Wow, another 35,420 new cases just today in America. That’s 960,651 total.
We may reach the millionth case before Monday.
Also, with 2,919,462 total cases worldwide, this means that 1 in 3 cases is an American.
I wonder why? Is it that proportionately per population the US does more testing? Or, maybe the immune systems of American citizens have been more compromised?
And New York State carries a disproportionate number of both, infections and deaths. Could there be some explanation to these varient numbers?
1,004,802 cases in America
Easily one of the greatest hoaxes the world has ever seen. 
{And isn’t it fairly recently that the world wide infection topped 1 million ?
Maybe last month ?
So hoax or no hoax ?}
“Live updates: U.S. coronavirus cases surpass 1 million; House leaders abandon plans to return next week”
Washington Post
{If this rate continues, even in a flattened rate, and the 2nd wave hits, combined with other forms of flue, is not relaxing the safety methods now ,
incline the odds toward very high and dangerous odds? }
Another milestone passed: The U.S. has lost more patients due to the coronavirus, then soldiers lost during the Viet Nam war.
Another sad statistic - doctors committing suicide in New York, thinking they beat the bug , going back to work, and relapsing.
Coronavirus is likely to keep spreading for at least another 18 months to two years – until 60% to 70% of the population worldwide has been infected, a team of longstanding pandemic experts predicted Thursday in a new report.
{So, if present statistics are any indication. with roughly 5 to 10 % fatalities, we can anticipate up to 500 millions of fatalities?}
Last summer, researchers from the U.S. visited Wuhan and wrote, "also claims diplomats were concerned the lab’s research on bat coronaviruses could risk a new Sars-like pandemic. The newspaper says the cables fuelled more recent discussions in the US government about whether the WIV or another lab in Wuhan could have been the source of the virus "
From NYT:
[b]'Mr. Trump, touring a factory in Arizona hastily converted to make millions of masks but choosing not to wear a mask himself, made it clear on Tuesday that he was determined to push to reopen the economy even while acknowledging that may mean more people die.
“Will some people be affected? Yes. Will some people be affected badly? Yes. But we have to get our country open and we have to get it open soon,” Mr. Trump said.'[/b]
There it is, all laid out. The Trump gamble. Open up the economy. Pronto. The infections will probably spike as will the number of dead.
So be it. Bet that the numbers won’t be high enough to offset the benefits of putting people back to work.
At least in minds of those in states with the numbers Trump needs for another electorial college victory.
With of course another tour of Russian support, against the Chinese-Biden axis.
See, I told you:
washingtonpost.com/opinions … ass-death/
[b]'The message from President Trump and Republicans on the novel coronavirus has gone through multiple phases, each as misleading and/or bizarre as the last. First they told us the virus would barely touch us. Then they said it was serious but Trump’s management would quickly make it disappear. Then they said it could have been worse, and anyway it isn’t Trump’s fault.
Now they’re arriving at what may be the most appalling message of all:
Sure, hundreds of thousands of Americans may die. But suck it up, America: We’ve got to get the economy going.'[/b]
‘We’re moving toward an utterly horrifying partisan divide, in which Democrats want to contain the virus so that we’re able to get the economy back on its feet, while Republicans decide that the only brave and manly thing to do is to stop worrying about the virus and “get back to normal” immediately, no matter how many Americans it kills. In fact, we may soon reach the point where dismissing all those deaths is precisely how you show your loyalty to Trump’.
Thank god this is all a hoax!!
Note to Maia…
Below is what might be called the typical liberal reaction to the covid-19 pandemic here in America:
nytimes.com/2020/05/08/opin … e=Homepage
[b]'In 1847, members of the Choctaw Nation sent relief money across the Atlantic to a starving Ireland — something the Irish, who lost more than a million people in a famine made worse by British indifference, have never forgotten. The Irish are now giving financial aid to Native American tribes hit with a pandemic that has been made worse by American incompetence.
'This is a gracious act, a boomerang of good will, as reported by my colleagues Ed O’Loughlin and Mihir Zaveri. But it also shows how much of the world has started to feel sorry for a nation laid low by the lethal ineptitude of President Trump.
'“The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful,” wrote Fintan O’Toole in The Irish Times. And he asked: “Will American prestige ever recover from this shameful episode?”
'Before we take up O’Toole’s question, let’s look at where we rank in the worst global crisis since World War II. In Trump’s assessment, his government has done a “spectacular job” with the Covid-19 pandemic.
