Saturday, April 11, 2020

Will the models be wrong once again?

Call it a hunch... but the way the numbers have been moving lately, it really seems to me that the daily death toll in that 1800-2000 range may hang on for a while longer.

Originally the peak was suggested to be Monday (the day after Easter). Then it moved to April 16th as the overall count went from 90,000 to about 80,000. If you go to the model today, it suggests that we should have hit our peak yesterday with just under 2000 deaths (Worldometer reported 2035 and CDC reported 1989). The model now shows just over 60,000 people will die from with Covid-19.

The fact of the matter is that much of this is currently New York driven. While New York has shown the number of hospitalizations and ICU admissions leveling or even going down, the number of deaths has been over 700 for four days in a row. I have gut feeling that we may not see that come down for a while.


Updated model shows yesterday as the new peak

Not to seem like some tin-foil hat conspiracist, but the powers to be in New York seem poised to add to their own death toll by including "more" non-confirmed and non-tested deceased in their Covid-19 counts. The latest news reports has them starting to include in-home deaths in their Covid-19 death count, based on symptoms (which we know is four times as likely to be something other than Covid-19). This could mean that we may be seeing previously non-recorded deaths being retroactively counted as Covid-19 deaths in their daily counts either currently or in the near future. Right, wrong, or indifferent, they may not even be Covid-19 related.

Moreover, there are some additional states that seem to be showing no signs of slowing down. New Jersey has reported 200 deaths or more four times in the past week, and Michigan just had their first day of 200. Several other states have been sort of stubbornly sticking around between 20-100 deaths a day. When you start adding in the smaller numbers from the less infected states, it feels like it could be a while before things start to come back down.

The main model being used (and being criticized for changing numbers almost daily) show a fairly quick decline from the current high of approximately 2000 deaths down to less than half of that by the end of the month. The only way there is any chance of that happening is for New York to drop their dead toll by at least half. When you rely on one particular state (which hasn't gotten much of anything right so far) to bring down an entire national model, it seems like a lot to hope for.

For the most part, my own analysis of the data has suggested that the models (at 80,000-90,000) dead were overshooting the mark. At one point, the models projected a peak of about 3500 dead in one day. That never seemed likely to me. That being said, the percentages that we were coming under those numbers did not suggest a 20-30 percent drop as the latest model suggests. We seemed to be coming in more consistently at around 85 percent of the curve.

I have never really bought into the one size fits all, full country on the same track model. I have always wondered if we would get to a point where as one part of the country got a little better, another part of the country would be on the upswing, where we would hit a solid plateau and sort of ride out the numbers for longer than the models were suggesting.

I hope I am wrong here, and we really have reached the peak. I hope we will be turning the corner sometime next week and the daily numbers will drop. After all, these people have way more information, have way more data to brew over, and have way more experience at creating these models. Trouble is, they have also shown a fairly consistent issue with getting it all wrong on this one.

62 comments:

Honest, decent, truthful Rev. said...

Trump Repeatedly Ignored Warnings
April 11, 2020 at 1:10 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard

New York Times:
“Throughout January, as Mr. Trump repeatedly played down the seriousness of the virus and focused on other issues, an array of figures inside his government — from top White House advisers to experts deep in the cabinet departments and intelligence agencies — identified the threat, sounded alarms and made clear the need for aggressive action.

“The president, though, was slow to absorb the scale of the risk and to act accordingly, focusing instead on
controlling the message,
protecting gains in the economy and
batting away warnings from senior officials.

“Even after Mr. Trump took his first concrete action at the end of January — limiting travel from China —
public health often had to compete with economic and political considerations in internal debates,
slowing the path toward belated decisions
to seek more money from Congress,
obtain necessary supplies,
address shortfalls in testing
and ultimately move to keep much of the nation at home.”

Honest, decent, truthful Rev. said...

HAVING FAILED ON THAT, WILL HE NOW FAIL AGAIN ON

The Biggest Decision He’s Ever Had to Make?

April 11, 2020 at 10:10 am EDT By Taegan Goddard

NYT:
As he grapples simultaneously with the most devastating public health and economic crises of a lifetime,
President Trump finds himself pulled in opposite directions on what to do next.

The bankers, corporate executives and industrialists plead with him to reopen the country as soon as possible,
while the medical experts beg for more time to curb the coronavirus.

