I may not ping anything else out today, got lots to do, some people aren’t messing with the thread today anywya. I’ll see if anything earthshaking happens... Freepmail me to get on/off this ping list.
Unrolled thread by “Carlos Oswedo” about the virus and such. I think it’s good, although he seems to think Fauci is okay. But that is a side point, I agree with what he says about Trump.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1249212727442182144.html
Carlos Osweda@COsweda
Thread
For @BillWhittle
In response to your very apt point that we’ll never know how bad COVID-19 could’ve been.
Here’s my theory:
@realDonaldTrump knew EXACTLY what we were facing, and he deliberately downplayed it.
https://youtu.be/3Aw5412M6HM
[Video here]
The Chinese lost millions.
We know that 21 million cellphone accounts disappeared.
Trump understood immediately that it wasn’t the mortality but our inability to TREAT the patients if COVID-19 infected 50 million Americans.
I just had the most frustrating phone conversation of my life.
A conservative who insists that COVID-19 is no worse than the flu.
The second I tried to get into the treatment issues, he began talking over me.
He’s obsessed with an unnamed cruise ship that had 3500 people on board, but only 700 got the illness.
If COVID-19 were so contagious, they all would’ve gotten it.
He has no factual knowledge about this issue.
The first cruise ship to be impacted was the Diamond Princess.
It had 3700 passengers. The first passenger to be diagnosed was a man who disembarked in Hong Kong five days out.
COVID-19 has at least a 14-day incubation period.
Eleven days after the first diagnosis, the passengers were told they had to adopt social distancing, and thy were monitored for symptoms.
Two days later, THEY WERE ALL QUARANTINED IN THEIR CABINS.
How many people did the infected man contact?
On a cruise ship holding 3700 people, one guy isn’t going to come into physical contact with every single person on board.
As they were returned home, THE PASSENGERS WERE QUARANTINED OR PUT INTO ISOLATION.
Public Health Responses to COVID-19 Outbreaks on Cruise Ships...
More than 800 cases of laboratory-confirmed coronavirus disease 2019 cases occurred during outbreaks on three cruise ship voyages, and cases linked to several additional cruises have been reported ac…
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e3.htm
This guy on the phone kept saying that noroviruses on cruise ships is a much bigger problem.
From 2008 to 2014, 74 million passengers sailed on cruise ships; only 129,678 suffered acute gastrointestinal illness and only 10 percent of those were due to norovirus outbreaks.
cdc.gov/nceh/vsp/pub/n…
The guy got hysterical when I tried to talk sense into him.
Imagine what would’ve happened if Trump said THIS at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak:
“We have nowhere near the amount of personal protection equipment or ventilators to treat patients. We have no way to test for it. As many as 50 million of us will get infected.”
OF COURSE TRUMP DOWNPLAYED IT.
He knew that he had a window of time during which he could make craploads of calls behind the scenes and alert the armed forces.
When the time was right, he announced the guidelines.
The FDA is working on 90 treatments.
Private industry is pitching in on a level not seen since World War I.
But most importantly, THE PUBLIC IS COOPERATING.
The problem with too many people is that they refuse to THINK.
Is there a law that states that Trump is supposed to tell us that we finally screwed the pooch, and now we’re going down once and for all?
This fat little slug is actually no worse than far too many others on both sides of the political aisle.
[Photo of Acursta and his chin]
The fact is, our default setting is “Dumbass.”
We let the Chinese—our deadly enemies—manufacture our MEDICATIONS?
As you said, this pandemic is China’s death knell. Trump hasn’t announced it, but we both know that he’s going to make the Communist party pay.
I hope he completely defaults on the debt that the Chinese bought.
And as for everybody else, DON’T KID YOURSELVES.
Trump knew EXACTLY what we were facing.
The guy who called me said that hospitals wouldn’t have run out of personal protection equipment.
This is insanity.
Nobody knows how anything works. Just testing each person used up at least THREE sets of personal protection equipment.
For God’s sake, why are unions, the armed forces, Facebook, and construction companies sending all their N95 masks to hospitals?
For FUN?
I’m really shocked at how obtuse people have become. They take everything at face value.
Trump made it so that we dodged the mother of all bullets, and he’s making sure it’ll never happen again.
Just because he didn’t TELL US THAT doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
At some point, reality must intrude.
People think that because Trump got us out of this mess, it wasn’t a mess after all.
NO.
He just didn’t broadcast the fact that we’d let ourselves slide so far that this time we almost didn’t get out alive.
A final thought:
What makes people think FAUCI didn’t deliberately downplay this at the beginning?
We needed time to prepare for the full-on pandemic.
AND WE HAVE TONS OF ENEMIES.
It was a case of national security.
My city is full of Chinese immigrants. There are two kinds:
The ones who bring the worst of their culture with them, and the ones who absolutely reject the worst of their culture and are grateful every second that they’re here.
I had terrible experiences with Chinese at the gym swimming pools.
They spat and blew their noses in the water, and they rammed into you in your own lane.
BUT.
I also met LOTS of Chinese like George.
He took his time greeting us, and then we gradually started talking.
He began swimming because he wanted to get healthy.
He was very slim, about 65 year old.
We only saw him in the pool.
And then one day he was late, and we met him as he was coming into the locker room.
He was wearing a leather jacket and jeans. Looked like a model.
“OH MY GOD, GEORGE!” I shouted. “Look at you! You’re GORGEOUS!”
And he totally cracked up. Bent double laughing.
“You’re the only person who ever said that to me in my life,” he said. “You have no idea how much it means.”
A very nice man, just trying to improve.
And he WAS gorgeous. He wasn’t trying to look younger. Just healthy and...stylish. He pulled it off like a boss.
Here’s to you, George, wherever you are.
I enjoyed our time together.
END
great post with Oswedo and Whittle!
Bears repeating:
“...
We needed time to prepare for the full-on pandemic.
AND WE HAVE TONS OF ENEMIES.
It was a case of national security.
My city is full of Chinese immigrants. There are two kinds:
The ones who bring the worst of their culture with them, and the ones who absolutely reject the worst of their culture and are grateful every second that they’re here.
...”
Invisible enemy is not only the virus, but those in that first group, the ones that bring the worst with them.
Recall the vids of people coughing on others & on food in the grocery stores.
I will leave it at that for now, since we are at war.