May 242020
 


Walker Evans Street Scene, Vicksburg, Mississippi 1936

 

Trump: ‘I Have A Chance To Break The Deep State’ (Attkisson)
The Influential Evangelical Group Mobilizing To Reelect Trump (IC)
Over 4,300 Virus Patients Sent To NY Nursing Homes (AP)
Cuomo Tries To Deflect Blame Of Nursing Home COVID19 Deaths On To Trump (Fox)
Russia Reports 153 Coronavirus Deaths, Highest Daily Toll Yet (R.)
Dominic Cummings Must Quit Over Lockdown Drive – Tory MP (R.)
UK To Require Employers To Pay 20-30% Of Furloughed Wage Cost (R.)
Project Leader: Oxford’s COVID19 Vaccine Trial Has 50% Chance Of Success (R.)
Powell’s Problem? He Can’t Print Jobs – DDMB (TA)
Judge Lifts Stay On Sale Of Venezuela’s Us Refineries (AP)
Judge In Flynn Case Hires Lawyer To Defend His Decision Not To Drop It (JTN)
Personal #Coronavirus Update 03 May 23rd 2020 (Steve Keen)

 

 

Global new cases in past 24 hours: 101,325

New cases in:

• US + 21,475
• Russia + 8,599
• Brazil + 15,016
• India + 6,274
• Peru + 4,056

 

 

 

 

 

Cases 5,427,555 (+ 101,325 from yesterday’s 5,326,230)

Deaths 344,417 (+ 4,034 from yesterday’s 340,383)

 

 

 

From Worldometer yesterday evening -before their day’s close-

 

 

From Worldometer

 

 

From SCMP:

 

 

From COVID19Info.live:

 

 

 

 

Hope you won’t mind if we don’t hold our breath.

Trump: ‘I Have A Chance To Break The Deep State’ (Attkisson)

President Trump says he is making inroads in taming Washington’s permanent bureaucracy, which he likes to call the “deep state.” “What am I doing? I’m fighting the deep state,” Trump said in an exclusive interview with Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson. “I’m fighting the swamp…If it keeps going the way it’s going, I have a chance to break the deep state. It’s a vicious group of people. It’s very bad for our country.” In the wide-ranging interview with Full Measure set to air Sunday, Trump also addressed the debate over whether religious services should remain closed. Calling them “essential services,” he says it’s time for them to open.


[..] Also addressed in the interview: the controversy over using the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine for coronavirus prevention or treatment. Trump says he just finished a two week course of of the drug for preventive purposes after two White House staffers were diagnosed with coronavirus. “I’m still here, to the best of my knowledge,” he says. The president also talked about the strengths and weaknesses of his political opponent in the presidential race, Joe Biden, his own Twitter practices, the new Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, and the scandal over FBI surveillance abuses. “That was the insurance policy,” Trump tells Attkisson, speaking of the FBI’s targeting of the Trump campaign in 2016 and the transition team in early 2017. “[They thought ‘Clinton is] going to win but just in case she doesn’t, we have an insurance policy.’ And now I beat them on the insurance policy. And now they’re being exposed.”

Read more …

Those who target old ladies in arcane churches are more tech-savvy than those who target more tech savvy people.

• United in Purpose is a group on the religious right that worked to grow evangelical support for Donald Trump in 2016.
• UIP’s 2020 strategy, as discussed on an April call, is to target religious Latino and African American voters.
• Ralph Reed boasted of “data partners” who had identified 26 million key voters in battleground states, about three-fourths of whom they could target via Facebook.

The Influential Evangelical Group Mobilizing To Reelect Trump (IC)

“The covid virus has been a gift from God,” began Ken Eldred. “The kingdom of God advances through a series of glorious victories, cleverly disguised as disasters.” In response to the coronavirus pandemic, Eldred noted, millions of Americans are turning to Christ, Walmart is selling out of Bibles, and online church broadcasts have hit record numbers. But while religiosity was growing, there have been setbacks from the disease outbreak. “Satan has been busy too,” Eldred, a major donor to evangelical and Republican causes, explained. “The virus has messed up many of our plans involving our in-person meetings with voters.” And the rise of mail-in ballots, Eldred added, would undercut voter identification laws, which have been a pillar of GOP election strategy.