The phone calls from his business friends compete against the television images of overwhelmed hospitals.

The public health experts tell him what he is doing is working, so he should not let up yet.

The economic advisers and others in his White House tell him what he has done has worked, so he should begin to figure out how to ease up.

Tens of thousands more could die.

Millions more could lose their jobs.

Said Trump:
“I’m going to have to make a decision, and I only hope to God that it’s the right decision. But I would say without question it’s the biggest decision I’ve ever had to make.”

C.H. Truth said...

Trump Repeatedly Ignored Warnings
April 11, 2020 at 1:10 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard


You know, Reverend... if your deity posts that same nonsense enough times, do you believe it will become true?

Just curious...

Honest, decent, truthful Rev. said...

The NYT is not my deity, Ch.
It is not perfect, but is widely regarded as having high standards of journalism and commentary (opinion pieces).

The case is well made in that article that Trump did indeed repeatedly ignore warnings even from his own staff.

Honest, decent, truthful Rev. said...

And if you would like even more detail, read the article.

Honest, decent, truthful Rev. said...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/us/politics/coronavirus-trump-response.html

Here it is, Ch. Read it and report here any actual distortions of FACTS you find.

Caliphate4vr said...

Maggie Haberman you fucking pederast hack

Anonymous said...

Which States are restricting the Muslim from going to thier Mosque.

Commonsense said...

The NYT is not my deity, Ch.
It is not perfect, but is widely regarded as having high standards of journalism and commentary (opinion pieces).


"Widely regarded" LOL.

The case is well made in that article that Trump did indeed repeatedly ignore warnings even from his own staff.

Based on those famous "unnamed officials" the NYT made up.

Honest, decent, truthful Rev. said...

I just finished reading the entire article. It is a long, detailed, well sourced piece of objective journalism that will stand the test of time.

C.H. Truth said...

Sorry Reverend..

I would prefer to listen to the actual experts (such as Fauci and Birx) who both suggest that the response of the Task force has been on point given the actual information we had at the time...

I know your deity Goddard and your Bible New York Times will disagree with those experts and demand that we could have done more... had we just... well done more...

But I am not buying it Reverend. Sorry. Too realistic.



Now I don't have to read the NYT piece to know they are going to bring up obscure warnings from a variety of people who "saw this coming"...



And then I am going to ask you if you believe for one second that any President (much less this President) could come out more than a month before anyone in the United States would actually die from a virus.



Tell Americans that something big was coming and without any tangible evidence ask that Americans close businesses, schools, etc... all because of reports of a Virus out of China that literally nobody here in the United States had any real medical knowledge of.


Seriously Reverend...

Are you really dumb enough to believe that is plausible?

Commonsense said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Commonsense said...

just finished reading the entire article. It is a long, detailed, well sourced piece of objective journalism that will stand the test of time.

Just a question, How do you know it's "well sourced" when all the sources are unnamed and/or made up?

Or is that just code for you saying you like and agree with the premise of the article.

Caliphate4vr said...

He’s dumb enough to believe presidents should build permanent hospitals Willy nilly, because something may occur sometime

Commonsense said...

New Video for James:

@AOC

Corona, Queens is the most heavily COVID-impacted zip code in America. I can tell you 1st hand that many ppl are too scared to go to the hospital & continue to work bc of Trump’s xenophobic COVID response.

In that uncertainty, street vendors are stepping up and saving lives


Yes, this is what a stupid bimbo sounds like.

Honest, decent, truthful Rev. said...

Well, Ch, I suggest you perform a little experiment:

Read the article and see how many of its sources are "unnamed and/or made up." I came across one extremely important name I do not remember having seen mentioned anywhere before.

And the amount of detail is staggering.

Commonsense said...

@SteveGuest

NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo: President @realDonaldTrump has responded “quickly” and "efficiently” to New York’s needs, often in less than a day

Commonsense said...

came across one extremely important name I do not remember having seen mentioned anywhere before.

And yet the extremely important name is never mention.

Caliphate4vr said...

The legacy of a Marxist failure and corona - Dr. WHO?
What we should know have known about the head of the World Health Organization, but didn’t. We are paying for it now.


So, who is this Doctor WHO?

US Senator, Tom Cotton, gives us a clue when he said “never trust a communist.” Was he referring to China? Or was he referring to Tedros Adhanom?

