Trump Now the Leading Cause of Death in the US
When Trump was elected, I predicted, and many of our readers agreed, that Trump’s presidency would not end well and that his supporters would have to explain to their children and grandchildren why they enabled this charlatan to take the White House. Well, his presidency is not quite over, but we’re there. Trump’s gross negligence, erratic behavior, and malignant narcissism have take their toll and continue to do so. COVID-19 just became the leading cause of death in the US, and has reached that point for one primary reason – Donald J. Trump. His negligence has been well documented. His idiotic declarations, then reversals of those declarations, have shown him to be the complete fool he is, and who is unimaginably ignorant, cruel, and unstable. And his foolishness has been on full display through national television on a daily basis.
After declaring himself having “total” control over the states and ready to punish governors who don’t do what he orders, he reversed himself yesterday, issuing “guidelines” which were simply pablum for mass consumption, dumping ALL responsibility back on the governors including testing. Testing has been just one of Trump’s massive failures, but is probably the most dangerous. Lifting stay at home orders without massive testing is nothing short of negligent homicide. Since Trump woke up from his Stupid Coma in mid-March he has promised massive testing. Those promises are also lies, and he has missed every single date he has established for availability of testing. Yesterday, The Atlantic published the results of their own studies that showed that the curve of infection in the US is shown to be “flattening” only because we’re not testing enough. In that article, one key quote was, “The high positivity rate also suggests that new cases in the U.S. have plateaued only because the country has hit a ceiling in its testing capacity.” That means that cases show to be declining only because we don’t have enough testing. Even as Trump has failed so miserably at leading the federal testing effort, he has incessantly lied about it. Even yesterday, one of his many lies was this –
“We built the most advanced and robust testing anywhere in the world and we’ve done more testing than any country anywhere in the world.”
That statement is a lie. A dangerous lie. The US government is bungling the effort to get out testing, both infection and antibody, not because everyone at CDC and FDA have suddenly become incompetent, but because that is by design. From the very beginning, Trump has tried “to keep my numbers down”. To Trump, life and death issues are just a gameshow that he has to “win”. That’s why he wanted to keep a cruise ship full of at risk Americans offshore so they wouldn’t add to his infection “score”. The Atlantic said that our “test positivity” rate in the US is 20 percent. That is a terrible rate, but it is that terrible because most states are only testing those who are symptomatic. We know that asymptomatic Coronavirus carriers can infect many others. Why then, are we not testing far more extensively to identify those people? We are not testing because Trump believes that will make him look bad.
Yesterday, Trump reversed himself on “reopening the economy” because someone finally got through to him that his claim of total authority over the states guaranteed he will be blamed for the disaster that will ensue by lifting restrictions too early. By minimizing testing, infections are grossly underreported justifying lifting restrictions when they should be left in place.
The only way we can begin to lift restrictions on stay at home and social distancing is through massive testing. First, we need to test to get infected people isolated and treated. Second, we need to identify those who were infected but have recovered and carry antibodies. That can only be accomplished by massive antibody testing. Besides critical care, massive testing is the number one goal we should be trying to achieve, but we’re not. Why? Because in Trump’s gameshow world, the most important thing is to report the lowest numbers and avoid responsibility so he can “win”.
And that, dear readers, is ACTUALLY getting people killed.
Kurt Vonnegut said this first about another President but it seems to fit here just as well, or maybe even better:
The President is so dumb that is wouldn’t surprise me if he thought Peter Pan was a wash basin in a whorehouse.
Truer words were never spoken!
1His majesty is a master huckster who continues to lure weak minded folks in. Just this morning the head of the SBC seminary in Louisville, who was against Trump in 2016, has endorsed him and said he will vote GOP forever due to their stance on abortion and judges. We like to think everyone sees what we do, but this will be an uphill climb and knock down brawl from today until November 3rd.
2Changing the subject a tad, what about the absolutely dreadful things said by FakeDoctor Oz and FakePsychologist Dr. Phil? Oprah foisted both of these men on us and she needs to sort them out.
3Jefe, those who have no symptoms test negative.
MSNBC sometimes has Laurie Garrett on. She was on Lawrence O’Donnell last night and pretty much said testing will only show you who has it at that minute. It will tell you nothing about those carrying. She is informative on matters pandemic.
