We're going to see situations where someone's loved one dies and a survivor assaults someone they know who ignored the warnings.

People who ignored the warnings deserve to get their ass kicked.

I think when the dust settles we will see a lot of animosity and blame directed at the people who didn't take this seriously.

Hogwash. We need to stay above this level of ageism nonsense. Literally every 60+ I know - including multiple who had the amazingly poor judgement to vote for Trump - is taking this seriously, self-isolating, rescheduling stuff on their own when they can without having to be asked to etc. This isn't a generational issue, it's a some people are self-absorbed jerks issue. My personal observations in my area are that the only people I see refusing to observe social distancing at all in any form are those around 30 who apparently think they're immune or something. This isn't making me go off on millennials though - they are just people making bad, selfish decisions.

Totally agree here, all day long.

You don't think they initially bought into Fox News and Trump downplaying this whole thing? They may be taking it seriously now, but it took a long time to get there and caused a lot of damage along the way. I completely agree with you that at this point you're just a fuckwad if you aren't on board.

Trump just put the responsibility for testing and medical supplies onto governors.

First, I think it's clear social distancing works (atleast to a point). But these comparisons to 1918 are apples to oranges. In 1918, there were 4 million cars in the US (there are 276 million now). People didn't travel a ton and most families involved the dad working and the mom staying home with kids. If you social distanced, you were pretty much 100% secluded. Houses were far from each other, traveling was more difficult, schools were smaller and the mom was already used to providing for the family.

That's nothing like 2020. Even a perfect social distancing "plan" will be nowhere as effective as it was in 1918. Most teenagers can hop in a car right now and drive to the next state. Mass transit systems in Boston, NY, Seattle, Chicago, San Fran, Portland and DC make it almost impossible to fully social distance if you are still working. Comparing the social distancing effects of 1918 to 2020 would be akin to comparing the ease of communication from 2020 to 1918. Not even close

Yes, I've heard you on here many times, you just wish we'd all stick our face in a bowl of coronavirus and get it over with. I got it.

Not at all. I'm 100% for social distancing and think everyone should take part. I just take issue with the idea that it will be as effective as 1918. That's just not feasible given our society.

But that in no way means I think we shouldn't try. I just think we need to have more reasonable expectations other than that graph for 1918. It will help, but it's not going to be as effective.

Damn.

I don't think people over 60 are a hive mind. I'm sure some listened to Fox News. I'm sure many more didn't. Lumping them all together is just intellectually lazy.

Definitely agree with Arles on the 1918 comparison. This isn't the same world as that. One of the consequences of the inevitable, unstoppable globalization in modern society is more and worse pandemics.

Sorry finally felt the need to respond since the majority of your posts are about Fox News which you seem to spend a lot of time obsessing over. Hindsight is great for everyone but jesus man two weeks ago you were debating (with a large portion of the board) whether to go on vacation to Cancun. You were downplaying it too, everyone was. Stop with the uneccessary politcial division in every one of your posts.

There are selfish 20 year olds, selfish 50 year olds, selfish 80 year olds, selfish democrats, selfish Republicans, selfish libertarians, selfish whites, selfish blacks, selfish atheists, selfish jews...

Old people don't all watch Fox News. My parents are 80ish and have been progressive their whole life. They're hunkered down, though my mother did deliver toilet paper to a bunch of people in her church.

Grocery store workers in Minnesota classified as emergency workers | TheHill

With some of the abuse I am seeing and hearing being directed at grocery store workers, it's the least they can do.

Agree.

Its these hyperbolic, out-of-context assumptions that I'll continue with (and try dream up of others) the Bernie is a socialist-commie-lover-deadbeat-dad-and-husband-7-bills-in-29-years-itwasntmyfaultiwasabumuntil41,itwasthesystemholdingmeback tirade.

How exactly is debating something downplaying it? If fact it is just the opposite.

If I was saying I was going no matter what that would be downplaying it.

Jesus, he doesn't even know where the hot counties are located.

My birthday is coming up next week and I've asked my family who seems intent on buying me a gift (which, IMO, is a little silly amid all this) to buy me gift cards to local restaurants. Not only will that give my wife a nice break from cooking every meal, but it will help get some cash to these businesses who need it badly right now.

My apologies for coming across as overly political. I will attempt to control it.

This is insane.