How did this little known community health official get to be elected to the top global health po‎sition?

He had backers, the main one being the Communist regime of China who helped him whip the votes of other nations. It was China’s role that defeated the candidacy of Tedros’s rival, UK’s David Nabarro.

His launch pad was as Health Minister of Ethiopia. His record in this job was controversial. In fact, it should have been the reason why he should never have been the head of the WHO in the first place, but China intervened with the acquiescence of too many Western governments.

The dark secret is that non-doctor Tedros Adhanom covered up another epidemic. The Ethiopian Health Ministry under his watch was suspected of hiding three separate cases of cholera.

Lightning strikes twice, or in Dr. WHO’s case, four times, it seems. And he gets away with it.

Honest, decent, truthful Rev. said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
C.H. Truth said...

I came across one extremely important name I do not remember having seen mentioned anywhere before.

I didn't say one way or the other whether the sources were named.

I suggested that the NYT was going to be quoting people who supposedly warned of a supervirus long before we had enough information to know one existed.


Why don't you do a little "what if" experiment...


We all know that Dr Fauci was heading up the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases...


So we all know that if there was an infectious disease out there that our government was truly worried about, that the NIAID would know about it and because of that we know that Dr Fauci would know about it.

We also know that the Wuhan Virus (as it was known at the time) was being studied by the NIAID (as is pretty much every infectious disease he hear about).


Now given that the NIAID is THE organization responsible.. and Dr Fauci is the leading epidemiologist in the world...


Let's argue that some other person in the Government with a medical degree (which I am sure describes the people or person that the NYT is quoting) had "warned" that they believed that the Wuhan Virus was going to be a super-virus of some sort...

But that the NIAID - led by the top epidemiologist in the world - had not concluded that same thing (because we didn't see even one death in the US till February and the information coming out of China was limited or dishonest).



Do you believe a President (any President)

Could take the word of some medical person (probably not even an epidemiologist) over that of Fauci and the NIAID and suggested to the American people that we should close businesses and schools...

Over a virus that wasn't really here in the United States and had only killed a few hundred world wide.


Is that seriously your argument??????????????????

Or are you arguing something different?

Commonsense said...

Oh its mentioned, alright

It's not mentioned by you which means it's not all that significant.

Honest, decent, truthful Rev. said...

Commensa: And yet the extremely important name is never mentionED.

Oh the name is mentioned, alright, or I would not have come across it. The man's initials are M. P.

Actually, there are surprisingly few unattributed sources in the article.

C.H. Truth said...

The man's initials are M. P.

And obviously... according to your Bible...

This person is the very leading epidemiologist who has more credibility than Fauci and Birx and we should have been listening to this person all along!!!


Now we have it. Thanks you James!!

We just listened to the idiot Fauci and his merry band of knuckleheads over at the Infectious Disease department...

When all along, any President should have know that those people are dwarfs in comparison to the ACTUAL EXPERT with the initials M. P.



Why don't you just tell us who this epidemiologist actually is and what qualifications he has to overrule the NIAID?

Commonsense said...

Actually, there are surprisingly few unattributed sources in the article.

And strangely none is ever named.

C.H. Truth said...

Here is the reality:

The first known case in the United States of COVID-19 was confirmed in the state of Washington on January 20, 2020, in a 35-year-old man who had returned from Wuhan, China on January 15.[4] The White House Coronavirus Task Force was established on January 29.[2] On January 31, the Trump administration declared a public health emergency,[5] and placed travel restrictions on entry for travelers from China.[6]


This was all done before a single person died in the United States from Covid-19


From that point forward... the group lead by experts Anthony Fauci, Alex Azar, Robert R Redfield, and others were tasked with making recommendations and implementing guidelines for Americans to follow.

Dr Fauci along with Dr Birx (who was added later) both suggest that our response to the outbreak has been consistent with what we knew at the time and have not suggested that any major mistakes were made or that their suggestions were not taken seriously at any time.

In fact, both Fauci and Birx have championed the idea that the President has been willing to listen, keep himself informed, and act on their advice. Fauci has praised Trump's leadership multiple times on National television.


Why should be believe the NY Times over Fauci, Birx, and the task force?



Honest, decent, truthful Rev. said...

I'm laughing at you, Ch.

