Monthly Archive: February 2020
The transition to the Wuhan Virus being World-wide — Waiting to See the Mortality Rate
From Bloomberg, via Yahoo: In the grip of a new infection spreading around a planet with no natural immunity, it can feel like the sky is falling. Over the coming months, it’s likely that...
Americans are canceling their domestic travel over coronavirus fears
Washington Post via MSN: Major companies are beginning to cancel conferences and travel plans within the United States due to the coronavirus, which analysts warn will have cascading impacts on the country’s hotels, airlines...
HHS Sec. Tells Congress Wuhan Virus Testing Kit Issue is Fixed
LA Times via MSN: “We’ve only had a handful of labs that can test with it. The rest have been on pause,” said Scott Becker, the executive director of the Association of Public Health...
Key Missteps at the CDC Have Set Back Its Ability to Detect the Potential Spread of Coronavirus
From ProPublica: As the highly infectious coronavirus jumped from China to country after country in January and February, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lost valuable weeks that could have been used...
Biblical Rain and Storms Set for the Southern U.S. on Super Tuesday
Who won’t stay home? The committed. Sanders people. What’s a little rain to have a shot at Medicare for All and student debt payoff? From Forbes:
McCaughey: Wuhan Virus is 40 Times More Deadly than the Flu
McCaughey in FOX: It spreads faster than flu and is over forty times as deadly, with a mortality rate of 2.3 percent compared with the flu’s 0.05 percent. It is also harder to contain because infected...
HHS External Affairs: COVID-19 Information and Resources for States, Schools and Healthcare Professionals
COVID-19 Information & Resources 1-Page Fact Sheet on COVID-19: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/downloads/2019-ncov-factsheet.pdf Resources for States COVID-19 Overview: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html Embed code to create auto-updating page on your website with latest from CDC: https://tools.cdc.gov/medialibrary/index.aspx#/microsite/id/403323 Pandemic Preparedness Resources: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/php/pandemic-preparedness-resources.html ...
Noonan: Wuhan Virus Could Give Sanders the Opening he Needs
Noonan: It is in crisis that you see the difference between showmanship and leadership. Early signs are not encouraging. The messaging early this week was childish—everything’s under control, everything’s fine. The president’s news conference...
Iranian Health Official: “It’s possible that it exists in all cities in Iran.”
From Reuters: While there are only a few known cases in India, one source said the country’s available countermeasures and the potential for the virus to spread given India’s dense population was a focus...
“Qom feels like a Shiite Disneyland,” — The Reasons Religious Practices in Qom, Iran will Spread the Wuhan Virus throughout the Muslim World
From The Atlantic: Picture the following sacred but unhygienic scene: Pilgrims from a dozen countries converge on one small city. They stay in cramped hotels, using communal toilets and eating meals together. For their...
Stock Market Takes a Political Risk Discount after President Trump’s Press Conference on the Virus
As CNBC reported: “Dow plunges 1,100 points, bringing its decline from a record high to more than 10%,” and is, in part, due to the significantly increased level of political risk to President Trump...
How the CDC’s Test Kit Shortage and Failure to Develop an Accurate Test is Responsible for the Unknown Number of Infected in the U.S. — We are Flying Blind
From Stat News: The discovery that a California woman was likely infected with the novel coronavirus by a previously unrecognized case in her community is proof of an enormous problem the country is facing at the...
California has Only 200 Wuhan Virus Test Kits on Hand
From CNBC: California health officials have 200 testing kits on hand and will be receiving more over the next few days, Newsom said. “We have just a few hundred testing kits and that’s surveillance...
NYT: DEMpire Elite Believes “no one candidate would clinch the nomination during the primaries and that there would be a brokered convention fight in July to choose a nominee”
From the NYT: Dozens of interviews with Democratic establishment leaders this week show that they are not just worried about Mr. Sanders’s candidacy, but are also willing to risk intraparty damage to stop his...
