The Coronavirus

[Eric the Green]

(05-08-2020, 08:58 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(05-07-2020, 08:59 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The wikipedia pages do not have up to date data. What I mentioned was what things were starting to be like, not what they were over the last month before today. That is the point you missed, due to your own wishful thinking. The point is that these states have Republican MIS-governors who have just started opening up their economies now, following Drump's wishes. According to the figures on worldometer today, they have more new cases than before, many more than Louisiana which has a Democratic governor and is proceeding more carefully. Louisiana was in the top 5 states and getting worse a month or so ago. Now it is 11th. Washington was first and is now 18th. Those states with responsible governors have declined relative to the other states.

The virus came on planes from tourists in Europe to New York and New Jersey and Massachusetts and spread from there across many states with people who travel and have money (mostly blue states). This happened because Trump did not stop or test people coming into the USA from Europe in time. Red states are more rural and poor and so did not get infected as quickly. So far India and China have far more people and far fewer cases because of the policies they pursued. The USA, UK and Brazil have the most new cases now because of their Trumpist policies and leaders. Sweden has more than its share because it did not lock down. Russia has the most new cases next to the USA now, but far fewer deaths, and far more testing so far.

I don't wish for the USA to catch up with Spain and the UK in total deaths per capita. But it probably will. Deaths take longer to happen than new cases. We don't have a better testing program than most EU countries. Our per capita or per million pop testing is lower than many of them.

Germany has had the best testing program in the EU, and has far fewer deaths and is declining in the "standings" among countries for cases. China, Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, New Zealand, Australia and some European countries are having the smallest number of new cases and deaths now.

If you refuse to check worldometer, then your data is out of date. They have stats for the world, the USA, the states, and even counties within many states now. My county of Santa Clara, the first on the west coast to be infected, is doing well right now. Los Angeles is doing better now than it was, and so is New York. NY only had less than 4000 new cases today, after having about 10,000 a day for many weeks. And yet the total new cases per day for the USA is still at 30,000. So the virus is increasing in other places besides New York and California now.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

We'll see what happens in the coming weeks in the states that open up too soon.

I like how whenever something bad happens to a blue state, you blame Republicans - like blaming Trump for late cutoff of travel from Europe for the northeast's problems - but when something good happens to a blue state, you credit Democrats - as with the relatively good results on the West Coast.  At a minimum if you blame Trump's later shutdown of travel from Europe for the fact that the East Coast did worse, you should credit Trump's earlier shutdown of travel from China for the fact that the West coast did better!

I do like the fact that you generally pay attention to the facts, even when they aren't convenient - unlike most other politically blue posters on this site, who are just in denial about any facts that don't support their agenda.

When I look at the Worldometer graphs, they cut off at May 1, so they are hardly up to date.  Maybe you are looking at some blip in the figures that haven't made it to Wikipedia yet, but if so, we'll see it in a couple of weeks, as you suggest.

For my part, I think Georgia could have problems.  The trend lines in Texas might steepen, but given how minor the whole Covid-19 issue is there, the benefits of raising the lockdown will be far greater there than an increase in the Covid-19 trend lines.  Let's not forget that an economic shutdown kills people too.

Florida I think will be okay, as their new cases have a falling trend at present, and they're not reopening the blue counties where that would cause a problem.

Trump does get credit for cutting off travel from China, which he endlessly does for himself. It was also a bit late, however. And those states and countries with effective shutdowns have done the best, there's no doubt about that. If the virus cases continue to rise, the shutdowns will be re-imposed.

The worldometer is up to date to the minute. If you click on yesterday, you can see the totals as of Midnight GMT for each day. We'll see what the trend is, but Florida also saw a rise in new cases yesterday, much more than Louisiana which is close to it in total cases along with Texas and Georgia. If you follow the numbers daily you can get an idea of the trend without a graph or make your own. That the USA continues to get 30,000 new cases each day is clear. You can see the numbers for the states and the countries each day. The Trumpist countries of the USA, UK and Brazil which shut down too late now have the fastest-rising number of cases, along with Trump sponsor Putin's Russia. The UK is now second place in total deaths.

If the economic shutdown kills people, it will be because the Republican congress has not provided enough support, and because Trump has withheld funds. The congress voted 2.2 trillion dollars. I would have thought that would be sufficient. These funds were to be provided to businesses as loans, which would be grants if they kept paying their employees, but many did not get them, while many large corporations who could have afforded paying their workers anyway did get them. In a depression, the federal government is supposed to provide relief. Trump has blown this crisis and should pay the price at the polls. He is today's Herbert Hoover. He is the USA's Louis XVI, the "executive that doesn't act." He wants to reopen the economy without providing the testing nationwide that is needed for this.

But the question is whether Trump and state Republican rulers will succeed in November 2020 in suppressing the vote. They succeeded in Wisconsin, and Trump's Courts allowed it. That is a huge signal that our democracy is in severe danger. The Democrats won that primary election in a judicial race only because the Republicans weren't holding a primary. Trump wants to let the post office go under, and he wishes mail in voting to be suppressed. He and his cohorts want to limit early voting and make people vote at an inadequate number of polling places on election day in the midst of the pandemic, effectively telling voters to risk their lives to vote. This in addition to states with Republican governors or others who could manage to purge rolls unfairly. 

If the vote is suppressed, the pitchforks and guillotines should come out and the people should do civil disobedience to stop the government from working. It will be time for an American Marseillaise. Whether such a revolt and general strike would work is another question. If Trump loses, then his attempt to rally his gun-toting supporters to bring off a coup in January will have to be defeated, and it could be bloody.