Forwarded by Major Major Major Major:
Coronavirus 411 alerts, updates, and information
Coronavirus: Fact vs Fiction with Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Coronavirus Global Update BBC World Service
Coronavirus Today: Alerts and Updates with Dr. Brian McDonough
Epidemic With Dr. Celine Gounder and Ronald Klain
Also:
The Al Franken Podcast: Andy Slavitt on the Pandemic
My latest for @onthemedia: I immersed myself in the world of prepper influencers to see whether the pandemic has met their end times expectations. Turns out many of them are scrambling just like the rest of us.. https://t.co/UmY6mW2pkA
— Micah Loewinger (@MicahLoewinger) March 21, 2020
Emma
This Podcast Will Kill You put out 6 (six!) 45 minute – 1 hour (!!!) episodes yesterday covering pretty much every aspect I can think of. Not hosted by actual doctors (I believe they’re grad students in one of the science fields), but they interview lots of doctors and scientists.
NotMax
Not a podcast, however feel should point this out as useful for Aloha Staters.
https://hawaiicovid19.com/
Major Major Major Major
These were sent in by a commenter who I don’t actually know the nym for, so thanks, commenter! You know who you are.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I suppose guns really don’t work with a virus. Wow listen to that report makes my brain hurt.
BR
Newsom announcing something now but can’t watch — anyone know what it is?
NotMax
@NotMax
And kudos to the state government, who put together a user-oriented site and secured the domain in record time.
EthylEster
WaPo headline: Congress to bail out firms that avoided taxes, safety regulations and spent billions boosting their stock. Less than a dozen years after the bailouts of the Great Recession, airlines, hotels and a long list of others come calling.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/03/25/still-too-big-fail-us-is-primed-bail-out-corporations-again/
km
I like TWiV – This Week in Virology. They’ve had several coronavirus episodes lately. Can be found on your podcast app or at http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/
PsiFighter37
Wilmer threatening to hold up the Senate legislation. Great – because this is the exact time to being playing purity pony.
Fuck that asshole. Still intent on nuking the Dems no matter what. Schumer should kick his ass out the caucus and truly render him irrelevant.
Mallard Filmore
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: He has heaped praise on a few billionaires and companies that are moving mountains to bring or build supplies for California.
And some other stuff like Keep Your Distance.
[ETA] Ooops, that should be a reply to BR.
Mallard Filmore
@EthylEster: Now I have a concern about this HUGE bailout … who will end up paying? Despite the bailout getting directed away from big companies, will this end up being a back-end way to loot the middle class when the bill comes due?
Baud
@Mallard Filmore: Depends which party controls Congress and the White House.
Mary G
Sounds familiar:
Second verse, same as the first!
Baud
@PsiFighter37: Gotta get back in the news somehow.
Brachiator
@PsiFighter37:
I would love it if it were good cop/bad cop. Schumer saying to McConnell, “Listen, you should give us what we asked for, or Bernie will hold out for even more radical reform. And he’s got nothing to lose.”
Mallard Filmore
@Baud: Yeah, sometimes my brain gets clouded and I forget that aspect of our troubled times.
Baud
@Brachiator: That never works, and would not work here.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
Why not?
Betty
@Mary G: Several of the first cases in the Caribbean were brought in by people from the UK. The UK is way behind on finding out who is infected.
Brachiator
@Baud:
Doesn’t work in the movies either. But leads to kick ass fight scenes.
PsiFighter37
@Baud: Asshole spent the whole time in Vermont and now pipes up. Honestly, fuck him. No wonder that jerkoff got kicked off a commune when he was in his 30s.
Betty
@Mary G: Sorry, I should have said confirmed cases. Testing has been very limited, and many of us suspect it has been in the region for a while between Carnival visitors and cruise ship arrivals.
Martin
@PsiFighter37: The Senate bill is terrible. You spend $2T not solving the problem, and then when shit gets really real you can’t do anything because you already wasted $2T.