“The children of the darkness put early voting into this CARES package,” he grumbled, a reference to the $400 million for election assistance programs to states included in the $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief bill. Following a brief prayer led by Eldred, in which he declared that “we have now turned the corner on the virus” and asked God for an end to coronavirus deaths, the business of the call got started: How Christian voters can be a force to reelect Donald Trump. The call, held in mid-April, one in a series of meetings sponsored by United in Purpose, a low-key group that has quietly become a preeminent venue for leaders on the religious right to convene. UIP was crucial in connecting Trump to evangelical leaders in 2016, and it promises to be one of the most vital weapons in Trump’s reelection arsenal this year.

Read more …

Whose fault is it? Cuomo says it’s Trump. That at least doesn’t appear to be the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

The CDC plays a role. And people now like saying it’s Trump’s CDC, but the influence of any single president on the CDC is of course limited. Which is, as those same people will say in other circumstances, exactly how it should be. That feels a little like having your cake and eating it to.

Over 4,300 Virus Patients Sent To NY Nursing Homes (AP)

More than 4,300 recovering coronavirus patients were sent to New York’s already vulnerable nursing homes under a controversial state directive that was ultimately scrapped amid criticisms it was accelerating the nation’s deadliest outbreaks, according to a count by The Associated Press. AP compiled its own tally to find out how many COVID-19 patients were discharged from hospitals to nursing homes under the March 25 directive after New York’s Health Department declined to release its internal survey conducted two weeks ago. It says it is still verifying data that was incomplete.

Whatever the full number, nursing home administrators, residents’ advocates and relatives say it has added up to a big and indefensible problem for facilities that even Gov. Andrew Cuomo — the main proponent of the policy — called “the optimum feeding ground for this virus.” “It was the single dumbest decision anyone could make if they wanted to kill people,” Daniel Arbeeny said of the directive, which prompted him to pull his 88-year-old father out of a Brooklyn nursing home where more than 50 people have died. His father later died of COVID-19 at home. “This isn’t rocket science,” Arbeeny said. “We knew the most vulnerable — the elderly and compromised — are in nursing homes and rehab centers.”

[..] Nationally, over 35,500 people have died from coronavirus outbreaks at nursing homes and long-term care facilities, about a third of the overall death toll, according to the AP’s running tally. Cuomo has deflected criticism over the nursing home directive by saying it stemmed from Trump administration guidance. Still, few states went as far as New York and neighboring New Jersey, which has the second-most care home deaths, in discharging hospitalized coronavirus patients to nursing homes. California followed suit but loosened its requirement following intense criticism.

Some states went in the opposite direction. Louisiana barred hospitals for 30 days from sending coronavirus patients to nursing homes with some exceptions. And while Louisiana reported about 1,000 coronavirus-related nursing home deaths, far fewer than New York, that was 40% of Louisiana’s statewide death toll, a higher proportion than in New York.

Read more …

But okay, there are CDC guidelines that may have played a role in the nursing home disaster. Only, what are those guidelines? Are they:

“nursing homes should admit any individuals that they would normally admit to their facility, including individuals from hospitals where a case of COVID-19 was/is present.”

Or

“CDC guidelines require any newly admitted and readmitted resident with a COVID-19 case to be placed in a designated COVID-19 care unit, while those who have met the criteria to have recovered can return to a regular unit in the nursing home. [..] “a nursing home can accept a resident diagnosed with COVID-19… as long as the facility can follow CDC guidance.”

Cuomo Tries To Deflect Blame Of Nursing Home COVID19 Deaths On To Trump (Fox)

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo Saturday doubled down on his state’s now-scrapped nursing home policy that critics say contributed to thousands of coronavirus deaths and instead blamed the problem on President Trump and his administration. “New York followed the president’s agencies’ guidance,” Cuomo said Saturday at his press conference. “…. What New York did was follow what the Republican Administration said to do. That’s not my attempt to politicize it. It’s my attempt to depoliticize it. So don’t criticize the state for following the president’s policy.” The governor’s office said New York’s original nursing home policy was in line with a March 13 directive from the Trump Administration’s Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and Centers from Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that went out to all states on how to control infections in nursing homes.

