The US Presidency 2020

[Blackadder1916]

Seriously:
1. Reasonable evidence exists that shows the point of origin may have been a research lab.

Can you provide some specifics?  While there has been many accusations, suggestions and innuendos (often by those who would benefit politically from it being so), I've not seen what could be termed as "evidence".

Though,

Virologist Explains Why It Is Unlikely COVID-19 Escaped From A Lab
https://www.forbes.com/sites/coronavirusfrontlines/2020/04/17/a-virologist-explains-why-it-is-unlikely-covid-19-escaped-from-a-lab/#118354773042

US military chief: 'Weight of evidence' that Covid-19 did not originate in a lab
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/14/covid-19-origin-lab-general-mark-milley

France says no evidence Covid-19 linked to Wuhan research lab set up with French help
https://www.france24.com/en/20200418-france-says-no-evidence-covid-19-linked-to-wuhan-research-lab-set-up-with-french-help

Scientists have strong evidence coronavirus originated naturally
Nothing suggests the virus was "man-made," experts say.
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/scientists-strong-evidence-coronavirus-originated-naturally/story?id=70207409

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

https://globalnews.ca/news/6820312/us-military-coronavirus-origins/

 

[Remius]

A rule being followed by every political faction in every country right now: "Don't let a good crisis go to waste"

As for Trump, I expected re-election of him, hard to say for now what peoples opinion will be come election, as the British PM said once: "Events my dear boy, events". Both parties could see their primary candidates for the position of POTUS taken out by the virus. China could lash out doing something really stupid. If the genetic evidence of the virus shows that it was tampered with by humans and released accidentally(most likely) or otherwise (very unlikely), then that will also play out in favour of Trump.

To be honest I thought he would be re-elected in the fall.  But with this, who knows.  He hasn’t exactly been polling as high as he should be.

Plus I’m sure the recent results in Wisconsin have a few of his campaign types staying up at night, a bit worried.

 

[FJAG]

People are upset about gardening supplies in Michigan because the governor's order made them believe they could not buy gardening supplies.  Was their interpretation reasonable?

I haven't read the whole piece of legislation but from what you quoted, Brad I have the understanding that going for gardening supplies is not permitted. To me the issue isn't so much as to whether or not the order was clear or not or needed clarifying or not but does a public health emergency create situations where one's usual freedom to do as one wills should be curbed for the greater good.

There is no question that this pandemic is killing people who would otherwise not die (as well as some vulnerable people who very well might have anyway). The numbers in Europe and now in the US clearly prove that.

It is also quite clear that, with this being a new virus, we are still learning much about it and how it transmits. Our testing so far (and by this I mean every country, not just the US) is very selective and targeting clearly infected individuals which therefore provides a) a very limited ratio of infected people within the general population and b) a very high fatality rate per infected person. Some random testing in Washington state and in Massachusetts has provided some preliminary data that our actual rates of infected individuals as to confirmed individuals may be higher by a very large magnitude (maybe as high as 85 actual infections for every 1 confirmed one). If born out that would indicate that the fatality rate is actually very much lower than it appears right now. Again that creates uncertainty not only in the public but also politicians and the medical profession.

Regardless, what is clear that the rate of serious infections is challenging the health care system. Slowing infection rates through slowing transmissions makes it more likely that the health care system will be able to cope with those seriously ill.

The issue facing politicians is to find the fine line between taking measures to slow the rate of transmission and restricting freedoms and the economy. That's a tough call to make and people have genuine disagreements about it. On top of that situations vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction so what works in one area won't in another.

I can readily sympathize with someone whose very business might fail as a result of mandatory closures and I can readily understand where he might wish to move the risk of loss from his shoulders onto the public in general. I can't sympathize with someone who is going to be delayed in putting in his petunia bed (and yup, I know they put their's in a little earlier down south than we do here) I sure as hell can't sympathize with some a$$hole with a death mask carrying his AR 15 to a rally.

Individual freedoms must be exercised within the framework of the public good. In a democratic society we, as individuals, give the power to determine that balance to our elected officials and can show our disagreement with their decisions at the next election. While I respect the right of every one of those individuals to voice their opposition to what their state governments are doing, I do not have to agree with what they say or how they demonstrate their opposition and I certainly do not have to agree with others who goad them on.

:2c:

 

[Brad Sallows]

To summarize:
1. The most likely origin is that it jumped from bats naturally (easy to substantiate given the history of coronaviruses and bats).
2. France insists the lab that France set up is perfectly fine, which is awesome except for the fact that "setting up" is not "operating".  I doubt the French tell the Chinese how to run their labs, let alone supervise them.