'“And I’ll tell you, the whole world is excited watching us because we’re leading the world,” he said, in an updated pat on the back this week.
'He’s right about the leading part: Every 49 seconds or so, throughout the first week in May, an American has been dying of this disease. With 1.3 million reported cases, the United States, just five percent of the world’s population, has nearly 33 percent of the sick. With more than 75,000 deaths, we’re at the front of the pack as well. No country comes close on all three measures.
'Globally, the average death rate is 34 people per million residents. In the United States, it’s more than six times higher — 232 per million.
'South Korea and the United States both reported their first cases of Covid-19 at the same time, in the third week of January. South Korea immediately started testing on a mass scale and socially isolating. The United States denied, dithered and did next to nothing for more than two months.
'By the end of April, new cases in South Korea were down to less than 10 a day. In the United States at that time, the pandemic raged at a daily rate of more than 25,000 newly sick. New Zealand, which also quickly went into lockdown, reported no new cases earlier this week for the first time since mid-March.
'“The United States reacted like Pakistan or Belarus, like a country with a shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering.” That’s the indictment of The Atlantic’s George Packer, calling the United States a failed state.
'He’s half right. As scientists note, you can’t stop an outbreak from happening, but you can stop it from becoming a catastrophe that brings down a society. The United States spends more on health care, per capita, than any other rich nation. And yet, here we are: a full-blown disaster, in lockdown with a narcissist for a president.
'A country that turned out eight combat aircraft every hour at the peak of World War II could not even produce enough 75-cent masks or simple cotton nasal swabs for testing in this pandemic.
'A country that showed the world how to defeat polio now promotes quack remedies involving household disinfectants from the presidential podium.
'A country that rescued postwar Europe with the Marshall Plan didn’t even bother to show up this week at the teleconference of global leaders pledging contributions for a coronavirus vaccine.
'A country that sent George Patton and Dwight Eisenhower to crush the Nazis now fights a war against a viral killer with Jared Kushner, a feckless failed real estate speculator who holds power by virtue of his marriage to the president’s daughter.
'Let’s not put too much of the blame on Kushner. After all, he’s also got Middle East peace, the border wall, the opioid crisis and reinventing the government on his plate. “Who’s in charge of it?” Trump said recently, about the “Warp Speed” vaccine development program. “Honestly? I am. I’ll tell you, I’m really in charge of it.”
'Well, then: Where is the test and trace program needed to safely reopen the country? Where is the national plan even to consider such an effort? Trump has surrendered. He never looked smaller or more pathetic than when sitting last Sunday on his little chair in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
'America has a failed federal government, laughed at and pitied the world over. But America is not a failed state. It will be saved by its scientists and doctors, its hospitals and universities, its nimble and creative companies, and leaders in the statehouses who act more decisively than the family of frauds in the White House.
'Perhaps it is best to let the coronavirus task force die a miserable death. It’s mostly show and ego projection.
'As to the Irishman’s question: Will American prestige ever recover? Not for some time. Our image abroad took a real hit after Trump’s election, and it has continued to fall. Most of the world now has no confidence in the president’s leadership.
'But then, the same is true with most Americans. Welcome to our nightmare.[/b]
Please pass this on to Turd. Allowing him the opportunity to offer up the conservative rebuttal. If, perhaps, not the actual typical one.
Who is right and who is wrong? North, South, East, or West… who knows best, if at all?
Does one have what the others need, and so need to come together to fulfill that need… and to do so, meaning to collaborate on a grand scale…
80,037 covid-19 deaths in America.
To put that in perspective, Mr. Trump, about 190 nations around the globe have less total cases than America has deaths.
Was 310, now 4,070
GRIM PROJECTIONSAs states reopen, an internal Trump administration model predicts about 200,000 new coronavirus cases each day by the end of May.
On the other hand, what if these numbers are meant to create a situation whereby if, by the end of May, we are nowhere near 200,000 new cases and 3,000 deaths a day, the Trump fanatics can declare victory?
That’s what happens when the pandemic itself becomes weaponized as a political football – “a topic or issue that is seized on by opposing political parties or factions and made a more political issue than it might initially seem to be” – and used to score “partisan” victories.
Then: Who knows what to believe?
Apparently, the covid-19 pandemic will end one of two ways:
nytimes.com/2020/05/10/heal … e=Homepage
[b]'How will Covid-19 end?