4@Crone – That is not true. There are those who tested positive who had no symptoms. Some didn’t develop symptoms, some developed symptoms later. https://www.propublica.org/article/what-we-need-to-understand-about-asymptomatic-carriers-if-were-going-to-beat-coronavirus
5I’ve been telling my husband that the lack of sufficient testing is not a bug, it’s a feature. Trump is totally focused on keeping his numbers down. To him that’s “winning”. I believe he will use every tool at his disposal to keep the U.S. from ever having sufficient testing during this pandemic.
6Here’s what frightens me: In South Korea, where testing has been just about universal, 163 people who recovered have the virus again. And we’re not close to a vaccine or an effective drug therapy.
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/17/836747242/in-south-korea-a-growing-number-of-covid-19-patients-test-positive-after-recover
7@5 I stand corrected.
But I still think there is no chance in hell testing will be forthcoming that is 100% correct or available to anyone who wants it. And as long as long some people asymptomatic test positive and people showing symptoms test negative and part of the time the test are wrong, what’s a mother to do?
8Crone@8–I agree. The nephew of a friend tested negative (with symptoms). Two weeks later he died.
9No one should ever again believe a republican who claims to be pro-life. This is a death cult, and their chosen One is a mass murderer.
10There are some very scary things lurking here.
111) 60% of the crew members on the Theodore Roosevelt tested positive for Covid-19 and showed no symptoms. Mark Esper finally got a clue, but he has no spine so it won’t help much.
2) Crops are being plowed under in the Rio Grande Valley (Sandridge? You have any info or updates on this?), haven’t heard anything about CA yet. Smithfield pork processing plant closed in South Dakota; JBS packing plant closed in Nebraska; large egg hatchery closed in Grand Island, Nebraska. I don’t like the picture this connect the dots is drawing.
3) People who die in the hospital may be diagnosed with Covid-19. People who die at home just die. The undercount is immense. It’s not going to be meaningful to some of these morons until it is in their own homes. What a pathetic bunch of losers we have become!
Aggieland Liz. Saw on the news farmers plowing under acres of green beans. Said they were for restaurants that were now closed. Made me wonder why they didn’t give to food banks.
12Aggieland Liz @11 [glad to see you back here], A large impact on Valley ag [though I no longer live there, but not too far away]. CA, FL, etc to follow.
Labor constrictions in all crops, veggies, citrus, sugar; maybe later on cotton/sorghum, planting should be wrapping up. Due to various reasons: ‘stay-at-home’, deportations and fear w/the large illegal workforce, distribution probs, processing plant probs, etc. A lot of veggies come from Mexico and get processed in the Valley, much tighter controls now.
— The total Valley citrus crop was destroyed [literally] this season due to an infestation of cross-border ‘mexican fruit flies’.
All Valley citrus exports were prohibited, then growers ordered to pick and bury the fruit, it’s possible that the groves will be ordered cut down and burned. [this bites, I jes luvs my Rio Reds and oranges+]
–There is a ‘climate change/global warming’ connection here.–
This is a major BFD as citrus built into a major Valley ag biz over the last 100+ years.
https://www.valleymorningstar.com/2020/04/04/invisible-enemy/
The huge Valley sugar crop may be affected too, another BFD.
HEB has recently imposed purchase limits on some groceries. I was surprised by the ‘pasta sauce’ limit of 4, as I use a lot. Eggs, etc too.
I look for some real food shortages and rationing coming up soon. Watch the Rethugs dodge and tapdance on that.
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Of course the number of COVID19 cases, deaths are being under-reported. Without adequate testing WASF.
trump is, intentionally, more dangerous and lethal than all past, present, and future ‘terrorists’. Why isn’t he in Gitmo?
The COVID19 US death toll has exceeded the number of Korean War KIA’s, it will soon pass those of Vietnam; now 35K and climbing fast.
Worse stats than any other nation [and getting worse every day], and Comrade Bonespurs is constantly bragging on his COVID19 ‘war record’.
13After the crippling economic damage Cheney-Bush wreaked on USAUSA#1, trump is delivering the coup-de-grace to us in the future global economy.
In the end, the US may test more people than any other country, because because COVID-19 is out of control here. At this point, I’m not sure how we get enough testing to track all f the outbreaks. South Korea has great testing, but for now, they don’t need to test that much. They got things under control.
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