Tracker

Those who are hoping that Trump's stupidity and malevolence has hit bottom, you will be disappointed. He, like all malignant narcissists, has zero empathy and concern about consequences of his actions. I predict that soon he will no longer be giving press conferences because he has not been getting fawning reinforcement and is being contradicted by many around him. Since his constant need for ego-gratification is not being met, he is losing interest.

17-year-old dies from coronavirus after being rejected from urgent care for lacking insurance Written by Alex Henderson March 27, 2020 From Italy to Iran to Queens, the coronavirus pandemic engulfing the globe has been especially deadly for older patients. But that doesn’t mean younger people are immune to it by any means, and in Lancaster, California, a 17-year-old has died after being turned away from one facility because he lacked health insurance. In a video posted on YouTube on Wednesday, Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris noted that the boy “had no previous health conditions” and that his condition deteriorated rapidly. “On Friday — the Friday before he died —he was healthy,” Parris explained. “He was socializing with his friends. By Wednesday, he was dead.” Parris indicated that the 17-year-old might still be alive if a medical facility hadn’t turned him away. "Wednesday, he had gone to an urgent care for an ***,” Parris noted. “He did not have insurance; so, they did not treat him and sent him to (Antelope Valley) Hospital. In route to AV Hospital, he went into cardiac arrest. When he got to AV Hospital, they were able to revive him and keep him alive for about six hours. But by the time he got there, it was too late.”

Some of the more bizarre outcomes of this pandemic crisis like the hoarding of toilet paper, were unforeseeable and we have not had to deal with a pandemic before, so a playbook on how to handle this is being written now, page by page and will be available should it become necessary again.

That is probably because no national government has implemented Communism as envisioned by Karl Marx. All of the national leaders thus far have utilized communism as a pretext to mobilize people as an ideal but once in power, most despots have a very difficult time relinquishing it. Any form of government, once installed and supported unquestioningly by their followers, will gravitate towards authoritarianism- the example we have in front of us is Trump.

Re-selling of essential needs will soon be illegal.

It looks like the wildfire has been lit. Louisiana and four other states have reported 500 or more new cases today alone. And remember, this are only the cases that have presented and there is no widespread testing, so for every case that presents for care, there are 10-20 that are not yet identified. It looks like Trump's supporters in the American southeast will pay for his incompetence with their lives.

Trump is so far out of his depth that he is flailing around at random trying to hit on something that will save him from both personal financial disaster and historical condemnation as the worst president in American history.

This will only ramp up fear in the US and is an attempt by Trump and co. to look like they are doing something significant to halt the pandemic. He is expecting that this will make his supporters believe (probably rightly) that Trump has their best interests at heart. Far from it. Trump has made a career out of doing whatever it takes to survive the next 24 hours and to him, the past and future are equally irrelevant. Therefore, he does not need to concern himself with consequences. As dire as things are in New York and Los Angeles, the panic will come when the pandemic explodes next in Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi. This is in the heartland of Trump support and the most vulnerable.

I suggest that folks watch "The Daily Show" tonight to see a damning expose of Trump's mental health using, of all things, Faux News clips.

Dr. Justin Frank literally wrote the book on Donald Trump’s mind and behavior. In “Trump on the Couch,” Frank tracks Trump’s life from childhood to adulthood and reveals a man who is mentally unfit in many ways — from his intelligence, values, emotions and temperament down to the deepest parts of the psyche — to be president of the United States of America. In the conclusion of Frank’s book he warned that Donald Trump would represent a dire threat to the safety, security and future of America and the world. In all, the power of the presidency is too vast and the opportunities for abusing that power are too great for a personality and mind such as Donald Trump’s to resist. On both a day-to-day basis, and in crises such as the Russia and Ukraine scandals and now the coronavirus (all of which are largely self-made and self-inflicted) Donald Trump’s poor mental health has only gotten worse. Unfortunately, the presidency, with its unique burdens and responsibilities, have not forced Trump to become a better person and to rise to the occasion. Instead, he has been caught in the undertow of a public downward spiral.

Are you saying that scofflaws will be caught and put on public display?

Because swords are flashy. It has always stumped me that adversaries in sci-fi choose to use bladed weapons to fight when they could stand meters away and kill their opponents. But then, in firefights, everyone can be 10 meters away from each other and miss repeatedly. Plus, the number one bad guy must always be killed or captured by the number one good guy. And in horror movies, when someone (usually a scantily-clad young lady) is alone in a dark place and hears a scary noise, she is compelled to walk slowly towards it.

And they have the veneer of credibility. Never underestimate the will of some to promote an irresponsible point of view for personal gain.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said on Wednesday that it will “suspend” efforts to close gun shops even after designating them as “nonessential businesses” that need to be shut down amid California’s statewide lockdown, the Los Angeles Times reported. Sheriff Alex Villanueva announced on Twitter that the “efforts to close nonessential businesses have been suspended,” adding, “CA Gov. Gavin Newsom to determine what qualifies as a non-essential business.” Villanueva also linked to a Fox 11 News clip in which reporter Bill Melugin quotes him as saying: “the county’s top lawyer put out a legal opinion that she believes gun stores are essential businesses and should remain open.”

Because having a degree of academic credentials does not guarantee competence or unbiased attitude. As an example, a psychiatrist friend of Gwyneth Paltrow has stated that not only is the COVID19 furor completely unwarranted, she doesn't believe that bacteria cause illness. When a great majority of experts in a field pronounce a verdict, they are not always right, but they almost always are. If it is assumed that this does not have the potential to kill hundreds of thousands and nothing is done, we will have a lot of bodies to burn if this is wrong.

A pox on both their houses.

Ambrose Bierce in his book, "The Devil's Dictionary" described a friend as someone you know well enough to borrow from but not well enough to lend to.

Before we stampede off a cliff following sketchy reports, let us consider that when tobacco was being exposed as both carcinogenic and addictive, the tobacco industry trotted out their sophists to claim that it was all harmless, even beneficial. The same has been true for opiods, diazepam, and global climate change. I choose to believe that because the vast majority of bodies and people charged with overseeing our welfare has seen fit to deem the COVID19 pandemic as potentially catastrophic, the overwhelming consensus is accurate. After all, one US (GOP) politician brought a snowball into the Congress and said it was proof that there is no global warming.

Since the American senate has set a precedent that the president is above the law, nothing that comes out of the legislative system applies to him. And as he said, the Second Amendment empowers him to do whatever he wants.

Damn. Not unexpected but scary nonetheless- particularly about the 10 year old.

As healthcare providers across the U.S. desperately attempt to treat a rapidly growing number of patients with the coronavirus, a pharmaceutical company with ties to the Trump administration has been granted exclusive status for a drug it is developing to treat the illness—a potential windfall for the company that could put the medication out of reach for many Americans. As The Intercept reported Monday, the Food and Drug Administration granted Gilead Sciences “orphan” drug status for remdesivir, one of several drugs being tested as potential treatments for the coronavirus, officially known as COVID-19. The designation is generally reserved for drugs that treat rare illnesses affecting fewer than 200,000 Americans—but companies can be eligible if the designation, as in this case of a rapidly spreading virus, is made before a disease spreads beyond that limit.

Does a guy named Homer work there?

It has been speculated that there are at least two strains extant now and possibly as many as 5.