*If* Who do you think is going to help all these 3rd world countries when they're loading up entire trucks full of body bags? Like, I said I'm open to there being an investigation, but while I don't doubt China engaged in a cover up, we don't know right now that the WHO assisted. How is it appropriate, under these circumstances of all times, to start doling out penalties before that investigation even takes place? And again, I don't believe Trump is doing this on the objective merits of the case. At the least he's putting the cart before the horse. He's acting like he needs them to be guilty so that he can excuse himself of accountability. If they are guilty, then you're dealing with crimes against humanity, and some pretty serious shit, but that needs to be approached separately from Trump's political considerations. I very much doubt the WHO workers on the ground who really need that funding were involved, if there was really an organizational cover up in the first place.
Question, are PSL and DSA in anyway shape or form relevant groups of any importance or significance because a shit ton of their guys are all of a sudden coming out of the woodwork to let us know that the true path forward is to being down the evil Conservative and Liberal parties who are beholden to their corporate masters and usher in a new political era of Democratic Socialism, Social Democracy, and Marxist-Leninism. On that and how Bernie pathetically choked and bent the knee to the corporate liberal establishment and failed "the cause". He was always apparently only seen as "adequate" and merely another cog in the machine to push socialism forward and in need of replacement like any worn out part. They also see the Democratic Party as equally evil as the Republican Party with simply a better front o something like that.
The WHO covered for China's lies, just like every other international organization that operates there. Trump just saw an opportunity to catch them at it, snatch $500m of funding from an adversarial voice (ie, someone not claiming he's perfectly managed this catastrophe), and further push a false narrative towards a scapegoat. He's been gunning for a lot of our international aid, which is...on brand for him. One thing that occurred to me is that within the past few years, a series of absurd voices have been louder and louder and they have been granted space in the public sphere, when....they don't really belong there. The flat-earthers. The anti-vaxxer's. I have to assume Holocaust deniers have been around since the 1940's, they were just not considered real enough to be in the NYT until very recently. When I see the folks labelling this a hoax....is now a good time to just say, "no...you're not getting a platform for this nonsense"? You'd think this is a really solid opportunity to corral the prevalence of fake news. Especially seeing the citizenry of Michigan's response to a cocked-up response, I wonder if this is the breaking point between public health and science voices having to shout over the people that for some reason or another find it more comfortable to believe they are being lied to about things like COVID-19, the Earth being round, vaccines not causing autism, whatever chem trails are, etc. I know free speech and all, but in the same vein as yelling "Fire" in a movie theatre isn't protected speech, I wonder if we'll start to see the public itself start to influence those voices and the platforms they use. No easy answer here, but I think this could be an inflection point that spins the weighted voice back to experts, away from assholes. Oh, what a wonderful world that would be, at least.
I agree. The point was that we can at least be honest of what the policy is without needlessly sensationalizing it. As for de-funding the WHO, well its just a piece of a larger effort to pull US aid back from the rest of the world. It fits the overall pattern, its just terrible timing/policy-making. But it doesn't mean he's wrong and I have yet to see any meaningful counter to his claims. Only about 12% of the WHO's budget is dedicated to pandemic planning and response, when the top nations funding it were doing so for just that purpose. In addition, its also not bullshit that they blindly accepted China's public statements around the early days of the outbreak without any investigation whatsoever. It then spread like wild fire while they continued to say that there was no pandemic risk. People can point back to Trump being a retard all they want and there is a lot of evidence to easily support that, but that's a stupid, pointless deflection from the fact the WHO failed its in primary and ultimate purpose. If China wants to step in and replace the US as the top funding arm and use it as another proxy for its propaganda, then so be it.
turns out some people got a lot more in relief than meets the eye if you wanna piss off voters, that's how.
Flat earthers... anti-vaxers... how about hydroxychloroquine? What happens when the anti-vaxers are controlling the platform? TDS runs deep. They've since done a triple back flip on the 'Trump drug'. 70% of doctors were prescribing it to critical patients in Spain while they stressed not to listen to the doctors who were only going to use it because the Trump administration said it was a good idea. Good stuff NYT, good stuff.