The guidance says “nursing homes should admit any individuals that they would normally admit to their facility, including individuals from hospitals where a case of COVID-19 was/is present.” “Not could. Should,” Melissa DeRosa, secretary to the governor and Cuomo’s top aide, said at the Saturday press conference. “That is President Trump’s CMS and CDC…There are over a dozen states that did the exact same thing.” Cuomo has been under scrutiny from GOP politicians who say the governor should have never allowed recovering coronavirus patients to leave hospitals and go back to their residential nursing homes to spread the contagious virus. Nursing care facilities, home to some of the most vulnerable citizens, have been coronavirus hotspots around the country.

New York leads the nation with the most reported coronavirus nursing home deaths at more than 5,000 — though the state changed how it counts deaths so the numbers of nursing home patient deaths could be even higher. Cuomo’s response Saturday echoed his past answers, that he was only following guidelines from the Trump administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. [..] CDC guidelines require any newly admitted and readmitted resident with a COVID-19 case to be placed in a designated COVID-19 care unit, while those who have met the criteria to have recovered can return to a regular unit in the nursing home. The March 13 guidance that Cuomo’s office cited says “a nursing home can accept a resident diagnosed with COVID-19… as long as the facility can follow CDC guidance.”

New York – along with California and New Jersey – went further and turned the guidance into state directives and said at the time that nursing homes cannot refuse to take patients from hospitals solely because they have the coronavirus. After mounting criticism that the policy put the most vulnerable people at risk and contributed to a high number of fatalities, New York reversed course May 10. Now hospitals can only send patients who have tested negative for COVID-19 to nursing homes.

Read more …

Russia has very few deaths vs its cases. HCQ rules? Or are the death numbers about to increase rapidly?

Russia Reports 153 Coronavirus Deaths, Highest Daily Toll Yet (R.)

Russia on Sunday reported 153 coronavirus deaths over the previous 24 hours, the epidemic’s highest daily toll, raising total fatalities to 3,541, the country’s coronavirus crisis response centre said It also said 8,599 new cases had been documented, fewer than on the previous day, pushing the nationwide tally of infections to 344,481.

Read more …

The UK talks about one topic only this weekend. Dominic Cummings has violated his own rules by taking a number of long distance trips while everyone stayed home. As his wife had COVID19 and he probably did as well.

The best twist is the government saying he did this because “he cares”. Does that mean everyone who “cares” should have done the same, instead of watching their parents’ funerals on a lap top?

Oh well, at least no-one talks about all the other failures anymore.

Dominic Cummings Must Quit Over Lockdown Drive – Tory MP (R.)

A lawmaker from Britain’s ruling Conservative Party on Sunday called for the resignation of Dominic Cummings, the senior adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson who travelled 400 km (250 miles) from London to northern England during lockdown while his wife showed coronavirus symptoms. “It is intolerable that Boris’ government is losing so much political capital,” Steve Baker wrote on Twitter. “Dominic Cummings must go.” Cummings, who masterminded the 2016 campaign to leave the European Union during the Brexit referendum, travelled to Durham in late March, when measures to combat the spread of the coronavirus were already in place.

Johnson’s office said on Saturday he made the journey to ensure his 4-year-old son could be properly cared for as his wife was ill with COVID-19 and there was a “high likelihood” that Cummings would himself become unwell. The Daily Mirror later reported that the advisor made a second trip from London during the lockdown and was spotted near Durham on April 19, days after returning to London from his first trip. “We will not waste our time answering a stream of false allegations about Mr Cummings from campaigning newspapers,” Johnson’s Downing Street office said on Saturday. Opposition politicians have called for Cummings, who wields huge influence on the government, to go, saying his actions were hypocritical at a time when millions of Britons were staying in their homes. Cummings has said he will not quit.

