RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Coronavirus outbreak in China, and global pandemic

You actually skipped what Trump lied about. Guess I’ll take that as recognition on your part that he lied and not anything you can defend.

As for the Nancy smear, yeah not really a lot of merit. On the other hand a republican actually compared McConnell to Antoinette. Again Mitch’s state takes federal money while NY pays in. Mitch made a mistake trying to characterize much needed state aid as a blue state bailout. This is true elitism looks like and it’s as ugly as his physical appearance is.

Fact check: Trump makes false claims about governors not wanting tests, and repeats errors about Pelosi and Michelle Obama

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Repost of the fact check you apparently didn’t read WB. Not sure how that justifies calling me a liar but maybe that’s just easier for you than trying to defend an actual liar.

President Donald Trump made yet another false claim about coronavirus testing on Wednesday, wrongly saying at a White House briefing that the US is conducting more tests than any governor probably even wants. In fact, numerous governors, including Republicans, have said that more testing is necessary.

Trump also continued to embellish about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's February 24 visit to San Francisco's Chinatown, inaccurately saying that she had held a Chinatown "rally." He continued to insist that his travel restrictions on China were a "ban," though they contained significant exemptions. And he threw in an old false claim about Michelle Obama for good measure.

As I've already established, you're a Media Matters lying talking points machine, propagandizing whatever the Democrat/Left is selling on any given day.

I've also already established that Factcheck and Politifact are branches of the far-left anti-Trump Washington Post and Tampa Tribune, that 75% of the time target Republicans/conservatives, and only to give the slightest semblance of unbiased neutrality and equal scrutiny do they factcheck Democrats.

In this case, you didn't even bother to pick a pseudo-neutral source, you parroted the talking points of CNN, disguised as a "factcheck". CNN, the network that was found in a Harvard study to tie with NBC as the most biased rabidly anti-Trump coverage, at a ratio of 93% of the time.

And that liberal bias (as sourced from the Media Research Center) reached 100% negative coverage during the Trump impeachment hearings.

CNN has been proven wrong on the facts once or twice a week every week that Trump has been president. One might think you'd stop believing them after a while. CNN is not a news agency any more, it is a P.R. wing of the Democrat Party. They don't even pretend otherwise anymore.

To go through just a sample of the propagandized distortions that you desperately cling to:



Obviously the tests are not out yet in the numbers everyone wants. Pence said there will be 5 million of the new tests available before the end of April, and 20 million in the next month.
Trump does this thing that you apparently can't comprehend, called a joke, and said something to the effect that "Governors will probably have more tests than they want."
This is something MediaMatters and the Left consistently does, is spin intended light moments as if they were said with absolute seriousness. It brings to mind the comment Trump made at a rally, clearly a joke, where he said they FBI can't find Hillary's deleted e-mails, and jokingly said to the audience, "Hey, maybe we can ask the Russians for them." Liberal propaganda sites, including CNN and Media Matters, consistently allege "Trump asked the Russians for Hillary's e-mails" as if it was a secret backroom phone call to Putin, instead of a joke made to an audience of Trump supporters, televised natiowide by the mainstream media.

You employ an old propaganda technique here WB. I didn’t lie but because Trump does you accuse me of being a liar.

Not just me of course but this also includes any media source that doesn’t act like an arm of the RNC. Conservapedia and Hannity are okay but most of the free and independent media must always be accused of not only being biased but an actual enemy of our country.

It boils down to you being protective of Trump’s actual lies by repeat accusations of the other side that includes everyone that wouldn’t be willing to chant “lock her up” at a Trump rally. Right here for example you accuse me of being a liar but where did I lie specifically? I didn’t and I’m specifically citing Trump’s lies. Below you do try to defend them but it’s mostly more of the same. Trump lies but it’s everyone else’s fault somehow.


I already deconstructed the "Trump lied" portion of this in my aabove post, that you somehow didn't process:

[quote=WB]Obviously the tests are not out yet in the numbers everyone wants. Pence said there will be 5 million of the new tests available before the end of April, and 20 million in the next month.
Trump does this thing that you apparently can't comprehend, called a joke, and said something to the effect that "Governors will probably have more tests than they want."
This is something MediaMatters and the Left consistently does, is spin intended light moments as if they were said with absolute seriousness.

