~*Official #COVID-19 Thread of Doom*~ Revenge of Omicron Prime

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

‘We depend on God’: gravediggers on frontline of Kano's Covid-19 outbreak

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Musa Abubakar used to dig two or three graves a day at the main cemetery in the northern Nigerian city of Kano. Then overnight it became 40.

 

“I have never witnessed mass deaths like this,” the 75-year-old said, his white kaftan muddied from his work at the Abbatuwa cemetery, where he has dug graves for 60 years. “From the first day of Ramadan to date, over 300 people have been buried.”

 

A jump in Kano’s death toll by 600 in one week in April sent alarm bells ringing across Nigeria’s second largest city and beyond. Local government officials denied that a coronavirus outbreak was the cause and claimed the death toll reports had been exaggerated. But in Abbatuwa, the gravediggers were running out of space.

 

 

[skillzdadirecta]

1 hour ago, Zaku3 said:

In their case it's just about downplaying it. I had a team huddle and someone mentioned that everyone that dies at a hospital is being listed as COVID because there is more money if it's a COVID case. 

 

Which makes little sense. My understanding is hospitals are doing poorly financially because so much of their money comes from surgeries. In addition in NJ/NYC the hospitals were swamped with COVID patients.

This is what I'm talking about.

[LazyPiranha]

1 hour ago, Zaku3 said:

In their case it's just about downplaying it. I had a team huddle and someone mentioned that everyone that dies at a hospital is being listed as COVID because there is more money if it's a COVID case. 

 

Which makes little sense. My understanding is hospitals are doing poorly financially because so much of their money comes from surgeries. In addition in NJ/NYC the hospitals were swamped with COVID patients.

 

Why would you get money from a death period?  Am I just that ignorant of hospital billing that they get to charge for someone dying and they get to adjust their rate based on what they die of as opposed to treatments trying to keep you alive.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

53 minutes ago, LazyPiranha said:

 

Why would you get money from a death period?  Am I just that ignorant of hospital billing that they get to charge for someone dying and they get to adjust their rate based on what they die of as opposed to treatments trying to keep you alive.

The funding that hospitals will receive for COVID-19 isn't based on deaths - it's based on a formula that uses total number of intensive care unit beds as of April 10 and the total number of COVID-19 admissions dating back to Jan. 1.

[mclumber1]

1 hour ago, Emperor Diocletian II said:

The funding that hospitals will receive for COVID-19 isn't based on deaths - it's based on a formula that uses total number of intensive care unit beds as of April 10 and the total number of COVID-19 admissions dating back to Jan. 1.

 

Kinda sucks for hospitals who don't have a lot of COVID cases but are otherwise unable to perform elective surgeries or other ways of generating revenue. 

[skillzdadirecta]

The Four Men Responsible For the COVID 19 TESTING DISASTER

 

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The government leaders who failed to safeguard the nation are CDC Director Redfield; FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn; Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar; and of course, President Trump. Together, these men had the power to change the direction of this pandemic, to lessen its impact on the economy, and constrain the death toll from COVID-19. Each failed, in a series of errors and mismanagement that grew into a singular catastrophe — or as Jared Kushner described it on Fox & Friends, “a great success story.”

 

 

THE ZEALOT

 

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The front-line agency built to respond to a pandemic, the CDC, was placed in unreliable hands. Dr. Robert Redfield is a right-wing darling with a checkered scientific past. His 2018 nomination was a triumph for the Christian right, a coup in particular for evangelical activists Shepherd and Anita Smith, who have been instrumental in driving a global AIDS strategy centered on abstinence.

 

Redfield’s tight-knit relationship with the Smiths goes back at least three decades, beginning when Shepherd Smith recruited him to join the board of his religious nonprofit, Americans for a Sound AIDS/HIV Policy (ASAP). The Smiths made their views plain in the 1990 book Christians in the Age of AIDS, which argued HIV infection resulted from “people’s sinfulness,” and described AIDS as a consequence for those who “violate God’s laws.” Redfield, a devout Catholic who was then a prominent HIV researcher in the Army, wrote the introduction, calling for the rejection of “false prophets who preach the quick-fix strategies of condoms and free needles.”

 

 Redfield was a rising star at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, whose name had been floated as a candidate for surgeon general. But the late 1980s were benighted times in the AIDS epidemic, and Redfield championed discriminatory policies that he defended as “good medicine” — including quarantining of HIV-positive soldiers in a segregated barracks. These soldiers were routinely given dishonorable discharges after superiors rooted out evidence of homosexuality, and left to suffer the course of their devastating disease without health insurance. “It was dark,” remembers Laurie Garrett, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Coming Plague, who reported on Redfield’s actions. “It was the opposite of compassion.” 