Read more …

From August. They sense how long and deep the misery will be, but they refuse to address it other than through this kind of nonsense. Every government does.

UK To Require Employers To Pay 20-30% Of Furloughed Wage Cost (R.)

The United Kingdom has drawn up plans to require employers to cover 20% to 30% of furloughed employees’ wages from August to reduce the vast burden of the coronavirus crisis on government finances, The Times newspaper reported. The United Kingdom extended its job retention scheme – the centrepiece of its attempts to cushion the coronavirus hit to the economy – by four months on May 12, but told employers they would have to help to meet its cost from August. “The Treasury has drawn up plans that would require employers to cover between 20 and 30 per cent of people’s wages,” The Times said.


“They would also be required to cover the cost of employer’s national insurance contributions, on average 5 per cent of wages.” A spokesman for finance minister Rishi Sunak declined to comment on the report. Sunak is expected to announce the changes next week, The Times said. Sunak said on Friday that Britain was facing a “very serious economic crisis” and jobs would be lost in the “days, weeks and months to come”.

Read more …

Why? “…low transmission of COVID-19 in the community..”

It’s so sad it’s almost not funny.

Project Leader: Oxford’s COVID19 Vaccine Trial Has 50% Chance Of Success (R.)

The University of Oxford’s COVID-19 vaccine trial has only a 50% chance of success as the coronavirus seems to be fading rapidly in Britain, the professor co-leading the development of the vaccine told the Telegraph newspaper. Adrian Hill, director of Oxford’s Jenner Institute, which has teamed up with drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc to develop the vaccine, said that an upcoming trial, involving 10,000 volunteers, threatened to return “no result” due to low transmission of COVID-19 in the community. “It’s a race against the virus disappearing, and against time”, Hill told the British newspaper. “At the moment, there’s a 50% chance that we get no result at all.” The experimental vaccine, known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, is one of the front-runners in the global race to provide protection against the new coronavirus causing the COVID-19 pandemic. Hill’s team began early-stage human trials of the vaccine in April, making it one of only a handful to have reached that milestone.

Read more …

The businesses are gone. But the people are still there.

Powell’s Problem? He Can’t Print Jobs – DDMB (TA)

“The Federal Reserve is stuck in the middle,” said Danielle DiMartino Booth, CEO and chief strategist of Quill Intelligence and a former advisor to the Federal Reserve. Speaking about Fed Chairman Jerome Powell on a Hedgeye webcast Thursday, she explained: “He wants to print more money, because he wants to put it into the hands of the lowest third of income earners.” Powell also “wants to keep his facilities open that violate the Federal Reserve Act and buy junk bonds, because he wants to keep Wall Street happy,” DiMartino Booth said. “So, he wants to keep the wealthiest happy, and he wants to print money to give to the lowest income earners in the economy. He cannot print jobs in the middle, and that is the problem,” she explained.

“He can’t print jobs. He can’t print cash flow. And he can’t print these small businesses back into business that the PPP failed,” the Fed critic said, referring to the Paycheck Protection Program. Powell “practically begged” for stimulus legislation to be passed by Congress during his appearance on the CBS show “60 Minutes” this past Sunday, she added. He “can’t get enough traction, because we’re getting closer and closer to Election Day,” and neither the Republicans nor Democrats want to give in to the other side when it comes to new stimulus dollars, DiMartinoBooth explained. Powell’s “naivete right now is very dangerous,” she said, pointing to his support for the expanded Main Street Lending Program.

The private equity firms that lobbied for it “were trying to make sure that the companies that pay them dividends didn’t have to go out of business,” the Fed expert said. “Powell thinks that he’s keeping those employees employed,” she explained. “But what he’s really doing is bailing out the big private equity guys, so that they can continue to pay themselves one-time dividends [and] load these companies up with debt and make them that much more dangerous.” When this situation deteriorates much further, “there is no Chapter 11 route,” DiMartino Booth said. “They’re just going to have to liquidate.”