It brings to mind the comment Trump made at a rally, clearly a joke, where he said the FBI can't find Hillary's deleted e-mails, and Trump jokingly said to the audience, "Hey, maybe we can ask the Russians for them."
Liberal propaganda sites, including CNN and Media Matters, consistently allege "Trump asked the Russians for Hillary's e-mails" as if it was a secret backroom phone call to Putin, instead of a joke made to an audience of Trump supporters, televised natiowide by the mainstream media.

Trump has consistently been deceptive on our testing capacity. “Everyone who wants a test can get one” is something Trump said a while back. It’s still not true. Nor has he acknowledged that what he said wasn’t true.

And in the last week Trump lied about the governors having the testing capacity that is needed. He’s lied about it just being democrat governors complaining about testing capacity. Now it’s supposed to be a joke as he continues to mislead on testing capacity? Governors have had to compete not only with other states and foreign governments for supplies but also our federal government. It’s actually really sick to even try to joke about them having more testing capacity than they want.

Trump is also saying he didn’t mean what he said about ingesting cleansers. It’s of course the media’s fault for reporting what he actually said.

Outside of the politics of this I hope everyone is doing okay here. Besides the pandemic itself so many people are being impacted with the shutdowns. And at this point I think it’s pretty clear that there is no going back to normal. Now it’s finding a way to a new normal. I suspect anybody that can work from home will be now doing that for the foreseeable future. Wherever social distancing can be be put in place for companies is going to be a must. Hopefully a vaccine works well enough that gets us closer to the old normal but that going to take some time. I’m hearing 12 to 18 months for a chance of having something that works and has been tested.

Sometimes a joke is just a joke. Trump makes a lot of jokes.

But in all seriousness, On OANN and Fox, it was reported that scientists are working on an ultra-violet light that can be inserted down the throat and into the bronchia passages, to kill the virus in the lungs, but in a way safe to humans.

They're also working, closer to completion, on an ultra-violet machine that rolls dowwn the rows of a passenger jet and projects ultraviolet rays on all the seats and surfaces, killing all bacteria and viruses.
They're also working on a version that can do the same in restaurants and other public places.

By Dr. Scott W. Atlas, Opinion Contributor — 04/22/2020


The tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be entering the containment phase. Tens of thousands of Americans have died, and Americans are now desperate for sensible policymakers who have the courage to ignore the panic and rely on facts. Leaders must examine accumulated data to see what has actually happened, rather than keep emphasizing hypothetical projections; combine that empirical evidence with fundamental principles of biology established for decades; and then thoughtfully restore the country to function.

Five key facts are being ignored by those calling for continuing the near-total lockdown.

Fact 1: The overwhelming majority of people do not have any significant risk of dying from COVID-19.

The recent Stanford University antibody study now estimates that the fatality rate if infected is likely 0.1 to 0.2 percent, a risk far lower than previous World Health Organization estimates that were 20 to 30 times higher and that motivated isolation policies.

In New York City, an epicenter of the pandemic with more than one-third of all U.S. deaths, the rate of death for people 18 to 45 years old is 0.01 percent, or 10 per 100,000 in the population. On the other hand, people aged 75 and over have a death rate 80 times that. For people under 18 years old, the rate of death is zero per 100,000.

Of all fatal cases in New York state, two-thirds were in patients over 70 years of age; more than 95 percent were over 50 years of age; and about 90 percent of all fatal cases had an underlying illness. Of 6,570 confirmed COVID-19 deaths fully investigated for underlying conditions to date, 6,520, or 99.2 percent, had an underlying illness. If you do not already have an underlying chronic condition, your chances of dying are small, regardless of age. And young adults and children in normal health have almost no risk of any serious illness from COVID-19.

Fact 2: Protecting older, at-risk people eliminates hospital overcrowding.

