COVID-19 in America

[Tankus]

wow ....bacon to die for

 

[Sasaferrato]

Which bit is surprising? I've not checked the population stats, but nothing leaps out at me as weird or surprising about those numbers. And I dont go in for the comparisons with average flu seasons, and if I did it wouldnt be the same as the stupid comparisons from people who wanted to downplay this virus, because I always take normal influenza more seriously than those dangerous idiots. I do sometimes find reason to compare stats from this pandemic with bad flu pandemic or epidemic historical mortality data, mostly just to put things in a historical perspective, but its still early days for that stuff too.

As for their final comment about a second wave, I take things one week at a time, I dont have predictions and the picture of virus spread, lockdowns and human behaviour in most places is complicated. I dont know how much wiggle room people in different places really have, or what else might affect the evolution of the pandemic in the coming weeks and months. I wont assume anything about seconds spikes, peaks and waves, I will just watch data for signs.

Firstly, you are the expert, and thank you again for the analysis.

To me, the data is inconsistent. There is no meaningful pattern as yet, figures are up and down on a daily basis, which I suspect is due to a lack of real time reporting. Based on that, I don't think that easing of restrictions is wise.

 

[platinumsage]

Right wing media going big on care homes (Fox News home page below), although of course it's States' fault not Trump's:

 

[yield]

As Amazon, Walmart, and Others Profit Amid Coronavirus Crisis, Their Essential Workers Plan Unprecedented Strike
April 28 2020

An unprecedented coalition of workers from some of America’s largest companies will strike on Friday. Workers from Amazon, Instacart, Whole Foods, Walmart, Target, and FedEx are slated to walk out on work, citing what they say is their employers’ record profits at the expense of workers’ health and safety during the coronavirus pandemic.

The employees will call out sick or walk off the job during their lunch break, according to a press release set to be published by organizers on Wednesday. In some locations, rank-and-file union members will join workers outside their warehouses and storefronts to support the demonstrations.

“We are acting in conjunction with workers at Amazon, Target, Instacart and other companies for International Worker’s Day to show solidarity with other essential workers in our struggle for better protections and benefits in the pandemic,” said Daniel Steinbrook, a Whole Foods employee and strike organizer.

 

[Badgers]

As Amazon, Walmart, and Others Profit Amid Coronavirus Crisis, Their Essential Workers Plan Unprecedented Strike
April 28 2020

GOOD

 

[Marty1]

Meanwhile the other thing marty linked to can't be opened in the EU.

Hmmm. Marty marty marty. You are the dishonest little trollcunt, aren't you?

Lol, it’s not my fault you’re having difficulty opening a link.

To quote the big man himself ‘don’t be a cutie pie’

Anyway - see if you can manage with this link which covers the story:

California urgent care doctor questions stay-at-home orders: 'You can get to herd immunity without a vaccine'

Dr. Dan Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi, co-owners of Accelerated Urgent Care in Bakersfield, Calif., joined "The Ingraham Angle" Monday to discuss a series of videos questioning whether California's stay-at-home order is necessary.

www.foxnews.com

 

[elbows]

Firstly, you are the expert, and thank you again for the analysis.

To me, the data is inconsistent. There is no meaningful pattern as yet, figures are up and down on a daily basis, which I suspect is due to a lack of real time reporting. Based on that, I don't think that easing of restrictions is wise.

It depends what data and where. Some pretty clear trends are visible all over the place, although I always prefer to wait and see, but thats a luxury I have because I dont have to make any decisions.

I havent looked at New York properly, just found a couple of graphs that are clear enough in their trends, although they are for the state rather than the city.

 

[Ax^]

of course marty1 only read unbiased non msm related content like fox and the reliable wsj

 

[Marty1]

New Jersey begins to open up.

