged that his transfer was politically motivated, that he had been raising concerns for months about the Trump administrationās problematic response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Some of his concerns were about supplies, about not enough masks. And I think his warnings have been borne out. The U.S. was caught flat-footed. And had the U.S. followed some of the concerns that Dr. Bright was raising and acted on them, we wouldāve been in a better position.
KELLY: He was also one of the ones raising concerns about the malaria drug that President Trump was trumpeting for a while there as a possible way out of all this, right?
DIAMOND: Thatās right. Thatās right. And thatās really the crux of his complaint and what I was trying to get to the bottom of. Dr. Bright says that he was the one helping block efforts to make that malaria drug widely available despite scant evidence that it would be effective for COVID-19.
KELLY: OK.
DIAMOND: Itās not clear, though, that he went as far as his allegations suggest that he did. And thereās some evidence that he may have actually been more favorable to using the drug than Dr. Bright alleged in his complaint.
KELLY: Right. I mean, you have found as you reported this out - youāve interviewed a bunch of people. You have found, as one often does, that itās complicated. What are some of the people saying who question some of Rick Brightās claims?
DIAMOND: Well, I think there are two areas, Mary Louise. One would be that Dr. Bright, while certainly not the biggest fan of using these malaria drugs, did help make it possible for the federal government to acquire them in the first place. He did play a role. He did not lie in the road and stop that project from moving forward.
I think a second issue is that Dr. Bright and his ouster - that was months in the making. I, as a political reporter, cover the agency pretty closely, and I talked to officials dating back to last year about frustrations with Dr. Bright and plans to move him early this year, even before we knew that COVID-19 was on the horizon.
Dr. Rick Brightās comments in front of Congress today. Whistleblower and former head of BARDA Director 2016-2020
This
Testingā¦all we need is testing. What about accurate testing? It looks like the Abbott device is not giving us the most accurate results - "it may miss as many as half of positive cases."
prognosis
False Negatives Raise More Questions About Virus Test Accuracy
Abbott device in use at White House had false negatives: study
Second analysis finds many inaccurate results from tests
New research is raising more questions about tests used around the U.S. to diagnose Covid-19 patients, with some of the tests producing a surprisingly high rate of false negatives that incorrectly show a person isnāt infected.
One study released Wednesday examining an Abbott Laboratories test thatās used at the White House to get rapid diagnoses indicated it may miss as many as half of positive cases. A second peer-reviewed study released hours later suggested that results for another type of widely used diagnostic test are particularly unreliable early on in an infection.
The first study found that Abbottās ID NOW machine missed at least one-third of positive cases detected with a rival test, and as many as 48% when using the currently recommended dry nasal swabs, according to the report on BioRxiv, a server where researchers post early work before it has been reviewed by other scientists.
Sheer nihilismā¦rejecting all normsā¦preface to where this societal breakdown begins and ends. WTF
NEW YORK, May 14 (Reuters) - Accused criminals across the United States have started using the threat of deadly COVID-19 infection as a weapon in attacks on police, retail clerks and grocers trying to keep the nation fed during lockdown.
Threats of spreading COVID-19 have occurred from coast to coast, raising questions about whether states will move to criminalize the weaponization of the novel coronavirus, the way more than half of U.S. states made undisclosed HIV exposure a crime when the AIDS crisis erupted in the 1980s.
A Michigan man wiped his nose and face on the shirt of a store employee who was trying to enforce a mask-wearing requirement. The 68-year-old man was charged with misdemeanor assault and battery and, if convicted, faces three months behind bars and a $500 fine.
In St. Petersburg, Florida, a man coughed and spit on police and threatened to spread the virus as they responded to domestic violence calls to his home. He faces up to five years in prison on federal charges of perpetrating a biological weapons hoax after his test results came back negative.
A San Antonio, Texas, man claimed in a Facebook post that he paid someone to spread coronavirus at grocery stores. While his threat was deemed false, he too was arrested and charged with a biological weapons hoax. He claimed he was trying to deter people from visiting stores in an effort to prevent the spread of the virus, federal prosecutors in Texas said.
New Jersey is among the first states to consider making it a crime to issue a "credible threat to infect another with COVID-19 or similar infectious disease that triggered public emergency," said a spokesman for the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Advocates for HIV-positive people said states drafting such laws should be careful not to make them so broad that they punish poor and minority communities, as studies show HIV criminalization has, according to the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Law and Public Policy at UCLA School of Law.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/14/wisconsin-bars-reopen-evers/
Wow.
All right, by my count; based on the first day of Washington Stateās Governor Jay Insleeās Stay @ Home Order, this is now Day 60 of our Social Distancing Experience.
Thereās all sorts of Coronavirus/Covid-19 information, conspiracy theories, and details all over the place, but few thoughts, forecasts, or predictions about what our futureās going to be like. Someone pointed out the other day that Mike Ryan from the WHO said COVID-19 could become endemic like HIV and may never go away. Swell. And North Korea or somebody MAY fire a missile at us, what kind of value is a message like THAT to us? To guard against HIV, one wears a prophylactic. So to guard against the Coronavirus, what, we wear oxygen masks? Remember that old Timbuk3 song, āThe Futureās So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades?ā What would be a modern day version, the Futureās So Grim I gotta Wear O2?