We can learn about hospital utilization from data from New York City, the hotbed of COVID-19 with more than 34,600 hospitalizations to date. For those under 18 years of age, hospitalization from the virus is 0.01 percent, or 11 per 100,000 people; for those 18 to 44 years old, hospitalization is 0.1 percent. Even for people ages 65 to 74, only 1.7 percent were hospitalized. Of 4,103 confirmed COVID-19 patients with symptoms bad enough to seek medical care, Dr. Leora Horwitz of NYU Medical Center concluded "age is far and away the strongest risk factor for hospitalization." Even early WHO reports noted that 80 percent of all cases were mild, and more recent studies show a far more widespread rate of infection and lower rate of serious illness. Half of all people testing positive for infection have no symptoms at all. The vast majority of younger, otherwise healthy people do not need significant medical care if they catch this infection.

Fact 3: Vital population immunity is prevented by total isolation policies, prolonging the problem.

We know from decades of medical science that infection itself allows people to generate an immune response — antibodies — so that the infection is controlled throughout the population by “herd immunity.” Indeed, that is the main purpose of widespread immunization in other viral diseases — to assist with population immunity. In this virus, we know that medical care is not even necessary for the vast majority of people who are infected. It is so mild that half of infected people are asymptomatic, shown in early data from the Diamond Princess ship, and then in Iceland and Italy. That has been falsely portrayed as a problem requiring mass isolation. In fact, infected people without severe illness are the immediately available vehicle for establishing widespread immunity. By transmitting the virus to others in the low-risk group who then generate antibodies, they block the network of pathways toward the most vulnerable people, ultimately ending the threat. Extending whole-population isolation would directly prevent that widespread immunity from developing.

Fact 4: People are dying because other medical care is not getting done due to hypothetical projections.

Critical health care for millions of Americans is being ignored and people are dying to accommodate “potential” COVID-19 patients and for fear of spreading the disease. Most states and many hospitals abruptly stopped “nonessential” procedures and surgery. That prevented diagnoses of life-threatening diseases, like cancer screening, biopsies of tumors now undiscovered and potentially deadly brain aneurysms. Treatments, including emergency care, for the most serious illnesses were also missed. Cancer patients deferred chemotherapy. An estimated 80 percent of brain surgery cases were skipped. Acute stroke and heart attack patients missed their only chances for treatment, some dying and many now facing permanent disability.

Fact 5: We have a clearly defined population at risk who can be protected with targeted measures.

The overwhelming evidence all over the world consistently shows that a clearly defined group — older people and others with underlying conditions — is more likely to have a serious illness requiring hospitalization and more likely to die from COVID-19. Knowing that, it is a commonsense, achievable goal to target isolation policy to that group, including strictly monitoring those who interact with them. Nursing home residents, the highest risk, should be the most straightforward to systematically protect from infected people, given that they already live in confined places with highly restricted entry.

The appropriate policy, based on fundamental biology and the evidence already in hand, is to institute a more focused strategy like some outlined in the first place: Strictly protect the known vulnerable, self-isolate the mildly sick and open most workplaces and small businesses with some prudent large-group precautions. This would allow the essential socializing to generate immunity among those with minimal risk of serious consequence, while saving lives, preventing overcrowding of hospitals and limiting the enormous harms compounded by continued total isolation. Let’s stop underemphasizing empirical evidence while instead doubling down on hypothetical models. Facts matter.
_________________

Scott W. Atlas, MD, is the David and Joan Traitel Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and the former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center.

by Gretchen Vogel, Apr. 21, 2020


Surveying large swaths of the public for antibodies to the new coronavirus promises to show how widespread undiagnosed infections are, how deadly the virus really is, and whether enough of the population has become immune for social distancing measures to be eased. But the first batch of results has generated more controversy than clarity.

The survey results, from Germany, the Netherlands, and several locations in the United States, find that anywhere from 2% to 30% of certain populations have already been infected with the virus. The numbers imply that confirmed COVID-19 cases are an even smaller fraction of the true number of people infected than many had estimated and that the vast majority of infections are mild. But many scientists question the accuracy of the antibody tests and complain that several of the research groups announced their findings in the press rather than in preprints or published papers, where their data could be scrutinized. Critics are also wary because some of the researchers are on record advocating for an early end to lockdowns and other control measures, and claim the new prevalence figures support that call.

