The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Trump's Test Plan Epic Nothingburger

    By NCD on Tue, 04/28/2020 - 9:53am |

    The Trump  'plan', summary from the pdf:

    "Federal Government

    • Publish guidelines for Opening Up America Again ...

    State, Local, and Tribal Governments

    • Develop testing plans  ..."

    Paul Romer, a Nobel Prize-winning economist from New York University who has recommended that 50 percent of the population be tested each week, said testing 2 percent:

    “is not enough to test everyone in health care even once, let alone to keep retesting them every day, which is what it would take to keep those who do get infected from going on shift and infecting their colleagues.” 

    Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Health Committee, said on Monday that Mr. Trump’s plan was meaningless.

    “This document does nothing new and will accomplish nothing new,” Ms. Murray said in a statement. “It doesn’t set specific, numeric goals, offer a time frame, identify ways to fix our broken supply chain, or offer any details whatsoever on expanding lab capacity or activating needed manufacturing capacity. Perhaps most pathetically, it attempts to shirk obvious federal responsibilities by assigning them solely to states instead.”

    link

     

    Comments

    No Federal effort to research and produce testing but Meatpacking Plants will be ordered to stay open using DPA.

    Maybe a testing effort could be put together and they can tell Trump it  is a Hamburger Plant. We have to use only objects he can understand from now on.


    by moat on Tue, 04/28/2020 - 4:15pm

    Well, as John Tyson said:

    “We have a responsibility to feed our country. It is as essential as healthcare. This is a challenge that should not be ignored. Our plants must remain operational so that we can supply food to our families in America.”  My bold.

    Apparently the country will starve without meat.  Full disclosure, I'm a carnivore.  But chances are good I'll survive.


    by barefooted on Tue, 04/28/2020 - 4:29pm

    Meanwhile, other food groups are rotting in the fields.


    by moat on Tue, 04/28/2020 - 4:35pm

    And dairy farmers are having to dump their milk.  It's not as though the cows can stop producing.


    by barefooted on Tue, 04/28/2020 - 4:43pm

    ... testing reagent plant - tell Trump it's setting up production of a new ingestible formulation of Lysol?

    He would "get it", he's outstanding with ordering mixed drinks.


    by NCD on Tue, 04/28/2020 - 5:57pm

    Too complicated. He was retweeting stuff on stage he did not understand when he exposed us to the desert of his consciousness.

    Fast food. Prostitutes. Development deals. Stick with the basics.


    by moat on Tue, 04/28/2020 - 6:43pm

    many not thrilled with getting a letter from him either:

    I bet he thinks like it's his money and not a refund of the taxes they paid...


    by artappraiser on Tue, 04/28/2020 - 6:47pm

    Another element the T team did not take into account is that we all get these smarmy letters from all the institutions who determine how much money we will get to help us or not. The idea that one could use that medium to make something look good may be the clearest evidence yet of how far removed the Administration is from what is going on.


    by moat on Tue, 04/28/2020 - 7:08pm

    I see staff set up something for him to do instead of Coronavirus briefings to keep him busy yapping like he likes. I only watched the first couple minute of this. Of note that Ivanka walked up to the stage with him (is she heading the small business task force? Enquiring minds would love to know without having to endure the torture of watching this in its entirety.) He was reading from a speech on the podium which made a point to express sympathy the victims of this "scourge", a word which he stumbled over.


    by artappraiser on Tue, 04/28/2020 - 7:01pm

    Read today competent epidemiologist predicts wirhout the necessary vast expansion by feds of testing, and contact tracing, or effective treatment or mass vaccinations, we will have 1 to 1 1\2 million dead by first half next year.


    by NCD on Tue, 04/28/2020 - 7:18pm

    There it is.
    The Republicans already said they were cool with that result.

    Because they keep moving the number of dead people to whoever died while they said stuff.


    by moat on Tue, 04/28/2020 - 8:35pm


    by artappraiser on Sat, 05/02/2020 - 1:17am

    Clarity about testing. Why we need it. And why the sick do not need it as much if they are isolated unless or until they have to come out of isolation to get treatment.

    The “Covid toe” stuff is fascinating but the emphasis on testing people with symptoms remains misguided.

    If you have symptoms stay home!

    We need to test people *without* symptoms whose jobs make it likely they’ll spread infection. pic.twitter.com/yZDupq9Cuv

    — Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) May 2, 2020

    Reality: if you get it so bad that you are acceptedd as an inpatient at a hospital, your risk of death is very high. Partly because: they are doing their best, but they don't necessarily know what they are doing! This is another reason why flattening the curve with social isolation is a good idea: putting off infection till much later means chances will be better that medicine knows more about the disease and treatments for it should you be one of the unlucky with a severe form of infection.

    We need to test and trace in order to make social decisions to keep infection levels down as long as possible.

    Test and trace will also mean a lot of pressure on people who test positive but asymptomatic to be quarantined. (Like a whole town in NM right now.) We should keep in mind that libertarian types may not be very happy about this....


    by artappraiser on Sat, 05/02/2020 - 7:05am

    Not even symptoms - by the time you show symptoms, you've had it for a whole. Some never really show symptoms.


    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 05/02/2020 - 7:07am