Push the House bill to the front.
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Because McConnell doesn’t care if a Democrat (or someone associated with Democrats) tanks the bill. There’s no leverage.
chris
@PsiFighter37: So you’d rather let the repubs strip out the UI provisions?
Mallard Filmore
@Baud:
McConnell is already plotting a Take It Or Leave It position.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/3/25/1931207/-Coronavirus-bill-held-up-by-GOP-to-punish-minimum-wage-workers-McConnell-plans-month-long-recess
EthylEster
@Mallard Filmore: WaPo is publishing stuff about the bill. More info is better. From Rubin editorial today….
Roll Call reports: “The enormous spending bill expected to be released Wednesday morning will include $400 million in election assistance, according to two sources who have seen a summary of the bill from appropriators.”
But I am also hearing that some R senators are gonna put a hold on the bill because….freedom? Could be rumors. No cites given.
Kevin Drum has a post up now discussing the size of the package. He compares it to WW2.
Brachiator
@Martin:
I thought the Senate bill contained elements that the House wanted. If this is “pass the Senate bill now and we might look at the House bill later,” then yes, fuck it.
rikyrah
Thanks for these posts
Brachiator
@Mallard Filmore:
Leave it.
Trump can explain to his supporters why a bill for corporations is a good thing. “A beautiful thing. It’s big. A perfect protect corporations bill.”
Hell, in a week Trump will get bored and forget the bill ever existed.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
this strikes me as a huge, hairy deal
I’m taking everything with a grain of salt, but Lammy is an MP and the link is to the Guardian. Home tests with finger prick blood tests (cause my first thought was: “No way can people give themselves an accurate nasal swab”). The article is not quite as definitive about the time-frame, one person saying weeks, not days.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Ah, that would add a yuge important data stream IDing those who now have antibodies for the virus. Doing it at home in near real-time? Brilliant, possibly, provided folks can do and report it without screwing up.
Miss Bianca
@PsiFighter37: Holding up the legislation? On what grounds?
@Brachiator: I would love it if that were the case, too, but methinks you may be just a tad too optimistic in this scenario.
Martin
@Brachiator: There are some, but I think Pelosi was willing to suck it up if the Senate could pass it. But if they can’t pass it, then get a vote on the House bill and make the Senate reject it.
We need to understand just how defining a moment this is.
J R in WV
Here’s a great way to keep busy during your home quarantine!! Free books published by Johns Hopkins University Press !!!
Several are about various paleontology subjects, because I found it on a rockhounds listserv, if anyone remembers those, but many others available too. Get educated in all sorts of academic topics!
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
Tell Bernie’s fans about that. Over in that article that was linked above to DailyKos, it’s mentioned that Sanders has no real leverage.
Here’s a comment saying, “no uh, yes he does!”:
Aziz, light!
The guns are for the coming race war, or for when the sick people turn into zombies, whichever comes first.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Miss Bianca: I had MSNBC on in the background, and a reporter whose name escaped me said a handful of GOP Senators want to trim UI benefits, and Sanders is threatening to blow things up if they do
I thought it was Eli Stokols but I just checked his twitter feed and I’m not seeing that
Dorothy A. Winsor
Crooked Media also has a coronavirus focused series going.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
If they’re really going do that, Sanders probably should just blow it up to be honest, and the House pass it’s bill
Martin
1M unemployment claims in CA in the last 2 weeks.
In case anyone was wondering why the GOP thinks the UI benefits are too generous.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned, but I’m not a Sanders fan, but he’s got a point here.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That’s different than what was reported upthread, which was that Bernie was going to blow up the deal. You are saying he’s going to blow up changes to the deal, which makes more sense.
Martin
The House bill avoids this situation because it raises minimum wage in the process.
Pay attention to whether they’re trying to save the economy, or just their place in the economy. Totally different goals.