Some observers warn the coronavirus’ march through the population has only just begun, and that even if the antibody results can be believed, they don’t justify easing controls. “You would have hoped for 45% or even 60% positive,” says Mark Perkins, a diagnostics expert at the World Health Organization. “That would mean that there is lots of silent transmission, and a lot of immunity in the population. It now looks like, sadly, that’s not true. Even the high numbers are relatively small.”

The many different academic and commercial tests for coronavirus antibodies are still being refined and validated. They can show whether someone’s immune system has encountered the virus. But because no one knows what level of antibodies, if any, confers protection against the new virus, the tests can’t tell whether a person is immune to a future infection. And no one knows how long such immunity might last.

A German antibody survey was the first out of the gate several weeks ago. At a press conference on 9 April, virologist Hendrik Streeck from the University of Bonn announced preliminary results from a town of about 12,500 in Heinsberg, a region in Germany that had been hit hard by COVID-19. He told reporters his team had found antibodies to the virus in 14% of the 500 people tested. By comparing that number with the recorded deaths in the town, the study suggested the virus kills only 0.37% of the people infected. (The rate for seasonal influenza is about 0.1%.) The team concluded in a two-page summary that “15% of the population can no longer be infected with SARS-CoV-2, and the process of reaching herd immunity is already underway.” They recommended that politicians start to lift some of the regions’ restrictions.

Streeck had argued even before the study that the virus is less serious than feared and that the effects of long shutdowns may be just as bad if not worse than the damage the virus could do. However, Christian Drosten, a virologist at Charité University Hospital in Berlin, told reporters later that day that no meaningful conclusions could be drawn from the antibody study based on the limited information Streeck presented. Drosten cited uncertainty about what level of antibodies provides protection and noted that the study sampled entire households. That can lead to overestimating infections, because people living together often infect each other.


Streeck and his colleagues claimed the commercial antibody test they used has “more than 99% specificity,” but a Danish group found the test produced three false positives in a sample of 82 controls, for a specificity of only 96%. That means that in the Heinsberg sample of 500, the test could have produced more than a dozen false positives out of roughly 70 the team found.

A California serology study of 3300 people released last week in a preprint also drew strong criticisms. The lead authors of the study, Jay Bhattacharya and Eran Bendavid, who study health policy at Stanford University, worked with colleagues to recruit the residents of Santa Clara county through ads on Facebook. Fifty antibody tests were positive—about 1.5%. But after adjusting the statistics to better reflect the county’s demographics, the researchers concluded that between 2.49% and 4.16% of the county’s residents had likely been infected. That suggests, they say, that the real number of infections was as many as 80,000. That’s more than 50 times as many as viral gene tests had confirmed and implies a low fatality rate —-a reason to consider whether strict lockdowns are worthwhile, argue Bendavid and co-author John Ioannidis, who studies public health at Stanford.

On the day the preprint posted, co-author Andrew Bogan—a biotech investor with a biophysics Ph.D.—published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal asking, “If policy makers were aware from the outset that the Covid-19 death toll would be closer to that of seasonal flu … would they have risked tens of millions of jobs and livelihoods?” The op-ed did not initially disclose his role in the study.

Yet Twitter threads and blog posts outlined a litany of apparent problems with the Santa Clara study. Recruiting through Facebook likely attracted people with COVID-19–like symptoms who wanted to be tested, boosting the apparent positive rate. Because the absolute numbers of positive tests were so small, false positives may have been nearly as common as real infections. The study also had relatively few participants from low-income and minority populations, meaning the statistical adjustments the researchers made could be way off.
“I think the authors of the paper owe us all an apology,” wrote Columbia University statistician and political scientist Andrew Gelman in an online commentary. The numbers “were essentially the product of a statistical error.” Bhattacharya says he is preparing an appendix that addresses the criticisms. But, he says, “The argument that the test is not specific enough to detect real positives is deeply flawed.”

Bhattacharya and Bendavid have also collaborated with Neeraj Sood, a health policy expert at the University of Southern California, to do a similar study in Los Angeles county. They used the same antibody test on 846 people selected by a marketing firm to represent the county’s demographics. In a press release issued this week, they estimated that roughly 4% of the county’s adult population has antibodies to the virus—as many as 300,000 people. (Sood told Science that 35 subjects tested positive.)

