Coronavirus Outbreak

[Josh]

Something of concern to me is that COVID-19 is probably going to leave a legacy of fake cures, people finding reasons to distrust the medical establishment, and ultimately continuing our society's trajectory on a track to lose confidence in authority and institutions.

For example, Jim Bakker is busy selling some kind of silver-based concoction he claims can cure the coronavirus, which the New York state attorney general has told him to stop doing. On private WhatsApp groups in the third world, all kind of fake cures and fake news about the coronavirus abounds.

In times past, we had strong leaders who said things like "We have nothing to fear but fear itself", said by a President who struggled with polio, a terrible disease that afflicted and killed many Americans. We went on to defeat polio.

Nowadays, the President makes a few positive statements and there is just a lot of complaining about a lack of test kids and lack of action sooner (including from myself). The most frequent complaint I hear is that the President hasn't been proclaiming enough doom and gloom, despite mobilising the entire resources of the federal government including taking direct action with manufacturers of masks and other medical supplies and the CDC announcing test kids available from family doctors nationally within a week.

We need responses like the "Miracle at Hickory" like happened in 1944. Will our society be capable of summoning anything like that from within itself, or do I just have a future to look forward to of televangelists hawking fake medicine?

[ohio jones]

... there is just a lot of complaining about a lack of test kids ...

Well, that is to be expected in a culture that accepts legalized abortion and gay marriage and widespread use of contraceptives and values pets more highly than children. And then we build walls and enact legal barriers to keep the kids who do want to come here, and even those who show up on our doorsteps, from entering. Of course there is a lack of test kids. And the ones we do have are distributed throughout the community in foster care instead of being institutionalized in orphanages, which makes it that much harder to access them for testing purposes. We will simply have to outsource this to places like China and India and Africa that have a surplus of unwanted humanity.

Imagine the public outcry if we would actually return to the procedures used in 1941, when "Jonas Salk and other researchers deliberately infected patients at several Michigan mental institutions with the influenza virus by spraying the virus into their nasal passages."

[Bootstrap]

Nowadays, the President makes a few positive statements and there is just a lot of complaining about a lack of test kids and lack of action sooner (including from myself).

I think the issue is that he is saying things that are scientifically wrong, accusing the WHO of using fake numbers, and implying that his hunches are better than what scientists are saying.

Aaron Rupar listed some of these issues on Twitter. Twitter videos don't display here, click on the link to listen to Trump's statements.

Aaron Rupar

@atrupar
Replying to @atrupar
In this clip, Trump:
1. Denies WHO's coronavirus death rate based on “hunch"
2. Calls coronavirus "corona flu"
3. Suggests it's fine for people w/ Covid-19 to go to work
4. Compares coronavirus to "the regular flu," indicating he doesn't get the difference

[video][/video]

I think it's generally best for a President to tell people to trust the medical experts and remind them to do things like wash their hands. Getting basic facts wrong tends to undermine trust.

[temporal1]

Page 1 / VP Pence thread
http://forum.mennonet.com/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=2732

“Medical Professor Praises Trump Admin for Coronavirus Response:
'I've Never Seen One Handled Better' “
https://www.westernjournal.com/medical- ... ed-better/

A medical expert is praising the Trump administration for its response to the coronavirus,
while slamming the news media for its actions.

“I’ve been handling these emerging contagions for about 20 years now, and I have to tell you, I’ve never seen one handled better,” Dr. Marc Siegel said regarding the actions of President Donald Trump since the coronavirus first emerged as a concern in January.

Siegel is a professor of medicine at New York University, a medical correspondent for Fox News, and the author of “False Alarm: The Truth About the Epidemic of Fear.”

Asked on SiriusXM’s “Breitbart News Sunday” about how the news media has handled the outbreak,
he said, “They’re certainly not helping because they’re hyping, and the hyping leads to hysteria.”

Siegel said the Trump administration’s
coronavirus task force brings together the right people.

“The task force are really top players,” said Siegel, noting the inclusion of Dr. Anthony Fauci,
director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Fauci is “one of the top infectious disease experts in the country,” he noted.

“They’ve been doing exactly what they’re supposed to be doing,” he said, listing actions Trump has called for such as “restricting travel, isolating patients who are sick and, trying to cut down on contact. It’s a very hard thing to do when people are pouring in from all over the world.”

CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield, a virologist, and Dr. Nancy Messonnier, an expert in vaccines who has been sounding the alarm about the virus, are also important members, he said, though he believes the “doom and gloom comment” about the inevitable spread of the virus was uncalled for.

Siegel said that the coronavirus is different from diseases such as SARS or the flu.

“SARS had about a ten percent mortality [rate], but it only affected about 8,000 people.
Swine flu had a very, very low mortality for flu, but flu itself really only causes about a point-four percent death rate, and [coronavirus] is about one-point-four percent.
So this is killing more than flu, but I want to make a couple of points that will reassure people,”
he said.

“One, at the beginning of an emerging contagion, it always appears more deadly than it actually is.
The 1918 flu is an exception, but normally as time goes on, it’s less deadly, and part of that is because you see more immunity appearing, and you also find a lot of milder cases — or even cases where people don’t get sick at all. You find that as you start to test more people,” he said.

He also noted that people who were infected but never got sick do not show up in statistics, making the virus seem more deadly than it is.