M. P. is what he is, and neither he nor the NYT article dismisses or disses Fauci and Birx.

"Whereof one does not know, thereof one should not speak."

Since you do not know-of the NYT article, never having read it, you should not speak thereof, unless you want to appear silly.

Commonsense said...

Yeah, the NYT article is a piece of shit. SOP for them.

Commonsense said...

Even a never-trumper agrees with that assement.

@AndrewMcCarthy

Why does @nytimes pollute *news* reporting with this crap? 'The shortcomings of Mr. Trump’s performance have played out with remarkable transparency as part of his daily effort to dominate television screens and the national conversation.' Imagine such a passage during Dem admin?

anonymous said...


Yeah, the NYT article is a piece of shit. SOP for them.

Wow cramps you are a multidimensional idiot!!!! Didn't realize that you were such an expert in medicine and virus's!!!!!!!! BWAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!

C.H. Truth said...

M. P. is what he is, and neither he nor the NYT article dismisses or disses Fauci and Birx.


My guess is that the Times article is talking about Matthew Pottinger (Deputy National Security Adviser) who is actually part of the task force (and has worked quite a bit with China). It would be consistent with the reports being "security related" rather than "medically related".


But as we know, the task force is not relying on the DNSA for their recommendations for the general public. He would have been "one voice" in the room, and if there was disagreement between Pottinger and Fauci in terms of American response... it hasn't been widely publicized.

Nor at the end of the day would the American public prefer we take the advice of a Security analyst over an epidemiologist as to the best way to handle a contagious virus.


Tell me I am wrong?

anonymous said...


Even a never-trumper agrees with that assement.

@AndrewMcCarthy


NOW THERE IS A SO FUCKING WHAT!!!!!!!!!

anonymous said...

his was all done before a single person died in the United States from Covid-19

While trump downplayed and lied about the 15 would soon be 0 and we had it under control!!!!! Gee 500k cases so far and no one saw it coming!!!!! BWAAAAAAPAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!

C.H. Truth said...

This is just very poor journalism...


Everyone is an expert on this sort of thing or believe themselves to be. The reality is that there are going to be people who said we did too little and people who said we did too much.

Time will tell how this plays out... but if these red states that did not shut down end up coming out of this better than the blue states that shut down (both in terms of economy and outbreak), then there will be a ton of second guessing if it was the right thing for all of those Governors to do.

Especially if this ends up killing less people than an above average flu season.


It just may look at the end of the day that the President was the voice of reason in suggesting that we don't want to overplay this and end up with a cure that is worse than the disease.


The media can only pretend that the median age of death being well into the 80s is not relative for so long... before it will start to hit people.

Commonsense said...

U.S. District Court grants Temporary Restraining Order in On Fire Christian Center v Greg Fischer (In his capacity as Mayor of Louisville, KY) allowing drive-in services for Easter Sunday.

The key finding; there's no evidence of a public health danger and therefore no compelling government interest in restricting drive-in services.

Commonsense said...

Time will tell how this plays out... but if these red states that did not shut down end up coming out of this better than the blue states that shut down (both in terms of economy and outbreak),

Like I said, I hope the people will remember the petty tyrants who took this opportunity to trample on our rights to peaceably assemble and to freely worship as our conscience dictates come election time.

Commonsense said...

Yep, Golden Corral withdrawal. Damn you really miss the chocolate fountain don't you?

anonymous said...

No one....especially me.....is bothered by drive throughs you dumb fuck...Having 1000 idiots like you in a church is the problem....especially in Miami with the most cases in florida and such limited testing!!!!!!!! As for the mayor....he is acting to protect his citizens the best he can and was IMHO rightfully restrained.....


Everyone is an expert on this sort of thing or believe themselves to be.

Especially idiots like Lil SChitty and cramps the doctor!!!!!!!! BWAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!

anonymous said...

Damn you really miss the chocolate fountain don't you?


And cramps shits his brains again....BWAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! Awesome hit there asshole!!!!!!!

Commonsense said...

Don't know where you get your information but the mayor of Miami has no authority to close the churches, synagogues, or mosques.

anonymous said...