Sorry, but what is TDS? Anecdata, but my doctor said she saw a tremendous number of cases where doctors (even a Goddamned veterinarian) were prescribing this stuff to themselves to stock pile it. She said about 1 in 4 of her elderly patients were coming to her and asking for it, thinking (mistakenly) that it was some sort of prophylactic against Coronavirus. For me, the solution is simple: if Trump is the only one telling you good news, he's probably lying. If Trump is begrudgingly reporting someone else's good news, it might be true. If he's claiming it's false, it makes him look bad, yet the rest of the world is saying it's the truth...it's probably true. Here's another issue with this: hydroxychloroquine likely...does stuff when humans take it. Does that stuff easily boil down to a tweet? Nope, nor should it. That's why medical/pharmacy school is long and difficult. Does someone like Trump understand the underlying mechanics of the science well enough to encapsulate it and regurgitate it in an effective way? Also, nope. Nor should he, that's why he has people like Fauci. When he does, why do we, as rational human beings that think "yeah, he's probably full of shit, or at a minimum not qualified to talk about this directly" not discard this stuff as bullshit, or at least as noise? In referring to "the platform", I'm thinking the Twitter's, the Facebook's, hell, even the Comcast's or Verizon's of the world, saying..."you know what, we can draw the line differently on what makes it on our platform moving forward". They do a decent job (from what I can tell) about monitoring, reporting and eliminating child pornograpy content, so we know the capacity exists to do the same for other "realms" of content that are considered harmful. I think the pendulum in motion is going to swing further away from free speech and closer to "we can now quantify the damage done by this nonsense in terms of lives lost and we don't want that responsibility."
"Trump Derangement Syndrome." It's a phrase Trumpers came up with to deflect from any legitimate criticism of the President or his actions.
Why would the United States want or allow that? If there's a problem with the WHO, the US should step in and fix it. We provide the most money, we're the most influential nation on Earth; if the WHO isn't serving the function it was designed to serve, then we should get it in line, not abandon it.
I think this is one positive thing that Trump has done: China is no longer a minor player, in the developing world. By quite a few measures, they are as powerful, influential and developed as Japan, SK, or Russia, and it's time they started being treated as such by the international community. Put another way: this administration recognizes that China's lagging development is it's own choice, not the fault of the international community. Just like we saw with Japan in the 1960's, and Korea in the 1980's, they have to tighten the laces to move forward with this economic model...which ran aground for both counties a few decades later.
Not a Trumper, and I'm not surprised the nonsense they wrote about hydroxychlorquine is considered "legitimate criticism" in your eyes. They purposely distorted the picture in an ill-conceived attack on the POTUS, They knew they were wrong and you can see that by watching them backpedal at 100 mph. This was a case where the rest of the world was saying what Trump was saying. Some idiots drank fish tank cleaner that had a derivative of the same substance, but was obviously quite different. One of them died. They blamed this on Trump. I don't.
If China really wants to be a world leader and a super power that stands next to the US they are going to have to establish some degree of trust with the international community. Coronavirus is the latest example of how undeserving they are of that trust. Tactics like they engage in with currency, trade, and military expansion will only further isolate them over the 21st century. The concept of the traditional empire is dead. Sometimes it seems like they get this, and other times it seems like they don't.
Hydroxychloroquine is insane. I know some very smart people who swear up and down that taking that, combined with zinc is the absolute cure that is staring everyone right in the face and we're just too stupid to see it. They don't realize that doctors are just as susceptible to hype and conspiracy theories as anyone else. Further, they can only use and prescribe what the scientists give them. Put another way, it's great if you can drive a race car really really fast. But you can't do that without a team of engineers developing a an engine and car capable of going really really fast in the first place. We're sitting here waiting on the engineers to come out with a really fast car, while someone is telling us that we can quarter mile a ford taurus without a seat belt. I mean, we can, but it's not going to be pretty. Or smart.