Bloomberg Decision Matrix if Sanders Wins Dem Nomination
Bloomberg believes Sanders will lose to Trump. Therefore, once Sanders wins the Dem nomination, it follows that the only possible path to defeating Trump is for Bloomberg to run as an Independent. It’s also...
Acting DHS Secretary Gets the Virus Mortality Rate Wrong in Congressional Testimony and the Mortality Rate of the Flu Wrong Too — He needs to Resign Immediately
Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf should resign immediately. To get these basic facts so incorrect means he needs to leave. Right now. Wolf says (see video below) that the Wuhan virus...
Global Mortality Rate of Virus is 3.4% — 34 times the Mortality Rate of the Flu
From Worldometers as of February 27, 2020, at 0400 Greenwich Mean Time: Total Infected: 82,166 Total Dead: 2,804 Mortality Rate: 2,804/82,166 x 100 = 3.4% mortality rate. This means the Wuhan virus has a...
China Takes Control of America Factory in China Producing N-95 Masks — Cancels Orders to U.S.
From National Interest: “China put export restrictions on those masks and then nationalized an American factory that produces them there,” said President Donald Trump’s director of trade and manufacturing policy, referring to N95 masks, used for...
China Tells Ships with Medical Gowns, Surgical Gloves, and Masks Bound for U.S. Hospitals to Turn Around and Come Back to China, they Need Them
From Coronavirus is Killing China’s Factories and Creating Economic Chaos: Americans are angry. “I was on the phone with leaders from several hospitals in New York, and they told me that they had contracts...
Korean Air Flight Attendant Working LAX Flights Diagnosed with Wuhan Virus
From CBS LA: LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) – A flight attendant for Korean Air who worked several flights out of Los Angeles International Airport has been diagnosed with coronavirus. The 24-year-old was diagnosed Tuesday in southern...
McCaughey: CDC’s Lack of Test Kits means They are Flying Blind — How You Can Protect Yourself
Betsy McCaughey in the NY Post on where the virus is now: The only known US cases are travelers to China, their spouses and cruise-ship passengers. But people carrying the virus entered the United States...
WaPo: Dem Voters See Sanders “as a Weapon Against a Governing Class that has Failed Them”
From The Washington Post, via MSN: “The party has shifted to the left, and I don’t think many of the more traditional, legacy leaders of the party got it,” said Andrew L. Stern, a...
CDC Expects Virus to Spread as Testing Kit Shortage Leaves U.S. National Pandemic Surveillance System Blind
WSJ: Meantime, many state and local health departments in the U.S. don’t have the test kits they need to rapidly diagnose coronavirus infections because federal health authorities are still working out kinks. The limited availability...
‘This is different’ — China is Lying and as hard as it is to do, “resist” buying the dip
What? CNBC gives airtime to the Allianz Chief Economic Advisor who warns the market not to buy the dip. The Wuhan virus must be undeniably serious: Economist Mohamed El-Erian told CNBC on Tuesday that investors should...
AOC: Green New Deal is the Mechanism to Change Everything
Devine in the NY Post: Her former chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, admitted last year, in a conversation reported by The Washington Post, that the Green New Deal “wasn’t originally a climate thing at...
Guardian: A ‘brokered convention’ designed to block Bernie Sanders would be a poison pill
From The Guardian: It may seem ludicrous to deny Sanders the nomination if he wins the most delegates and sweeps the primaries. What’s the point in having primaries if party insiders at the convention...
Groupthink Crazies — Who Can Not Cope with Predictions that Sanders (or Trump) would win
I predicted that Trump would win the primary and the general election, to derision from people who literally could not cope. A year ago I said it was highly likely Sanders would win, to...
Only First Place Finish in South Carolina will Keep Biden’s Campaign Alive
Vox: “If Joe Biden wins by a small margin, then I think his campaign is on life support,” says Anton Gunn, Barack Obama’s 2008 South Carolina political director. “If he comes in second or...