Another serology study, in the Netherlands, produced a similar figure for antibody prevalence that was revealed in the country’s House of Representatives on 16 April. Hans Zaaijer, a virologist at Sanquin, the Dutch national blood bank, who helped lead the study, says the team used a commercial test, which “consistently shows superior results” in validation studies, but didn’t provide more details. The results made it clear that the country was not yet near the “herd immunity” that some had hoped for. Nevertheless, the government said on 21 April that it would start to lift some restrictions in the coming weeks, opening elementary schools and allowing children’s sports teams to practice.

A small study in the Boston suburb of Chelsea has found the highest prevalence of antibodies so far. Prompted by the striking number of COVID-19 patients from Chelsea colleagues had seen, Massachusetts General Hospital pathologists John Iafrate and Vivek Naranbhai quickly organized a local serology survey. Within 2 days, they collected blood samples from 200 passersby on a street corner. That evening, they processed the samples—and shared the results with a reporter from The Boston Globe. Sixty-three were positive—31.5%. The result carries several large caveats. The team used a test whose maker, BioMedomics, says it has a specificity of only about 90%, though Iafrate says MGH’s own validation tests found a specificity of higher than 99.5%. And pedestrians on a single corner “aren’t a representative sample” of the town, Naranbhai acknowledges.

The pair says a paper describing the team’s results has been submitted to a journal but they shared the data with The Boston Globe first because “we felt there was an urgent infection control issue in Chelsea that warranted getting the information out.” The Boston researchers do not think quarantines should be eased, however. Better containment is urgently needed in Chelsea, they say, to help prevent further spread both within the community and in the larger Boston area.

Even if the antibody surveys show a COVID-19 death rate well below 1%, says Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, control measures will be needed for a long time to avoid [a surge of patients resulting in] overwhelmed hospitals. “The seroprevalence data only confirm the challenge we face. The data [these studies] are generating … is just showing how hard this is.”

by Andrew Mark Miller, April 24, 2020
Washington Examiner


A random sampling study shows that at least 6% of the population in Miami, Florida, have coronavirus antibodies, indicating past infection.
165,000 residents of Miami-Dade County tested positive for coronavirus antibodies, suggesting the rate of people infected could be more than 16 times higher than previously thought, according to a study released by University of Miami researchers on Friday.

The study, set into motion by local officials, will be an ongoing weekly survey randomly selecting residents who volunteer to submit pinpricks of blood to show whether they were positive in the past. Friday’s results were based off two weeks of countywide testing of about 1,400 participants, and researchers found that about half of those who tested positive did not report symptoms in the previous 14-17 days, according to the Miami Herald.

"What we're finding out is something we've frankly known all along. There are a lot of asymptomatic cases out there where people are carrying the virus but are not experiencing any symptoms," Miami Mayor Carlos Gimenez said in a press conference.

Antibody studies across the globe are reporting similar findings.

A high school in France this week determined that 25% of students and staff possessed coronavirus antibodies requiring nine hospitalizations but zero deaths.

A random sampling test conducted by Stanford researchers in Santa Clara County, California, concluded that the coronavirus is 50-85 times more prevalent than previously thought, and the fatality rate is 50-85 times lower.
Nearly one-third of a group of 200 people tested in Massachusetts were positive for virus antibodies.

by Jeremy Berke, Business Insider
April 23, 2020


A statewide antibody study found that 21.2% of New York City residents have been infected with the coronavirus, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on Thursday.
The study tested 3,000 New York residents statewide at grocery and big-box stores for antibodies that indicate whether someone has had the virus. Overall, it found that 13.9% of New York state residents had been infected.

The highest rates of past infections occurred in and around New York City, which has been the epicenter of the US outbreak. In Long Island, 16.7% tested positive, and in Westchester and Rockland counties, 11.7% tested positive. In the rest of the state, just 3.6% tested positive.
"What we found so far is that the statewide number is 13.9% tested positive for having the antibodies," Cuomo said. "They were infected three weeks ago, four weeks ago, five weeks ago, six weeks ago, but they had the virus, they developed the antibodies and they are now recovered."

