If you know someone who is a regular Fox watcher and a member of the Trump cult, beware. I believe that they present a higher risk for spreading Corona virus. Why? Because they are buying the lies and Corona virus disinformation being spread by Donald Trump and Fox News and not doing what they should be doing to protect themselves or others.
". . . public health experts are largely in agreement about this. If we don't "flatten the curve" which is to say, make sure our coronavirus patients come to our hospitals in manageable waves, rather than all at once then we will soon become Italy, where doctors are now facing the possibility of wartime triage, which would require making choices about who lives and who dies based on a patient's age, because there aren't enough beds and ventilators to go around. But rather than flattening the curve, Fox is behind the curve. Each and every time.
It is of course legitimate to worry about the fate of American businesses, large and small, and to fear for the short- and long-term security of American workers. But this swagger about carrying on business as usual goes beyond reflexive pro-Trump and pro-market reflexes."
The Trump propagandists at Fox News have been mocking the seriousness of the threat of Corona virus, suggesting that it is not real. The brainwashed people who believe everything all the lies Trump and Fox news spew will not take the threat seriously. They will ignore their symptoms. They will not self isolate. They will not wash their hands. They will, as a whole be a greater danger to the rest of us than people who do take the virus seriously.
To be clear, not all conservatives are in that boat. But there are a lot of them. And it's advisable to steer even more clear of them than you have in the past.
Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.
He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com
more detailed bio:
Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization (more...)
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12 people are discussing this page, with 23 comments
There are some barely visible truths in this, but the political emphasis detracts from them.
This is a new type of virus, not much different from most flues, but since it is new, no one has immunities. Once it passes through, those who got it without dying will have some immunity and the next time it goes through, there will be fewer people getting and spreading it, so it will act more like a normal winter flu. Some people with compromised immune systems will die, as usual. This time, since there is not a set of already immune people, the virus will spread more quickly, our broken medical system will overload, and more sick old people will die than usual.
The kernel of truth in the article is that we do not want to overload our broken sick medical system too much. We will overload it. The corrupted medical system, our insurance system, our legions of working poor and our homeless population assure that we will overload the system anyway. How bad it becomes overloaded will be a factor in how many sick oldies get nailed. We can spread out the time to deal with the problem by isolating.
Personally, at 75 years old and in good health, I hope I eventually catch the virus so I can develop an immunity while I still have a robust immune system. Along with that, I hope all healthy kids catch the virus too and thereby gain immunity.
The problems come when dealing with the old and sick. In my age bracket, I come in contact with a lot of sick old people and I do not want to endanger them. Wouldn't it be much more reasonable to quarantine sick old people and sanitize those who take care of them? Programs that pay sick leave, hand washing, smaller gatherings, etc SLOW the spread and make the overload on our broken medical system lesser.
But it is important for healthy people to get the virus. It is not a crime or a failure. This is the way creatures deal with a new sickness. If you are healthy, do the right thing, get the virus and get over it, but be careful about giving it to grandma.
Fear mongering, political maneurvering, and blame games are not helping anything. Eat well, drink lots of water, keep clean and keep the grandkids away from the grandparents (unless they are looking to this virus as a way out).
I agree with a lot of what you said, but I don't really see the logic of suggesting that young people should hurry up to contract the virus. It seems to me that it will help "flatten the curve" if everyone puts off getting it as long as possible, because if a young person gets it he is more in a position to transmit it to someone who might become seriously ill than if that young person does not have it.
I agree that young people should not go out intentionally to catch this virus. We do want to slow the spread of the virus, but take in account that the majority of us are predicted to get it before this is over. The fear mongering puts an evil status on those, the majority of us, who will get this virus. That does not help things.
Immunities are not 100% for anything and our vaccination system is screwing with our immune systems in ways that often reduce future immunities or open us up to other devastating illnesses. I trust my body as much as I trust our for profit, promote chronic illnesses, let-em die after we bankrupt them, medical system.
Thank You for correctly identifying our medical system. It is the same system that killed my mother in 1986. I have no doubt it will kill me someday. But MegaMillions is drawing numbers tonight and if Lady Luck blinks, I may win it. Then the IRS gets their money and I get a passport. I have not decided where I will go to stay, but India is first on my list. Sometime between 2000 and 2005, I started to get sick. In the years after, my sickness has got worse. Only by seeing the Apartment Maintenance people pulling down the ceiling in my bathroom, did I see what was trying to kill me. Three inches of Black Mold coated all the plumbing, and at least 12 inches of the upper walls. Two Immunologists, one at BayState in Springfield, MA and at Brigham and Women's in Boston, MA gave me diagnoses that made no sense at all. American Medicine is a total scam.
Submitted on Saturday, Mar 14, 2020 at 12:25:06 AM
Putin has accomplished in 3 years, through his orange puppet, what his Cold War predecessors couldn't do in 50 years - destroy this country both politically and, possibly, literally.
The Trump Presidency Is Over. The author (a Republican) condemns the president's mismanagement of the corona virus crisis and lists the many failures, misteps, and misstatements.