Read more …

Criminal enterprise.

Judge Lifts Stay On Sale Of Venezuela’s US Refineries (AP)

A U.S. judge on Friday approved moving forward with the sale of Venezuela’s prized U.S.-based CITGO refineries, allowing a Canadian mining company to collect $1.4 billion it lost in a decade-old takeover in the South American nation by the late socialist President Hugo Chávez. The case is critical to Venezuela’s opposition led by Juan Guaidó, which was banking on profits from the Houston-based company to finance the crisis-torn nation’s recovery — if they were ever able to force President Nicolás Maduro from power. The order by Chief Judge Leonard P. Stark of U.S. District Court in Delaware follows a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday that upheld an earlier ruling by Stark authorizing CITGO’s liquidation.

Obstacles still remain before moving ahead with CITGO’s sale. The Canadian mining company Crystallex must first get a license from U.S. Treasury officials, which had temporarily shielded Venezuela’s opposition from losing CITGO. Crystallex and attorneys for Venezuela also have to agree on how it will sell CITGO, Stark’s latest ruling said. Chavez took over the gold mining firm’s Venezuela concession and the local operations of other international companies as part of his Bolivarian revolution that has left Venezuela spiraling into deepening economic and political turmoil.

Crystallex, which went bankrupt, sued Venezuela to recover its lost investment in Venezuela. The case is unique, because the court allowed Crystallex to attach assets of CITGO’s parent company, the Venezuelan state-run oil firm PDVSA, finding that Venezuela had erased the lines between the government and its oil firm. Venezuela has owned CITGO since the 1980s as part of PDVSA. It has three refineries in Louisiana, Texas and Illinois in addition to a network of pipelines crisscrossing 23 states. It provides between 5% and 10% of U.S. gasoline.

Read more …

The case gets crazier by the day. He’s hired a defense lawyer because he was asked to explain his decision. Bad conscience?

Judge In Flynn Case Hires Lawyer To Defend His Decision Not To Drop It (JTN)

Emmet Sullivan, the judge who has been directed to explain his conduct in overseeing Michael Flynn’s case—including his unwillingness to drop the case after the Justice Department requested it—has hired a lawyer to defend his conduct before the court. The judge was ordered by an appeals court this week to explain his unorthodox handling of Flynn’s ongoing case in district court. The Justice Department this month moved to drop its case against Flynn, but Sullivan declined to immediately do so, instead appointing a retired judge to argue against dismissing the case.


Sullivan has retained Beth Wilkinson, a high-profile attorney known for successfully arguing in favor of the execution of domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh. She also assisted Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 after he was accused of sexually assaulting Christine Blasey Ford in the 1980s. Sullivan has been given until June 1 to respond to the appeals court’s order to explain his conduct. The judges at appeal will also hear arguments from Flynn’s team as to why they believe Sullivan should be dismissed from the case.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1259825319126749185

Read more …

Lovely from my good mate Steve in Thailand. Do read the whole piece.

Personal #Coronavirus Update 03 May 23rd 2020 (Steve Keen)

It has certainly been eliminated in the province we’re living in, Trang (in the capital city of the same name). There were 3 cases here when we arrived in Thailand, then 4, 6 and finally 7—all from one family so I’m told, of a 24-year-old who had been working in Phuket. Phuket is a major tourist destination, and has had a total of 224 cases out of a population of 420,000—or about 1 case per 2000 residents (that’s about half as bad as The Netherlands). The province of Trang has had 7 cases amongst it 700,000 residents—or 1 case per 100,000. The last new case was over a month ago. All the most recent cases have been in Bangkok, a sprawling city of 8 million that I was sure would be a viral hotspot. Instead, it has recorded just 1548 cases: about 19 cases per 100,000, versus 260 per hundred thousand in the Netherlands and close to 400 in the UK.