No, no they're not. They are not as susceptible to medicinal conspiracy theories on medical treatments as the general populace, and they sure as fuck know better than WAPO (who doesn't have a single medical adviser on their staff) on those subjects. You think the doctors are prescribing some anti-vaxer quackery because the media and Trump got in another fight? Come on, man. Hydroxychloroquine hasn't been vetted for Covid-19 by the standards we would usually apply, but there's also a reason we aren't waiting several months for all the traditional trials to take place. There's very good reasons every first world country (or at least nearly all) has authorized it for treatment, but I guess it's just the right soup for people to say 'global conspiracy'.
Shrug. To be honest, I haven't followed the hydroxycholoroquine issue in the news as much as I have for work. I did ask my doctor about it, and her summary was "nope, not going to be an effective treatment for COVID". My understanding is Trump touted this as some sort of effective treatment or prevention measure for COVID-19 against the advice and perspective of the medical community, thus creating yet another run on a resource and giving people a false sense of confidence. I saw reports that he benefited financially from this claim, and that falls in the bullshit bin for me (it's a generic medicine, produced widely). Again, if there is an effective treatment or prevention for this, it needs to come from the folks we trust with our health, not someone who has steadily lied for the past few months/years. Ie, if Fauci says "we've found a cure, and here are some nerds explaining it" I'd have confidence in it. Trump in a rambling, incoherent speech saying "Hydroxychloroquine is great....it's great for viruses. It's been great for malaria, which is a virus, been great for that for years. I took it for my COVID-19 flare up, and folks it is a miracle cure. Great job to the malaria folks for telling us about it. It's a great cure, we'll be rolling it out with the stimulus checks, you'll be amazed at how great a cure it is." Instills ZERO confidence in a medical intervention. Any human being who communicates this way sets off alarms, because it feels like they don't know how they will end the sentence currently in their mouth. It certainly isn't how people expect someone who's trustworthy and well-informed to share information about something this complicated and important. I don't think that's a Trump thing, that's a president thing. I wouldn't believe Obama/Bush/Clinton saying anything more than "we have smart people working on pursuing a cure, and here is their report". At a minimum, if they did, it should align with the messaging from their admini What does kill me is the false confidence that his bullshit gives people. Two problems with that: they now assess risk differently, as if they know this miracle cure will save them, and can (and likely have) flaunt quarantine, making the spread worse. The other problem is they value his bullshit over expertise. This means that when they are given actual bad news, they stick their head in the proverbial sand of comfortable bullshit and in some cases, double down. "Hydroxychloroquine doesn't help, but essential oils does." They then refuse to believe....a healthy chunk of the collective reality the rest of us inhabit. It's dangerous, infuriating, and yeah, he needs to be held accountable for lying to the American public, same as any other politician (cue laugh track).
It wasn't against their advice, he was touting it because they were already prescribing it. I'm not saying it's a 'wonder-drug' and he certainly provided some misleading information, that may have been less intentional so much as him being an idiot. I think this is a fair assessment: The media has already changed their tune when writing about it. I don't get why you guys think this has no support from the medical community. You think Germany gives a fuck what Dr. Trump prescribes? Ideally, we'll have better treatments 3 months from now and no one will be using it, but until then doctors around the world are going to keep prescribing it, and not because they're anti-vaxers. Jesus.
Because I asked my doctor, and she said it was ineffective. Because the folks who are charged with this (CDC, FDA) say things like: https://www.fda.gov/media/136538/download "Hydroxychloroquine sulfate is experimental because we do not know if it works for COVID-19. It is not approved by FDA for the treatment of COVID-19, but emergency use has been authorized for adults and adolescents who weigh 50 kg (110 pounds) or more and are hospitalized with COVID-19 if a clinical trial is not available or you are not able to participate in a clinical trial. There is limited information known about the safety and effectiveness (whether this will make you better) of using hydroxychloroquine sulfate for hospitalized patients with COVID-19." https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/therapeutic-options.html: "Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are under investigation in clinical trials for pre-exposure or post-exposure prophylaxis of SARS-CoV-2 infection, and treatment of patients with mild, moderate, and severe COVID-19." THOSE are fair assessments. Dickbagblog.com isn't really where I go to for medical advice in a pandemic. YOU were the one that injected the hydroxychloroquine example into the comment about antivaxxers.
