Coronavirus Outbreak

[Grace]

Winston Churchill famously said: “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” I see the Trump Administration is taking this message to heart:

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Funny, that is what I thought the liberal media is doing. Never fail to take up the opportunity to create a crisis that they can blame Trump for. Some are even saying the virus should be renamed to "Trumpvirus". Can you imagine the fit people would have had, if Fox News came out and suggested that Ebola should have been named "Obamavirus".

Who is saying this?

New York Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/26/opin ... trump.html

[temporal1]

Grace:
New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/26/opin ... trump.html

i cannot imagine a piece like that getting a passing grade in a respectable high school English class.

[Ken]

Winston Churchill famously said: “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” I see the Trump Administration is taking this message to heart:

.

Funny, that is what I thought the liberal media is doing. Never fail to take up the opportunity to create a crisis that they can blame Trump for. Some are even saying the virus should be renamed to "Trumpvirus". Can you imagine the fit people would have had, if Fox News came out and suggested that Ebola should have been named "Obamavirus".

Actually yes. That is EXACTLY what Trump himself did in 2014. Trump tweeted furiously at Obama during the Ebola epidemic in the summer and fall of 2014 during run-up to the mid-term elections. Calling Obama "psycho" "arrogant" and "stupid" for his handling of the crisis, saying "there is seriously something wrong with his mental health" and he specifically tried to turn Ebola into a mid-term election issue in favor of Republican candidates. After the November 2014 mid-term elections Trump promptly lost interest in the issue and never tweeted about it again. This was well covered at the time. Here's a wide variety of right wing, left wing, and centrist sources that covered Trump's Ebola tweets. Feel free to go read them all for yourself.


https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2014 ... ravel-ban/
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-c ... eak-2020-2
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... /17815841/
https://www.vox.com/2020/2/26/21154253/ ... oronavirus
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/arch ... ts/595420/

[Ken]

President Trump has spoken consistently about the Fed Reserve/interest rates, and tax cuts.

He is obsessed by the stock market and is measuring his presidency by the Dow Jones. This was his tweet on Monday morning moments before one of the worst weeks in the history of the stock market. I'm actually shocked it hasn't been deleted yet:

@realDonaldTrump: The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!

[temporal1]

President Trump has spoken consistently about the Fed Reserve/interest rates, and tax cuts.

He is obsessed by the stock market and is measuring his presidency by the Dow Jones. This was his tweet on Monday morning moments before one of the worst weeks in the history of the stock market. I'm actually shocked it hasn't been deleted yet:

@realDonaldTrump: The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!

i don’t twitter, but from what i see here, i see nothing alarming.
as POTUS, he must multi-task, a stock market scare/panic is not healthy, nothing to trifle with.

did you read his remarks in the Pence thread? -
http://forum.mennonet.com/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=2732

he responds to a lot of questions/criticisms, if you have an open mind at all.
i realize, not everyone does. so many just seem to scream in response as a default mechanism.

for myself, i’d rather a POTUS “obsess” about the stock market than about sodomy.
should we discuss HIV-AIDS? (see J.M.’s post below.)

DJT has some ideas about the Federal Reserve and interest rates that i’ve never heard before.
i’m interested in whether he’s right about low-low or no interest rates? i do not know.

we bought our first home when interest rates were double digits, no fixed loans available!
we were told, interest rates+mortgages “WOULD NEVER” be single digit again, etc.
thankfully, that was FALSE. but, now this, the polar opposite. i’m listening.

[temporal1]

Page 2

Others may know better .. i can only wonder ..
i wonder if some potential pandemics may have been averted, by improved education, hygiene, relatively fast vaccine development, etc.?? HIV-AIDS is not a flu-type virus, but it was linked to animals, in the 1980’s, it was a huge scare.

(i believe) more could have been done to prevent the spread, it continues ‘way more than it should. imho. it is nearly 100% preventable. (i believe) HIV-AIDS is “accepted” as PC, and this is the central reason it has not been eradicated. i feel very sorry for those with new cases, to repeat, nearly 100% preventable. (i wonder) if this is the first potential pandemic that has been “normalized?”

CDC / HIV and Youth
https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/group/age/youth/index.html

I know this is going off on a bunny trail but I think you're right about HIV/AIDS being normalized. I've noticed that celebrities who "come out" about their HIV or AIDS status are praised for being courageous even though a large number of them acquired it from homosexual activities, or in the case of Magic Johnson, from sexual activities with numerous women.

When it first hit the fan back in the 80s, we had a good idea it was blood borne. But did not have a vector, it was originally HTLV-3, because the virus was thought to be a vector for leukemia, little did we know.

The original cases were remembered by the “H” s. Homosexuals, Hemophiliacs, Heroin users, Harlots and Haitians. The reason Haitians were among the index cases was a practice of routinely transfusing mothers postpartum since it made them feel better.

