CoronaVirus spreads to Red States in the US

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/05/graphic-tracking-coronavirus-infections-us/

It is spreading inland and to the Southern states, many of which are Republican states.
The Democratic states appear to all be improving. 

While many of the Democratic states got the virus, first of all, it is not clear if the Republican states refused to follow lockdown with the same commitment. 

The worst places for Coronavirus are now US, Russia and Brazil. All of them had leaders that were slow to commit to a lockdown, and their people are now seeing the effects.

There is talk the president of Brazil might get impeached for incompetence. A far right-winger religious person like Trump.

Slow to react?   A hell of a lot faster,    Who declare lockdowns in the USA?    

Eight states had more than 1000 new cases yesterday.

1 New York 2920

2 Illinois  2432

3 California 3034

4 Texas 2012

5 New Jersey1466

6 Massachusetts 1239

7 Pennsylvania 1041

8 Maryland 1083

........

Of those 8 States only Texas is under Republican government. It pays to look at the numbers rather than reading Fake News.

Louisiana

2,982 new cases this week, up 838 from the previous week

72.6 cases per 10,000 people

South Dakota

743 new cases this week, up 124 from the previous week

45 cases per 10,000 people

Virginia

6,330 new cases this week, up 889 from the previous week

34.1 cases per 10,000 people

Arkansas

716 new cases this week, up 279 from the previous week

14.9 cases per 10,000 people

Largest Decreases

New Jersey

8,451 new cases this week, down 5,813 from the previous week

162 cases per 10,000 people

Nebraska

1,941 new cases this week, down 1,052 from the previous week

51.3 cases per 10,000 people

Massachusetts

8,088 new cases this week, down 2,934 from the previous week

122.1 cases per 10,000 people

District of Columbia

972 new cases this week, down 269 from the previous week

100.4 cases per 10,000 people

New York

15,147 new cases this week, down 7,082 from the previous week

178.9 cases per 10,000 people

I ask you a simple question SB - who in the USA decide on lockdowns?  Why no answer? .  

Of course the States that haven’t been in a major disaster like all the East Coast States and Illinois have, are going to show higher growth rates. Those Democratic states are coming down  from their peaks.

This about as valid as saying New York was screwing  up and Italy was getting  it all right at the point Italy’s cases peaked.

The good news so far is that the Country after a week of reopening is still on a slow downward trend of cases......which probably peaked about April 3 except for a few spikes which likely had more to do with measurement changes.

And yes National Geographic is fully part of the Globalist Consensus.

Let’s remember scientists told us this disease was no big deal....scoffed at Trump’s China travel ban... never advised the nursing homes to be hardened..  have done nothing to develop Corona virus treatments in spite of SARS.....told us masks won’t work..  have no approved treatment....got the likely fatalities hopelessly wrong.

And may....I stress may.....have caused the outbreak by poor security in the Wuhan level 4 lab.

Scientists have a lot to  answer for and nothing beyond 1919 distancing to claim credit for. They have been bloody awful with no credible game plan.

SB

The real fact is that the President declare a State if National  Emergency - in this case a pandemic,  Health Services falls under State Governors and they declare whatever administrative requirements are needed,  The Governors declare the lockdown and lay down the conditions attached to  lockdowns.   If the Federal Government want to interfere they would have to look at constitutionality o the lockdown rules and the Justice Department can act to protect the Constitution.    The Federal Government is there to provide assistance to the States, the national situation (eg closing of borders), treatment o the pandemic since there are no medicine for it and potential vaccine development.  

Why was the mess in New York Governor buggered up and he is a Democrat,    

COVID-19 in Brazil: “So what?” - The Lancet

OK 

I think we have learned some things. With highly contagious, deadly new viruses the only effective strategy is draconian containment. The world is totally interconnected if the links aren’t cut.Why were all governments, except to some degree Trump, so slow to stop travel?

We have also learned the limits of our science...a simple virus is cleaning our clock despite all the biotech geniuses’ best efforts.

And we have learned all the movie stuff is pie in the sky. There is no team of geniuses ready to be called off the golf course or their safaris. No data centre humming with data fed from friendly scientists around the world. No computer model spewing out various courses of action and reliable statistics.

It’s really been quite sobering.