 

Redfield’s Army career derailed after he was accused of “sloppy or, possibly, deceptive” research for touting a trial HIV therapy that later proved useless. An investigation found no wrongdoing, but called out his “inappropriately close” relationship with Shepherd Smith, who also hyped the drug. Redfield insisted there was “no basis for any of the allegations,” but the scandal spurred his departure to a research lab at the University of Maryland.

 

 

THE INSIDER

 

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The CDC reports to the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Alex Azar, a former executive for the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly who gained infamy, in his five-year tenure, by doubling the price of insulin.

Azar is a creature of the GOP establishment: He cut his teeth as a Supreme Court clerk to Antonin Scalia, worked with Brett Kavanaugh on the Clinton-Whitewater investigation under special counsel Ken Starr, and served as a deputy HHS administrator in the George W. Bush era, before becoming Eli Lilly’s top lobbyist. Azar, 52, is the type of corporate leader Republicans have long touted as capable of driving efficiencies in the unwieldy federal bureaucracy. Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell praised Azar’s nomination in 2017, insisting, “Alex brings a wealth of private-sector knowledge that will prepare him well for this crucial role.”

Azar sought to shrink the CDC, an agency that has been on the chopping block throughout the Trump administration. In HHS’s most recent budget proposal — unveiled this past February, 10 days after the World Health Organization declared a global emergency over the coronavirus — Azar sought an $85 million cut to the CDC’s Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases program and a $25 million cut to Public Health Preparedness and Response. Azar defended the budget at the time as making “difficult, prudent choices.”

The Trump administration had also hollowed out the CDC’s China presence, slashing staff from 47 to barely a dozen. These cuts were part of a broad-reaching drawdown of America’s disease preparedness, including Trump’s decision to disband the National Security Counsel’s pandemic-response team. In late 2018, Azar’s HHS rejected a proposal, solicited by the Obama administration, to buy a machine capable of churning out 1.5 million N95 respirators a day, for use in a pandemic.

 

UNREADY AT THE FDA

 

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Stephen Hahn had been on the job at the FDA for barely a month. A bald, 60-year-old of modest height, Hahn has an impeccable résumé — he served as chief medical executive at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center — but he had no experience running a government agency.

 

The need to engage the private sector for coronavirus testing was not only foreseeable, it was foreseen — by Trump’s first FDA commissioner, Scott Gottlieb. In a January 28th Wall Street Journal article, “Act Now to Prevent an American Epidemic,” Gottlieb warned that the “CDC will struggle to keep up with the volume of screening.” He said the government must begin “working with private industry to develop easy-to-use, rapid diagnostic tests.”

If Hahn read his predecessor’s call to action, he did not act on it. Hahn did not lack authority; the FDA has broad discretion to relax the rules that were locked into place with Azar’s declaration. But Azar had, unaccountably, not included Hahn on the Coronavirus Task Force. By default, private test developers were now required to obtain an “emergency-use authorization” from the FDA to deploy COVID-19 testing. “Companies couldn’t make their own lab-developed tests,” Adalja says, “so you had Quest and LabCorp and the big-university labs on the sidelines.”

 

 Yet the failure to activate the private sector was the key difference between the U.S. response to the coronavirus and that of South Korea, which first detected the virus in its country at the same time the U.S. did. “Instead of going through regulatory hijinks,” says Milton, the University of Maryland virologist, South Korea “turned their biomedical industry loose, and they started producing lots of tests right away.” With this massive rollout — including drive-through testing clinics for patients with mild symptoms — South Korea got in front of its outbreak. At the beginning of May, South Korea had recorded fewer than 11,000 cases and 250 COVID-19 deaths. The United States, Milton insists, missed the window to activate its biomedical might to achieve the same result. “We have that capability,” he says. “We could have done that.”

 

 

There's a hell of a lot more and it's a great, in depth read.

 

One more excerpt...

 

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The testing breakdown had left the nation blind to the true scope of the outbreak. By March 1st, the CDC’s official tally of coronavirus cases had spiked from the 15 cases touted by Trump to 75. But researchers at Northeastern University have now developed models showing there were likely 28,000 infections at the time, in just five major cities, including New York and Seattle. The Seattle Flu Study — bucking red tape from the FDA and CDC — had begun a rogue effort to test swab samples it had collected using its own lab-developed test. By early March, the testing had uncovered a bevy of undiagnosed coronavirus infections. Dr. Helen Chu, the project’s lead scientist, told The New York Times that she realized then, with horror, “It’s just everywhere already.

 

One last one...damn.