BeautifulPlumage
OT ( but still aural): this is a very good trump vs god Easter ramble impression, this guy nails it. He apparently has a podcast “Making Podcasts Great Again” but I haven’t explored it yet.
https://mobile.twitter.com/JLCauvin/status/1242515702688485376
ETA: 4th try finally gets the link to show?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I have know since I was ten that you can’t get unemployment if you quit your job. I learned it from a television sitcom.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Working taxpayers receive $1k checks.
Unemployed lazy people receive surplus government bootstraps.
Brachiator
@Martin:
It still rankles me that the US could not even grasp the concept of trying to get companies to retain workers and subsidize their pay. Schumer and other Democrats really have a thing for wanted to help laid off workers instead.
However, paying money to the unemployed is still less than the freaking no-strings bailout of corporations.
And the US will still have to aid in the rebuilding of entire industries when this is over.
hueyplong
Only a fucking Republican thinks someone would give up a steady job to make an extra couple of bucks of temporary UI benefits. It’s just another example of the fact that the phrase “moral hazard” actually means “fuck the powerless.”
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: That’s what I read–Sanders is saying he’ll block consensus etc. on the bill as long as Republicans are doing the same. Needless to say, his ‘demands’ are better.
trollhattan
@hueyplong:
One of myriad things I {heart} about Charlie Pierce is naming David Brooks’ Irish setter Moral Hazard.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Mallard Filmore: Oh I meant the pepper podcast, but yes it’s been noted in Cal the rich aren’t being douches and that’s nice.
trollhattan
@hueyplong:
They have a giant file drawer labeled “F” for “Free Stuff.” Anything involving gummint dollars that isn’t a DoD contract or giving away federal land goes in there.
WereBear
@Brachiator: so maybe we will get an infrastructure week?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
If this were Blackburn, Johnson or Cornyn, maybe a couple of others (Marco, the goober from North Dakota who beat Heitkamp), I’d buy stupid as an excuse, but however warped or damaged these three might be, I have trouble believing they believe this bullshit.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I can see how this is going to play out.
Republicans dick off and whine about socialism
Blue states and the blue cities in the Red States take action with the distancing, beat down the pandemic.
Republicans the idiot base claim it was no big deal.
Geminid
I listened last hour to Virginia Governor Ralph Northam give a Covid-19 briefing. Seemed very solid. Northam had an active pediatric neurosurgery practice until he became governor in 2018 (he was a state senator before that, a part time job in Virginia). And he served four years as an Army surgeon at the beginning of his medical career, so he is well-grounded in medical problems and solutions. Northam spoke of conversations he and other state officials had carried on with Falwell Jr. and Liberty U. officials, and quoted 1 Corinthians about responsibility. (Now Falwell’s saying he did not exactly say he was reopening, mumble mumble. Just an asshole.) So far as I can see the social distancing mitigation is being carried out, and we should be bending the curve down. But we are all just making more or less educated guesses, because a certain asshole pissed away most of two months and we are only now starting to test in large numbers. Good luck everybody. We’ll need it.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Martin: Sudden surge of up to 25% of the population not spending money, because they are out of work has it’s own problems too. Of course the MAGA hats can’t even think beyond their next meal so that concept is beyond them.
dmsilev
Oh, for the love of God
Enhanced Voting Techniques
More like as Catch 22 said, any government money not going to farmers is dangerous socialism.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@dmsilev: This is in the context that Louisiana in a week and half has passed the death toll of California has had the kast 44 days and they figure Louisiana will be out of ventilators by the end of next week.
mrmoshpotato
Related to this fucking virus:
After it’s safe to be within 6 feet of each other, GO BITCHSLAP THESE MOTHERFUCKERS UNTIL YOUR SHOULDER HURTS!
