Hot Air
The Federal Government has failed us remarkably with regards to COVID-19. Not only were they not prepared for any pandemic; they purposefully did not act. They did not ramp up testing, they did not provide the essential PPE, they lagged on guidelines for social distancing. And now there are reports of the feds “reallocating” medical supplies for political purposes.
Remember that the first confirmed case of coronavirus was Nov 17. That’s five months ago. The WHO shipped their first tests on Feb 4, the same day that the first faulty CDC test kits were sent out.
Even though testing was the gold standard used with reported success in China, South Korea and Taiwan, there was widespread delay of testing in the US. Even today, five months later, we do not have widely available testing.
And we will only have significant numbers by integrating comprehensive testing data.
But wait, it gets better. Or weirder. Now there’s this. The feds are seizing coronavirus supplies.
In Florida, a large medical system saw an order for thermometers taken away. And officials at a system in Massachusetts were unable to determine where its order of masks went.
…
PeaceHealth, a 10-hospital system in Washington, Oregon and Alaska, had a shipment of testing supplies seized recently.
…
Trump and other White House officials, including his close advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner, have insisted that the federal government is using a data-driven approach to procure supplies and direct them where they are most needed.
…
Using the Defense Production Act, a Korean War-era law that allows the president to compel the production of vital equipment in a national emergency.
.
And I leave you with this. (It would be interesting to know what Snowden’s sources are regarding China.)
Shelter in Place with Edward Snowden
[video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5OAjnveyJo] h/t gjohnsit
.
.
The thread is open...
Comments
Good morning...
We were just discussing what a "long strange trip" it has been...and we've a long way to go.
We had our first garden salad of the season last night. We should be harvesting lettuce into mid-June or so. Eating with the seasons provides lots of salads in spring and fall.
The doctors I follow are all recommending Vitamin D. John gave details yesterday. The other factor I'm hearing from them is the importance of being metabolically healthy (meaning low blood sugar and insulin) to maximize your immune system. Not a guarantee to be asymptomatic, but it is a proactive thing we can do to protect ourselves.
I keep coming back to the idea that this is a great time to develop a plan to change the system. To get off oil and transition to an equitable society with "liberty and justice for all". Currently all the money is flowing to the very people/corporations that are the problem. Now is the perfect time to discuss a new economic model. We need something concrete to aim toward after (maybe if) this unwinds. At any rate it would be productive exercise.
Wishing you all the best. Thanks for the OT, MA.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
morning lo
Just back from a very long walk through the neighborhood. The streets are empty except for a few workers and delivery trucks. A bit early for a lot of pedestrian types. Heh.
It's been cloudy here again. Not good for the growing season per se. Though who knows if we will even be able to get the workers here to pick everything. Looks like the lettuce growers are plowing their crops because the restaurants are closed. My potatoes are doing well. I need to start covering them with straw but I have not straw. Maybe eucalyptus leaves. Maybe not. Hmmm...
Be well and take good care.
Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation
Hot Air Website, Twitter, Facebook
just for laughs
simpler times...
morning q
...an America at war with someone else is an America at peace with itself
have a goooooooood one or two or three...
Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation
Hot Air Website, Twitter, Facebook
they're just children
Compensated Spokes Model for Big Poor.
morning sailor
Whew. Just par for the course unfortunately. When will we ever learn.
Have a good one...
Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation
Hot Air Website, Twitter, Facebook
Good morning magi. We started on a new garden area
yesterday and my wife also planted a few plants in parts of our existing garden area that were fallow. I see that there are rumblings of a loosening of the process, but I'm not ssure that it isn't way premature, and not sure how much we will go along with it. I'm not feeling particularly driven to jump start "the economy" at the risk of serious illness of death, so maybe they should jump start testing, finding bona-fide treatments that work and vaccines. Instead, our corporate overlords and their political lackeys are, as usual, simply all about profits, profiteering, amassing power and wealth, and keeping the hoi polloi dependent and desperate.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
morning el
You know, we just don't know. There are so many contradictory studies out now. I trust the early ones more I think. The more recent ones may be trying to obfuscate. I read one study (sorry no link) that said Sweden was doing well without any restrictions but just this morning I read one that said their numbers are way up.
Sweden: 22 Scientists Say Coronavirus Strategy Has Failed As Deaths Top 1,000
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidnikel/2020/04/14/sweden-22-scientists-...
It does appear that social distancing is working here on the left coast. So there is that. Masks also are good in general. But it looks like the unwinding of this could take a very long time.
Take good care. May your garden grow well,
Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation
Hot Air Website, Twitter, Facebook
Hi magiamma
I think social distancing will be effective in controlling almost any contagious virus on the planet. (Except for mind viruses, of course, which are quantum bodies.)