The personal impact of this is palpable. Even though people are still practicing personal caution here, the mood is relaxed: you’re no longer afraid of your fellow human being. I noticed this at a restaurant earlier this week, when the owner came up and clinked glasses with us over a meal. Even a month ago, that was unthinkable. Now, it feels like old times—as in, like six months ago. I wouldn’t even have noted such an event back then. Now, it’s significant. I feel like someone who almost drowned, noticing the air in a way that everyone else takes for granted. Thailand won’t let this relaxed mood lead to a resurgence of cases, however. It is still locking down provinces—you can’t travel from one to another without a health clearance, a good reason to travel (tourism doesn’t qualify!), and a clearance to travel from the provincial government; you have to scan a QR code when you enter and leave a shop, to enable case tracking; everyone everywhere wears a mask when they are in contact with people they don’t know

[..] So I find myself in part of the world that is virus-free, and watching a New World Order evolve that no-one anticipated—not even Huxley or Orwell. It’s a “fractured planet”, with two enormously disparate fractions: China, Southeast Asia and Oceania in the “virus free” segment, and the rest of the world in the “virus afflicted”. I’m glad to be in the virus-free part, but I do have some trepidation about the future politics of this block, in which China is by far the major power economically and militarily.


The “winners and losers” from EndCoronavirus.org at https://www.endcoronavirus.org/map-visualization

That worry aside, I’m relaxed and working well, though enormously behind on numerous projects thanks to the time I lost in the move. Initially, getting settled here took total precedence: finding a place to rent (we rapidly located an unfurnished 4 bedroom house in a gated community on the outskirts of Trang, for US$300 a month), furnishing it, buying the essentials for mobility in a region where the temperature never drops below 24°C and frequently hits 37°C (a car, motorbike, and bicycles for exercise before the sun rises too high). That took about six weeks all up. It came after spending two weeks visiting my family in Sydney for what I was sure would be the last time for at least a year, after working with Russell Standish on Minsky for two weeks in late February. All of March, all of April, and part of May was thus lost to the personal impact of the virus. I finally got down to solid work about two weeks ago.

Read more …

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Home Forums Debt Rattle May 24 2020

Viewing 17 posts - 1 through 17 (of 17 total)
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  • #59149

    Walker Evans Street Scene, Vicksburg, Mississippi 1936   • Trump: ‘I Have A Chance To Break The Deep State’ (Attkisson) • The Influential Evangel
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle May 24 2020]

    #59150
    zerosum
    Participant

    Why me!!!!!

    The definition of a survivor is a person who copes with a bad situation or affliction and who gets through, or a person who manages to live through a situation that often causes death.

    1. I read TAE.
    2.

    #59151
    zerosum
    Participant

    Options

    Buy from USA or do without
    Buy from USA companies or do without
    Buy from non USA companies and pay tariffs.

    or

    Don’t buy

    #59152
    Rototillerman
    Participant

    But okay, there are CDC guidelines that may have played a role in the nursing home disaster. Only, what are those guidelines?

    Through March and April, the CDC guidelines for release from the transmission protocol were that the patient had to be symptom-free for 72 hours (no fever / no cough, though the cough was open to interpretation) and they had to have two consecutive negative PCR tests 24 hours apart. However, nursing homes and congregated living facilities could accept patients not meeting those guidelines back if they had the capability to properly isolate and care for sick patients. However, there is a lot of leeway in judging if a facility has that capability; my wife the epidemiologist says that staff has to be properly trained and equipped with appropriate PPE for the care tasks involved. For someone interacting closely with a resident that would be the full gown/gloves/mask, while someone delivering a meal and staying six feet away could probably just wear a mask. But here are some of the key take-away: nursing home staff are usually not medically trained (though there is always a medically trained supervisor) and nursing home staff are usually low-paid workers, sometimes without much (if any) paid sick leave. Thus you have a pretty high chance of staff becoming infected, and then they don’t know it at the asymptomatic early stages; later, the incentives are to keep working while possibly low-grade symptomatic, because they need the pay for their families to survive and they don’t have paid sick leave. My take on it is that arguing over whether CDC guidelines are to blame is probably a red herring, and the real failures are more subtle. Our state followed the CDC guidelines and didn’t have the kind of disaster New York experienced; I don’t think it is just the scale of the case load in New York. My wife says the AP article doesn’t really have the kind of detail to make a judgement on the appropriateness of what was done.

