Bullet Train Wreck

Written By: - Date published: 10:21 pm, March 25th, 2020 - 23 comments
Categories: covid-19, Donald Trump, leadership, us politics - Tags:

New York Governor Cuomo was told CoVid-19 was like an approaching freight train. More like a bullet train was his response. Watching the White House daily briefing with Trump dominant it looks like a massive train wreck is on the way in the US.

With confirmed cases exploding, particularly out of New York, Trump’s oft-stated desire to have the US back to work by Easter so the “beautiful churches” can be filled is delusional. The figures are here, based on Johns Hopkins University data.

Medical and epidemiological advice is being side-lined in favour of trying to stem the economic fallout and save Trump’s re-election. Massive injections of money to the same corporations who profited from the 2008 crash will not make up for real economic activity. The World Health Organisation says the US is likely to become the next epicenter of the virus.

Governor Cuomo is honest and direct. Joe Biden is AWOL in more than one sense.

The contrast with our government’s swift and decisive action could not be greater. We may have to protect our borders for longer than we think.

 

23 comments on “Bullet Train Wreck ”

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  1. Peter 1
    25 March 2020 at 10:35 pm

    Cuomo was direct? Here's someone else who's a tad direct too:



  2. lprent 2
    25 March 2020 at 10:53 pm

    I've been picking for a while that either Iran (the reporting there seems to be more framed for PR than reality) or the US will prove to be the worst epicentres in the near future. In the US really doesn't look like the federal authorities nor many of the state authorities are looking to see the scale of the problem.

    Of course it may that the massive African megacities as a whole might wind up being the medically unconstrained test rather than the US.

  3. Incognito 3
    25 March 2020 at 11:08 pm

    They dropped an A-bomb above the US and now we’re witnessing the fallout.

  4. Andre 4
    26 March 2020 at 5:48 am

    As an example of what the mandarin manutang isn't doing, but could be: there's the Defense Production Act. This empowers the government to instruct companies what to make and who to sell them to, and mandates the selling price to be cost plus a reasonable profit margin.

    It's been used as recently as 2001, by Shrub, to deal with electricity issues in California. Governors are begging for it to be used, to increase production of medical supplies and manage their distribution.

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/coronavirus-defense-production-act-trump_n_5e7a1847c5b63c3b6497a050

  5. Ad 5
    26 March 2020 at 7:55 am

    Cuomo is rising like his dad did.

    But polls are showing that Trump is rising faster.

    There's a pretty good chance that Trump's emotionally accurate impulses to rebuke the disease, rise over it, deny its effects, and magnify the larger than life swagger he has on behalf of all Americans who feel the same way , will all play very well here.

    Also, the more state leaders like Cuomo rise like lighthouses around fatal cliffs and take their authoritative place commanding-and-controlling in their states, the more Trump gets to offload blame onto all of them as the ice rinks fill up with the dead.

    Trump has a very good chance of rising triumphant using Covid19 as his oxy-accelerant tank.

    • AB 5.1
      26 March 2020 at 9:44 am

      If he can win by feeding the delusion that American exceptionalism extends even to biology, he'll give it a go.

  6. Ad 6
    26 March 2020 at 7:57 am

    It will be particularly weird if New Zealand has the same or higher PROPORTIONAL number of infections as the US does.

    • Andre 6.1
      26 March 2020 at 9:23 am

      Right now the US is at about 200 cases per million population, just under 3 deaths per million, and 1 per million recovered. We're at under 50 cases per million, zero deaths and about 4 per million recovered.

      Given the vast differences in testing, it's hard to guess whether those numbers actually mean anything.

      https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

      • Ad 6.1.1
        26 March 2020 at 9:39 am

        The comparisons will be odious but they will be inevitable, and as each country recovers at its own rate such comparisons will be arriving thick and fast as they already are.