When broken down by race, African Americans and Latinos tested positive at twice the rate of whites in New York — at 22.1% and 22.5% respectively, compared to 9.1% for Whites — though Cuomo said that these results are a function of where people live.
Men tested positive at a slightly higher rate than women, at 15.9% versus 12% percent respectively.

The tests were conducted in 40 localities across 19 counties in the state. New York state has 19.4 million residents, meaning that approximately 2.7 million have been infected with COVID-19, per the study. The state recorded just under 15,500 fatalities as of Wednesday, indicating a mortality rate of around 0.5% — far lower than previous estimates.
The study has limitations and Cuomo noted that the results are preliminary. To start, the study relied on a self-selected sample of New Yorkers who went to grocery stores where testing was happening. It's possible that those who thought they had coronavirus and are no longer symptomatic sought out tests.


"These are people who were out and about shopping," Cuomo said. "They were not people who were in their homes, they were not people who were isolated, they were not people who were quarantined."
The full results and methodology have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal or released to the public.

The death toll remains high, but indicators are trending in the right direction
•The state reported 438 deaths on Thursday, down from 474 on Wednesday, bringing the death toll in the state to 15,740, per the Department of Health. The total number of cases is 263,460, though that number is likely higher based on the antibody test results, Cuomo said.
•Both intubations and ICU admissions declined as well, continuing similar trends for this week.
•Still, more than 1300 patients were admitted to hospitals on Wednesday. That number has remained relatively flat since late last week.

Here are the other key takeaways from Cuomo's Thursday press conference:
•The state will launch an investigation into nursing homes led by New York Attorney General Letitia James. The investigation will look into the high number of deaths recorded at nursing homes, and whether the homes are adhering to the Department of Health guidelines by isolating COVID-positive residences, providing protective care and temperature checks for workers, and notifying family members of positive tests, among other points.
•Cuomo said the lower rates of antibodies in upstate New York could provide credence to a regionally-based reopening, letting stores, businesses, and schools reopen in areas where infection rates are lowest. Cuomo cautioned that the study's results are preliminary, and it won't be used immediately to make reopening decisions.
•Cuomo laid into Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, calling him a "self-proclaimed Grim Reaper" over McConnell's assertion that the federal stimulus package is a "blue state bailout" and that states like New York that are seriously affected by the coronavirus should consider declaring bankruptcy.

The misdirected Trump obsession continues.

Despite the science that increasingly shows this shutdown is not the most effective way to contain the Covid-19 virus and save lives.

....

Cuomo has been making the case for states needing coronavirus aid money for a while now. States need the money because of the shutdowns and it’s not constitutional for them to declare bankruptcy as Mitch wants. To put this in more perspective, even republican King from NY compared McConnell to Marie Antoinette. This was a rare political miscalculation on Mitch’s part I think. Kentucky sucks on the federal money that NY and other states pay in. Cuomo is right that it’s been NY bailing out Mitch’s state all this time. For McConnell to block much needed aid to the states because he sees it as hurting blue states is really crappy nor smart partisanship.

We already knew the shutdown wasn’t the most effective way but because our government blew it on testing at the beginning of this that was what we were left with. As of last week we still don’t have enough testing despite what Trump has said. States are starting to partially reopen but it could happen a lot faster with less risk with more testing capacity.

And I don’t think it’s been established that you have immunity after having contracted Covid. Actually it sounds like that is very much in doubt right now. Hopefully that is not the case!

Cuomo failed to prepare his own state for this epidemic when warned by his own health department in 2015, and despite having the highest ffatalities the lying Newspeak liberal media fawns over him as "the golden governor", despite the most devastating losses in the country, vastly hyper-spread by resistance to the China travel bans and Democrat public officials openly encouraging crowd events that exploded the level of fatalities. Including Mayor Deblasio, and his own New York city health director!

You keep trying to sell Mitch McConnell as Marie Antoinette, but as I already said above, that is a lying Democrat counter-narrative intended to hide and replace the Marie Antoinette image and commercials surrounding Nancy Pelosi and her $24,000 freezer filled with 12-dollar-a pint expensive ice cream for blue bloods, that *FAR* more fits the mold of Marie Antoinette.
As Pelosi denies and stalls loans for weeks to intentionally kill millions of small businesses, more of which fold every day she delays, she sits around and calms her anxiety with expensive ice cream from her $24,000 freezer. Multiple pundits from both sides have marvelled at the incredible out-of-touchness of Pelosi to have done this interview and made these remarks.