 

[ska invita]

Opinion | Another Way the 2020s Might Be Like the 1930s (Published 2020)

The strikes at Amazon and elsewhere over working conditions and low pay have been small, but they may spark a new movement.

www.nytimes.com

Lead opinion peice in the NY Times a couple of days back:

"Class consciousness does not flow automatically out of class identity. Being a worker does not necessarily mean you will come to identify as a worker. Instead, you can think of class consciousness as a process of discovery, of insights derived from events that put the relationships of class into stark relief.
Or as the political theorist Cedric J. Robinson observed about the Civil War and Emancipation,

Groups moved to the logic of immediate self-interest and to historical paradox. Consciousness, when it did develop, had come later in the process of the events. The revolution had caused the formation of revolutionary consciousness and had not been caused by it. The revolution was spontaneous.

We aren’t yet living through a revolution. But we are seeing how self-interest and paradox are shaping the consciousness of an entire class of people. The coronavirus pandemic has forced all but the most “essential” workers to either leave their jobs or work from home. And who are those essential workers? They work in hospitals and grocery stores, warehouses and meatpacking plants. They tend to patients and cash out customers, clean floors and stock shelves. They drive trucks, deliver packages and help sustain this country as it tries to fight off a deadly virus.
The close-quarters, public-facing nature of this work mean these workers are also more likely to be exposed to disease, and many of them are furious with their employers for not doing enough to protect them. To protect themselves, they’ve begun to speak out. Some have even decided to strike.
At the start of the crisis, in mid-March, bus drivers in Detroit refused to drive, citing safety concerns. “The drivers didn’t feel safe going on the bus, spreading their germs and getting germs from anybody,” Glenn Tolbert, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 26, said in an interview with The Detroit News. “We are on the front lines and picking up more sick people than doctors see. This was a last resort but drivers didn’t feel safe.” Their actions prompted officials to increase cleaning, provide masks to passengers and drivers, and eliminate fares to keep person-to-person interactions to a minimum.

That same month, at an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island, a group of workers walked out over safety concerns, chanting, “How many cases we got? Ten!” in reference to workers there who had tested positive for the coronavirus. Amazon fired Chris Smalls, the worker who led the demonstration, supposedly for violating the warehouse’s social-distancing policy, but this didn’t stop other workers at other warehouses from organizing walkouts to protest a lack of protective equipment. (Notably, Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, has informed Amazon that her office is scrutinizing the firing of Mr. Smalls.)

Workers at Whole Foods, owned by Amazon, went on strike to demand paid leave and free coronavirus testing, as did workers for the grocery-delivery service Instacart, who demanded protective supplies and hazard pay. Sanitation workers in Pittsburgh staged a similar strike over a lack of protective gear, and workers at America’s meatpacking plants are staying home rather than deal with unsafe conditions.
It’s true these actions have been limited in scope and scale. But if they continue, and if they increase, they may come to represent the first stirrings of something much larger. The consequential strike wave of 1934 — which paved the way for the National Labor Relations Act and created new political space for serious government action on behalf of labor — was presaged by a year of unrest in workplaces across the country, from factories and farms to newspaper offices and Hollywood sets.
These workers weren’t just discontented. They were also coming into their own as workers, beginning to see themselves as a class that when organized properly can work its will on the nation’s economy and political system


American labor is at its lowest point since the New Deal era. Private-sector unionization is at a historic low, and entire segments of the economy are unorganized. Depression-era labor leaders could look to President Franklin Roosevelt as an ally — or at least someone open to negotiation and bargaining — but labor today must face off against the relentlessly anti-union Donald Trump. Organized capital, working through the Republican Party, has a powerful grip on the nation’s legal institutions, including the Supreme Court, whose conservative majority appears ready to make the entire United States an open shop.

The inequities and inequalities of capitalist society remain. American workers continue to face deprivation and exploitation, realities the coronavirus crisis has made abundantly clear.

The strikes and protests of the past month have been small, but they aren’t inconsequential. The militancy born of immediate self-protection and self-interest can grow into calls for deeper, broader transformation. And if the United States continues to stumble its way into yet another generation-defining economic catastrophe, we may find that even more of its working class comes to understand itself as an agent of change — and action."