 

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On March 6th, at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Redfield again stood by the president’s side. “I want to thank you for your decisive leadership, in helping us put public health first,” he told Trump, who wore a red keep america great cap. Redfield again called the risk from the coronavirus “low” and insisted the U.S. had only an “isolated number of clusters.” He then made a claim that would be comical if it were not so tragic: “It’s not as if we have multiple, multiple — hundreds and hundreds of clusters” across the country. “I mean, we’re not blind where this virus is right now in the United States.” The next day, appearing with Pence and cruise-industry executives, Redfield encouraged American travelers to keep their reservations, and even to visit Disneyland. Within the week, the administration’s denial crashed into the reality of the exploding pandemic. Disney shut its parks; Trump declared a state of emergency. Finally, on March 16th, the administration rolled out social-distancing guidelines to “slow the spread,” and the nation’s economy started grinding to a halt.

 

Really the last one... I did not know the bolded part.

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Rolling out this practice nationally would be a sophisticated undertaking, requiring coordination that had not, into May, materialized from the White House. After failing to provide anything more than a gesture at a framework for reopening in late April, the administration began pushing states to rev up their economies. It did this despite internal CDC projections that COVID-19 deaths were on track to hit 3,000 a day by June 1st, while blocking release of a science-based CDC playbook for opening schools, restaurants, churches, and mass transit.

[thewhyteboar]

11 hours ago, MarSolo said:

dOnAlD TrUmP iSn’T rAcIsT!

 

 

The fact that a good chunk of this country finds this blubbering child to be a sterling example of a macho man blows my mind. He pouts more than my 4 year old nephew. 

[Chairslinger]

53 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

The Four Men Responsible For the COVID 19 TESTING DISASTER

 

 

 

THE ZEALOT

 

 

 

THE INSIDER

 

 

UNREADY AT THE FDA

 

 

There's a hell of a lot more and it's a great, in depth read.

 

One more excerpt...

 

 

One last one...damn.

 

 

Really the last one... I did not know the bolded part.

 

 

I didn't realize I was being less critical of the Trump administration than they deserve.

 

I mostly gave them a pass on their slow response because I think most of us were unaware of the true threat it poised in the early months of the year. I had heard bits and pieces of their lax response, but it wasn't until I read that article that I realized the full scope of it. Not only was Trump and his cronies negligent in ignoring warnings, they actively ran a campaign to keep the rest of us unaware of the threat until as late as we did. It's like if Bush not only got the "imminent threat" warning, but also spent 2 months before 9/11 assuring everyone Al Qaeda was no threat.

 

And they seem dead set on repeating the exact same mistake reopening the economy with still none of the pieces in place to do it right.

[skillzdadirecta]

44 minutes ago, Chairslinger said:

 

 

I didn't realize I was being less critical of the Trump administration than they deserve.

 

I mostly gave them a pass on their slow response because I think most of us were unaware of the true threat it poised in the early months of the year. I had heard bits and pieces of their lax response, but it wasn't until I read that article that I realized the full scope of it. Not only was Trump and his cronies negligent in ignoring warnings, they actively ran a campaign to keep the rest of us unaware of the threat until as late as we did. It's like if Bush not only got the "imminent threat" warning, but also spent 2 months before 9/11 assuring everyone Al Qaeda was no threat.

 

And they seem dead set on repeating the exact same mistake reopening the economy with still none of the pieces in place to do it right.

Yeah it's a combination of incompetence and downright negligence mixed with full on malpractice. This is fucked up... but on the bright side HBO is gonna make one HELL of a mini-series from this. speaking of Russia... They now are THIRD with the most Coronavirus cases behind The U.S. and Spain... and their hospitals seem to keep catching on fire. 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

12 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

She disguised criticism in the form of a question.  While her criticism is well founded, and Trump's answer is completely inappropriate.  Does anyone really believe that she asked a real question that she expected an answer to?

We’ve all seen dodges to questions such as these by any President with half a brain. Even Bush jr could have navigated that question. 

something like

“It’s not about competition, it’s about assuring the American people all that we are doing to combat Covid-19. The loss of life is unfortunate, and sadly unavoidable, but we are taking measures to minimize the toll from this virus. Next question.”

[Keyser_Soze]

28 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

"It’s not about competition, it’s about assuring the American people all that we are doing to combat Covid-19. The loss of life is unfortunate, and sadly unavoidable, but we are taking measures to minimize the toll from this virus. Next question.”

 

Wow, I'd vote for you. Do you think you can beat Biden?

[PaladinSolo]

Seems like we're definitely fucked.

 

[finaljedi]

13 minutes ago, PaladinSolo said:

Seems like we're definitely fucked.

 

 

Fake news, we took a month off, mission accomplished, the sneaky enemy defeated, time to go back to work and make sure companies can't be sued for infecting their employees

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

All the best people getting very close to covid, but still so far away

[LazyPiranha]

In all seriousness, if Trump tested positive for COVID, do you think there’s even the slightest chance we found out unless he was hospitalized?