J R in WV
OK, so politics related… Got an email the other day boosting Betsy Sweet for Democratic nominee in Maine, running against Susan Collins. Was from Susan Sarandon, who worked hard for Bernie Sanders and against Hillary Clinton in 2016. So worked hard for Donald J Trump for President, also too!! Wrote back to Ms Sweet, to tell her being endorsed by Ms Sarandon was a fatal error.
The real Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine is Sara Gideon, current House Majority Leader in the Maine House of Reps. So I donated to Ms Gideon, and wrote another note to Ms Sweet’s campaign to tell them about their fatal error. No one who helped Trump get elected, like Susan Sarendon, deserves any support from real members of the Democratic Party!
You all might want to support Ms Gideon for Senate in Maine !!!
ETA: fix typo
Brachiator
More on podcasts
I have been enjoying the podcasts Make Me Smart, Marketplace and Planet Money, which have had good programs on the impact of the corona virus on the economy.
WaterGirl
@dmsilev: Handkerchiefs anointed with coronavirus?
mrmoshpotato
@dmsilev: Yes, for the love of God, and apparently wanting to meet sooner than later.
Martin
@Brachiator: Yeah. Wages are typically only about 15% of food service industry costs. Do a national rent/debt payment/utility freeze, guarantee 50% of employee wages (because you’ve eliminated the need for the other 50% with the freezes) and tell employers they can’t do layoffs. You just freeze everything in place.
The sooner we realize that we have no functional economy and every effort to have one undermines saving lives, the sooner we can get on the right footing here.
trollhattan
If there were ever any doubt Republicans have become a death cult worshiping Trump in exactly the fashion of David Koresh and Jim Jones followers:
Mind = boggled. Ninety fucking percent.
mrmoshpotato
@Mary G: ?Lying fucks in DC, lying fucks in London, here I am stuck in a blue state, you too??
dmsilev
@trollhattan: I’d make the traditional ‘tell his base to drink bleach and they’d do it’ joke, except that that arguably already happened with him pushing those very dangerous drugs a few days ago, leading to someone killing themselves by drinking pool cleaning solutions.
Miss Bianca
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Well in that case, good for Bernie. Please proceed, Senator!
Brachiator
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
A lot of conservatives are in the same boat as everybody else. But they seem to grab onto the false promises that Trump offers and are eager to point the blame on anything except reality if things don’t magically improve in a couple of weeks.
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan: No cult! No cult! You’re the cult!
dmsilev
@WaterGirl: Adds a special something to the occasion. Who says you can’t mix church services with a nice friendly game of Russian Roulette?
Chyron HR
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
GOP Senators want to trim UI benefits, and Sanders is
threatening to blow things upgoing to tell his supporters the Democratic establishment did it.NotMax
@trollhattan
Like The Far Side‘s Ginger, what they hear when asked is “blah blah blah Trump blah blah blah.”
PsiFighter37
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I have not read into the details, but of course it is typical Bernie to not play nice with the caucus he is a part of and make unilateral demands on his own. Because he’s had sooooooo much success legislatively in his career.
Again: fuck that guy. Leave it to the professionals who have gotten shit done.
WaterGirl
@dmsilev:
Well done, sir!
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Brachiator:
Until the shit really hits the fan and somebody close to them dies because of this virus.
Come to think of it, America’s gun problem adds whole new dimension to this crisis: what happens if doctors decide to take a loved one off a ventilator because they’re unlikely to pull through and a patient with better chances needs it but the family points a gun at the doctor trying to pull the plug?
Hospitals already have police on site and I suppose visitation to hospitals is and would be discouraged/prohibited anyway
WaterGirl
@dmsilev: So progressive for an evangelical church!
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Okay, doomer.
;)
mrmoshpotato
@PsiFighter37: Renaming post offices, Psi!
Renaming! Post! Offices!
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@WaterGirl:
I would make a Darwin Awards joke, but it’s just these morons who will be affected
NotMax
@dmsilev
Headline we won’t see: When the holy sh*t hits the fans.
satby
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): you only have leverage when your opponents want the same outcome (this particular bill passed). The Republicans aren’t all that committed to this bill, the changes were forced on them. They’ll be totally ok with blaming “the Democrats” and taking a recess because they’re secure in the knowledge that American “news” media will cover for them and blame the Democrats too.