"Taken together, this is a massive failure in leadership that stems from a massive defect in character. Trump is such a habitual liar that he is incapable of being honest, even when being honest would serve his interests. He is so impulsive, shortsighted, and undisciplined that he is unable to plan or even think beyond the moment. He is such a divisive and polarizing figure that he long ago lost the ability to unite the nation under any circumstances and for any cause. And he is so narcissistic and unreflective that he is completely incapable of learning from his mistakes. The president's disordered personality makes him as ill-equipped to deal with a crisis as any president has ever been. With few exceptions, what Trump has said is not just useless; it is downright injurious."
Looks like they are two for two on that. The Bernie bus appears to be just about out of fuel. And a lot of people on OEN I suspect agree with part two. He has certainly caused a lot of Democrat headaches!
MSNBC and CNN serve the Democratic Party and the Dems hate Bernie because, if he wins, he will take their power away. So it makes sense, like Mike says, for Fox to be friendlier to Bernie. But I think that Bernie has a better chance of beating Trump.
In response to the virus the administration has put pressure on the creation of test kits, there are something like 10 million test kits out and manufacture is ramping up. In response to the government team has gotten insurance companies to charge no co-pay for getting tested, the goal is to have everyone in the US tested. They are looking at giving an extension on income tax filings to keep the money in the economy. Trump met with 5 or 6 of the biggest banks to plan responses to turmoil in the financial system. There is plans to give assistance to industries particularly hit by the virus like the travel industry and other collateral industries like after 9-11.
CDC staff members have been involved in the COVID-19 response, including clinicians (i.e., physicians, nurses, and pharmacists), epidemiologists, veterinarians, laboratorians, communicators, data scientists and modelers, and coordination staff members. Of these CDC staff members, 497 (37%) have been deployed to 39 locations in the United States and internationally, including CDC quarantine stations at U.S. ports of entry, state and local health departments, hospitals, and U.S. military bases that are housing quarantined persons, as well as WHO and ministries of health around the world. CDC staff members are working with state, local, tribal, and territorial health departments and other public health authorities to assist with case identification, contact tracing, evaluation of persons under investigation (PUI) for COVID-19,* and medical management of cases; and with academic partners to understand the virulence, risk for transmission, and other characteristics of this novel virus.
California Governor Gavin Newsom, properly characterized as "anti-Trump" said, "We had a private conversation, but [Trump] said, 'We're gonna do the right thing and you have my support, all of our support, logistically and otherwise.' So before he made those statements publicly, I had a private conversation with him around 4:30 West Coast time. And he said everything that I could have hoped for. And we had a very long conversation and every single thing he said, they followed through on. "
Here is John Kasich (noted Anti-Trumper) trying to talk to Don Lemon. Lemon just can't advance his ad hominem narrative.
I think you, Rob, are unnecessarily politicizing the situation. First of all, I don't think Fox News is in denial about the virus or its seriousness: one look at their website (foxnews [dot] com) shows that. It's true that Republicans are somewhat more likely to look at the economic consequences of anything, compared to Democrats being willing to at least give lip service to social consequences, but, in my opinion it's outrageous to make such a black-white condemnation of half the country. It sounds like Hillary's "deplorables".
Second, while I don't think Trump can be trusted to give an impartial, responsible view on almost any subject, I don't think he's done too badly with Covid-19. He started out being calming, a bit of "we have nothing to fear but fear itself", and has since gotten on board with the seriousness of it all. As far as the Federal government in general's efforts goes, I've been trying to determine how other countries efforts to cope compare to the US. Wikipedia has some interesting data, where you can see when the first cases were discovered, the present totals, and, down at the bottom some interesting graphs comparing major European countries's progressions. Unfortunately, the US is not represented in the article, but, from what I've been able to find out, we had our first cases identified at about the same time as the European countries did, and our identified cases are fewer than any of theirs.
I consider many liberal criticisms of the Trump response and the rest of the government to be retrospective nit picking. Any action he might take will be criticized as draconian infringement on civil liberties, racist, etc., or, on the other hand, as "too little too late". I think we should concentrate on what to do and spend less time on armchair quarterbacking.
First the working class, then the middle class were economically sucked dry. Now it will be the upper middle class, who like Eloi, stroll though life believing they will enjoy a priveleged life forever, unaware of history and trusting the ruling clique. COVID-19 is a 9/11-like reset button that will collapse the class structure for the benefit of the rulng clique. The trajectory follows the same predatory curve that led to the revolutions of the 18th C, where it was the lesser peerage and bourgeoisie who marshalled the fight against the Royals.That won't happen here as the bourgeoisie and the professional class have blind faith in a system that has benefitted them. They believe all problms are just resuls from partisan incompetence. That's about to change.