IN McConnell's case the logic of what he says can only be distorted by the liberal media's deliberate omoission of the facts: These Democrat states have been deficit-spending and bankrupting themselves for years, in many cases decades. It was not the Coronavirus crisis that bankrupted them, they were already broke. No federal bailout should be done to hide the Democrats' irresponsible deficit spending, that *FAR* preceded the current crisis.

Yes Cuomo didn’t prepare for a pandemic just like Trump didn’t.

And when republicans are comparing McConnell to Marie Antoinette it’s pretty out of touch that this is all partisan dem spin.

Again Mitch’s state of Kentucky takes the federal money NY pays in. Now when NY needs help because of the pandemic Mitch wants to screw them over and all the other states?

Bankruptcy isn’t even a legal option for states and as Cuomo has explained will hurt the economy even more. Again Mitch’s state is actually the one that gets federally bailed out while states like NY provide the funding Kentucky takes.

I’m not sure what you exactly consider a lie WB. Kentucky does take federal money. NY pays out Mitch’s state takes it. The governor may be a democrat but that doesn’t change the fact that Kentucky (like Florida) takes federal money while states like NY pays out more.

As for Cuomo not preparing for a pandemic like Trump didn’t, neither had the stock piles of supplies recommended. Trump of course takes no responsibility for not replenishing anything over the years he’s been President. What are you calling a lie?

Laura Ingraham devoted the majority of her program last night to a half dozen doctors who have seen clear results and saved many patients with Hydroxychloroquine.
And detailing the Democrat Left, liberal media, and apparently a Democrat-aligned wing of the medical establishment's propaganda holy war on progress, regarding a drug that outside the U.S. has proven to have a high ratio of success in fighting Covid-19, and saved many lives.

Laura Ingraham - April 27, 2020, Monday, 42 minutes

As I cited sources for above, there are a lot of details in that Federal money to states that is glossed over and unexplained, that smack of false narrative the way you (and Gov. Coumo) are spinning them.

As for the "both Trump and Cuomo didn't prepare" false narrative:
1) Gov. Cuomo was directly warned by his own Health Department in a 2015 written report that he was specifically deficient in several thousand ventilator machines, and yet Cuomo ignored the report. In N Y state, with the city that is the most densely populated in the country, that has been the target of multiple recent terrorist attacks. Cuomo had reason to be concerned and prepare, but he instead ignored specific warnings of his own health department.
2) Trump was in office a shorter time and was not similarly warned. Despite this, Dr Anthony Fauci gave a videotaped speech in Jan 2017 just before Trump was inaugurated, warning that a pendemic was likely from China in the next few years. It seems to me that Fauci (NIH) and Redfield (CDC) were the two who should have prepared for such a threat and sounded the alarm for funding and preparation, if only behind closed doors to the president. As with the long delayed Covid-19 test kits as well, it is their failure, not Trump's, to push for these preparations.
I would point out also that against their advisement to leave the border open, Trump gave an order to suspend all travel from China on Jan 31st, long before the first death by Covid-19 in the U.S. had occurred.
Fauci as well was on television on virtually every network downplaying that Covid-19 was a threat to the U.S., that the annual flu was a greater threat to Americans, and as recently as March 9th advised a caller asking if he should cancel his cruiseline trip due to Covid-19, Fauci advised him not to worry and go on his cruise!

These are the "experts" who lead the NIH and CDC! These were the people advising President Trump. Ossosite of Cuomo who was sspecifically warned of specifically such a pandemic outbreak, CDC and NIH were downplaying the threat to Trump.
And yet in lying demagogue narrative, you try to blame Trump for not acting?!? Be serious.
Trump did more than his leading medical experts, and yet you (the Democrats and liberal media, who were ALSO downplaying the pandemic threat until mid-March) demonized Trump as "over-reacting" and "racist" for the steps up till then he took, way beyond what Obama, Hillary, Biden, or any other establishment Democrat or Republican would have done.
Based on that evidence, you are such a fucking liar. Trump early on put an immediate stop to 20,000 visitors a day arriving from China. If Trump did less than he could have, blame the medical experts who were running CDC and NIH since at least when Obama was president, and some of them back to Ronald Reagan, who were assuring Trump those actions and preparations were not necessary. As I just detailed above, Trump resisted their advice and did more than Obama or any of the other Dems criticizing him would have done. Period. End of argument. Absolute fact.