Dude every one of your posts in about being intellectually superior to people who watch Fox News. And if you go back to the beginning of the thread nobody thought was is happening now would be happening. Nobody, quote a post from early March that proves otherwise. It's not fox news fault.

And I'm not a Trump supporter either and I like you a lot. We have kids about the same age and have always liked your posts I just think it gets old hearing about Fox News when nobody thought this would happen. And honestly we still arent certain if this county will be Italy, South Korea, or something way worse or something a whole lot better.

...

My girlfriend was supposed to be off this week, on vacation in California. Instead she's working long shifts at Whole Foods every day. Yesterday she trained 10 workers on something she had just been trained on an hour before. And she's unloading trucks and getting paid separately by Amazon for that (since it's through Prime delivery). Amazon gave a raise to full-time employees that are carrying extra duties. We all know the evils of Amazon, but I think there's something to be said for the role of corporations in a crisis. They can deliver services in ways government cannot. I think private industry has hugely outperformed government so far.

She says most customers have been very polite, but a handful aren't handling the stress well and take it out on whoever is around them. But, foot traffic is down considerably since earlier in the week, as Amazon is still churning out the grocery prime deliveries.

And the way she likes to relax is cook, so, when she gets home, with whole foods groceries, she goes to town and we've been eating like kings.

I'm very much in awe of her this week. I hope I can take her on an even bigger vacation when it's all over.

I'm finally working from home but the job is basically the same either way - just writing appellate briefs. Our support staff is still at work regular hours, because they can't really work from home and the government has to churn on. I'm in awe of them as well. (Though they probably enjoy having the big office space to themselves).

I'm going to say I called it on the below post on 2/21. I will say that I never expected the US to be 3-4 weeks delayed in getting test kits/results.

Yeah I followed up also. I need to stay off twitter and social media probably took more out on you. Just think it's a given that Trump sucks but think the social distancing is being ignored by all parts of society.

Too much Trump talking in today's conference (and don't see Fauci). There was a press person that tossed him a soft ball question.

They should have 2 conferences, one for the real info, status updates and another for Trump to blabber on.


Trump said Carnival (?) was offering use of their cruise ships. I like the idea assuming I get a room with a view and balcony.

Two young men from my office (early 20's) were supposed to go to a wedding in Florida this weekend. That got cancelled. So they decided that they are still going to go to South Carolina to do some spring break shenanigans. Boss told them they are morons and not to come into the office for two weeks after they get back. They are mostly out in the field so they can still work but he did want to slap them upside the head for being stupid.

The ship is for the Google engineers working on the COVID website.

150 deaths / 8898 confirmed = 1.7%

No breakdown of demographics in below report.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/19/healt...day/index.html

Italy has now passed China for number of deaths.

Indiana's governor just closed all schools until May 1. There goes softball season. :(

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/19/81819...ts-on-covid-19

To be safe, let's not vote for any Republicans at any level of government for the next 500 or so years until we can figure out what's going on with them.

My 70 year old mom who hates trump and never turns on fox news is being her normal, erratic, irresponsible self. I don't speak with her anymore for my own well being but have been keeping up with my sister closely and trying to help her to get mom in the right mindset. Last Friday she wanted to go to urgent care for allergies. Sister is trying to help her get a bunch of groceries so mom doesn't have to go anywhere, mom is resisting in all kinds of strange ways, and is likely to just go out and run 20 errands as soon as she feels up to it. In addition to being 70, she's a poorly controlled diabetic, and has had 3 or 4 issues in the past that took a whack at her respiratory system. Her level of risk is completely off the charts, and there is zero way to get her to give a shit about it.

I'm with those who say you can't trust numbers out of China as far as you can throw them, but no question Italy's a horror show right now. I honestly expected the lockdown over there to have more of a mitigating impact.

I've read with the virus incubation period it'll still be another week or so before new case counts reflect measures taken. I think the key to follow is new cases per day. If that levels off, good news.

Wow what an unusually large cluster in that area, right near New Orleans. How many weeks since Mardi Gras? 2 to 3 right? pic.twitter.com/xC5883H898

— Mister AntiBully (@MisterAntiBully) March 19, 2020

We should be doing everything in our power to setup as many "drive up" testing spots as it humanly possible right now. Just getting the people who go through 7 hoops to qualify is nearly useless. We need to find out if some cities have massive sections of their population walking around/going to work with the virus.