Moz, for me the one big tragedy is the fact that not even a crisis like this could bring about a situation where petulant political shenanigans are put aside. Even in this hour of people’s lives being turned on their heads, you have people being more interested in playing political games in the name of caring about “the people”. Same thing happened in the UK. 

In the UK, the Labour party has used this as a means to put pressure on the Conservative party in a sleazy politician type of way. 

However, US politics at the moment is extremely fierce between parties. It is cut-throat and it seems either party will do anything and everything to oust the other one. 

By the way, has anyone seen the new leader of Labour, Keir Starmer? He seems like the real deal so far. A former lawyer, he seems sharp. Much better than the useless Corbyn. 

Probably more centre like say Tony Blair, although I need to see more of him. 

Corbyn's brother was arrested for protesting against the lockdown this weekend. He is another far left-wing basket case, but relevant as now it is some left wings getting arrested - instead of just the right wings.

Politicians should never use a national crisis for political purposes,  The weak coalition Government in Germany prevented it from becoming a political issue and was more successful in the fight against he virus than others,

In the USA the Democrats from the word go blamed Trump fir the crisis - while they did everything to sabotage everything he tried to do,   New York is a typical example of what happened,    That was wrong and to an extent  shows political immaturity from both sides,

Who are the scientists who claimed that the virus was around as far back as November 2019?  Wonder how they can prove that discovery and how much the Chinese are paying them to divert attention away from the virus starting in China.          

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/03/donald-trump-reopen-us-economy-lethal-robert-reich

• Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a columnist for Guardian US

That says it all.    A new level of medical expertise discovered.   LMAO 

Another leftie news article linked without commenting. Only one sentence, stating one fact. No comment, and that about an article with a large number of assertions that could all be challenged.

Which states are subject to the quarantine?

Currently, those states are Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Utah, the governor of New York state Andrew Cuomo told reporters.

38000 cases yesterday/36000 today  in the whole USA....6500 cases yesterday/5200 today in Texas.

Total cases:

Blue States

New York .....414000

New Jersey...173000

California....198000

Red States

Texas.....136000

Florida....114000

Georgia...71000

The deaths are even more disproportionately in Blue States. There are more deaths in NY than all the red states combined. New York’s active cases still dominate the active cases in any other State, as no doubt do their asymptomatic cases. Cuomo the nursing home nemesis has got a hell of a nerve.

A lot of bs out there ....the average age of those getting the virus has dropped by 10 years in Florida. It’s the young people deciding the disease is not lethal for them that are getting infected. Which will be a good thing if the vaccine doesn’t come soon.

One interesting theory about the southern  States is that people are going indoors with the summer heat, whereas up north the populations are emerging from tight indoor conditions. Perhaps there is some validity to this  as NY, NJ etc are tracking places like France  and Italy that got there sooner.

I just scrolled through this thread from the top again, and this caught my eye.

“ By the way, has anyone seen the new leader of Labour, Keir Starmer? He seems like the real deal so far. A former lawyer, he seems sharp. Much better than the useless Corbyn.   “

For some reason, many seems to think that being a lawyer makes you a good politician. 

These are some of the current and recent US Dem politician/lawyers off the top of my head:

Barak Obama, Jerry Nadler, Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, Elizabeth Pocahontas Warren, Kamala Pothead Harris, Joe Biden*, Amy Klobuchar

*Joe Biden’s law studies:

“During his first year at Syracuse, Biden was accused of plagiarizing five of fifteen pages of a law review article“.  

Just one example of his many known instances of plagiarism/BS’ing about his achievements/life events. 

My cousin and her yank husband both live here in JHB. 

The two of them and their daughters both got Covid.

They're also Trump supporters.

Correlation = Causation 

Doh!

"For some reason, many seems to think that being a lawyer makes you a good politician."

But in Keir Starmer's case he's actually doing well. Now in absolute fairness a plank of rotten wood with a tie wrapped around it would be better than Jeremy Corbyn but Starmer has been really effective so far.

He's consistently out performed Johnson at Prime Ministers questions. Even several right wing Tory backing newspapers have actually said this, not just the left wing papers you would expect to say that. The polls show Labour have narrowed the gap to the Torries and Starmer's approval ratings have gone up while Johnson have gone down. He forced a u-turn from the government on the surcharge foreign workers in the NHS where being charged to use the NHS themselves.

