5 minutes ago, Paul852 said:

Agreed. Pelosi's words are very heavy. Trump's words are even heavier.

It was the free market that alerted us as to how serious this virus was when all of the major sports organizations shut down. Many of them in the prime do their season. 

6 minutes ago, Paul852 said:

Agreed. Pelosi's words are very heavy. Trump's words are even heavier.

My point is there is a ton of blame to go around

11 minutes ago, Paul852 said:

Agreed. Pelosi's words are very heavy. Trump's words are even heavier.

Hence why I carefully phrased my statement regarding how Van minimized her voice.  But, you are right that the President carries the bully pulpit. 

12 minutes ago, Tnt4philly said:

I’m not saying that we should have done nothing. And though I would prefer zero mandatory shutdowns, it’s hard to make a case to have allowed restaurants and other businesses that rely on large amounts of people to operate like normal. I do think though, that most businesses would have done the right thing and made the necessary adjustments to make sure their customers and employees were safe. Yeah I know, not all of them, but not enough to justify punishing everyone. I trust a person who has a personal stake in their business and or livelihood to make better decisions than a person sitting in an office 10, 100, 1,000 miles away. I think it is forgotten that if the major sports organizations would have waited for the government to make their decision to shut down, it would have been too late. That is when I started to take this virus seriously. 

And I'm not saying we should shut down until there's a vaccine.  But you have a lot more faith in the ability of a lot of people to make safe decisions on a societal level, especially given the impact only a few places ignoring any regulation can have on national spread.  Now I don't exactly trust many politicians to make those decisions either FWIW given how much everyone has politicized this whole thing, which is why I lean towards following the recommendations of  national institutions like the CDC and NIH.  They're not going to get it right 100% and aren't without their biases, but it's literally what they were designed to do.

2 minutes ago, Tnt4philly said:

It was the free market that alerted us as to how serious this virus was when all of the major sports organizations shut down. Many of them in the prime do their season. 

There were warning signs WAY before sports shut down man.  Hell even TEW was talking about this months before that.  The free market has a lot of uses people, but people should have been well aware of the potential consequences of this thing well before Adam Silver made a decision.  C'mon now.

Pretty sure the only person in here, democrat or republican, who would be disappointed with Pelosi being kicked to the curb is @mr_hunt with his "GILFs of the Democratic party" fetish.

35 minutes ago, BBE said:

She is the Speaker of the House, two steps from the presidency and you minimize her statements...

No I didn't.  She represents 700K people.  That's a lot of people and she was completely irresponsible to say that.  However in San Francisco county, there are 2,179 cases and 36 deaths, so it looks like her constituents didn't take her advice to heart.  Not to mention, as Speaker she has no power to declare a national emergency, no power to institute the Defense Production Act, no power over the CDC or the FDA.  So her actual authority to implement measures to contain the virus as it struck was extremely limited.

Trump on the other hand, had the full powers of the executive branch, with authority over every agency.  He represents all 328M people and in the country there are 1.6M cases and 94K deaths.

To minimize Trump's comments/inaction by putting it on par with Pelosi's is much worse.

Having said that, if they were both out of office tomorrow, I'd be good with that.

3 minutes ago, VanHammersly said:

No I didn't.  She represents 700K people.  That's a lot of people and she was completely irresponsible to say that.  However in San Francisco county, there are 2,179 cases and 36 deaths, so it looks like her constituents didn't take her advice to heart.  Not to mention, as Speaker she has no power to declare a national emergency, no power to institute the Defense Production Act, no power over the CDC or the FDA.  So her actual authority to implement measures to contain the virus as it struck was extremely limited.

Trump on the other hand, had the full powers of the executive branch, with authority over every agency.  He represents all 328M people and in the country there are 1.6M cases and 94K deaths.

To minimize Trump's comments/inaction by putting it on par with Pelosi's is much worse.

Having said that, if they were both out of office tomorrow, I'd be good with that.

She is Speaker of the House and you just gloss over it.  I understand it doesn't fit your politics, but Nancy Pelosi is far more than just a representative of 700k people.

8 hours ago, DBW said:

hey millennials, You can start licking toilets again 

 

https://www.foxnews.com/health/cdc-now-says-coronavirus-does-not-spread-easily-via-contaminated-surfaces

My idiot sister, "They couldn't keep this a secret forever.  They wanted to keep this a secret because they are making too much $$$ hyping this whole thing up!"  I'm still trying to figure out who "they" are and how they are making all this $$$.