What are your thoughts about the future? Whatās keeping me going is the Pandemic of 1918, which lasted a year and then blew over without a vaccine or anything. So, based on that, 60 Days Down, and ājustā 305 Days to go.
The next five years will be harder than the 2008 recession. The coronavirus will alter most of our lives forever. Everything from cultural norms to even architecture will change slightly to facilitate society new needs. Iām hopeful but feeling cautious. Humans are extraordinary creatures, we will adapt but how quickly is the real question.
Stay home if you can, wear a mask in public, and wash your damn hands. The future can still be ours if we hold on to hope.
Yeah, I know about staying at home, and wearing a mask, and washing my hands, but while Iām sure the financial hit will linger for a while, Iām hoping the social distancing thing will end faster than that.
I was streaming Al Di Meola on Pandora last night, and was thinking āDAMN heās good with a guitar!ā And then I started thinking about the local jazz club where I saw him perform twice, each with a strikingly different style. Thereās a wonderful bartender there named Kelly, and she said heās like that EVERYTIME he plays.
Well, there WAS a wonderful bartender there named Kelly, that clubās shut down now. Maybe this is going to be like a Rip Van Winkle kinda thing; whenever itās safe to venture out, weāll have to rediscover our new world.
My guess is that it will be touch and go for a while, some hot spots will have to open and close as they struggle with containment. From what Iāve been reading, the virus is not contained right now and we have no national plan to contain the virus, so itās up completely to the states when to end the stay home orders. No state is currently meeting any benchmark for reopening. In Wuhan, I believe I read they were under stay home orders for 76 days. I have a feeling itāll be a bit longer for us. We donāt have a strong healthcare infrastructure in the states, itās all piecemeal and Americans hate being told what to doāwearing masks, staying six feet apart, etc.
I have hope but I fear the worst, containment of the virus has been politicized to the point of endangering peopleās lives. This will not be easy.
Hereās the latest forecast from the CDC
Agreed, while the Washington State Governor is trying to be proactive and emulate the South Korean methodology, itās all voluntary, and thereās no travel restrictions across the border. Soā¦I think THAT part, at least, is doomed to fail. AND, thereās certainly not going to be any nationally organized and/or enforced strategy for at LEAST another 250 days.
The other dynamic though is, as time goes on, more and more people will have been exposed, and start developing antibodies. Thatās what happened in 1918. There was no vaccine, there WERE about 675,000 deaths in the United States alone, but it was pretty much all over after a yearās time.
Yes! The Port could put in place fever screenings at the very least, more people come in through our ports than from than they Idaho or Oregon borders. I worry about the cruise ships in late summer docking downtown. They should keep the Market closed, this is no time for tourism. 
Itās my understanding that this pandemic will be similar but not as many deaths due to better mitigation practices and other advances in medical technology.
Thatās what happened in 1918. There was no vaccine, there WERE about 675,000 deaths in the United States alone
Itās my understanding that this pandemic will be similar but not as many deaths due to better mitigation practices and other advances in medical technology.
Well, weāll see what happens when they put those better mitigation processes on hold, without changing anything else. Iām expecting an upswing. Youāve got a good point though, about the advances in medical technology; even during THIS experience. Like, how theyāre found out that, at least in some cases, those sought after ventilators might be doing more harm than good.
And thatās āgoodā news that this pandemic will be similar to what happened in 1918; as it suggests that it WILL just run its course naturally, no chugging Clorox required! 
Yes good point but what I was actually referring to is the great leap weāve made in the last hundred years alone. Read, from NYTās
In 1918, the world was a very different place, even without the disruptive influence of World War I. Doctors knew viruses existed but had never seen one ā there were no electron microscopes, and the genetic material of viruses had not yet been discovered. Today, however, researchers not only know how to isolate a virus but can find its genetic sequence, test antiviral drugs and develop a vaccine.
In 1918, it was impossible to test people with mild symptoms so they could self-quarantine. And it was nearly impossible to do contact tracing because the flu seemed to infect ā and panic ā entire cities and communities all at once. Moreover, there was little protective equipment for health care workers, and the supportive care with respirators that can be provided to people very ill with coronavirus did not exist.
With a case fatality rate of at least 2.5 percent, the 1918 flu was far more deadly than ordinary flu, and it was so infectious that it spread widely, which meant the number of deaths soared.
Researchers believe the 1918 flu spared older people because they had some immunity to it. They theorize that decades earlier there had been a version of that virus, one that was not as lethal and spread like an ordinary flu. The older people living in 1918 would have been exposed to that less lethal flu and developed antibodies. As for children, most viral illnesses ā measles, chickenpox ā are more deadly in young adults, which may explain why the youngest were spared in the 1918 epidemic.
Regardless of the reason, it was a disaster for life expectancy, which plummeted. In 1917, life expectancy in the United States was 51 years. It was the same in 1919. But in 1918, it was just 39 years.
Everything was different, all the great medical advances of the 20th century happened after the āSpanish fluā pandemic, so at least weāve got that going for us. We just have to get through this, itās shit now but itās better than dying or infecting others who could die.
Wowā¦a 39 year life expectancy!!! Iām a RELICā¦and HAPPILY so!
A couple of interesting reads -not like thereās a shortageā¦
And even in the face of this pandemic, trump supporters continue their slavish loyalty & ignorance of the real world factsā¦