Just yesterday Labour had to deal with another case of antisemitism when Rebecca Long Baily shared an article that contained a antisemitic conspiracy theory. As opposed to Corbyn who struggled to deal with antisemitism in Labour for years, Starmer sacked Long Baily within hours. A campaign group of left wingers within Labour requested a meeting with Starmer to discuss the sacking. He straight up declined it. Pretty damn decisive and I've already read Jewish groups in the UK have come out in support of his decision.

Also interesting that Johnson has been attacking Starmer for being a lawyer. In the 2017 election lawyer the Conservatives had at 38 the most number of MP's of any party who's occupation was lawyer. The le gal profession was also the 2nd most common  occupation of MP's overall.

My point was not that that being a lawyer does not make you a crap politician and neither did I suggest that Starmer is crap either. 

I also have no issue with a narrow gap between the ruling party and the opposition. I am a firm believer that you need a strong opposition. I support Johnson over Starmer every day of the week but I’m not blindly supporting him in everything he does. I think that his handling of the coronavirus issue was atrocious on many levels. 

In addition, each and every head of govt has taken a hit because of the coronavirus. Almost without exception they are all blamed directly for each and every coronavirus death as if they were sitting in a dark little room planning on how to cause as many deaths as possible. 

As far as my post with the list of names are concerned, I was pointing out that not all politician with legal backgrounds are good politicians. Some of the politicians with legal backgrounds are really crap politicians. 

“ I can understand if you choosing right wing politics over left wing in general and that's why you support Johnson over Starmer but from from the perspective of say a non aligned voter who is willing to vote either way I can't see how anyone would support Johnson over Starmer at the moment.  “

There you go with your assumptions again. I have never been supportive of Starmer. He seems to be jumping around and has also been indecisive in his thinking. His approach to Brexit is a prime example. I was surprised that he took immediate and decisive action with Rebecca Wrong-Daily. Although I’m sure that I’ve seen somewhere that he has already backtracked and reinstated her again. 

You also can not compare countries like the UK and the USA with the likes of San Marino and Andorra. The simple reason is the flow of travellers and/or the number of ports of entry. 

Well I can't imagine any other reason why anyone would back Johnson at this stage, he's proven to be dangerously inept at this point. I'm not saying every live lost in the UK due to corona virus was preventable, no matter who was in charge lives would be lost and given the circumstances I don't think its reasonable to expect any government to get anything right but Johnson's government has consistently blundered its way through the crisis and bares a huge amount of responsibility for the high death toll in the UK. If that isn't enough reason for people to no longer back him no reason ever will.

Tell me if the Johnson/Tory government continues to be this crap for the next 4 years, would you consider changing your vote to another party (not saying it has to be Labour) or would you simply not vote?

Labours Brexit approach was confused under Corbyn and to an extent Starmer had to toe that line under him but so far for the few months he's been in the job Starmer has done well and he's got Johnson's number at PMQ's. If you want indecision on Brexit I see Johnson says he is working on changing that unfair withdrawal agreement...eh the one he negotiated, or what about  no internal borders inside the UK after the end of the transition period.  

Time will tell if Starmer back tracks on Long Baily. But for now he's made the correct decision. All though if Long Baily was clever she should of claimed she shared that article to test her eye sight because that excuse seems to work

Also I agree you can't compare San Marino and Andorra, that's why I said they should be taken out of comparison's even though sites like worldometer include them in their corona virus ranking lists.

“ Tell me if the Johnson/Tory government continues to be this crap for the next 4 years,“

The coronavirus isn’t going to be the centre of attraction for the next four years, and it certainly isn’t the only issue right now. It is the one issue that is being handled shyte, yes. 

An interesting stat was that you were twice as lively to get the Wuhan Virus if you lived in a blue state.

Blue state cities are in a bad way through years of bad management. People and businesses are leavi ng.

"The coronavirus isn’t going to be the centre of attraction for the next four years, and it certainly isn’t the only issue right now. It is the one issue that is being handled shyte, yes."

What exactly has the UK government handled well at this point?