Cillizza: Without Obama’s Endorsement of Another Choice, Sanders is Impossible to Stop
“If no one drops out by Super Tuesday, is it even possible to stop Bernie Sanders?” NBC’s Chuck Todd asked former Obama White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer on Sunday. “I do not believe it is,”...
NPR: In Hong Kong 12,000 people “are under mandatory home quarantine after being diagnosed with COVID-19”
It is important to note that the use of the word “diagnosed” may not, likely does not mean these patients have been tested and confirmed as being infected with the Wuhan virus. If these...
Vox: “We are at a turning point” — the Wuhan virus outbreak is looking more like a pandemic
From Vox: this outbreak might be much larger than it looks now, said Sylvie Briand, the director of infectious hazard management at the WHO, in a media briefing Friday.“We are wondering about the potential...
Rut Row: U.S. CDC’s Coronavirus Test Kit Distribution is Delayed by False Positives — Only 3 out 100 U.S. Labs have Approved Test Kits
Politico: Problems with a coronavirus test developed by the CDC have delayed the Trump administration’s efforts to expand screening to state and local public health labs, more than two weeks after the FDA granted...
DEMpire Doom
From Politico by Korecki and Siders: “In 30-plus years of politics, I’ve never seen this level of doom. I’ve never had a day with so many people texting, emailing, calling me with so much...
For DEMpire “it’s Joe or Bust,” Bloomberg Can Not Recover
From Politico by Korecki and Siders: “For the establishment, I think it’s Joe or bust,” said Simon Rosenberg, New Democrat Network president, who served as a senior strategist for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee...
Bernie’s Diverse Racial Coalition Forces DEMpire to Re-assess
From the Washington Post via MSN: “People who have been locked out of power are speaking up about corporate influence over the issues that matter in their lives,” said Abdul El-Sayed, a Sanders ally...
Clyburn to endorse Biden — will give big boost prior to S.C. primary
DEMpire gives Clyburn center stage, from Politico: Several panicked Democrats, including one with direct knowledge of the planned endorsement, said they see it as a last-ditch effort to blunt Bernie Sanders’ momentum before he...
Remaining Dems Wring Hands about Whether to Prepare for a Contested Convention and to Court Super Delegates
From the Intelligencer: Is there going to be someone like Obama was in ’08 — not in a majority, but so clearly ahead that it’s a foregone conclusion? Or a muddle in the delegates,...
Lizza: Biden’s Second Place Finish in Nevada Stymies Bloomberg
From Ryan Lizza in Politico: Sanders wasn’t supposed to be able to break through with black and brown voters, but the group was racially and ethnically diverse. (Sanders won 27% of African Americans and...
Bloomberg Works DEMpire with Money and Influence to Install Him as Nominee at Convention — Take it Away from Sanders
From Politico: LAS VEGAS — Mike Bloomberg is privately lobbying Democratic Party officials and donors allied with his moderate opponents to flip their allegiance to him —and block Bernie Sanders— in the event of...
With help from Latino voters, Bernie Sanders hits the Nevada jackpot
From ABC News: Sen. Bernie Sanders ran competitively in unaccustomed support groups amid the Nevada Democratic caucuses while sweeping the table among Latino, young and very liberal voters, leaving his competitors wrestling inconclusively over the sharply...
Sanders Campaign’s New Tactics to Attract Latino Voters
CAMPAIGN CHRONICLES in The New Yorker: On President’s Day, Daniel Parra met a group of friends at Eldorado High School, in East Las Vegas. The Bernie Sanders campaign was holding a soccer tournament there that a...
Taibbi: The Bloomberg Myth Explodes on Live TV
Taibbi in the Rolling Stone: What a catastrophe Wednesday night was for Mike Bloomberg. The New York plutocrat was kicked in the teeth by Elizabeth Warren in the first minutes — she denounced him as a Trump-like...