This report does not surprise me.
i wanted to add it here because the majority of reports (i’ve seen)
are focused on criticizing, making sport of, VP Pence praying with the Task Force.

i’m not overly bothered by criticism of prayer.
(my takeaway) from such criticism is, IF criticizers were authentically convinced there is no strength in prayer, they would ignore it, it would be “nothing.” (they do NOT ignore it.)

they know prayer IS something. fighting it is proof. they are intimidated by what they don’t know.
Jesus Christ faced identical problems, it must be expected. they are correct. prayer is powerful.

Found in comments elsewhere: (unverified)

“Remember when Obama was President and 61 million people got the Swine Flu
and 13,000 people died?”

.. praying.

[temporal1]

Nowadays, the President makes a few positive statements and there is just a lot of complaining about a lack of test kids and lack of action sooner (including from myself).

I think the issue is that he is saying things that are scientifically wrong, accusing the WHO of using fake numbers, and implying that his hunches are better than what scientists are saying.

Aaron Rupar listed some of these issues on Twitter. Twitter videos don't display here, click on the link to listen to Trump's statements.

Aaron Rupar

@atrupar
Replying to @atrupar
In this clip, Trump:
1. Denies WHO's coronavirus death rate based on “hunch"
2. Calls coronavirus "corona flu"
3. Suggests it's fine for people w/ Covid-19 to go to work
4. Compares coronavirus to "the regular flu," indicating he doesn't get the difference

[video]

I think it's generally best for a President to tell people to trust the medical experts and remind them to do things like wash their hands. Getting basic facts wrong tends to undermine trust.

So sorry you’re not in Italy.
In the meanwhile, do yourself a favor, give up your twitter habit.

[Josh]

Perhaps the best thing the President could do right now is ask Americans why they decided to stimulate the paper-products industry by stockpiling more toilet paper than the world has ever seen before.

[Ken]

Perhaps the best thing the President could do right now is ask Americans why they decided to stimulate the paper-products industry by stockpiling more toilet paper than the world has ever seen before.

So that is nation-wide? It's all sold out here in WA. So weird. Was there some viral Facebook thing about hording toilet paper that I missed? Or did everyone get the same random panic at the same time.

Here in WA the bottled water has also been flying off the shelves. Bottled water? Are they expecting an actual hurricane? It's just bizarre. Do people think the tap water is going to shut off somehow? Or get contaminated?

[Josh]

So much toilet paper is being bought in Japan, Australia, Canada, Singapore, America, and other places that manufacturers and distributors are adding extra shifts, running extra routes for distribution, and stores are even posting pallets in the middle of aisles since they are bought out so fast. The prior sources are from published news articles, but I also heard second-hand that a Costco has someone stationed at the door who simply drops a packet of toilet paper into every shopper's cart right at the entrance door.

Even stranger is panic-buying bottled water. Bottled water is purely a convenience; the bottles can easily be refilled from your tap, or you can just store water in larger containers that are also quite easy to acquire. It's baffling to find out what people value, and this seems to be global and universal: the people want toilet paper and bottled water.

The world will be more prepared to use the bathroom than it ever has been before, and afterwards, the world will be well-positioned to have a refreshing drink of water. I can't figure out what either of these have to do with the coronavirus.

[Bootstrap]

The world will be more prepared to use the bathroom than it ever has been before, and afterwards, the world will be well-positioned to have a refreshing drink of water. I can't figure out what either of these have to do with the coronavirus.

Me neither. But both activities seem appropriate and useful in their place.

I FINALLY managed to change my flight reservation, I was on hold for 40 minutes or so, they are busy changing and canceling flights.

[Ken]

So much toilet paper is being bought in Japan, Australia, Canada, Singapore, America, and other places that manufacturers and distributors are adding extra shifts, running extra routes for distribution, and stores are even posting pallets in the middle of aisles since they are bought out so fast. The prior sources are from published news articles, but I also heard second-hand that a Costco has someone stationed at the door who simply drops a packet of toilet paper into every shopper's cart right at the entrance door.

Even stranger is panic-buying bottled water. Bottled water is purely a convenience; the bottles can easily be refilled from your tap, or you can just store water in larger containers that are also quite easy to acquire. It's baffling to find out what people value, and this seems to be global and universal: the people want toilet paper and bottled water.

The world will be more prepared to use the bathroom than it ever has been before, and afterwards, the world will be well-positioned to have a refreshing drink of water. I can't figure out what either of these have to do with the coronavirus.

I was living in Juneau Alaska during Y2K. Alaska already trends much more in the "prepper" direction than other states due to the isolation and harsh climate. But the run-up to Y2K was something to behold. There were all kinds of fears that the global transportation network would be cut off due to computer bugs shutting everything down. And there were folks prepping like it was going to be the zombie apocalypse. I remember going to Thanksgiving dinner at the house of a work colleague who had also invited over a neighbor. "This guy had spend something like $50 grand and countless hours digging an armored bunker under his house with about a year's worth of food, fuel, and ammo. He was lecturing us all about how we would all be sorry when everyone was rioting in the streets. And I'm thinking. "THESE NEIGHBORS? Here in Juneau? The same ones that will all drop what they are doing in minutes and organize search parties in the woods any time there is a lost child? They are all going to go crazy because of a computer bug?

By December 1999 all the stores in Juneau had signs on their doors saying "no returns on any goods bought after 12/1/1999" because they didn't want to see hundreds of portable generators, chain saws, lanterns, portable stoves, prepper food, and tons of extra guns and ammo get returned on 1/2/2000 when nothing happened.