So I just read this thread and my head is about to explode. That saying, my wife is a Nurse Practitioner at the local hospital and was just laid off as well as many other employees. The hospital told them they will no longer match their 401 and will backdate that to January 1st, 2020. The CEO still makes his 1.5 million though. The layoffs come after the ones with COVID 19 have dwindled down to fewer patients, thanks to all who risked their lives to save them. Business need to start to reopen but with common sense. A business here opened up with it's 65 employees but one came to work with the virus. Now all of the employees are sent home once again for 2 weeks. A lady with the virus said she needed to eat. A few restaurants are open to max of 25 people but spaced apart. She went into one knowing she was sick, instead of having the food delivered. Now 5 more have the virus. Common sense has left the world and ignorance has replaced it.

5 minutes ago, Eaglesfandan said:

My idiot sister, "They couldn't keep this a secret forever.  They wanted to keep this a secret because they are making too much $$$ hyping this whole thing up!"  I'm still trying to figure out who "they" are and how they are making all this $$$.

Netflix and "Big Toilet Paper"

13 minutes ago, BBE said:

She is Speaker of the House and you just gloss over it.  I understand it doesn't fit your politics, but Nancy Pelosi is far more than just a representative of 700k people.

I'm not glossing it over.  She has a huge voice within the Democratic Party.  But, again, she has no authority over the CDC or the FDA and she has no power to institute the DPA.  So, unless you somehow believe that Trump would've taken her advice, her scope was extremely limited when it comes to actual policies that could've initially stemmed the tide.  Unfortunately for all of us, it was up to Trump to take the reigns.  But he didn't.  

And her words were stupid, but I didn't see a lot of liberals (the people who her words actually influence) downplaying the danger of the virus so they must not have taken her words to heart.  Trump's followers, on the other hand, have clearly taken his words to heart, fighting sound medical advice every step of the way in favor of conspiracies and miracle cures.  So let's not act like the real-world implications of what both of them have said are equal.

1 hour ago, paco said:

My point is there is a ton of blame to go around

For sure but in the end of the day the Head Coach (Trump) / Owner (Voters) are responsible.

Quote

Within hours of President Trump's decision to restrict travel from China on Jan. 31, top Democrats and media figures immediately derided the move as unnecessary and xenophobic -- and they are now beating a hasty retreat from that position as the coronavirus continues to ravage the economy and cause scores of deaths.

Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden led the way, quickly attacking what he called Trump's "record of hysteria, xenophobia and fear-mongering" after the travel restrictions were announced, and arguing that Trump "is the worst possible person to lead our country through a global health emergency." Biden, on Wednesday, didn't criticize the travel ban in any way, and instead accused Trump of "downplaying" the virus early on in remarks to Fox News.

"I had Biden calling me xenophobic," Trump told Fox News' "Hannity" on March 26. "He called me a racist, because of the fact that he felt it was a racist thing to stop people from China coming in."

In March, another Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., conspicuously insisted at a Fox News town hall that he wouldn't consider closing the U.S. border to prevent the spread of coronavirus, before condemning what he called the president's xenophobia. The Vermont senator has since taken to promoting "Medicare-for-All" and workers' rights amid the outbreak, while deferring to health experts on border closings.

For many news outlets, the about-face has been stark. A Jan. 31 article in The New York Times quoted epidemiologist Dr. Michael Osterholm as saying that Trump's decision to restrict travel from China was "more of an emotional or political reaction."

Weeks later, though, the paper reported that dozens of "nations across the world have imposed travel restrictions to curb the spread of the coronavirus," and did not criticize any of them for the move.

The Washington Post ran a story quoting a Chinese official asking for "empathy" and slamming the White House for acting "in disregard of WHO [World Health Organization] recommendation against travel restrictions."

 

In March, The Post finally acknowledged that critics accused China and WHO of "covering up or downplaying the severity of an infectious disease outbreak."

A week earlier, Vox confidently declared that "The evidence on travel bans for diseases like coronavirus is clear: They don’t work." The article originally referred to the "Wuhan coronavirus" in its headline, before left-wing journalists and Democrats argued that terminology was racist.

Vox also tweeted on Jan. 31: "Is this going to be a deadly pandemic? No." On Mar. 24, Vox deleted that tweet, writing that it "no longer reflects the current reality of the coronavirus story."