=========

Really think theres a fight brewing between workers and "get back to work" governments - those strikes a sign that fight is already on.
In the UK too : 18th May is the date they're planning to reintroduce full public transport again...coming soon for us

 

[Badgers]

Trump says US 'very close' to 5m daily coronavirus tests target despite country only doing 200,000 a day

President skips daily coronavirus briefing, but takes questions twice on Tuesday, seemingly unable to resist the media spotlight

www.independent.co.uk

 

[gosub]

kristenfmartins

kristenfmartins.wordpress.com

nice iinsight

 

[editor]

The unhinged mob:

Hundreds of protesters, some carrying guns in the state Capitol, demonstrate against Michigan's emergency measures

Lawmakers declined to extend the state's emergency declaration and voted to bring a lawsuit to challenge Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's authority. Whitmer then issued new emergency orders.

www.nbcnews.com

 

[editor]

Smart move

New York’s 24/7 subway system will shutter nightly from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. to facilitate coronavirus cleaning, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Thursday in a historic move.

NYC subways will close overnight for coronavirus cleanings

The transit system that never sleeps is taking a snooze. New York’s 24/7 subway system will shutter nightly from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. to facilitate coronavirus cleaning, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announc…

nypost.com

 

[spring-peeper]

.

 

[petee]

The unhinged mob:

Hundreds of protesters, some carrying guns in the state Capitol, demonstrate against Michigan's emergency measures

Lawmakers declined to extend the state's emergency declaration and voted to bring a lawsuit to challenge Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's authority. Whitmer then issued new emergency orders.

www.nbcnews.com

this is of course psychotic. please remember - as i have to remind myself - that they number in the handfuls and 99% of americans think they're obscenities. recall the post i put up here earlier about the businesses in GA, a stereotypical red state, which are not re-opening and have the support of local populations for not re-opening, bolstered by JimW 's post from the last page. there are also photos of the sergeants-at-arms mentioned in your tweet editor and state cops too, standing in the way of the fuckheads.

 

[petee]

for example, these big boys facing off with a completely same rightwinger expressing his rahts.

 

[spring-peeper]

 

[spring-peeper]

Maryland governor says coronavirus tests acquired from South Korea under guard at undisclosed location

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said Thursday that thousands of coronavirus tests obtained by the state from South Korea are currently protected in an undisclosed location by the Maryland National Gu…

thehill.com

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said Thursday that thousands of coronavirus tests obtained by the state from South Korea are currently protected in an undisclosed location by the Maryland National Guard.

Asked in a Washington Post Live interview whether he was concerned the federal government would seize the tests, Hogan acknowledged “it was a little bit of a concern.”

 

[spring-peeper]

10 coronavirus-unit nurses are suspended, potentially for weeks, for refusing to work without N95 masks

Nurses say they are still on administrative leave from Santa Monica, California's Providence Saint John's Health Center for demanding they be given N95 masks while treating Covid-19 patients.

www.cnn.com

Ten nurses were placed on administrative leave from Providence Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California, for demanding they be given N95 masks while treating Covid-19 patients, two of the nurses told CNN.

Two nurses at PSJHC told CNN that they, along with eight other nurses, were suspended with pay after refusing to enter coronavirus patient rooms on April 9 without N95 masks.

The hospital said there were no N95 masks for them and insisted they wear surgical masks instead, the nurses said, even though other healthcare workers at the hospital were provided N95 masks.

 

[Dogsauce]

The unhinged mob:

white privilege right there. They’d be battered to within an inch of their lives if they were non-white, wouldn’t have even got close to the building. Unbelievable that they’re tolerated, perhaps they don’t want to give them the war and martyrdom they seek?

 

[yield]

Forget the Haircut Protesters. There's a Real Labor Movement Blossoming in America.
Esquire (really?) Apr 29, 2020

It is more than passing ridiculous that the cable news people insist on covering the smattering of angry (if armed) shut-ins who are popping up outside of various state capitols as though this were an actual movement instead of the latest kabuki outrage performance art from America’s conservative ratfcking industrial complex. The attention becomes ever more absurd when you realize that an actual national movement is being completely ignored.