Ella in New Mexico
@PsiFighter37:
Dude, if this is what he’s fighting with Lindsey, Sasse, and the two fucking Scotts I don’t get why you’d object.
I don’t see any evidence he’s trying to stall things. Meanwhile, the R’s are absolutely trying to hurt people. You need to post a link to the accusations you make or else this is just Bernie Bashing and spreading false rumors to whoop people up.
dmsilev
@WaterGirl:It seemed like the obvious thing to do.
HumboldtBlue
Newsom Announces Mortgage Relief For Californians Affected By COVID-19
– 12:45 p.m., March 25, 2020
Four of the five major national banks have agreed to a 90-day forbearance on mortgage payments for those affected by COVID-19, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday.
Wells Fargo, US Bank, Citi and JP Morgan Chase have all agreed to waive mortgage payments for 90 days. Bank of America was the only one that did not commit to the 90-day forbearance. The bank has only committed to a 30-day forbearance, Newsom said.
State-charter banks and credit unions have also agreed to the 90-day forbearance. Newsom said it is important to have a coordinated relief effort for families instead of a patchwork of relief like what happened during the housing bubble collapse in 2008.
There is no income requirement for mortgage relief, but there needs to be evidence that the homeowners have been affected by COVID-19, Newsom said. But it won’t be as laborious as it was during the housing crisis in 2008, he added.
More than 1 million Californians have filed for unemployment benefits since March 13. Under the stimulus package deal that was just reached, the federal government will add $600 on top of the state benefits, Newsom said. — Alexander Nguyen, web producer
Martin
@BR: He’s gotten most banks to agree to a 3 month mortgage holiday. Need to expand that to rents. Not sure a governor can do that.
Brachiator
@Martin:
Some countries (The Netherlands, Denmark, Canada) seem to be taking the approach of trying to subsidize wages and also help small businesses. And yes, they are helping some big corporations as well. This seems a more rational approach.
Los Angeles County, as noted before has declared a moratorium on personal and commercial evictions, and encouraged moratoriums on utility bills and have tried to keep small business employers from laying off staff. Obviously, for California as a whole, this has not been tremendously successful.
I’ve said this early and often here, and in some tax and accounting sites I participate in. Countries deliberately contracted the economy. They cannot react as though it is a simple recession or dip in the economy.
And Trump and his chief advisors are unable to conceptualize this at all. The same is true of the Senate Republicans. Some Democrats are a little shaky as well, but they don’t seem to be as inflicted with “corporations uber alles” dogma as the GOP.
WaterGirl
@dmsilev: I did not want your good work to go unnoticed! :-)
HumboldtBlue
There’s a reason Sanders is threatening to hold up the legislation, the fucking Republicans think the unemployed are going to get too much money.
So good on Sanders for standing up to these fucking traitors.
Geminid
@dmsilev: Pentecostals can get into weird shit, like snake handling. I took it as a bad sign when Trump hooked up with that nutty Paula White. Maybe she thinks praying over Trump is a form of snake handling.
HumboldtBlue
@Brachiator:
Dacoda Nelson provided a good primer on the “economy” and it’s relation to we workers and the stock market.
Origuy
Sir Patrick Stewart is tweeting readings of Shakespeare’s sonnets.
Another Scott
@Brachiator:
I think you’ve mentioned this before.
I’ve been curious how it would work. There are established systems for paying the unemployed, sending people checks, etc. Those can be ramped up quickly.
Is there an existing economy-wide system for the government to pay companies to retain workers? Maybe that’s the rub – maybe there isn’t such a system? Dunno.
The federal government is a huge beast built up over 200+ years. Lots of laws, lots of rules and regulations, lots of traditions and norms, lots of political constraints.