[edit = typo]
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Hi pluto
Totally. In places where they wear masks they have less contagious diseases. Lol.
Have a good one.
Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation
Hot Air Website, Twitter, Facebook
Good morning, magi ~~
Thanks for posting that Snowden video. I didn't watch it the first time it was posted, so I took advantage of it this time. He is incredible - so knowledgeable and here to guide us. A special being among us.
Beautiful day on tap! Can't wait until work is over so I can spend the afternoon outside. I always leave my phone in the house so "they" don't know where I really am! With lots of acreage to play on, I get lots of vitamin D (which, as Lookout has noted several times, is good for our immune system and I also take a supplement). Spring is finally in the air and we are enjoying planting, watering, and just the great outdoors.
Hope all are well. Live in the present moment and live in love.
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
howdy ra
Yes, Snowden reminds us again and again.
Your day sounds wonderful. You can put your phone in one of those old lead photo bags that were to protect the rolls of film from the xray machines when traveling. If you have one. No longer needed now with digital. It really says a lot that we have to do this.
Take good care and have a very good one.
Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation
Hot Air Website, Twitter, Facebook
Winter has returned to Illinois.
Snow and 23 degree (overnight) temperatures. My daffodils are laying over like dead onions. Had these for half a century. two varieties, one from my mother and the other from wife's father. I grew up with these flowers and carried bulbs to Buffalo Grove IL, Virginia, back to Bloomingdale IL and now to here. Plums and apples were starting to open flowers.
My daughter called to complain about abnormal temperatures - 40 degree lows. We are having 40 degree highs. Grocery stores having less and less. Cereal starting to disappear. And potato chips! Still plenty of wine and booze.
UPDATE: Three inches of snow predicted for tomorrow. this is mid-April, not mid-March.
There are people in the South that haven't seen three inches of snow in their whole life. Beleive me, I won't forget the 16 inches the day I retired. And that is not uncommon.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
morning tvitw
That is so sad about your daffodils. Can you save the bulbs? Don't they survive underground? Maybe it's too cold there.
So, with all the focus on The Virus it's easy to forget about The Climate Change. Right? Still happening, those wild swings of the jet stream. Yup. you said it. "We are so screwed".
Never the less, take good care and have a good one.
Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation
Hot Air Website, Twitter, Facebook
Thanks
They look better now in the afternoon. Maybe they will survive.
Plums, peaches, and some apple blossoms starting to open. May have diminished crops or no crops.
IIRC, those stone fruits are wiped out in Wisconsin along with cherries in Michigan and diminished peaches in Michigan (a major source of peaches).
More proof that global warming doesn't just mean a bigger A/C bill or that NYC will drown. I forget when the media quit mentioning that Global warming will drown NYC. Maybe they figured out that most of the country doesn't care about NYC or that Southerners will cheer.
Sorry New Yorkers. I like most of you, but your upper crust deserves to drown.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Thanks for the Snowden video
I'll look at it this evening.
I'm posting an interview with Vandana Shiva that JS posted a few nights ago in the EB (h/t to him) It's interesting and I think it should get a lot of coverage.
hola randt
omfg! This is me. Trees changed my life. I was only six or seven and we took a field trip to the forests outside of Eugene up in the mountains. We walked on moss. On a moss carpet by a stream among beautiful trees. I knew then that we were one. The trees and us.
She, Vandana Shiva, talks about tree mining.
Exactly so. They stripped the mountains in Oregon and Washington of trees. Sent them to Japan to be made into plywood and then shipped the plywood back.
Funny how the Coronavirus is attacking the lungs. No?
Have a very good one and take good care.
Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation
Hot Air Website, Twitter, Facebook
Another feature not a bug
.
USAA reversed this action, but I am hearing about how other banks are garnishing people's checks and Mnuchin is not rescinding their ability to do that. But of course a few democrats are asking Mnuchin to set policy and put a stop to this.
Here's the link for more info on this.
Congress woman Tlaib (sp) is trying to get a bill passed to give us $2,000 a month until after the epidemic shut down is over. Thanks. Hope you get lots of people to sign on with it. You'd think that after McConnell, Pelosi, Schumer and Trump just gave the rich another $90 billion in taxes cuts they would see the need to jump on this right away. Pelosi owns much of what came out of the senate bill because she refused to allow the whole house to debate what went into the bill. I am sure you have heard about Nancy's Let them eat cake moment and here is Rising on it. Absolutely appalled by her doing that, but I hope she does more. #Guillotines is trending on Twitter.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqAQKtG5X_Y&list=TLPQMTYwNDIwMjD7QM9t4su...
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Hi snoop
Why am I always surprised again and again. I am at a loss for words.
Have a good one.
Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation
Hot Air Website, Twitter, Facebook
Staggering indeed
.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.