You like to paint this as a partisan issue WB but even Trump’s people like Dr. Fauci are not on board. I hope it does turn out to be a useful lifesaving drug to battle Covid but I don’t think we’re there yet.

Trump limited travel and than said it was under control. As it spread throughout the US he kept downplaying the threat. And for over 3 years did nothing to replenish the national stockpile. Are you going to pretend he wasn’t warned that we were unprepared for a pandemic at the federal level but Cuomo at the state level was? Most Governors are showing increased popularity as many have scrambled to compensate for a disorganized and slow federal response. Trump’s is back down to his most loyal fans.

Trump takes no responsibility at all and has spent hours on camera praising himself while rambling on with partisan attacks and misinformation in the middle of a pandemic. It’s all on tape and will be part of the historical record. I don’t believe the gop is going to be able to spin it.

Trump tells governors to seriously consider and maybe get going on opening schools.

Yeah it would be nice to reopen everything back up. It would be nice having a president that actually took responsibility and had some empathy too. Instead we have Trump saying crap like this when even by the feds standards it’s not safe to reopen schools.

I've seen no evidence that Trump was warned and then didn't act. The way Gov. Cuomo was clearly warned and didn't act.
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That is the current narrative your side is selling.
Now that all your previous narratives were proven wrong.

President Donald Trump's polling numbers are tanking across the board amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Americans increasingly disapprove of his handling of the presidency as well as his approach to the coronavirus pandemic, and he's trailing former Vice President Joe Biden in the 2020 race, polling shows.

Comparatively, a number of GOP governors have enjoyed a surge in approval over their handling of coronavirus. Unlike Trump, these Republican leaders have consistently taken the threat of the virus seriously while following the guidance of public health experts.

After taking steps that left the US less prepared for a pandemic in his first three years as president, Trump ignored warnings from the intelligence community and top advisers on the potentially devastating impact of the virus, while publicly downplaying the threat for weeks.


But as the coronavirus outbreak escalated in startling ways across the US in March, leading the president to declare a national emergency, Trump saw his approval rating briefly go up in what pollsters dubbed a rally-around-the-flag effect. That quickly changed in April as the US death toll and unemployment rose to astronomical levels, while Trump simultaneously turned daily White House press briefings into campaign rally-like events in which he dominated the spotlight, berating reporters and spreading false information in the process.

The contrast between Trump's handling of the pandemic and the approach taken by a number of Republican governors could not be more stark. And the consequences of this with voters appears to be playing out in the polls.
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I’m pretty amazed that you haven’t seen any evidence. Does it make any sense that a governor would have better intelligence and information about pandemic preparedness than the president? Nope.

I’m sure I’ve posted several links to articles about how Trump really can’t truthfully say nobody could have seen this coming. Obama’s administration ran a simulation for the incoming Trump administration and they also ran one last year. Obama also had a pandemic response book that Trump didn’t follow. Supposedly because it was outdated but if it had been followed critical needed decisions would have been made much sooner.
Here’s the link..
Coronavirus Outbreak: a Cascade of Warnings Went Unheeded

There is plenty of evidence WB and it’s pretty easy to google and see it. I suspect somebody who thinks Trump proclaiming he takes no responsibility at all is great leadership isn’t going to “see” any evidence.

I thought what Fauci said than sounded right as I do now. What was proven wrong?

GOP governors who took coronavirus seriously saw a huge polling bump. Trump didn't, and is tanking


I think Trump is convinced that if the economy isn’t back on the upswing he’s in trouble but he actually saw a slight bump when he changed his messaging on coronavirus to make it appear he was treating the pandemic seriously. It dissolved as he went back to partisan attacks and trying to shift blame all the while demanding praise. Hours and hours of Trump being Trump has paid off...for democrats.