EXPOSED: The WHO's Bungled Covid Response

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

No drop believes he’s responsible for the flood. This pretty much sums up Ajax’s philosophy.

- Doc

[_EAllusion]

Trump just announced he is suspending by executive order all immigration to the United States. This is under the guise of COVID protection, but given that the United States is the worst country in the world when it comes to COVID, that seems like a sham basis to try to assert dictatorial control over immigration policy to enact far right preferences under the guise of emergency.

Anywho, we'll have to be on pins and needles to see if this is a further collapse of the American order or one of those situations where it gets walked back while Trump angrily denies having ever said it.

[_Res Ipsa]

You're asking how I got a late November date. These papers support that date range for the development of the novel virus. Mid to late Novemberish is the media n point in the estimates based on phylogenetic mapping. The support that there was an apparent novel disease outbreak in the region that intelligence discovered via intercepted communication and shared is just independent reporting from a few blue chip sources. It seems that you find that implausible because you expect to see more medical records from that time period showing up, but I'm not sure why their absence is precluded given the suppressive efforts the Chinese government is known to have engaged in at the outset of the outbreak.

No, you’re missing the point. My point is that reports that the Trump administration was developing intelligence on a disease outbreak in late November is not credible. The symptomatic patients in early December were only discovered by after the fact review of medical records. The papers you cite posit a first infection as early as late November, with a wide range of dates at the 95% confidence level. But even if the first person was infected in late November, how the hell did an American intelligence service notice a single infected person in China? Or even a handful? Why would anyone find a few pneumonia cases in China worth reporting on?

[_EAllusion]

[quote]No, you’re missing the point. My point is that reports that the Trump administration was developing intelligence on a disease outbreak in late November is not credible. The symptomatic patients in early December were only discovered by after the fact review of medical records. The papers you cite posit a first infection as early as late November, with a wide range of dates at the 95% confidence level. But even if the first person was infected in late November, how the hell did an American intelligence service notice a single infected person in China? Or even a handful? Why would anyone find a few pneumonia cases in China worth reporting on?[/quote]

This presumes faithful and accurate access to Chinese records of the area in the relevant time frame, which is not something you should suppose to be the case. Once you remove that presumption, it is plausible that there was chatter in Chinese communications about a cluster of unusual pneumonia's in late Nov. that the US could've picked up. It's not at first blush something you can dismiss nonsense because you don't have medical records showing a cluster of symptoms at that time. The reporting could be wrong, but it's not prima facie ridiculous.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/ ... -one-year/

"Although there is still much we don’t know about the coronavirus, we know enough to say that it is far more dangerous and deadly than the flu. It took twelve months and 61 million infections for the H1N1 swine flu to kill 12,500 Americans in 2009–10. The Centers for Disease Control estimated that the seasonal flu killed 34,200 Americans during the 2018–19 flu season. In 2019, car crashes killed 38,800 Americans."

iT's JUst tH3 fLoO BrO!!

- Doc

[_Icarus]

Bob Barr wants legal action against Governors who are enforcing lockdowns

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... f=ixxiOWGT

[_Jersey Girl]

Bob Barr wants legal action against Governors who are enforcing lockdowns

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... f=ixxiOWGT

Good to know we're under the sound leadership and advisement of people like Barr and Trump who can't interpret the data in front of their own faces.

[_EAllusion]

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/2 ... age-197983

Absolutely pathetic. There is no practical difference between being actively in favor of this and offering such spineless opposition.

In the words of Adam Serwer, "Democrats in Congress are doing no oversight over Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic, and have handed Trump trillions with no strings attached, but at least they’re also caving on everything else."

The Democrats plan, as best I can tell, is to hope they win in November. They appear so terrified of doing anything that might upset their slight polling leads that maybe they think acting as a functioning bulwark to unfathomable corruption and incompetence or appearing to oppose or delay Republican bailout preferences is bad politics. Given that they are also doing nothing to make sure that winning in November is even possible when running against people who are quite open about their wiliness to cheat elections, this plan doesn't seem entirely thought through. So maybe it's just about keeping up appearances while feeding from the same trough.

It's also quite telling that this party spent a year arguing against meaningful Congressional oversight of Trump for the more important work of passing messaging bills that had no chance in hell of passing the Senate now isn't passing anything resembling their supposed messaging at the exact moment they were gifted the leverage to do so. It's like a mirror image of "repeal and replace" Republicans turning out, to no one's surprise, not having any actual replacement once they got the chance.

[_Res Ipsa]

No, you’re missing the point. My point is that reports that the Trump administration was developing intelligence on a disease outbreak in late November is not credible. The symptomatic patients in early December were only discovered by after the fact review of medical records. The papers you cite posit a first infection as early as late November, with a wide range of dates at the 95% confidence level. But even if the first person was infected in late November, how the hell did an American intelligence service notice a single infected person in China? Or even a handful? Why would anyone find a few pneumonia cases in China worth reporting on?

This presumes faithful and accurate access to Chinese records of the area in the relevant time frame, which is not something you should suppose to be the case. Once you remove that presumption, it is plausible that there was chatter in Chinese communications about a cluster of unusual pneumonia's in late Nov. that the US could've picked up. It's not at first blush something you can dismiss nonsense because you don't have medical records showing a cluster of symptoms at that time. The reporting could be wrong, but it's not prima facie ridiculous.

Well, at least you've gone from asserting it as a fact to claiming it's plausible. That's progress. Still, the problem is that all the evidence we have is inconsistent with the existence of a "cluster" of unusual pneumonias in late November. The two anonymously sourced media articles are simply contrary to all the facts we have. In fact, to take those articles at face value is walk deep into conspiracy theory territory -- that alarming reports were disseminated to Israel and NATO and nobody said or did anything in response. I would describe taking these two media articles at face value and using them as the basis to even suggest that there was a cluster in late November that was large enough and unusual enough to attract the attention of U.S. Intelligence agencies as ridiculous.

[_EAllusion]

[quote="Res Ipsa" post_id=1222408 time=1587502074 user_id=16705]

Well, at least you've gone from asserting it as a fact to claiming it's plausible. That's progress. Still, the problem is that all the evidence we have is inconsistent with the existence of a "cluster" of unusual pneumonias in late November. The two anonymously sourced media articles are simply contrary to all the facts we have. In fact, to take those articles at face value is walk deep into conspiracy theory territory -- that alarming reports were disseminated to Israel and NATO and nobody said or did anything in response. I would describe taking these two media articles at face value and using them as the basis to even suggest that there was a cluster in late November that was large enough and unusual enough to attract the attention of U.S. Intelligence agencies as ridiculous.
[/quote]

Neither report claims that "alarming reports" were sent to allies that did nothing. It's perfectly consistent to imagine that intelligence reports initially included a reference to "there's signs of a disease cluster here" in a body of information without that rising to the level of alarm because "dangerous things on the radar" has a lot of ground to cover in intelligence sharing. The ABC reporting paints a picture of initial intelligence awareness in late November followed by increasing awareness up the chain to the point that it's reasonable to surmise it was part of information for Presidential briefing by mid/late December.