But that is all a secondary benefit for the ruling clique. Their primary objective IMO is to stall China, who has been gaining ground on the US, by sabotaging its 5G R&D and Silk Road Initiative, as well as damaging the circular economic arrangements it is establishing in Afirca. The collateral damage - whether to others (nuclear bombardment of Japan, testing of "rainbow chemicals" in Vietnam) or to its own population (9/11, radiation and LSD testing on prisoners) - has never been a concern for the US, nor has the safety of its civilians ever forestalled any plan to spread empire. Once again braiwashed dopes who receive their intellectual perspectives by osmosis while staring at MSNBC or Fox will continue to believe this is all a matter of partisan politics and not multi-trillion dollar initiative of the ruling clique and its MIC attack dogs. Put down the spitballs and FOLLOW THE MONEY.
I didn't think it would happen via a designer virus, but I did see this class reset coming for a long time. In 2013 I commnted here by reproducing a letter I wrote:
"Phase two: Undressing of the upper middle class, the conclusive proof..."
Humanity has been obsessed throughout history with the search for an immutable principle to justify "greed." It's the elephant in the classroom, at the root of racism and forms the pretext of national sovereignty and exceptionalism.
Apologists for American exceptionalism who dismiss comparisons between the purges of the Stalinist regime and the genocide of the Third Reich with the massive destructive force the US has exerted on the developing world for over a century of treachery, murder and environmental warfare, fail to remember that each believes its murderous intentions should be understood as a justified means in advancing the best interests of the world and the higher aspirations of the human species whether they be in the guise of tribal superiority and religious ambition or an inalienable free market right to own everything viz., the plutocrats.
Here in the US, the clique of plutocrats will now begin its plunder of the upper bourgeoisie. It will follow Euro historical precedent and first relieve the professional class of any semblance of socio-economic power it once believed brought with it entitlement to a privileged lifestyle.
It happened to the gentry and the Spanish Jews in the middle ages when a psychopathic triad consisting of the Papal States and the royals of Spain and Portugal unleashed an inquisition. Its net effect was that it salvaged the papacy from further materialist attacks from an emboldened, agnostic gentry and created the greatest land grab in Euro history, as the confiscated seisins of the Jews and "heretic" knights helped fund the armadas that pillaged the new world.
Similarly, the ever increasing military expense of maintaining an armada to defend the US clique's global spoils (referred to in the media as "our national interests") will now demand it, as the former middle class and lower middle classes have been bled dry and ground into a single amorphous debtor class. In the zoology of capitalism, this amounts to a behavioral transformation from parasitic to amensalistic, as the benefits these classes provide can no longer advance the plutocracy's pyramid of expansion.
It will also not be difficult for the US plutocrats to plunder the upper middle class, as all regulatory obstacles have been removed by a legislature dominated for decades by regressive, classic lumpen sycophants who serve the clique's interests, and by a succession of chief executive entourages bought and paid for, regardless of party affiliation.
It will be a scene blended from quantum physics where the clique is passing by itself simultaneously on the up and down escalators of history. The first nation to declare the dictates of royal privilege to be void of any moral justification 250 years ago, will soon be the most lopsided royalty on earth.
First, I love the reference to the Eloi, from The Time Machine. And I think of how Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine described how predators take advantage of crises. There are people who will make a fortune during this crisis. And there will be millions of small business people who are going to be hurt really bad.
As far as my article, I was talking to Fox Watchers and they didn't respect the threat or danger. That may have changed now that Trump declared a state of emergency.
Thanks, Rob. Last Wednesday I had to make an emergency trip to NY. On the way back I stopped to buy groceries in Greenwich CT at a Whole Foods - a store where every single car in the overflowing lot was either a Mercedes or a Range Rover. While standing in one of the long check-out lines packed with the creme de la creme of upper middle class America, I overheard one of the cashmere draped women in my line say to her similarly dressed freind in an adjacent line: "You know we're leaving tomorrow for Steamboat Springs to get in the last skiing." To which her literal isomer replied, "Oh really, we're leaving Monday for Aspen." The exchange was an ironic epiphany that the Upper Middle Class are the unwitting carriers (again, think Eloi) of their own demise, and that I was standing at a COVID-19 epicenter.
You wonder if in a year these 1 to 5%ers will have the same insouciant conversation after the realiztion sets in that the vulture capitalists have picked through the carnage of their collapased small businesses, distressed real estate assets and wounded professional practices. The COVID-19 economic reset will result in vacuuming the accummulaton of twealth and assets, up from the ever shrinking 1% - 5% demo to the exponentially richer ruling clique - the royals - whose position continues to consolidate.
The CDC has been working to destroy our health for years. Their own scientists have called them out:
"Now a group of more than a dozen senior scientists have reportedly lodged an ethics complaint alleging the federal agency is being influenced by corporate and political interests in ways that short-change taxpayers."
"Experts in the nutrition arena have said that the relationships are troubling because the mission of the CDC is protecting public health, and yet certain CDC officials appear to be close with an industry that, studies say, is linked to about 180,000 deaths per year worldwide, including 25,000 in the United States. The CDC is supposed to be addressing rising obesity rates among children, not advancing beverage industry interests."
I'll start having faith in authorities again when they dismantle these:
Yes, the CDC, like other government agencies, has been corrupted by corporate interference and has been weakened by GOP mismanagement and hostility. But the solution isn't to get rid of these agencies. The solution is to reform them so they serve the people, not the corporations.
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