        For example we are already seeing articles about Why Japan Was Fine, and Why Spain and Italy Were So Bad Despite Good Preparation …

        The United States rates of infection are just gold sparkly propaganda to China who are doing all the diplomatic and social media groundwork to offload primary global culpability onto the United States.

        And then there's little old New Zealand … where once again distance looks our way and we can bathe in the warm bath of Prime Ministerial virtue … without the results to back it up.

        So there's a lot to be made of such comparative COVID-19 statistical state performances.

        What is at stake is the coming post-Virus debate about whether liberal democracies are now so bad at dealing with crises that heavy-state hyper-nationalism is revealed as superior to them …and used as an excuse to further degrade the remaining strong democracies.

        • mickysavage 6.1.1.1
          26 March 2020 at 10:13 am

          Our recovery rate may be because it is quite warm right now. Winter could be rough …

          • Carolyn_Nth 6.1.1.1.1
            26 March 2020 at 10:19 am

            Also, most of those infected are under 70 years old, probably because most of the Covid-19 positives so far are travellers returning from overseas, or close contacts to them.

            If/when there is more widespread community contamination, more of the older vulnerable people could be effected – hence the strong advice for self-isolation, and to stay at home for those over 70 yrs or those who have underlying health issues.

          • Andre 6.1.1.1.2
            26 March 2020 at 10:20 am

            Singapore's experience suggests temperature might not be a big factor.

          • Sabine 6.1.1.1.3
            26 March 2020 at 10:26 am

            it might be warm in the north, but here in middle north island its 'fresh'. And further south the first frosts have already come.

          • Gabby 6.1.1.1.4
            26 March 2020 at 1:46 pm

            Winter will help keep people inside.

        • Phil 6.1.1.2
          26 March 2020 at 10:20 am

          post-Virus debate about whether liberal democracies are now so bad at dealing with crises that heavy-state hyper-nationalism is revealed as superior to them

          There are a myriad of factors at play here. Analysis based on broad national political structures is overly simplistic and banal. Local and provincial government competency and preparedness, for one, appears far more critical to successful containment of the virus in large countries. Age demographics play a huge part in death toll. Proximity to major travel hubs, etc.

    • Sabine 6.2
      26 March 2020 at 10:22 am

      Why?

      Because we are now in lock down? The diseases had several weeks to go around and it will. What will count is how our health system will be overloaded. Not how many people will have it, as quite a few of us are already carriers and we are now just waiting to show symptoms.

      AS for the US, they are holding Convid-19 Parties, cause fuckwits is them.

  7. A 7
    26 March 2020 at 10:39 am

    Cuomo is likely being positioned to take over from Biden when he steps down due to "health issues", so expect news saturation of his heroic effort to save NYC.

    Brother works for CNN, multi-generational political family…and I hear a bit of a tyrant.
    NYC could have handled this crisis on it's own but the blame is being put on Federal government for stuff like ventilators.

    If it's Trump vs Cuomo it could turn into another situation like Bush/Gore where the counts were so close nobody knew who had won for quite some time. God help the US.

  8. Carolyn_Nth 8
    26 March 2020 at 10:48 am

    Report from a doctor working at the epicenter of Covid-19 in NY.

    Bloody scary stuff – people on ventilators and life support; people vomiting and having difficulty breathing. Tiring work for the medical people, and all the patients they see are Covid-19 positive. It's bad now but he expects it to get worse.

    Doctor who survived Ebola details a harrowing day in the ER. Coronavirus scares him

    …

    The numbers will undoubtedly skyrocket overnight, as they have every night the past few days. More will come to the ER. More will be stat notifications. More will be put on a ventilator," he wrote.

    Spencer wrote that it's too late to stop the virus, but its spread can be slowed because "the virus can't infect those it never meets."

    “Social distancing is the only thing that will save us now,” he wrote. “I don’t care as much about the economic impact as I do about our ability to save lives.”

  9. peterlepaysan 9
    26 March 2020 at 7:50 pm

    China ,as usual, is playing this disaster for all its geopolitical worth. Putin will be smiling..