But: The Washington Post reported that lab operations since France helped establish the lab haven't entirely been up to standard, and part of the lab's area of interest is "conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats."  And the lab has removed a critical statement from its website - hardly a marker of people with nothing to hide.

Leave aside the hand-waving, the absolutist assertions ("no evidence, nothing"),  and the accusations, suggestions and innuendos that people who would benefit politically are pushing accusations, suggestions and innuendos.

The existence of "most likely" or "concensus" doesn't rule out other plausible and probable sources, including an accidental release of bat coronavirus from a lab researching bat coronaviruses.  So there are essentially two competing hypotheses, both involving bat coronavirus: spontaneous, from one of those bat-human contacts that are always going on, or accidental.

 

[Brad Sallows]

>To me the issue isn't so much as to whether or not the order was clear or not or needed clarifying or not but does a public health emergency create situations where one's usual freedom to do as one wills should be curbed for the greater good.

And to me, there are two issues.  The minor issue: stop criticizing the people who believe they aren't allowed to buy gardening supplies in Michigan.

The major issue: in neither the US nor Canada is it practical to enforce restrictions; neither country is sufficiently a police state; neither country has sufficient detention or trial means to suppress widespread disobedience.

If the aim is to limit spread, the aim can only be achieved by co-operation, not force.  (Hypothesis, not fact, but I think a strong hypothesis.)  The willingness of people to co-operate is aggravated by at least two things: severity of restrictions, and duration of restrictions; the lighter the restrictions, the longer they can be maintained.  Every possible routine activity that can be tolerated, should be.

And we don't know the extent to which a particular restriction contributes.  The encouraging numbers only tell us whether the sum is effective.

I believe we should be more willing to risk an uncontrolled outbreak than prolonged economic damage, because I believe the latter is more likely to lead to social breakdown or long-term repressive governments.

Suppose the virus spreads beyond efforts at containment and health care systems collapse with respect to the capability to sustain coronavirus patients who need hospital care to survive the illness.  As bad as the apparent fatality rates are compared to common flu, I doubt they are high enough to cause widespread social disorder; the survivors - who I think will be 98%+ of people who get the disease - mourn their dead and normal life resumes.

Suppose the virus is held in check, but to do so requires measures that produce 20%+ unemployment, the permanent loss of anywhere from 1/3 to 2/3 of businesses which are under closure or severe restrictions, and the depletion of capital for recovery.  What kind of politics emerges?

The "greater good", in the tension between public health and economic health, does not obviously lie on the side of the former.

 

[blacktriangle]

What kind of politics emerges?

My personal speculation? The kind of politics that try to sell the idea of a universal basic income rather than trying to lift people out of poverty, or get small businesses and the economy back on track. The kind that ensures life-long dependence for a larger cohort of voters. Probably throw in the loss of the odd personal freedom (justified by evidence, no doubt) At least in places like Canada.

In other places (perhaps the US) the pendulum will swing in the opposite direction. I don't think either direction is ideal for humanity.

 

[Pelorus]

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/trump-secret-payments-sons-wife-girlfriend_n_5e9a1c46c5b635d25d6c747a?ri18n=true

Trump Campaign Secretly Paying $180,000 A Year To His Sons’ Significant Others
Lara Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle are each receiving $15,000 per month through the campaign manager’s private company, GOP sources said, to dodge FEC rules.

WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump’s campaign is secretly paying one Trump son’s wife and another one’s girlfriend $180,000 a year each through the campaign manager’s private company, according to top Republicans with knowledge of the payments.

Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of eldest son Donald Trump Jr., and Lara Trump, wife of middle son Eric Trump, are each receiving $15,000 a month, according to two GOP sources who are informal White House advisers and who spoke on condition of anonymity.

They were unsure when the payments began but say they are being made by campaign manager Bradley Parscale through his company rather than directly by either the campaign or the party in order to avoid public reporting requirements.

“I can pay them however I want to pay them,” Parscale told HuffPost on Friday, but then declined to comment any further.

Critics of the arrangement, including Republicans, said the setup was designed to get around Federal Election Commission rules that require campaigns, political parties and other committees to disclose their spending in detail.

“A lot of people close to Donald Trump are getting rich off of his campaign,” said Paul Ryan, a campaign finance legal expert at the watchdog group Common Cause. “They don’t want donors to know that they’re getting rich. Because, at the end of the day, it’s donor money.”

Stuart Stevens, a top aide to 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign, was even more blunt: “That’s why Parscale has the job. He’s a money launderer, not a campaign manager.”

More at link. Emphasis mine.

 

[mariomike]

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/trump-secret-payments-sons-wife-girlfriend_n_5e9a1c46c5b635d25d6c747a?ri18n=true

3,2,1... "But, what about Hunter!?" 