Goodrx is dickbagblog? Anyway, we don't even really disagree. Or I mean the websites you linked aren't saying anything different than what I did. The clinical trials aren't sufficient, it's authorized for emergency use, etc. I don't get how your takeaway from that is that the treatment is Trump quackery. So your doctor doesn't want to use it... thousands of other doctors disagree. All of them want a better alternative that hasn't emerged yet.
The Trump quackery is hawking it to the public like a miracle cure so that he can claim he "had the answer all along," instead of letting the process of testing and disseminating test results to the medical community work as it's supposed to. This isn't about positive medical outcomes, this is about Trump needing to have been right all along so that the blame for the severity of the crisis doesn't fall at his feet.
Trump quotes: "HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine. The FDA has moved mountains - Thank You! Hopefully they will BOTH (H works better with A, International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents).........be put in use IMMEDIATELY. PEOPLE ARE DYING, MOVE FAST, and GOD BLESS EVERYONE! @US_FDA @SteveFDA @CDCgov @DHSgov — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 21, 2020" Compare that to what FDA/CDC is saying. It's misleading. Experts don't talk about medicine that way. Fuck, that's how Shannon Sharpe talked about Lamar Jackson. Calling something" a game changer" applies to strains of weed, not a cure for a fucking historic pandemic. "Trump referred to the drugs at his Saturday press briefing and asked: “What do we have to lose? I feel very good about it.” After the president left the briefing, his top science adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was asked if he had “any sense” of the drug cocktail the president referred to, and whether Trump’s “74-and-a-half million Twitter followers should be taking medical advice from him or from someone else.” Fauci responded that there may be positive “anecdotal reports” — informally observed individual cases — about the drugs, but they haven’t yet been proven to work, or to be safe. “If you really want to definitively know if something works, you got to do the kind of trial that [gives you] the good information,” he said. “The president is talking about hope for people,” not science, he noted." “It’s been approved, they took it down from many, many months to immediate,” Trump said. “We’re gonna make that drug available.” But the Food and Drug Administration has not approved Chloroquine for treating the coronavirus, an FDA spokesperson confirmed to Bloomberg News. Instead, Chloroquine is approved for treatment of malaria ― its primary intended use. Shortly after Trump claimed that the drug had shown “very, very encouraging results,” FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn took a much more restrained approach at the press conference, emphasizing that the drug needed to be tested to see if it could work in treating coronavirus. “That’s a drug that the president has directed us to take a closer look at as to whether an expanded use approach ... benefits patients,” Hahn said. “We want to do that in the setting of a clinical trial, a large pragmatic clinical trial.” Again, this is giving folks a false sense of confidence, and yeah...that's Trump's fault. It's why other presidents either let the experts speak, or read off of what the experts said. I get that this medication is at least worth looking into, and it's not the same as Alex Jones selling supplements. I am saying that his platform (tweets), his choice of words ("game changer") and the actual experts either directly contradicting him ("we're gonna make that drug available"-it is, vs. "you've got to do the kind of trial that gives you the good information"), combine to give an average reader an unrealistic expectation of the efficacy of this drug. That's dangerously irresponsible behavior, especially from POTUS. The folks dying from the overdoses, yeah idiots. The millions of dollars being spent on securing this before we are 100% sure it works? That's on Trump. The folks who die because they ignore quarantine, falsely believing this medicine will protect them? That's on Trump. The folks who mistakenly believe the FDA is letting people die by not approving the drug for COVID-19 use? That's on Trump. "What do we have to lose, I feel good about it" is a very telling quote: the loss will be spread out, but the good feelings are his alone.