Your next 2020 Democratic presidential primary thread: Now we're serious

i was gonna say that bernie should make it a big point in the debate given how it's starting to grow into a full blown panic and pharma corps apparently have little incentive to spend on vaccination research

I'm having similar thoughts KM

idk the fact that you might have to pay over $1000 just to get *screened* for this virus which actively disincentives people from getting tested seems like a good point in Bernie's favor

as of yesterday, i think only 3 states (IL + two others i forgot) even have the capability to test for it

Given his administration has no problem rounding up and caging people who *aren't* sick ...

and the official word from the president and his cronies is "everything is fine, buy stocks on the dip"

bernie + democrats should be bashing the living fuck out of this on the campaign trail. talk about trump's dismantling of the very administrative infrastructure that was built to confront a pandemic like this

he did it for no fucking reason, and now he's having to ask congress to authorize funds for a pool of money that shouldn't been taken away in the first place

xpost tbf "go shopping" was W.'s response to 9/11, and that solved everything.

tracer posted this earlier today: recommended reading

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/31/coronavirus-china-trump-united-states-public-health-emergency-response/

The epidemic control efforts unfolding today in China—including placing some 100 million citizens on lockdown, shutting down a national holiday, building enormous quarantine hospitals in days’ time, and ramping up 24-hour manufacturing of medical equipment—are indeed gargantuan. It’s impossible to watch them without wondering, “What would we do? How would my government respond if this virus spread across my country?”

For the United States, the answers are especially worrying because the government has intentionally rendered itself incapable. In 2018, the Trump administration fired the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command, including the White House management infrastructure. In numerous phone calls and emails with key agencies across the U.S. government, the only consistent response I encountered was distressed confusion. If the United States still has a clear chain of command for pandemic response, the White House urgently needs to clarify what it isIf the United States still has a clear chain of command for pandemic response, the White House urgently needs to clarify what it is—not just for the public but for the government itself, which largely finds itself in the dark

(disregard if you're already annoyed by reading about coronavirus, and like rush limbaugh, want to think that it's equivalent to the common cold)

― But guess what? Nobody gives a toot!😂 (Karl Malone), Tuesday, February 25, 2020 1:23 PM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ohhhh cool, I was just this morning wondering when the CoronaTruthers were gonna start seeping out of the woodwork.

they'll probably come out on ilx too, i'd guess. not "truthers" but the "it's not a big deal" crowd. it's a very natural response, and i remember catching a bunch of shit when the ebola stuff was happening. a lot of people are naturally inclined to see these things as a boy who cried wolf situation

A friend of mine, who is of Chinese descent, is convinced that the mortality rate has been blown out of proportion by Western authorities for the sole purpose of making China look bad.

He's also a Big Brother and Uyghur 'reeducation' camp apologist, so 🤷.

It is vital to remember that the utter-catastrophists are wrong, then it means the it's-a-nothingburger contingent must be right. in every situation, there are only these two options.

Truer words were never spoken.

My immediate response to that line of commentary is: are there people who benefit from blowing this out of proportion? If you can't explain who those people are and what their angle might be, maybe just stfu, I dunno.

(Re: the 'blown out of proportion' hot take)

it's certainly the job of people who track diseases to paint a picture of the worst case scenario because the worst case is a very possible scenario. But it does make one wonder whether or not you should actually panic. I"m not panicking, but we did cancel our spring break trip just to avoid airports and planes for the time being.

xp 'Western imperialism' would be his answer.

we've seen what happens in situations where we were prepared (y2k computer issues, etc) and what happens when we've failed to keep on our toes (9/11 intelligence being left in a folder, catastrophic failure of infrastructure and support systems during multiple hurricanes) and the response seems to be that people don't give a shit unless their lives are personally affected

people are incredibly bad at risk/reward calculations, and if they didn't succumb to a risk, they assume they're not reaping any benefits -- because the benefit is that your life continues on

imo you could argue that humanity is even worse off when the worst does happen. our government tortured people in search of facts that simply didn't exist in order to solicit confessions implicating collaborators and future planned attacks, when those were pure fictions

you can't waterboard people until you've undone 9/11, but that's exactly what was going on. you can't undo a catastrophic event with future actions

preparing for the worst in this case would actually all be beneficial. bitches should be washing hands more anyway.

yeah I mean wash your hands and don't go to China

bad reason to buy vodka though.

I've been looking for an excuse to start bodyslamming douchebags who leave the restroom without washing their hands, and I think I've finally found one.

(NB, I will not be bodyslamming anyone anywhere but in my mind, but still)

... when there are so many other better reasons to buy vodka you can choose from.