And one could easily imagine some sort of BS lawsuit about paying companies to retain their workers making its way to the SCOTUS and the RWNJ 5 deciding that it’s all unconstitutional anyway, so we have to go back to the gold standard, or something…
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
This is just sad. At least a Business Insider story on this lays it out plain.
I am not the only one who has pointed out that Trump’s supporters will grasp onto him even if it costs them their own lives.
But I am just gobsmacked and saddened at the degree of their insane faith in this idiot. But the best grifter always gets the suckers to defend him to the death.
danielx
Overhearing Fat Bastard’s daily shitfest* – let’s see:
beautiful
tremendous
big beautiful wall
very unfair
biased
not happy
only the day and issue changes, never the overarching themes of ‘I am great’ and ‘everybody is so unfair to me’.
Citizen Alan
Offtopic, but the Bernie Swine are now pushing a 1993 rape accusation against Biden apparently made by a woman name Tara Reade. She hasn’t bothered to say anything about this in the last 27 years or so, but she has put out blog posts as recently as 2018 expressing her deep admiration for Vladimir Putin. Naturally, anyone who points these facts out on Twitter is accused of red-baiting and told we should “always believe women.”
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
And yet Trump tramples traditions and ignores norms and rules and the people cheer him. He is a man who does not recognize any constraint and the GOP leadership backs him to a large degree.
Here is one of the the things that Denmark proposed to do:
And The Netherlands
I am not saying that these are perfect answers. But I see more creative thinking coming out of California and New York, and from Los Angeles county than from the federal government.
People talk about FDR. But the idea is not to mimic his proposals, but to adapt and adopt his method, thinking about a contracted economy in new ways.
ETA: even the plan to send people checks needs an overhaul of the present system. You can’t just depend on last year’s tax records for addresses. The Make Work Pay credit excluded people on Social Security, even though their address and bank information is more up to date. Using the unemployment compensation system has to be retooled to include people who currently have jobs.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@NotMax:
Heh. : )
Some of the “doomers” ended up being right about all of this: the virus escaped containment in China, spread to the entire world, has begun to tank the economy, and has already started killing a lot of people, sadly
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Brachiator:
It is sad and I don’t get it. Anybody who actually has paid attention over the last 3 years and focused on the big picture should come away with the opinion that Trump is an incompetent, corrupt bullshitter. He sounds like a fucking idiot half the time during these public Coronavirus addresses.
It’s pathetic and sad and this fact should be shoved right into their faces
Brachiator
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I know people who actually say that when they see Trump, they see a strong leader who reassures them. They go out of their way to excuse his angry flareups and attacks on his opponents as just being “unfortunate.”
They remind me of people who are so “pro-cop” that they refuse to even consider the possibility that a police officer may have even committed an error when there is a confrontation or shooting of a civilian.
For example, even though they defend their own right to have a gun, if a civilian legally had a firearm with him and was shot by a cop, they immediately ask, “why did he have a gun? The cop obviously was in fear for his life.”
Trump supporters cannot see anything other than their faith in Trump. I even heard one person once say “Trump is a businessman. Of course he lies. But he still loves America.”
andy
The prepper thing is particularly amusing. Of course they are not ready because what they really wanted was the opportunity to shoot somebody and be the big hero, the tough guy who makes the tough decisions. Now they are scrambling for toilet paper because they didn’t install bidets in The Compound.
Mousebumples
@km: thanks for the rec! Pediacast is great if you’re concerned about kids, childcare, etc. Hosted by a pediatrician, they’ve also had some covid cases recently.
https://www.pediacast.org/
ballerat
I think most of them will still blame their usual boogeymen.
They will blame the Dems for distracting Dear Leader with impeachment. They will blame the media for conspiring to try to make Trump fail. They will blame the Chinese for bringing it into the country.
They hear what they want to hear, and they will blame who they always wanted to blame.