My understanding is that we don't yet have enough test kits available to make that viable. I 100% agree that's what we need to do, as in two weeks ago, but until we have the capability to sustainably test at volume it's really not something we can do.

The consensus seems to be growing that testing on a massive scale is the key to mitigation short of a complete lockdown (which is impossible anyway).

The only question is when (if ever) we will be able to do it.

Yeah, later they said it wouldn't be for patients, so I have no idea what the point of this would be.

What I heard is it would be for non-coronavirus patients so it frees up hospital bed space.

The existence of this thread is an indication. The very first sentence is:
Infectious disease experts have been sounding the alarm since January. Did we 100% KNOW then what would happen? Of course not. We still don't know what our future holds. But what we are seeing today is not a surprise to scientists and was a probable outcome. They had been telling us. People didn't want to believe the experts.

Terrible news in FL. Residents in 19 long-term care facilities have tested positive.

Worth bringing this back up at this juncture, especially in light of the Burr revelation. My friend is a run-of-the-mill private practice doctor, not particularly well connected, relatively young (late 30s/early 40s,) and basically everything medically that he said would happen has happened. I didn't want to say it at the time, because honestly I thought folks would think he was a quack or overreacting, but at that dinner, everyone was required to wash their hands before serving themselves, before getting seconds or refilling drinks, and before leaving the house. The kids weren't allowed to get their food themselves at all, including his 12-year-old, even, because he didn't want any of them in the kitchen.


And again, this was just a regular ol' unconnected doctor. It's certain that those higher-ups in the CDC and elsewhere had more info than he did. It's becoming more and more impossible to believe that high-ranking officials didn't hide this information. They knew they should have taken action earlier.

One week is way too short, it's 14 days to not have caught it plus 14 days to develop symptoms. Results of measures won't show up until at least 4 weeks after the (semi) lockdown starts.

See post #39 back when the first hearings were happening.

Or post #51.

#57
#61
#86
#93
#112
#119
#123
#133
#139
#151
#165

But, you're right, none from early March. All of those are from February.

We're going to do a dick measuring contest about who the most pessimistic was? Great!

And congrats to anyone that was fired up about people dying that you need to brag about that now. I've noticed that some people seem super excited about worst-case scenarios.

Pelosi was demanding means-testing before she'd consider any proposal and Schumer is touting payday loans for small businesses. Sure members of the party have touted those ideas, but not the leadership.


Everyone's a social democrat during a pandemic.

I was talking about Italy's numbers. By my calculations we're about a week or 2 from seeing how the experiment worked? Could be wrong?

Stop. No one is excited. But there was ample evidence even at the level of news consumer to see that this was a potential major problem. Saying nobody could have known is simply not accurate and not only allows the mistakes of the past to be forgotten, but gives permission for more mistakes to be made and ignored.

I don't care who posted first. I do care deeply if, as it appears, high-ranking government officials understood how this was likely to go, but refused to act for political reasons.

Michigan is moving rapidly up the list of states in terms of confirmed case count. Tripled the number of cases in less than a day. Detroit, unfortunately a de facto disaster area for decades already, is clearly about to become the latest big city to become an even bigger nightmare :(

Uh no? A question, actually challenge, was proposed and it was answered.

I think when the dust settles, the Trump/fox news "poo-pooing" this in the early days really put us behind the 8-ball. I'm assuming most of the medical professionals consulted behaved like Ben's friend and Trump just decided not to listen. I know it would have been tough for him to make statements politically before it broke out, but the administration should have atleast been setting up the infrastructure behind the scenes to be ready if it did happen.

Or rather the folks who were seemingly more pessimestic a few weeks back were those who were taking these reports seriously? I mean it's undoubtable that Fox News was downplaying COVID-19 for a while, basically around the time when Trump was. And Fox News was telling it's viewers that it's basically no worse than the flu. This was the same time that CNN and MSNBC were getting worried about the pandemic. I don't think it's a coincidence that my friends who tend to watch Fox News were waiving off any fears and kept saying this is a 'media panic' and the 'media' should be ashamed of itself.

I don't think it's going too far to say Fox News has blood on its hands.

not sure if this has been posted here or not.

How Fox News has shifted its coronavirus rhetoric https://t.co/tTUOIV0tUi pic.twitter.com/q4FdGdduDX

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) March 18, 2020

No one is fired up. That's ridiculous and you know it.