The Heritage Foundation's Lyndsey Fifield identified numerous other instances of prominent media outlets criticizing the travel ban, in many cases without issuing any kind of correction. For example, The Verge cautioned that Trump's policies "contradict advice from the World Health Organization (WHO), which said yesterday that countries should not restrict travel or trade in their response to the new virus."

BuzzFeed News asserted that "barring foreign travelers from China, along with making U.S. citizens self-quarantine at home ... likely violated civil rights laws, without leading to any real lowered risk of a U.S. outbreak," citing "global health law expert" Lawrence Gostin of Georgetown University.

STAT, a health and medicine news site, reported that the travel ban was similar to calls from "conservative lawmakers and far-right supporters of the president," even as "public health experts ... warn that the move could do more harm than good."

On Jan. 15, when the first American with coronavirus returned from China, House Democrats were ceremoniously carrying their articles of impeachment against Trump to the Senate. (The president was acquitted overwhelmingly on each article of impeachment.)

Nevertheless, this week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., accused Trump of endangering lives by wasting time. "As the president fiddles, people are dying,” Pelosi told CNN's Jake Tapper.

"The president, his denial at the beginning, was deadly," she claimed.

Media outlets and Democrats have also retreated from their previous talking points that Trump was recklessly proposing an antimalaria drug as a possible coronavirus treatment. The FDA has since approved the drug on an emergency basis for coronavirus treatment.

In recent days, the Biden team and other Democrats have moved on to other lines of attack, including claiming that Trump once referred to the coronavirus as a "hoax." That claim has been refuted by numerous fact-checkers, including The Post's, which found that Trump was clearly referring to Democrats' efforts to blame him for the pandemic, not the virus itself.

Additionally, numerous Democrats, including Biden, have falsely claimed that the president cut the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) budget. The Associated Press has noted that those claims "distort" the facts, largely because Congress blocked planned cuts.

 

Fox News has reported that the Obama administration also sought hundreds of millions of dollars in funding cuts to the CDC.

"Many in the scientific community beclowned themselves because their hatred for Trump blinded them -- and does to this day," Fifield said.

Meanwhile, even some prominent left-wing Democrats have come to the president's defense.

"This is not time to bicker," California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday on CNN. "Let me just be candid with you. I’d be lying to you to say that [Trump] hasn’t been responsive to our needs. He has. And so, as a sort of an offer of objectivity, I have to acknowledge that publicly."

Newsom added: "The fact is, every time that I've called the president, he's quickly gotten on the line. When we asked to get the support for that [USNS] Mercy ship in Southern California, he was able to direct that in real-time. We've got 2,000 of these field medical sites that are up, almost all operational now in the state, because of his support. Those are the facts."

 

So much blood  

26 minutes ago, DEagle7 said:

Netflix and "Big Toilet Paper"

I crack up when I can't get a serious answer from her though and she gets all defensive about her position on this whole thing.  Fing with her has been the most fun part of this whole lockdown for me entertainment wise.

26 minutes ago, VanHammersly said:

I'm not glossing it over.  She has a huge voice within the Democratic Party.  But, again, she has no authority over the CDC or the FDA and she has no power to institute the DPA.  So, unless you somehow believe that Trump would've taken her advice, her scope was extremely limited when it comes to actual policies that could've initially stemmed the tide.  Unfortunately for all of us, it was up to Trump to take the reigns.  But he didn't.  

And her words were stupid, but I didn't see a lot of liberals (the people who her words actually influence) downplaying the danger of the virus so they must not have taken her words to heart.  Trump's followers, on the other hand, have clearly taken his words to heart, fighting sound medical advice every step of the way in favor of conspiracies and miracle cures.  So let's not act like the real-world implications of what both of them have said are equal.

Do people seriously listen to politicians for medical advice?   Just asking.  Because i always thought thats what i pay a fortune in medical insurance for.  To get advice from real doctors.   

11 hours ago, mayanh8 said:

 

 

10 hours ago, mayanh8 said:

So... my wife has a part time job at a credit union making pennies and I keep trying to convince her to quit. I've been at it ever since she had the job but she just likes talking to people. 

In the past week she's caught on to the idea of quitting and collecting unemployment because:

1. She doesn't have the necessary hours in the day to teach our youngest. 

2. She'd make way more collecting unemployment than what she makes working. 

If for childcare purposes she could fall under that policy. In a normal situation, voluntary quit=no UC. 

7 hours ago, Ride the Walrus said:

Pay more.