He can close anything that needs to close in the event of emergency.....

d, I hope the people will remember the petty tyrants who took this opportunity to trample on our rights to peaceably assemble


BWAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!! Sure cramps....advocate anarchists for christ movement!!!!!! TOO FUNNY!!!!!! Has nothing to due with your own right to do whatever you like.....just assemble in mass to keep your health....what a stupid thing to do....!!!! Protect you from being stupid which in your case is a full time job!!!!! BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Commonsense said...


Liberal Treated With Hydroxychloroquine Hopes He Still Dies Of COVID-19 To Prove Trump Is Stupid
April 7th, 2020


NEW YORK, NY—When Jeffrey Walton tested positive for COVID-19, he hoped for a speedy recovery. But since he has been treated with hydroxychloroquine, the experimental treatment President Donald Trump has been touting, he now hopes he dies quickly to help prove that Trump is an idiot.


While Trump has been giving people hope that hydroxychloroquine could save lives, his political opponents have called it false hope and claimed Trump has no idea what he’s talking about. Walton, a lifelong Democrat and progressive, had joined in calling Trump “irresponsible” and an “ignoramus” and now has an opportunity to prove it by simply dying. “It’s such an opportunity, I don’t want to pass it up,” Walton said.

Doctor Glenn Logan, Walton’s physician, says he’s been up and down. “After we gave him the hydroxychloroquine, he got really excited about the idea of dying to prove Trump is dumb, and his good mood helped his condition, and he started to improve. Because that would only help Trump, his getting healthier made him depressed, which caused his condition to deteriorate. Which made him really happy. Which helped him recover and... Well, it’s been a weird cycle.”

Dr. Logan has been warning Walton that there is a chance he could fully recover. Walton is trying to prepare himself for this -- a world where everything isn’t black and white and Trump can be right about some things -- but he insists he’d much rather die.


Fact check by snopes in 3-2-1.

Commonsense said...

He can close anything that needs to close in the event of emergency.....

No, he can only close what the state says he close. And the state says he can't close places of worship.

Anonymous said...

"Actually, there are surprisingly few unattributed sources in the article."
Weak James

Sad .

Commonsense said...

James has already ran away.

Anonymous said...

Canada and Mexico and many other Nations Closed their borders , taking the action to protect their people.
When Pres. Trump did it, well you know.

Anonymous said...

CS. James has been "struck speechless"

anonymous said...

Hey goat fucker.....you are stuck on stupid......YOU WIN!!!!!! BWAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!

anonymous said...


No, he can only close what the state says he close


BWAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!! Prove it asshole....!!!!!!!! Your word IMHO is worth shit.....!!!!

anonymous said...

Who was it who posted the new trump ad against biden was devastating??????/ As I suspected....it is full of steaming horseshit and edited comments out of context....Typical Trump lies that the enthralled idiots will embrace!!!!!!! So sad!!!


April 11, 2020 at 7:48 a.m. EDT
The big headline from a new Trump campaign ad is that it features an image suggesting that Gary Locke, former Washington governor and U.S. ambassador to China, is a member of the Chinese Communist Party. The image flashes for only a moment, but the suggestion is clear: Joe Biden is bowing deferentially to a person of Asian descent standing in front of Chinese flags. Except that the person of Asian descent is actually an American.
But that’s hardly the only way in which the ad obscures and misleads. It is a veritable smorgasbord of deception and disinformation. It attacks Biden for saying things about China that are extremely similar to what Trump himself has said. It also alters Biden’s comments about travel bans and other things to make it sound like he was saying something he did not say.
Let’s walk through it.
AD

“Biden Opposed China Coronavirus Travel Restrictions,” reads a highlighted headline early in the ad, as it plays a clip of Biden citing Trump’s “hysterical xenophobia."
Except that headline didn’t come from a news source; it came from a video the Trump campaign itself posted to Twitter.
And there’s a reason for that: Reputable news outlets haven’t reported that Biden opposed the travel restrictions. As fact-checkers have said, Biden’s comments about “hysterical xenophobia” actually made no reference to the China travel restrictions. At no point has Biden said he opposed the restrictions.

Commonsense said...

BWAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!! Prove it

Here you go Denny.

Governor DeSantis Stay at Home Executive Order

Anonymous said...

AOC level Dumb

"Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has urged President Trump to reverse a reported plan to block an Iranian request to the IMF for $5 billion in aid to fight the coronavirus crisis -- saying it is in the U.S. national interest to accede to the request."

Commonsense said...