There is no dick measuring contest. Panerd's post laid out a claim and JPhillips refuted the claim. The responses JPhillips cited weren't only his posts. They were posts from a variety of people who thought this was serious. You'd have known that if you spent 5 seconds looking at them before firing off your hysterical bullshit post.

This is the problem with our political system right now. If the republican side is in power, they want to do everything to protect it and keep things going well. It's really no different than a NFL team if a top player gets suspended for steroids. Their fans say it's no big deal while opponent fans act like that player is the worst person on the planet.

One hope for after we get through all this is maybe we dial that "us against them" rhetoric back a bit. But, given what I see on twitter right now (from the left and the right), that looks like a pipe dream.

We've been warned periodically of worldwide virus and illness threats. Look at the Ebola thread. We were all going to die. Nobody here, private citizens, had expert information about where we'd be now. The amount of worry one had, or preparations one made, was entirely based on one's own personal worry and pessimism level.

The worriers were right this time. If they used that worry to help others or prepare to help others, than that's great. They're heroes. If it's about bragging on message boards and putting others down who don't think the world is ending every time there's a new flu reported, I'm not sure it's as productive.

I'm still more optimistic than most. It's just how I'm wired. I heed official advice. And my priority is helping people. But I sure as hell didn't think this is where we'd be on March 19. If I was a more depressed, pessimistic person, I would have been scared and started buying toilet paper in January I guess. I don't think that would have made me a better person.

Generic "both sides" rhetoric is also very problematic.

Bingo, and the press is already misfiring on this story, from what I'm seeing. They're talking about how Burr "didn't inform the public." Whatever. Though all won't agree with it, there's a cogent argument to be made that the public didn't need to be informed until it was time for us to start social distancing, etc. My issue is if, as it appears, they had this guidance from medical experts and didn't DO anything.

Another hope is we can drop this "best in the world" attitude and exceptionalism that no longer exists. This country has been exposed as behind the curve scientifically and bureaucratically. Perhaps this experience will be a lesson for us to catch up to the rest of the world.

Yeah much better response than I had, thank you Molson. Let's just say JPhillips.posts and attitudes on this seem to be slighty politcial?

Maybe, but if we're going to draw a moral line between the optimistic and the pessimists, then I think the pessimists are on the wrong side to the extent they didn't take steps to help others when they knew where were headed.

I feel like this board right now is a lot of financially-secure people comfortably hiding out, patting each other on the back, and judging people who don't have that luxury.

Serious question outside of China, Italy, and South Korea where exactly do the other countries of the world differ for better or worse? Because we are talking similar numbers as the US all across.Europe and those governments vary from highly bureaucratic and socialist to closer to us with seemingly similar results to one another. So what improvements could we have made that would have made any difference?

Yep, it's just those damn millenials being selfish...
I don't trust the numbers out of China completely, but I'm willing to believe them that they've mostly got Wuhan under control, and we've obviously seen how South Korea's measures worked. In both cases it's been 6 (Korea)-10 (Wuhan) weeks for them to get to that point? So why are so many eager to take as gospel the Imperial College report where their hospitalization curve peaks in early July (14 weeks away) even under their best case long term scenarios https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ETbvzf2UcAAHWlR.jpg while also saying a full suppression tactic will just delay the spike https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ETbv-dPUUAEQGh5.jpg and we're guaranteed 1.1 million+ deaths?... Does anyone think South Korea, which has been the most successful at suppression and identification, is going to have a massive spike and resurgence in the future? I certainly don't, and I don't think we will here either as we can get testing ramped up - and there's plenty of evidence companies are already quickly ramping up our ability to test, just like I assume we'll be able to massively ramp up our number of ventilators as we focus on that too. The herd immunity stuff is also interesting to think about longer term, especially among medical professionals - it almost seems like 20-25% of the >45 population (or extending upwards among medical professionals if there are available beds) being exposed at this time & on a rolling basis going forward would be best if you can keep them separate from the highest risk 65+ population. Not sure entirely how that's manageable, more of an interesting thought exercise, but 60+ year old's not yelling at receptionists who try to reschedule eye exams or showing up in grocery store lines every time I stop in one could be a nice start.