    #59153
    Maxwell Quest
    Participant

    “Trump: ‘I Have A Chance To Break The Deep State’ (Attkisson)”

    “The kingdom of God advances through a series of glorious victories, cleverly disguised as disasters. (Ken Eldred)”

    No, I’m not a fan of the Evangelical movement. One Dark Ages was enough, where sparks of light were hunted down and destroyed as enemies of an all-powerful Church. But I do recognize success when I see it, even when it is disguised as failure.

    Occupy Wall Street from all appearances was a failure, but before it died it was able to plant some powerful ideas into the public consciousness, ideas that have only grown more dominant since the days of Zuccotti Park. Before OWS, the average man of the street had never thought about the wealth inequality problem (1% vs 99%), nor how it could be traced back to the vampirism of Wall Street. Now, the idea is as prolific as dandelions.

    Trump also appears like a complete failure, and may never make the slightest progress with his foreign or domestic policy goals, but I have a suspicion that the ideas that he planted into the public consciousness will live on and thrive. Ideas like “Fake News” and “Deep State” for example. These are powerful ideas that can change the course of history when they finally bear their fruit.

    #59154
    zerosum
    Participant

    The only way that restaurants etc can stay in business, is to impose a surcharge on the remaining customers to cover the increased costs.

    I don’t agree. I, for one, are finding ways to make my dollar go farther.

    The USA has lost 40 million customers, (U.I.)
    The approx. remaining +60% are still living paycheck to paycheck.

    Those approx. 10% of well to do middle class enablers are finding out that everyone one want a portion of what you have to cover their increased cost that they cannot or will not reduce. (Taxes, rent )

    The 1% don’t care because they belong to restricted exclusive clubs and their can afford to pay to be segregated from the rifraf and the servant enablers.

    #59155
    WES
    Participant

    Zerosum:

    Falling into that catigory Toronto doesn’t seem to want to cut their costs!

    They are threatening the provincial and federal governments, by saying they will layoff 20,000 workers if their $1.5 billion shortfall isn’t covered by the two higher levels of governments.. Hopefully their demands fall on deaf ears. Naturally they have done nothing but keep spending money they don’t have. If Toronto ratepayers had to make up the deficit, their property taxes would need to double!

    #59156
    upstateNYer
    Participant

    Rotertillerman: if you happen to read this and feel inclined to respond… since your wife is an epidemiologist I wonder if you’d mind asking her just what it is that NY got so wrong with this virus? I live in NY and the numbers here are simply appalling. Yes, NY City has density, but so do a lot of other cities/countries. Even here in upstate NY, my county has over 1800 cases and 100+ deaths (pop 450,000). I remain perplexed as to just how it has gotten so far off track here compared with nearly everywhere else …

    #59157
    WES
    Participant

    Ontario’s virus cases continue to climb while testing declines.

    The Premier says everyone can get tested but local health units decline to test just anyone. You need to meet their testing criteria still. No wonder testing has fallen!

    People know better than to waste their time and energy trying to get tested.

    Just anothers reason Ontario’s lockdown failed.

    #59158
    WES
    Participant

    UpstateNYer:

    One thing NY and Ontario both got wrong is allowing the virus to get injected into nursing homes.

    In Ontario 79% of deaths were in it’s nursing homes! Many nursing home workers work in multiple nursing homes to put together many part time jobs into a full time job.

    Not sure what percentage of NY’s deaths were in nursing homes but suspect very high.

    By my calculation, only about 30% are wearing masks in Ontario. Bet NY is about the same!

    #59159
    upstateNYer
    Participant

    Thank you, Wes. I don’t think our stats for nursing home deaths are as high as you’re experiencing. I found data from 5 days ago that shows about 25% of NY deaths are in nursing homes (note: does not include nursing home residents admitted to hospital and then died so it’s undoubtedly much higher %). In NY our testing has ramped up considerably. There are well-publicized “pop up” testing sites in our county where you can simply show up and get tested, no referral, no symptoms. As far as masks? That’s hard to gauge since I’ve never been a very good consumer so rarely go out shopping … but the times I go shopping, people have masks on. I think most NYers feel pretty beat up at this point by this virus. NYC is the worst affected, and many counties have little spread so probably don’t wear masks? But here in my county we mostly are.