 That $600/wk is the equivalent of a $15/hr job by itself. Let’s say you’re a call center rep making $16/hour. Their normal week would be $640. That would put their weekly UC rate at about $302.  Now tack an extra $600 on top of it for a total of $902. The difference is $262 a week, or $6.55/hour. So you think that person should be given a 41% raise to come back to work (which only gets him EQUAL to the amount being paid to watch Netflix and eat Cheetos)?  If that person has a great work ethic (which let’s be real is a 50/50 shot at best) maybe that would incentivize them, but realistically a lot of people you would have to pay MORE than they’re making on UC to come back. So what...a 50% raise? 60%?  It’s ridiculous. The $600/week was an awful idea from the start. 

6 minutes ago, SNOORDA said:

Do people seriously listen to politicians for medical advice?   Just asking.  Because i always thought thats what i pay a fortune in medical insurance for.  To get advice from real doctors.   

True.  I hope not.

32 minutes ago, paco said:

 

So much blood  

Source of your Brietbart article, Zucker?

19 hours ago, Smokesdawg said:

You are very quick to forget the dismantling of the pandemic response team and playbook, all in the name of government waste. 

We were talking about his early response and what anyone else, policy wise, would have done better. I don't see anyone currently who would have handled policies better. The tweets you posted ran thru the end of February when Fauci himself said no reason to change behavior at that point.

Now do I think we could have done a better job? Absolutely across the board. We especially failed the most vulnerable.

But I do think Trump did a good job for NYC getting them all they needed. But his demeanor and the stupid things he says I don't care for.

5 minutes ago, VanHammersly said:

Source of your Brietbart article, Zucker?

1 hour ago, BBE said:

Hence why I carefully phrased my statement regarding how Van minimized her voice.  But, you are right that the President carries the bully pulpit. 

You're reading too far into it . It was a fat joke

8 minutes ago, DMMVP said:

We were talking about his early response and what anyone else, policy wise, would have done better. I don't see anyone currently who would have handled policies better. The tweets you posted ran thru the end of February when Fauci himself said no reason to change behavior at that point.

Now do I think we could have done a better job? Absolutely across the board. We especially failed the most vulnerable.

But I do think Trump did a good job for NYC getting them all they needed. But his demeanor and the stupid things he says I don't care for.

So ignoring his actions leading up to the outbreak, and ignoring his behavior once the outbreak had already taken hold of the country (2 monumentally important periods of time when it comes to affecting the course of the outbreak in the USA by the way) you're asking is there something someone would have done better in just his early response that could have potentially lessened the impact of this outbreak on the country?

Yes.  Unequivocally yes. Even in the unreasonably small time frame you've decided to focus on he absolutely 100% should have handled things better.  That's not to take blame away from anyone else because there is plenty to go around, but saying that you don't see anyone who could have handled policies better is just batsheet insane.

38 minutes ago, DEagle7 said:

So ignoring his actions leading up to the outbreak, and ignoring his behavior once the outbreak had already taken hold of the country (2 monumentally important periods of time when it comes to affecting the course of the outbreak in the USA by the way) you're asking is there something someone would have done better in just his early response that could have potentially lessened the impact of this outbreak on the country?

Yes.  Unequivocally yes. Even in the unreasonably small time frame you've decided to focus on he absolutely 100% should have handled things better.  That's not to take blame away from anyone else because there is plenty to go around, but saying that you don't see anyone who could have handled policies better is just batsheet insane.

I was responding to a conversation in which tweets through February were named as proof. Not my timeframe.

Pelosi was inviting people out. NYC leadership waited until mid March. Failure across the board and no one in government was clamoring for shutdowns at that point.

What policies should have been enacted by Trump? You literally wrote two paragraphs with little substance.

44 minutes ago, Paul852 said:

You're reading too far into it . It was a fat joke

There is a definite meta to your statement. 

1 minute ago, DMMVP said:

Pelosi was inviting people out. NYC leadership waited until mid March. Failure across the board and no one in government was clamoring for shutdowns at that point.

What policies should have been enacted by Trump? You literally wrote two paragraphs with little substance.

To me its very clear where Trump F'ed up.  He claims, probably correctly, that Obama's "playbook" was deficient for this scenario and the stockpile was outdated.  Well he had a good two months to get that plan revised and check on the stockpile didn't he?  Instead the first month of the pandemic was wasted juggling the changes while New York burned.