Who was it who posted the new trump ad against biden was devastating??????/ As I suspected....it is full of steaming horseshit and edited comments out of context....Typical Trump lies that the enthralled idiots will embrace!!!!!!! So sad!!!

Denny agrees, it's brutal.

Honest, decent, truthful Rev. said...

A Times examination reveals the extent of President Trump’s slow response as the virus spread.

"He Could Have Seen What Was Coming:" Behind Trump’s Failure on the Virus

Five Takeaways on What Trump Knew as the Virus Spread

An examination by The New York Times reveals that there were warnings from the intelligence community, national security aides and government health officials — even as the president played down the crisis.

By Michael D. Shear April 11, 2020
Updated 5:56 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON — Top White House advisers as well as experts deep in the cabinet departments and intelligence agencies all sounded alarms and urged aggressive action to counter the threat from the coronavirus, but President Trump remained slow to respond, a detailed examination of the government’s response found.

Mr. Trump’s views were colored by long-running disputes inside the administration over how to deal with China and his own suspicion of the motivations of officials inside what he viewed as the “Deep State.” And recommendations from public health officials often competed with economic and political considerations in internal debates, slowing the path toward belated decisions.

Interviews with dozens of current and former officials and a review of emails and other documents reveal the key turning points as the Trump administration struggled to get ahead of the virus, rather than just chase it, and the internal debates that presented Mr. Trump with stark choices along the way.


Intelligence agencies and the N.S.C. produced early warnings.

National Security Council officials received the warnings in early January about the potential dangers from a new virus in Wuhan, China.

The State Department’s epidemiologist warned early that the virus could develop into a pandemic, while the National Center for Medical Intelligence, a small outpost of the Defense Intelligence Agency, reached the same conclusion. Weeks later, biodefense experts in the National Security Council office responsible for tracking pandemics looked at what was happening in Wuhan and started urging officials to think about what would be entailed in quarantining cities the size of Chicago and telling people to work at home.

But some of the earliest warnings came from national security hawks eager to blame China, and they often ran into opposition from the president’s economic advisers, who were concerned about upsetting relations with China at a time when Mr. Trump was negotiating a trade deal with Beijing.


Trump was told of a memo saying 500,000 “American souls” could die.

Peter Navarro, the president’s top trade adviser, wrote a searing memo at the end of January arguing that a pandemic caused by the virus could cost the United States dearly, producing as many as half a million deaths and trillions of dollars in economic losses.

The memo, in which Mr. Navarro argued in favor of limits on travel from China, says that in a worst-case scenario, 30 percent of the population in the United States would be infected with the virus, leading to the deaths ”on the order of a half a million American souls.”

In recent days, Mr. Trump has denied that he saw the memo at the time. But The Times report reveals that aides raised it with him at the time and that he was unhappy that Mr. Navarro had put his ideas in writing.

Honest, decent, truthful Rev. said...

Three weeks were lost at a crucial time.

By the third week in February, the administration’s top public health officials had concluded that it was time to begin shifting to a more aggressive strategy to mitigate the spread of the virus, including social distancing, stay-at-home orders and school closures.

But they never got the chance to present the plan to the president. An official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention went public with dire warnings too soon, sending stocks tumbling and angering Mr. Trump, who pushed aside his health and human services secretary and put Vice President Mike Pence in charge of the response.

It would be three more weeks before Mr. Trump finally recommended aggressive social distancing guidelines, a period when the virus spread largely unimpeded and the task force was trying to avoid alarmist messages like the one that had angered the president.


Experts in and out of government were alarmed at the failure to take swifter action.

Throughout January and February, a group of academics, government physicians and infectious diseases doctors — including Trump administration officials — expressed alarm at the ferocity of the coronavirus in a lengthy email chain they called “Red Dawn,” an inside joke based on the 1984 movie about a band of Americans trying to save the country after a foreign invasion.

The officials repeatedly expressed concern about the lack of aggressive action to deal with the virus. They assailed the lack of testing and helped bring to the government’s attention concerns about the virus being spread by people without symptoms. They also tracked the global spread of the virus. At the end of February, a top Veterans Affairs Department doctor wrote, “So we have a relatively narrow window and we are flying blind. Looks like Italy missed it.”


The White House was divided over how to respond.

