- New Cases: 338,352 (⬆︎ .84%)
- New Deaths: 4,392 (⬆︎ .39%)
USA
- New Cases: 57,327 (⬆︎ .68%)
- New Deaths: 442 (⬆︎ .20%)
Three pieces from WaPo and NYT that illustrate a small part of how thoroughly fucked up this Cult45 administration is.
Of course we’re tired of the coronavirus, Mr. President. Wishful thinking won’t make it go away.
AS A frightening new wave of coronavirus infections and hospitalizations washes over the nation, President Trump and his team sound like cheerleaders in a fantasy world. “The light at the end of the tunnel is near. We are rounding the turn,” Mr. Trump said Friday. His White House coronavirus adviser, Scott Atlas, went even further on the weekend with nakedly irresponsible advice that face masks don’t work. The implication was: Don’t bother to wear them. “People are tired of covid,” Mr. Trump declared Monday. “People are saying, ‘Whatever, just leave us alone.’ ”
Of course we are tired of covid. More than 8 million Americans have been infected by the novel coronavirus and at least 219,000 have died, more than in any other country. Some number of those deaths can be attributed to Mr. Trump’s adoption of wishful thinking as policy. He has resisted a national testing plan and a national public health strategy, and he continually encourages reckless behavior and mocks prudence. The result is more unemployment, more illness, more misery.
“Masks work? NO,” Dr. Atlas wrote, egregiously. He is no expert in infectious disease, but he has risen in the White House hierarchy because he is comfortable in Mr. Trump’s make-believe world. Dr. Atlas rejects universal mask mandates, says they are unnecessary except in close proximity to others, frequently criticizes lockdowns, insists that businesses and schools open, and discourages expanded diagnostic testing. He pursues the mirage of natural “herd immunity.” There is no other way to read this than a strategy to let a lot of people die. Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota described it as “the most amazing combination of pixie dust and pseudoscience I’ve ever seen.”
The pandemic poses tough trade-offs: Restrictions on people congregating, which can slow viral transmission, must be weighed against the enormous costs to education and the economy. But there can be no honest debate based on fraudulent science and negligent leadership. Masks are not perfect, but they work. Mitigation works. Careless openings and reckless gatherings lead to outbreaks and surging virus.
According to The Post’s reporters, Dr. Atlas is at odds with others on the White House coronavirus task force, including Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Deborah Birx, the coronavirus response coordinator. The hostility spilled into the open Monday in Mr. Trump’s conference call with campaign staff. “People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots,” the president said. “He’s been here for, like, 500 years. He’s like this wonderful sage telling us how — Fauci, if we listened to him, we’d have 700,000 [or] 800,000 deaths.” Trump added of Dr. Fauci: “Every time he goes on television there’s always a bomb, but there’s a bigger bomb if you fire him.”
Dr. Fauci has been honorably speaking out, as much as he can. We wish Dr. Birx and the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Redfield, would be as forthright in sharing unvarnished, data-based advice. But they are not the villains here; undoubtedly, they are trying their best to keep the nation on course in the face of ignorant and heedless leadership.
Mr. Trump’s malpractice in responding to covid-19 is by any measure a firing offense. Fortunately, Americans have an opportunity to fire him, in voting taking place now and culminating on Nov. 3.
NYT - Remdesivir is no miracle cure:
Remdesivir Fails to Prevent Covid-19 Deaths in Huge Trial
Critics said the study, sponsored by the W.H.O., was too poorly conducted to be definitive
Remdesivir, the only antiviral drug authorized for treatment of Covid-19 in the United States, fails to prevent deaths among patients, according to a study of more than 11,000 people in 30 countries sponsored by the World Health Organization.
The drug was granted emergency authorization by the Food and Drug Administration on May 1 after a trial by the National Institutes of Health found that remdesivir modestly reduced the time to recovery in hospitalized patients. President Trump received the antiviral after he began showing symptoms earlier this month.
“This puts the issue to rest — there is certainly no mortality benefit,” said Dr. Ilan Schwartz, an infectious disease physician at the University of Alberta in Canada.
But other scientists said the design of the W.H.O.’s sprawling clinical trial, which collected data from hundreds of hospitals, meant the conclusions were not definitive.
Conducted in dozens of countries with various health care systems and inconsistent treatment protocols, the data are difficult to analyze and compare, said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease expert at the University of California, San Francisco.
The findings, which were posted online on Thursday, have not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal.
Remdesivir, which was originally developed as a treatment for Ebola and hepatitis C, interferes with the reproduction of viruses by jamming itself into new viral genes.
There's always tension between colleagues - that's how it's supposed to be. One guy puts up his hypothesis, and the next guy tries to tear it down, then the first guy rebuts, then another guy chimes in, and on it goes until some kind of consensus is reached.
My point here is that they just don't know enough yet. When President Stoopid jumps into the middle of it and goes off half-cocked, the whole thing just gets weirder and more jumbled, and that makes it harder for anybody to get any closer to solid useful information.
NYT:
Pfizer Says It Won’t Seek Vaccine Authorization Before Mid-November
Friday’s announcement represents a shift in tone for the company and its leader, who has repeatedly emphasized the month of October in interviews and public appearances.
The chief executive of Pfizer said on Friday that the company would not apply for emergency authorization of its coronavirus vaccine before the third week of November, ruling out President Trump’s assertion that a vaccine would be ready before Election Day on Nov. 3.
In a statement posted to the company website, the chief executive, Dr. Albert Bourla, said that although Pfizer could have preliminary numbers by the end of October about whether the vaccine works, it would still need to collect safety and manufacturing data that will stretch the timeline to at least the third week of November.
Close watchers of the vaccine race had already known that Pfizer wouldn’t be able to meet the requirements of the Food and Drug Administration by the end of this month. But Friday’s announcement represents a shift in tone for the company and its leader, who has repeatedly emphasized the month of October in interviews and public appearances.
In doing so, the company had aligned its messaging with that of the president, who has made no secret of his desire for an approved vaccine before the election. He has even singled out the company by name and said he had talked to Dr. Bourla, whom he called a “great guy.”
We've been told over and over that there's no curative, and there're no therapeutics (none that can be applied across the spectrum of cases anyway), and that it's not realistic to expect a safe effective vaccine that can be widely distributed before spring 2021, at the earliest.
But there's President Stoopid again, running off at the mouth because he gets to say any fuckin' thing he wants to say because he has an opinion and that means what he says is just as valid as what any doctor says and blah blah blah, and now it's getting worse and more people are dying and we need somebody to beat that fucker with a sock full of rocks til he shuts the fuck up.
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