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

If the aim is to limit spread, the aim can only be achieved by co-operation, not force.  (Hypothesis, not fact, but I think a strong hypothesis.)  The willingness of people to co-operate is aggravated by at least two things: severity of restrictions, and duration of restrictions; the lighter the restrictions, the longer they can be maintained.  Every possible routine activity that can be tolerated, should be.

Actually, Brad, I think it aggravated, for the most part by three things, and you skipped to two and three.

The first one, by far, is inconsistent messaging, I would almost say derision, by the highest leader, of the actual measures restricting temporarily freedoms so that the people find it irrational to actually co-operate in the execution.

Do I have to specify what ... I mean who ... the primary cause of the current lack of co-operation in obeying the suggested restrictions, even in revolting openly about them, in the USA is?

(Hint, in card games, its a suit that beats all others  ).

 

[Brad Sallows]

There are undoubtedly more factors - hence, "at least" - and everyone is free to subjectively assign whatever weight he chooses, but my point about co-operation is relevant to Canada, was written to include Canada, and reflects what I have written here and elsewhere about keeping effective measures in place in Canada.  Fortunately, Trump isn't responsible for the messaging in Canada, and we are not in the middle of an election campaign here.

 

[Remius]

Fortunately, Trump isn't responsible for the messaging in Canada, and we are not in the middle of an election campaign here.

Good point Brad.  I wonder if things might be different here if there was a campaign.  Possibly. But Federally we are in a minority situation which adds a different tone from the gvt.

The US however, is perpetually in a campaign though. 

 

[Brad Sallows]

I think we are very fortunate to have a minority federal government.  All parties are motivated to focus on the problem at hand, and there is no majority with an opportunity to try to shovel a bunch of stuff through in an omnibus "epidemic" bill.

 

[OceanBonfire]

AP FACT CHECK: Trump's misdirection on virus testing, deaths

President Donald Trump is falsely assigning blame to governors and the Obama administration for shortages in coronavirus testing.

For much of the week, he was pretender to a throne that didn’t exist as he claimed king-like powers over the pandemic response and Congress. But by the weekend, he was again saying governors called the shots and they are the ones to blame — not the federal government, not him — for any testing problems.

He says governors aren’t using all the testing capacity that the federal government has created. It’s not true.

Meanwhile, Trump denied praising China’s openness in the pandemic, when he’s on record doing so repeatedly, and declared victory over what he calls relatively low death rates in the U.S. But that’s too soon to tell.

A look at his recent rhetoric and its relationship with reality.


TESTING

TRUMP, on governors urging wider availability of virus tests: “They don’t want to use all of the capacity that we’ve created. We have tremendous capacity. ...They know that. The governors know that. The Democrat governors know that; they’re the ones that are complaining.” — news briefing Saturday.

THE FACTS: Trump’s assertion that governors are not using already available testing capacity is contradicted by one of his top health advisers. He’s also wrong that Democrats are the only ones expressing concerns about the adequacy of COVID-19 testing; several Republican governors also point to problems.


TRUMP: “Some partisan voices are attempting to politicize the issue of testing, which they shouldn’t be doing, because I inherited broken junk.” — news briefing Saturday.

TRUMP: “We inherited a broken, terrible system.” — news briefing Saturday.

THE FACTS: His repeated insistence that the Obama administration is to blame for initial delays in testing is wrong. The novel coronavirus did not exist until late last year, so there was no test to inherit.


DEATH RATES

TRUMP: “The United States has produced dramatically better health outcomes than any other country. ... On a per capita basis, our mortality rate is far lower than other nations of Western Europe, with the lone exception of possibly Germany. ... You hear we have more death. But we’re a much bigger country than any of those countries by far.“ — news briefing Saturday.

THE FACTS: His suggestion that the U.S. response to the coronavirus has been better than many other countries’ because its mortality rate is “far lower” is unsupported and misleading.


TRUMP: “China has just announced a doubling in the number of their deaths from the Invisible Enemy. It is far higher than that and far higher than the U.S., not even close!” — tweet Friday.

THE FACTS: It’s the reverse, more than 4,600 recorded deaths in China compared with more than 36,000 in the United States. And the notion that China can overtake the U.S. in a final accounting of the dead is a long shot right now.


CHINA vs. US

TRUMP: “China was supposed to catch us. ... For years, I’ve heard, ‘By 2019, China will catch us.’ There’s only one problem: Trump got elected in 2016. That was a big difference. And we were going leaps and bounds above China.” — news briefing Saturday.

THE FACTS: No matter who got elected in 2016 — Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton — China’s economy could not have caught up to America’s.


EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY

TRUMP: “Some in the Fake News Media are saying that it is the Governors decision to open up the states, not that of the President of the United States & the Federal Government. Let it be fully understood that this is incorrect ... It is the decision of the President.” — tweets on April 13.

TRUMP, asked about his level of authority to reopen the country: “I have the ultimate authority.... They can’t do anything without the approval of the president of the United States.” — news briefing on April 13.

THE FACTS: The federal government did not close down the country and won’t be reopening it. Restrictions on public gatherings, workplaces, mobility, store operations, schools and more were ordered by states and communities, not Washington. The federal government has imposed border controls; otherwise its social distancing actions are mostly recommendations, not mandates.


TRUMP: “If the House will not agree to that adjournment, I will exercise my constitutional authority to adjourn both chambers of Congress.” — news briefing Wednesday.

THE FACTS: His power to adjourn Congress is highly questionable.


WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION

TRUMP, explaining in part why he is freezing money to the World Health Organization: “The WHO willingly took China’s assurances to face value, and they took it just at face value and defended the actions of the Chinese government, even praising China for its so-called transparency. I don’t think so.” — news briefing Tuesday.

TRUMP, asked about his past praise of China: “I don’t talk about China’s transparency.” — news briefing Tuesday.

THE FACTS: He did praise China’s transparency as well as its overall performance in the pandemic.


https://apnews.com/fd37d76dab33c3cc944fea0913048e4a

 

[Brad Sallows]

A couple of those "fact checks" are wrong.

Neither his nor the preceding "administration" was responsible - by which I mean, the political layer - for testing delays which occurred due to ordinary decision making processes (the decisions to prioritize other expenditures over replenishment of stockpiles consumed in 2009), and bureaucratic inattention and "sludge": the problem with the CDC kits that went overlooked; the insistence that the kits had to be wholly fixed before deployment; the insistence that test results had to be sent to the CDC; delays by the FDA authorizing tests.

There is no way of knowing what China's actual death count or rate is.  Neither Trump nor anyone else should be making comparisons to China.

There is no way of knowing accurately any country's mortality rate, because the denominator of the calculation is so uncertain.  Neither Trump nor anyone else should be comparing mortality rates.

The power of the president to adjourn Congress is not settled, but neither is it "highly questionable".  The conditions are clearly spelled out; it is just that it has not been used and thus not been tested.

 

[kkwd]

A new Trump campaign ad focusing on Nancy Pelosi's ice cream incident.

Trump Campaign Web Ad Hits Pelosi For Snacking While People Lose Jobs: "Let Them Eat Ice Cream"

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/04/20/trump_campaign_web_ad_hits_pelosi_for_snacking_while_people_lose_jobs_let_them_eat_ice_cream.html

 

[Baz]

A new Trump campaign ad focusing on Nancy Pelosi's ice cream incident.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/04/20/trump_campaign_web_ad_hits_pelosi_for_snacking_while_people_lose_jobs_let_them_eat_ice_cream.html

I fear for the survival of US Democracy as we know it.  The two parties are so close together politically all they can do is attack each other on frivolities.  Meanwhile, in order to do nothing other than make money, all the media outlets pander to a specific demographic; it's not media bias, it's profiteering.

God help as all if they continue down this path.

 

[Infanteer]

To add some perspective, I've seen similar statements from the 1800s directed at the state of UK politics and the work of Fleet Street.  In the long run, I think we'll be okay.

 

[Baz]

To add some perspective, I've seen similar statements from the 1800s directed at the state of UK politics and the work of Fleet Street.  In the long run, I think we'll be okay.

Oh, I know I'm being dramatic.  Just trying to let people know that there is in fact a middle ground and maybe we'd be better off if we discussed the issues rationally.  It seems a lot of voices feel they need to scream, I just thought I'd scream from the center.

 

[mariomike]

In the long run, I think we'll be okay.

I think we will be too.

Perhaps a little bit less confident about "The US Presidency 2020", from what I have read elsewhere,

https://www.google.com/search?ei=qvKeXsa2DcOwtAbqt6OwCQ&q=%22transition+of+power%22+trump&oq=%22transition+of+power%22+trump&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQDDoECAAQRzoECAAQHjoGCAAQCBAeOgYIABANEB46CAgAEAgQDRAeOgYIABAHEB46BggAEAUQHjoICAAQCBAKEB5Q5zFYiroBYP_PAWgAcAJ4A4ABxAWIAfgnkgEOOS4xNC4xLjMuMS4wLjGYAQCgAQGqAQdnd3Mtd2l6&sclient=psy-ab&ved=0ahUKEwjGs5fSzfnoAhVDGM0KHerbCJYQ4dUDCAs#spf=1587475144020