One possibility, historians say, is that the coronavirus pandemic could end socially before it ends medically. People may grow so tired of the restrictions that they declare the pandemic over, even as the virus continues to smolder in the population and before a vaccine or effective treatment is found.
'“I think there is this sort of social psychological issue of exhaustion and frustration,” the Yale historian Naomi Rogers said. “We may be in a moment when people are just saying: ‘That’s enough. I deserve to be able to return to my regular life.’”
'It is happening already; in some states, governors have lifted restrictions, allowing hair salons, nail salons and gyms to reopen, in defiance of warnings by public health officials that such steps are premature. As the economic catastrophe wreaked by the lockdowns grows, more and more people may be ready to say “enough.”
'“There is this sort of conflict now,” Dr. Rogers said. Public health officials have a medical end in sight, but some members of the public see a social end.
'“Who gets to claim the end?” Dr. Rogers said. “If you push back against the notion of its ending, what are you pushing back against? What are you claiming when you say, ‘No, it is not ending.’”
‘The challenge, Dr. Brandt said, is that there will be no sudden victory. Trying to define the end of the epidemic “will be a long and difficult process.”’[/b]
In other words, both sides get to claim victory when it finally does end.
Well, this wave anyway.
You want bleak?
Read this if you dare: washingtonpost.com/outlook/ … rc404=true
‘At every turn, the scale of the disaster is almost unfathomable. Forget the Great Recession or the Crash of ’87. It’s easy to imagine a scenario in which, if we escape a crisis “only” on the scale of the Great Depression, we might be lucky.’
Joker could have written it…
And yet, vaccine development may frustrate Covid 19 much more rapidly then supposed.
A lot has been learned since the 1980’s when the mutations seemed to trump any quick development.
This virus does not mutate as skillfully, but if it does, the idea of different versions of viral attack can combine to form a united frontal attack. Eventually the cocktail method may be likewise adapted , far faster then pre supposed. At any rate, the biochemical venue is not to be downplayed between the social-political and the social psychologically new frontiers which are being exposed as primary defensive measures.
As I noted above:
Another rendition of that here: nytimes.com/2020/05/10/opin … e=Homepage
‘I fear that when [Trump’s] shortcomings become apparent, it could trigger a low-grade civil war between those who will ask their neighbors: “Who gave you the right to ignore the guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control and heedlessly go to a bar, work or restaurant and then spread coronavirus to someone’s grandparents or your own?” And those who will ask their neighbors: “Who gave you the right to keep the economy closed in a pandemic and trigger mass unemployment, which could cost many more lives than are saved, especially when alternative strategies, like Sweden’s, might work?”’
And…
[b]'China has chosen the pathway of locking down and then opening its economy, but with strict social distancing, masks everywhere and highly intrusive testing, tracking, tracing and quarantining anyone with coronavirus to prevent further spread — while it waits for a vaccine to create herd immunity.
Sweden has chosen moderate social distancing, keeping a lot of its economy open, while trying to protect the most vulnerable and letting those least vulnerable — those most likely to experience coronavirus either asymptomatically or as a mild or tough flu — continue to work, get the virus and develop immunity to it. Then, when enough of them are immune, they can sound the all-clear for the vulnerable. That’s Sweden’s strategy, but it is too early to say it’s the right answer.'[/b]
And then the bumbling path that Trump has put us on here.
The main distinction I make [as always] is between those who recognize just how complex this tug of war is when it doesn’t unfold “in your head” but out in the countless contextual reflections of the real world, and those who don’t.
That and the utter incompetence of the Trump adminstration in making it all so much, much worse than had to be.
Unlike with the “climate change” political conflict, which could take decades to resolve, liberals and conservatives may only have to wait 6 months before we have a more definitive assessment of the covid-19 battle:
[b]'Headline: 2020 will be the ‘darkest winter in modern history’ if changes aren’t made, a whistle blower plans to testify.
'Dr. Rick Bright, a whistle blower who said he was removed from his job running a federal research agency after objecting to the widespread use of malaria drugs promoted by President Trump, intends to warn a House subcommittee on Thursday that “2020 will be the darkest winter in modern history” if the United States does not quickly ramp up its coronavirus response.
'“Our window of opportunity is closing,” Dr. Bright wrote. “If we fail to develop a national coordinated response, based in science, I fear the pandemic will get far worse and be prolonged, causing unprecedented illness and fatalities.”[/b] NYT
Objectivists, stake your positions!