The initial rational for the secrecy behind the diagnosis was that without it people would simply decline the test, and no one would know their status, and be able to prescribe what treatment we had.

It could be eradicated in one generation of only one generation would behave itself.
Don’t hold your breath.
J.M.

[temporal1]

Reports continue to be mixed this morning,
this is hopeful:

”Breakthrough: Israeli Scientists Say They’ll Have a Coronavirus Vaccine in Just Weeks”
https://www.faithwire.com/2020/02/28/br ... ust-weeks/

Once approved, then, matters of manufacturing and distribution.
Iran’s problems continue.

[JimFoxvog]

I think this thing is way over blown.
...
I agree with Trump saying this thing will cycle out soon with the weather.

The World Health Organization disagrees with you and Trump.

THE WORLD HEALTH Organization on Friday raised its global risk assessment from the coronavirus from "high" to "very high." https://www.usnews.com/news/world-repor ... -very-high

[Bootstrap]

Reports continue to be mixed this morning,
this is hopeful:

”Breakthrough: Israeli Scientists Say They’ll Have a Coronavirus Vaccine in Just Weeks”
https://www.faithwire.com/2020/02/28/br ... ust-weeks/

Once approved, then, matters of manufacturing and distribution.

In the Trump/Pence press conference, Trump referred to vaccines being developed in the United States:

We have in quarantine those infected and those at risk. We have a lot of great quarantine facilities. We’re rapidly developing a vaccine, and they can speak to you — the professionals can speak to you about that. The vaccine is coming along well. And in speaking to the doctors, we think this is something that we can develop fairly rapidly, a vaccine for the future, and coordinate with the support of our partners. We have great relationships with all of the countries that we’re talking about. Some fairly large number of countries. Some it’s one person, and many countries have no problem whatsoever. And we’ll see what happens.

Tony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases addressed this in more detail in the Q/A after the presentation. Sounds basically like we may have a vaccine by next year, which will be helpful if Corona comes back then. I am just guessing, but I imagine the timelines will be similar for the Israeli vaccine since it would have to go through the same stages.

Viruses mutate. I am imagining this might be like the flu shot, where they have to change it for various strains and they do better some years than others.

DR. FAUCI: My name is Dr. Tony Fauci. I’m the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at NIH.

Just a very quick update on the countermeasure development in the form of vaccines and therapeutics. I had told this audience at a recent press briefing that we have a number of vaccine candidates and one prototype, to give you a feel for the timeframe of a vaccine and what its impact might be now and in subsequent years — is that I told you we would have a vaccine that we would be putting into trials, to see if it’s safe and if it induces a response that you would predict would be protective in about three months.

I think it’s going to be a little bit less than that. It’s probably going to be closer to two months. That would then take about three months to determine if it’s safe and immunogenic, which gives us six months. Then you graduate from a trial — which is phase one — of 45 people, to a trial that involves hundreds if not low thousands of people to determine efficacy. At the earliest, an efficacy trial would take an additional six to eight months.

So although this is the fastest we have ever gone from a sequence of a virus to a trial, it still would not be any applicable to the epidemic unless we really wait about a year to a year and a half.

Now, that means two things. One, the answer to containing is public health measures. We can’t rely on a vaccine over the next several months to a year. However, if this virus — which we have every reason to believe it is quite conceivable that it will happen — will go beyond just a season and come back and recycle next year — if that’s the case, we hope to have a vaccine.

And then finally and briefly: therapeutics. There are a number of anti-viral drugs that are being tested. A few days ago, we initiated a randomized controlled trial of a drug called remdesivir, which has anti-viral activity in vitro and in animal model. The good news about that is that it’s a trial that’s randomized to either placebo or standard of care, and drug and standard of care, which means that we will know reasonably soon whether it works. And if it does, we will then have an effective therapy to distribute.

[Bootstrap]

In Trump's press conference, he referred to a Johns Hopkins study that said the United States is more prepared to deal with a pandemic than any other country in the world. Johns Hopkins posted a clarification here:

Here's the Johns Hopkins study President Trump referenced in his coronavirus news conference

Johns Hopkins, highly respected, … they did a study, comprehensive, the countries best and worst prepared for an epidemic," Trump said in the White House briefing room. "And the United States, we're rated No. 1.

Though the U.S. does sit atop the rankings, overall the report—produced by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the university's Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Nuclear Threat Initiative, and The Economist Intelligence Unit—paints a discouraging picture of global readiness.

"National health security is fundamentally weak around the world," the 324-page report concludes. "No country is fully prepared for epidemics or pandemics, and every country has important gaps to address."

Here is the full report.

Johns Hopkins also has an interactive map you can use to track Corona Virus cases:

Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases

That said, it's easy to overreact. Corona probably will come to the United States, it's a matter of when. Protecting ourselves from Corona is a lot like protecting ourselves from the flu.