    #59160
    VietnamVet
    Participant

    Yes, the pandemic has made the world bi-polar; China, Vietnam, Cuba, New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, Austria and the other nations and local states and provinces where government still works and the public health system stopped the virus spread dead and the rest of earth still suffering from the coronavirus pandemic.

    A WaPo editorial said “Diagnostic testing is important, absent a vaccine or therapy, as part of a concerted effort to identify the sick, isolate and treat them, and allow everyone else to get back to business.” Then goes on to say why testing is so necessary. No doubt to please the for-profit corporations who develop and administer the tests. But it completely ignores that the only way to control the virus everywhere in the USA is with a working federal government public health system. No mention that the CDC is sidelined.

    It is not a coincidence that the top eight nations with the most cases of coronavirus are those ruled by corporations and oligarchs and the politicians bought and paid for. The Elite are simply unwilling put people back to work to control the pandemic. That will take a portion of their wealth. It is of no matter to them that spending the money now avoids the enormous costs later of the Greatest Depression, the collapse of the Western Empire, and the quarantine and halt of trade with pariah nations that remain infected with the Wuhan coronavirus.

    #59161
    upstateNYer
    Participant

    Correction: I shouldn’t have said “I think most NYers feel pretty beat up at this point by this virus.” How would I know what most NYers are feeling??? My apologies. A bit of an assumption on my part there.

    #59162
    Rototillerman
    Participant

    @upstateNYer: one of the things my wife is very cautious about is making statements with incomplete data. So, unfortunately she is very disinclined to speculate about the way things went so far off track in New York. She does know colleagues in the New York state health system, and I’m sure at some point they’ll be sitting in Atlanta eating dinner after a CDC meeting and beans will get spilled. If I get the story at some point, I’ll report back here. It may be quite a while, however, since of course CDC is communicating with state health departments by Zoom like everyone else, instead of flying them in for periodic meetings.

    #59163
    upstateNYer
    Participant

    VietnamVet: You are correct, we have no public health system to speak of in the US. And while we have testing sites where you can get tested without referral/symptoms … most cost some pretty big bucks ($150 – $200) if you don’t have health insurance. We do have a public health clinic in this county that does testing for free, but that has limited testing sites and usually requires a person to travel to Syracuse for testing (many rural residents won’t consider that an option). The clinic is starting to open up more testing options with the pop up clinics in more rural areas (kind of late).

    One thing many people lose sight of is the fact there is an entire state attached to New York City. 😉 The City’s infection rate is very high (close to 20%), but in the remainder of the state it’s still [generally] around 2% or less. We have a LONG way to go before we’re on the other side of this if we don’t get it under control. As you so succinctly pointed out, we have no system in place to get it under control.

    It can be hard to read the comments about the pandemic being a “nothing burger” because here in NY, it is far from that. My friend lost a very close cousin to Covid-19 (blood clot, no underlying health conditions) so you’d be hard pressed to convince me that “business as usual” and just let people die is the answer to a pandemic.

    #59164
    upstateNYer
    Participant

    Rototillerman: Darn those conservative scientists thinking they need data to accurately assess a situation!!! LOL. Thank you for asking her. Will look forward to getting the inside scoop, hopefully, someday, maybe, if it’s possible …

    #59165
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Well spoke/done Steve Keen; everything pretty much spot on…
    Like Trang, Ratchaburi (where I live), has had a total of 7 cases and hasn’t had a new CV-19 for weeks.
    Thailand and Asia in general have been models of common sense and excellent on the ground management of the virus. Having intact, quality, healthcare for all, has proven its excellence.
    Essentially, we’re still a mentally healthy society, unlike the insane west.
    Thanks again Prof. Keen…

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