Not really. Jphillips is a chicken little on everything Trump does. (Kind of like Ron Paul when the market fails right?) My original post was about others taklkng about great travel deals who now claim to have had the foresight that the sky was falling back then.

China and South Korea were far more prepared to handle this than we are. Really can't compare them to us.

My parents are similar, both over 70 and still going shopping, for coffees at the golf club, to a garden centre today.

It’s selfish & irresponsible in my eyes: the science says no, the government says so, me and my brother say no, but they don’t want to, so it’s screw the rest of country, risk their grandkids growing up without a full set of grandparents.

Mum’s a Daily Mail reader, dad’s just stubborn and doesn’t consider himself in the at risk group (he’s active and better than the vast majority at his age, but still 87 and takes pills for an elevated HR about which he had to go to A&E twice last year).

Nothing either me or my brother have said seems to have had much effect (they did ask me to get some stuff while I was at the supermarket today, but went to the garden centre at the exact same time).

My only option is to aggressively call them on it - my thought is to remind them that they voted Brexit as they felt it was better for the UK to govern ourselves, and then 3 months later they choose to directly and consciously ignore the UK government advice in the most serious time since WW2...

I don’t know what else to do TBH.

Even still, that take was too optimisitc. South Korea cases went from 95 to 150+ new so it’s still not exactly over there. There are already two strains of COVID-19 out there and it’s shown a pretty good ability to mutate, now add in infecting a bunch of new hosts. I don’t anticipate international travel opening up anytime soon.

Not to mention completely wrong. There is enough evidence that Fox News completely downplayed it based on what the President was saying. And now there is evidence that Republican Senators knew 3 weeks ago that it'd be far worse than the President was saying in public and prepped themselves while saying it was a nothingburger in public.

This isn't about pessimists 'winning', but the folks who were paying attention to what health experts were saying for weeks. It's another example of folks who constantly denigrate science not listening to the folks who had the facts and were warning people about it. And other media was getting concerned and talking about it. Sanjay Gupta has been on CNN for weeks saying this is going to be a problem. One major news network said it wasn't a big deal... they should not be left unscathed or benefit from the 'both sides' bullshit.

South Korea (and a few smaller Asian governments that were hit hard by SARS/MERS) have shown a much better response. I don't need to hear about China as a better example when there is ample evidence they suppressed evidence and information (and even called in medical professionals to have political chats with them in the early days) that allowed the virus to blow up in their own country. (Not going to 100% blame them for it's worldwide spread - enough foreigners seemed to be in the Wuhan area early and it probably would have been spread regardless).

But "American exceptionalism" has historically not been defined by us being ahead of the curve, it's been about our response when faced with threats. Part of South Korea's success wasn't government directed it was a private company acting early, and while it seems we missed that boat and there certainly should be questions about the manufacturing defect in the initial CDC developed test, Abbott, Thermo-Fisher & Roche are lined up to produce millions per week soon.

Massachusetts/Boston is a good barometer for all this in that it has a ton of high quality hospitals, medical research and manufacturing companies that are used to partnering, all within a small area. It was also one of the initial flare ups (the Biogen conference) and one where the state government took seemingly drastic action a couple days before many other states. They'll probably be one of the first states to really test people who need it so a better idea can develop of the scope, and also one that has higher health care capacity than many (and so far 0 deaths).

EDIT - I will add that unfortunately it seems like the NYC area and Georgia at a minimum will quickly turn into shitshows and have high death rates unfortunately. I won't be shocked if North Carolina joins them - Charlotte does have a large medical presence, but it is not being taken nearly as seriously here as up in Boston.

It's just such and apples and oranges comparison between the USA, S Korea, Italy, UK and Germany:

US: 331 million
Germany: 83 million
UK: 67 million
Italy: 60 million
S Korea: 51 million

Don't you think it would be a lot easier to deal with if all we had to worry about was California, Oregon and Washington? (52 million). Basically the US is akin to all of Western and Southern Europe (340 million) trying to stop the virus from spreading while keeping all their borders open with no restrictions.

You're kidding me on China, right? They knew back on Dec 1, 2019 and did nothing until late January. If the US followed that model, we wouldn't do a thing until late April. The fact that China took over 7 weeks before taking serious steps is a major reason the rest of the world is dealing with it. China is an example of exactly how NOT to act when a potential outbreak occurs. If you think Trump is bad, look at how the Chinese treated Wuhan in December and most of January.