Just choke down some Purell, it has a multitude of uses.

imo every major urban center should be running drills at the very least annually where they pop up temporary expanded facilities, run through quarantine protocol, make sure communication lines to the CDC are dedicated and proofed against disruption by natural or intentional factors, and have a full set of mock patients come through

bodyslamming douchebags who leave the restroom without washing their hands

can we also do this to anyone who uses a hand dryer?

Has the USA experienced widespread urban quarantines since the 1919 flu epidemic? I'm not aware of any. The necessary 'public health and safety' laws are still on the books, though.

most restrooms in NYC have only hand dryers, i think?

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/25/us/politics/pete-buttigieg-amy-klobuchar-debate.html

“I wish everyone was as perfect as you, Pete."

man, political reporting is so depressing to read. Fuck these people.

here's a lol

When your consultants watched a lot of game footage pic.twitter.com/Gf5ZkkNe0Z

— Sawyer Hackett (@SawyerHackett) February 25, 2020

At work, we have hand sanitizer dispensers on the walls, so I tend to use those instead of washing my hands after a pee, IF nobody is around. If someone else is in the bathroom I do a cursory hand wash, and then use the purell anyway. Do you know why? Touching my genitalia isn’t the dirty part. It’s touching the door handle

Yeah I pull the door open with my genitalia to avoid getting my hands germy

Touching my genitalia isn’t the dirty part. It’s touching the door handle

otm. where there are paper towels (s.o.p. in medical faciltites) the trick is to use the damp paper towel to open the door, then toss it in the waste can as you exit.

proper hand washing is a more effective antiviral than sanitizer gel

the best bathrooms have doors that open outwards so you can just use your feet to open the door on the way out

most restrooms in NYC have only hand dryers, i think?

but really I just light my Bernie Sanders votive candle to ward off sickness

i wash my genitalia after touching it with my hands

Always good to give it a quick rub down

proper hand washing is a more effective antiviral than sanitizer gel

when proper hand washing requires me to make contact with a ton of skanky fomites, I’ll take my chances with the expensive alcohol gel

ideally you apply the sanitizer to your hands and penis, then wash hands, then open door, then use hand sanitizer station directly outside the door

proper hand washing is a more effective antiviral than sanitizer gel

This is misleading, because "proper hand washing" means something like two minutes of sudsing and scrubbing up to your elbows, and no one does that. There was an interesting New Yorker article about Purell (and the like) several years back:

Gojo has never marketed Purell as an anti-soap; indeed, the company also sells some of the most widely used soaps in health care, food service, and other industries. But, starting in the nineteen-nineties, a number of studies demonstrated that alcohol hand rubs could be more effective than ordinary washing. In 2002, the C.D.C., after reviewing the accumulating science, rewrote its “Guideline for Hand Hygiene in Health-Care Settings.” The C.D.C.’s report concluded that alcohol-based products were “more effective for standard handwashing or hand antisepsis . . . than soap or antimicrobial soaps,” and that alcohol-based products were better at killing drug-resistant pathogens than even soaps and detergents containing powerful antibacterial agents. Seven years later, the World Health Organization issued similar guidelines, and said that alcohol rubs should now be considered the preferred cleaning agent for all medical workers, including surgeons, whose hands are not visibly soiled.

In 2005, the Army, in conjunction with Gojo, conducted a study of the efficacy of Purell outside health care. (The military is a rich source of subjects for such studies, because it consists of large cohorts of closely matched individuals who do what they’re told.) Historically, illness and infection have felled more soldiers than weapons have. The Army had already imposed a stringent hygiene protocol for new recruits, but illness-related absenteeism during boot camp remained high and was costly. Arbogast, who worked on the study, told me that the Army “didn’t want soldiers to get partway through the training and then get knocked out due to illness.” Gojo installed Purell wall dispensers in mess halls and other strategic locations, and designed a bottle that would fit in a uniform pocket, survive a parachute jump, blend in with camouflage, and not stand out when viewed with a night-vision scope. (It looks like a small green hand grenade.) After thirteen weeks, the Army found that two test battalions had experienced forty per cent less respiratory illness than the control group, forty-eight per cent less gastrointestinal illness, and forty-four per cent less lost training time. The military is now a significant Gojo customer. Michael Dolan, who is the company’s vice-president for science and technology, said, “It’s hard to go through boot camp today without being exposed to Purell.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/03/04/hands-across-america

Yeah that article is the primary inspiration of our household antimicrobial doctrine

Brb, looking for a reason to use "boy who cried Wolf Blitzer" in conversation somehow