As of Saturday, the United States has the highest number of confirmed deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic in the world.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1303218
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1303218
Just the latest entry in Trump’s growing list of top spots in the presidential sweepstakes.
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That’s just a Democratic hoax! Everyone is fine! Now get back to fucking work!
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So much winning.
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I’m assuming that does not include an adjustment for the undercount.
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Just said on another thread I’m watching the virus march inexorably into Pennsylvania’s most remote, low-population-density counties. I couldn’t find one without any confirmed cases. So it’s not like you get a pass if you don’t live in NYC or New Orleans. The damn thing erupted in Albany, Georgia because of two funerals. It’s everywhere, and if you live in a rural area then gloat while you can because it’s coming and you need to hope you’re lucky.
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No more than Puerto Rico’s count did, for a while.
There hasn’t been an official acknowledgement of the disparity in deaths, as compared to the annual average. I doubt this administration will ever acknowledge it.
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Or some states.
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Along with the horrifying reality and overwhelming sadness of so many lost American lives, is that this may well be the nail in the coffin of the American Era.
No doubt other countries look at us with a sense of bewilderment as to what we’ve become and how ineffectual we are at saving our own citizens. If we can’t even save ourselves, how can we help others? If we’re willing to stoop so low as to steal, then hoard, a possible vaccine for ourselves, how can they trust us? As such, they will look elsewhere for help and leadership.
American billionaires and corporations who cheered on this maniac for cheap tax cuts in the short term, will rue the long term as capital flows to China and other more stable countries with better leadership and more pragmatic, evidence based governance.
What hurts me the most is how we’ve abdicated our role, imperfect as it was, as the moral beacon of the world.
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A Yanomami boy in the Amazon rain forest died yesterday of Covid-19. And as I’ve pointed out several times, the Navajo Nation has cases.
Any corner that escapes will have been almost miraculously lucky.
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"The Appointment in Samarra"
The speaker is Death
There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, “Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture. Now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me.”
The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, “Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?”
“That was not a threatening gesture,” I said. “It was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”
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A white Mississippi trailer park community with a nuclear arsenal.
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It must make Vlad smile.
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I think for a long time we’ll know the severity anecdotally. People know if Grandma is alive or dead, at least, or that popular history teacher at school. People will die who wouldn’t have in normal times. And many aspects of this will also be elite knowledge, at least in the early stages. The NYT, for all its flaws, has been putting together irrefutable evidence that the administration ignored solid warnings and wasted a tremendous amount of time. So has the WaPo. When people hear that more and more, it will help them understand why Grandma died.
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Yes, but we did it to ourselves. He just gave a slight push. And “by us”, I mean Republicans and their ill-tempered, aggressively ignorant supporters.
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Isn’t there a saying from hackers: Information wants to be known?
It will be hard to actually cover up how many deaths have occurred I think. It’s more chaotic right now, but eventually there will be ways to account for who was lost.
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I don’t think there’s a village in the world today so remote it has no contact with the outside world. The virus will be slower in such places, but not absent.
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That may be one of the best descriptions yet - A Talking Virus.
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I remember a widespread saying to the effect that information wants to be free, as in not paid for. Early days of the intertubes, obviously. I always thought that was funny, information not having volition. I used to suggest that if you personally wanted the information to be free, you should just say so.
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