The president was surrounded by divided factions in March even as it became clearer that avoiding more aggressive steps to stop the spread of the virus was not tenable.

As he prepared to give an Oval Office address on the evening of March 11, Mr. Trump continued to resist calls for social distancing, school closures and other steps that would imperil the economy. Seeking to understand the potential effects on the stock market and the economy, he reached out to prominent investors like Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chief executive of Blackstone Group, a private equity firm.

During an Oval Office meeting, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin stressed that the economy would be ravaged by such measures. Robert C. O’Brien, the national security adviser, who had been worried about the virus for weeks, sounded exasperated as he told Mr. Mnuchin that the economy would be destroyed regardless if officials did nothing.

Later, Mr. Trump reflected on that period of debate among his advisers, saying: “Everybody questioned it for a while, not everybody, but a good portion questioned it,” adding: “They said, let’s keep it open. Let’s ride it.”
___________

So they "rode it" -- far too long. And look where we are now.

Honest, decent, truthful Rev. said...

That gives you some idea of the much longer NYT article. It does not have as many of the details and names of those who raised warnings, but it gives an overview.

Now read the the detailed article linked at 1:23PM above and you will see that sources are not "made up" but that many names are supplied.

Myballs said...

James NY Times article states that as of March 16, there were still only 4226 cases in the U.S., in a country of over 300M people. They're trying to say Trump was a foot dragging, indecisive failure because he didn't shut down the country in those 3 weeks prior when there were only 15 cases nationwide in February. It's a bogus argument. If Trump had done this in February, these same people would be writing that he panicked, over reacted, and ruined millions of lives unnecessarily.

Anonymous said...

Biden can't win.

Commonsense said...

Yeah they got top people at the New York Times:

We found no pattern of inappropriate activity with women, except all the other inappropriate activity with women” Incredible

@nytimes

No other allegation about sexual assault surfaced in the course of our reporting, nor did any former Biden staff corroborate Reade’s allegation. We found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Biden, beyond hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable

anonymous said...

Blogger KansasDemocrat said...
Biden can't win.


A blessed Easter to all you dumb fucking trump lickers!!!!!!!!! Especially you cramps....and I hope you enjoy your sunday services and that none there are no typhoid mary's in your flock!!!!!!! BWAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!

anonymous said...

At least some courts have working brains...> I am sure our cramps will side with the idiots in the GOP!!!!


Kansas court strikes down GOP measure allowing in-person Easter church services
The Democratic governor and GOP legislators clashed over limits on in-person church services in what some people in the state h

anonymous said...

Another well written expose of why people like cramps are cultists and their opinions about science must be ignored!!!!!!

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By
Karen M. Masterson
Karen M. Masterson, author of "The Malaria Project," is a professor of science journalism at Stony Brook University.
March 25, 2020 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
Confirmation bias is the central conundrum in “fake news.” People with a lot of followers can say just about anything, and if they hit on a general bias in people’s desires, they’re believed. The one true desire unifying us all right now is for this coronavirus madness to end.
So when a lawyer and a blockchain investor recently mused on Twitter that the anti-malaria drug chloroquine was a cure for covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, they hit the jackpot in confirmation bias: They made the right people believe that a magic-bullet drug will rescue us. Elon Musk tweeted about it. The lawyer was invited on Fox News to talk about it. Then our Fox News-watching president amplified it in a news briefing and on Twitter, reaching millions and all major news outlets.
And now, as public health experts try to keep all 330 million Americans focused on social distancing, hand-washing and local health authorities’ region-specific instructions (so important as the infection curves unfold state by state), they also have to mitigate the damage done by false hope in a magic-bullet medication.
Already, Nigeria has multiple reports of poisonings of people self-medicating with chloroquine against covid-19. One man died Monday in Arizona after he and his wife ingested a chemical made of chloroquine phosphate — used to kill parasites on their pet fish — thinking they were protecting themselves from covid-19. His wife survived after vomiting up the chemical.
Hope in this 75-year-old drug started after recent French and Chinese studies were released, claiming that chloroquine could stop the coronavirus from becoming deadly. The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony S. Fauci, warned that these studies were small, ad hoc and anecdotal, not randomized and double blind (necessary to avoid biased results) — which means researchers have no reliable evidence that the treatment works.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/03/25/chloroquine-coronavirus-toxic-malaria/