" You are preaching to the converted. I, myself, am a victim of the poor handling, but even so, I’m not blaming Boris Johnson in person. He has made the decisions but he relied on unelected career bureaucrats around him, like the now exposed Ferguson guy. "

Well I'm sorry to hear you have suffered from the the UK's poor handling of the situation, but I'm not sure why you're giving Johnson a free pass. It was a political decision that the UK opted for a herd immunity strategy. They where willing to sacrifice lives to get an economic edge, but miscalculated how costly it would be. It was the Johnsons government that sent PPE abroad just a month before the NHS had PPE shortages that saw NHS staff wear bin bags as make shift PPE, it was Johnsons government that was unable to source PPE and ignored offers to jointly source PPE with the EU and then placed a mass order for PPE with a very small Turkish firm that could never provide them (and incidentally a deal the government kept no records). It was the Johnson government that gave up on the test and trace strategy against the advise of the health experts, then tried to implement it with too few contact tracers. It was his government that repeatedly failed to hit testing targets and lied about it. It was his government that decide it wasn't going to use the contact tracing app provided by Google and Apple only to use there own internally developed app that never materialized and was eventually scrapped at the cost of £11-12 million while also lying that no country had a working app (Germany says hello). Its his government that kept giving out mixed messages on the virus. It his government that stopped doing international comparisons when it started to make the UK look bad. It was him that chose to keep Dominic Cummings (an unelected career bureaucrat) in post after he committed a far worse offense than Ferguson did.

He's in charge of that shit show and while he's not entirely to blame for everything he has to take the lion share of it. But that's Johnsons plan, he's going blame the scientific experts for the wrong advice and the general public for not complying with his deliberately vague restrictions on the corona virus.

Goodness. This happens every time. A simple statement evolves into one hell of a debate that has absolutely zero to do with the original argument. 

You suggested that I chose Johnson above Starmer because I’m a conservative. I denied it and told you why. Now you are onto how crap the Johnson govt is because of the handling of the coronavirus issue. Something that I have already admitted could have been handled differently. Why shouldn’t I counter and say that you would of course prefer Starmer because you are a leftie and he is also an indecisive liberal like most of the lefties?

I cannot understand why you are so obsessed  with the UK politics, while you hardly ever say anything about your own country’s politics. Is it because you got the shit end of the Brexit stick? And because you were laughing your backside off when Theresa May allowed Varsdkar and the EU to walk all over her. Then to see Boris step in and shove a hot boiled potato up the EU and Varadkar’s arses, with Varadkar eventually being dropped like a bad habit?

It is no premeditated plan to blame the scientists? It is the reality. Any head of state listens to the experts and advisors and then make the decisions, based on that. Unless you believe that each and every head of state should be a epidemiologist, a virologist, a medical doctor, an engineer, a military strategist, etc, etc, all in one. How long do you think any head of state would last if he ignores the experts and just carries on on his own? Ask Theresa May. She can tell you. She knows all about it. 

Look, the long and the short is this. In the eyes of the left and in particular Remoaners like yourself Johnson is pretty much in the same boat as Trump. He can find a cure for cancer and they will say he is doing a shit job. Your assessment of the job he is doing is an opinion, just as mine is an opinion. The problem with you lefties is that you are intolerant to that principle. You acknowledge and recognise all opinions as long as it conform with yours. 

Anybody who do not 100% agree with you are racist, bigamist, misogynistic, alt-right wingers. 

I was not really interested in getting into another lengthy drawn out argument with you, but here we are. Totally drawn away from my initial assertion. I’m sure if I let it go we may end up discussing the Scandinavian Potato Producers issue. 

As a person he's not as bad as Trump but the political system in the UK restrains Johnson a lot less than the political system in the US does to Trump so he's actually capable of doing more damage than Trump is at least in his own country.

Of course you can say its just my political bias that causes me to say these things. I believe I can back up my arguments with facts and you are simply getting annoyed because your unable to refute them. All you do is get somewhat angry with me and accuse me of changing the subject. If I'm guilty of that, you are just as much.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion but opinions are meaningless if you have nothing to base them on.

"The problem with you lefties is that you are intolerant to that principle. You acknowledge and recognise all opinions as long as it conform with yours. 

Anybody who do not 100% agree with you are racist, bigamist, misogynistic, alt-right wingers."

Now who's making assumptions.

"I was not really interested in getting into another lengthy drawn out argument with you, but here we are. Totally drawn away from my initial assertion. I’m sure if I let it go we may end up discussing the Scandinavian Potato Producers issue. "

Your not interested into a lengthy argument because you have never been able to properly debate with me.

Fine we can just ignore each other from now on and not comment on each others posts.