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, LazyPiranha said:

In all seriousness, if Trump tested positive for COVID, do you think there’s even the slightest chance we found out unless he was hospitalized?

It’s nearly a negative number

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

4 minutes ago, LazyPiranha said:

In all seriousness, if Trump tested positive for COVID, do you think there’s even the slightest chance we found out unless he was hospitalized?

Regardless of symptoms, it depends if he's still tweeting. 

[CitizenVectron]

8 minutes ago, LazyPiranha said:

In all seriousness, if Trump tested positive for COVID, do you think there’s even the slightest chance we found out unless he was hospitalized?

 

4 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

It’s nearly a negative number

 

Fuck, the more likely public info would be that the deep state killed him with a focused 5G ray.

[69los]

21 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

All the best people getting very close to covid, but still so far away

 

Burn down the Kremlin

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

7 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

 

 

Fuck, the more likely public info would be that the deep state killed him with a focused 5G ray.

If only it were so easy

[CitizenVectron]

Colorado suspends business license of restaurant that opened for Mother's Day:

 

 

 

 

[CitizenVectron]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/doctors-without-borders-navajo-nation-coronavirus/

 

Doctors Without Borders dispatches team to US for the first time to assist a Navajo Nation with treatment on their land.

 

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Doctors Without Borders is best known for sending medical professionals into international conflict zones in the midst of medical crises. The organization has teams in Afghanistan, Iran, Sierra Leone, Venezuela and 66 other countries. It did not, however, have a medical presence in the U.S. — until now.

Jean Stowell, head of the organization's U.S. COVID-19 Response Team, told CBS News that Doctors Without Borders has dispatched a team of nine to the hard-hit Navajo Nation in the southwest U.S. because of the crisis unfolding there. The team consists of two physicians, three nurse/midwives, a water sanitation specialist, two logisticians and a health promoter who specializes in community health education.

 

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There are many situations in which we do not intervene in the United States, but this has a particular risk profile," Stowell said. "Situationally, the Native American communities are at a much higher risk for complications from COVID-19 and also from community spread because they don't have access to the variety of things that make it possible to self-isolate… You can't expect people to isolate if they have to drive 100 miles to get food and water. "

 

Navajo Nation, home to roughly 170,000 people, now has more coronavirus cases per capita than any state in America. Due to a shortage in nursing and specialized medical staff, the most critical patients have to be airlifted to hospitals outside of the reservation.

 

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

Radical self governance takes the day

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

MSF deployment to United States = status as "developing nation" confirmed.

[SuperSpreader]

1 minute ago, Emperor Diocletian II said:

MSF deployment to United States = status as "developing nation" confirmed.

Look at all that potential! Wow! Amazing!! Keep buying stuff!!!!

[CitizenVectron]

 

Accurate.

[MarSolo]

1 hour ago, LazyPiranha said:

In all seriousness, if Trump tested positive for COVID, do you think there’s even the slightest chance we found out unless he was hospitalized?

It would be like that heart attack he had where he vanished for a weekend and then came back complaining about all the news saying he had a heart attack when no one reported that he had a heart attack.

[CitizenVectron]

Basically, the Trump admin has no plans for anything and is only concerned with stymieing the plans that others want:

 

 

 

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

 

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

And so on. Staffer from a moderate Dem senator. Even these people can see we're pretty much fucked, but Nancy doesn't seem to be pushing for anything

[Remarkableriots]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-52637725

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The curfew will start on the evening of 13 May and stay in place until the morning of 18 May.

The number of cases has risen to its highest point in more than a month after the was lockdown rolled back.

People "should stay home and avoid going out except for urgent cases", Information Minister Manal Abdel Samad said.

Prime Minister Hassan Diab said more than 100 new infections had been recorded in the past four days, accusing some of "negligence and lack of responsibility" for ignoring government guidelines on social distancing.

The country has 870 confirmed cases according to Johns Hopkins University, and 26 deaths due to the virus.

 

[Remarkableriots]

 

[Joe]

NJ just added 898 new cases today. First time in way over a month we added under 1k cases in a day. My county, the NJ epicenter, has gone from 600-700 new cases a day to 47 today. Just insane.

[CitizenVectron]

LA County will "with all certainty" keep stay-at-home orders in place through July: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-05-12/coronavirus-beaches-reopen-los-angeles-county-move-toward-new-normal

[Firewithin]

1 hour ago, CitizenVectron said:

LA County will "with all certainty" keep stay-at-home orders in place through July: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-05-12/coronavirus-beaches-reopen-los-angeles-county-move-toward-new-normal

 

good luck with this

 

edit:  after reading the title is misleading.  it really saying they want people to stay home while thing will slowly open up instead of saying "things are reopened" to avoid people flocking to everything at once