Talk about bad luck and timing. A cousin of mine opened up a new restaurant outside of Fort Worth a couple of weeks ago.

Did the restaurant go viral?

Sean Payton has tested positive for the coronavirus

Was he at the Sloan Conference? I saw someone who is pretty sure he has it while at Sloan.

Observed what was going on in S. Korea and done the following:

** Not downplayed it in official rhetoric & pronouncements. Prepare the public for the fact that it was coming here ahead of time, instead of saying its not an issue, it's a hoax, everything is under control, etc.

** Begun at least at that point, as I realize there wasn't political will in past years to do advance pandemic prep, to ramp up drive-up testing capacity, production of hospital equipment, etc.


Do you have a suggestion as to how we could ramp up competently trained medical staff in the relevant timeframe as well, since without that the additional ventilators/beds/etc. isn't going to do all that much good?

I have not seen one person come across that way, and if I have then I am appalled.

There is a huge difference between criticizing people for how they live socially and doing something out of necessity.

My wife has spent the last two days putting together lesson plans, remote assignments, links to various websites (She contacted all of the parents to make sure that the kids have access to a computer and internet) and individual suggestions for the parents/guardians of each kid.

5 of the 7 parents/grandparents/guardians of the kids don't know the user names nor passwords of the kid's e-learning accounts. :banghead:

Thank goodness she doesn't drink

So....very close to home

My Mother in Law has to get tested. 7 days ago she was at a hospital in New York, Columbia Presbyterian. She had a heart transplant 11 years ago there and isn't in great shape. She was there for 3 days due to really bad diarrhea and dehydration.

LShe came home last Thursday. Last couple days she has had a runny nose and sore throat. No fever and not dry coughing or having breathing issues. She called her doctor there today and he told her she needs to be tested. The earlier they find out the better.

She called her PCP who said she doesn't think she can get a test without a fever. She called the heart doctor back. this is her exact message from there


She is currently waiting for her doctor in New York to call back.

Senator Dumped Up to $1.6 Million of Stock After Reassuring Public About Coronavirus Preparedness — ProPublica


Senator Burr needs to go to jail.

@ Lathum: not much that can be said I don't think other than I've very sorry someone close to you is in that all-too-common situation.

Though on the bright side, her symptoms sound more like the cold than Covid 19.

FWIW, wife came back from a run. She dropped by Publix and got some eggs! She said it was pretty busy but plenty of eggs, a guy was putting them out.

That's a good sign I guess.

Haven't heard much from the socialist democrat on the Pandemic since Sun debates. Guess the social democrats don't have much to offer in the immediacy of the situation (or still putting aloe on their butts with the butt kicking they got).

Probably Bernie and the other like minded Gen Zed & Millennial socialists were sunning it up in the Florida beaches and dreaming of their Cuban utopia.

I know!

TBH I am frustrated at her doctor for getting her worked up. She has virtually no symptoms and he has to know she wont be able to get tested. All it is doing is making her panic.

Yeah, its definitely a problem with some posters getting political about trump.

Jesus fucking christ dude.

Nothing to do with Trump, see #1651 for the political cheap shot.

We are barely getting started and nurses are already resorting to making their own masks. The UAE and Kuwait have tested more people than us.

And why "outside of China and South Korea"? Two different governments that have both made us look like a 3rd world country in terms of response. We should be at least at their level.

I was referring to the numerous comments made during the day today accusing people of being overly and unnecessarily political regarding Trump in this thread. If that gets called out then the bullshit way you are referring to some politicians that you don't like does too.

ah fuck it. Why I click on posts sometimes from people I have ignored is beyond me. Forget it, my fault.

Feel free to call it out in post #1651. Let's be fair and balanced (not Fox version)

Tbf, what can Senator Sanders do at this point in time? He was one of the voices calling for direct payments to people at least. It's probably for the best if he doesn't try to grab the airwaves right now. I think he's actually considering whether he should suspend his campaign or not (he should).

Government is setting up UBI for Americans as we speak. President just made a declaration to nationalize private factories. There are multiple bills being pushed through to provide government health care, day care, and funding for businesses. The military is setting up publicly funded medical facilities and testing as we speak.

That's not a cheap shot. The government is full of social democrats right now. There are no libertarians in a pandemic.

The person I mentioned earlier was my mother-in-law. She tested negative, luckily.