Thanks to the invaluable Payday Report, we learn that, over the past several months, more than 140 wildcat strikes have occurred, most of which involved employees who feel that their health and safety is being endangered, and that their employers have not taken sufficient steps to protect them in the workplace. The strikes cover almost every high-risk category, from a McDonald’s in Florida to a Boeing factory in Washington state. Fifty workers walked off the job at the Smithfield Foods plant in Crete, Nebraska, and library workers engaged in a “sick-out” in New Orleans, as did sanitation workers in Shreveport and bus drivers in Richmond, Virginia. This is what used to be called “labor agitation” in the last Gilded Age. It used to be something every medium covered.

Nurses Say They Don't Want to Be Called Heroes During the Coronavirus Pandemic
April 28, 2020
"I don't need a compliment; I need safe staffing."

Every evening at 7 o'clock, cheers erupt from apartment buildings throughout New York City to applaud the health care workers combating COVID-19 at the global epicenter of the pandemic. But as political leaders in Washington commend their courage in the “war” against the coronavirus, some nurses consider the language of heroism and sacrifice a way of disguising how they’re being forced to work in risky conditions that could have been avoided. “I am being martyred against my will,” Jillian Primiano, an E.R. nurse in Brooklyn, wrote on her protest sign for a demonstration in Harlem earlier in the month. Health care workers across the country carried out a National Healthcare Day of Action on April 15 to decry the unsafe working conditions they are enduring in the eye of the pandemic, declaring #TheSystemIsBroken.

Why are teen vogue and esquire of all places doing real journalism?

 

[Gimigimi]

Why are teen vogue and esquire of all places doing real journalism?

Teen vogue got some socialists on the editorial board or something, they've been doing journalism on strike action and all kinds of other stuff for a little while now. It's pretty funny and it's getting them readers, though I seriously doubt they're teenagers. Not sure about Esquire, though.

edit: just went to teen vogue website. Four headlines: why do i always get acne in the summer?
you are cordially invited to teen vogue's virtual prom.
Democratic socialism, explained
17 must read books for anyone who loves fashion

I love this

 

[Artaxerxes]

white privilege right there. They’d be battered to within an inch of their lives if they were non-white, wouldn’t have even got close to the building. Unbelievable that they’re tolerated, perhaps they don’t want to give them the war and martyrdom they seek?

Every time I see these heavily tooled up gimps I am utterly fucking astonished by the disparity between how they are treated and how even just a potential minority charged with a speeding ticket is treated.

It's just so blatant.

 

[petee]

 

[weltweit]

fuckin lunatics .. and what is JB supposed to mean?

 

[Yossarian]

fuckin lunatics .. and what is JB supposed to mean?

The governor of Illinois is JB Pritzker.

 

[Part 2]

 

[spring-peeper]

Not only do the Americans expect China to pay, they are already deciding where to spend it.

This week, President Trump announced that the U.S. would bill China for more than $160 billion in coronavirus-related claims. Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt also took a significant step toward holding China legally responsible by filing a recent lawsuit against the Red Dragon for its role in generating the pandemic. Any damages received should go to beleaguered small businesses, which are on the front lines of the war against the virus and will lead the charge in the country's economic recovery.

Entrepreneurs, workers, and taxpayers shouldn't bear the entire cost of this crisis. They aren't responsible for it. The coronavirus bill should be paid by China, the country that covered up its severity, targeted whistleblowers, and dithered while the virus spread. China is not only morally but also legally responsible for unleashing this plague, which has killed over 60,000 Americans and 220,000 people worldwide so far and caused untold suffering -- both emotional and economic -- for millions more.

Virus Restitution From China Should Go to Small Businesses | RealClearPolitics

The coronavirus crisis has had a major impact on small businesses. Quarantines and disrupted supply chains have forced most customer-facing companies across the country to close. One recent survey...

www.realclearpolitics.com

 

[weltweit]

The responsibility for American deaths might lie in part with China but it also lies with America's pathetic preparedness and response to the pandemic. If there is a court case I expect it will be messy.