WHO Says COVID-19 Can Be Called A ‘Pandemic’ Amid Spread, Gov’t Inaction | Talking Points Memo

The World Health Organization on Wednesday announced that COVID-19, the disease resulting from the novel coronavirus that spread across the globe, can be considered a pandemic.


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1296362

Fake News!! Fake News!!! La, la, la, la, la, la…

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A month or more too late, but I guess good. I’m assuming it took this long due to US political meddling. Anyone with the intelligence of a fruit fly has seen that this meets all the requirements of a Pandemic for weeks now.

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How does Trump spin this news that his “hoax” is now a full-blow global pandemic?

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Yup. They’re only announcing this because they hate Cadet Toadglans mit der Bone Spurs.

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JFC. WTF is it with McConnell not reading him the riot act on this insanity? Is having power all that much fun if you’re dead? That would be news to me.

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This should cost Trump the election; along with any GOP bastard who refuses to challenge the Orange Virus. All GOP Senators up for re-election should be pounded with this inevitable announcement. Trump’s sole concern is that he “look good in the media”; the rest of the world is expendable in his pursuit of ego satisfaction.

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Guess WHO is on second?
Donnie’s on first when it comes to medical stable genius-ness.

DJI down 1,200 and falling.

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One word: INACTION

That defines the preening, self-inflating moron who classifies essential, life-saving information.

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Bandy Lee said months ago that as he gets sicker, he’ll be more predictable, and I think we’re seeing that. He used to understand that he had to pay lip service to things a normal public servant would talk about, like the population staying healthy and not dying. Trump can no longer pretend, it seems. All he can say is stay calm, everything’s going to be fine, we’re going a great job not good great and so forth. He can’t say there will be temporary disruptions in daily life, or that he understands the concern, or that we’re all in this together. “You” and “us” are not in his repertoire except as objects to exploit. He’s a sick, sick man and can’t pretend otherwise. Shaking my damn head.

But of course, there are the truly stupid ones who believe him:

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So does a pandemic count as a pivot?

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I don’t know. If you suddenly become much worse, much less conventionally presidential, is that a pivot? If it is, he’s pivoting.

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It’s an addiction. Plus, I don’t believe any of the currently powerful Republicans (including McConnell) are all that smart. If they were they would figured out how to hold on to power without the debasements of Trump and Putin. Of course, that would require them to at least pretend not to be racists and misogynists. They are addicted to those two things as well.

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Why the United States declined to use the WHO test, even temporarily as a bridge until the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could produce its own test, remains a perplexing question and the key to the Trump administration’s failure to provide enough tests to identify the coronavirus infections before they could be passed on.

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Trump is so damned dumb he thinks he can tell the tide not to come in and it will obey! FUBAR!!

WHO says it and Fauci agrees so that pretty much settles it in my mind as far as definitions go. What happens if all the ICUs and respirators are taken a week or so from now and new patients are refused is another question.

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And of course, people often end up in effect choosing the high over staying alive. So good point.

ETA but still, the truly insane thing about Trump’s insanity here is that if he pulled up his socks, asked his aides what the best thing to do would be, and then accepted that he has to address this thing to have even a ghost of a chance of surviving politically, or let’s say if he had done that in time, he would be in a much better position. But he thinks, although not in these terms, that he can alter reality by talking. He thinks he has the power to make people see things as he does, as he wishes they would, and in that Trumpian world he’s done everything perfectly and should be reelected in a 50-state landslide. The problem is that he’s trapped in our world and we in his. It’s a waking nightmare.

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Because the financial industry is so “innovative” Pandemic Bonds exist:

Expect for those bondholders to get hosed.

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Clusterfuck doesn’t even begin to describe this Wankapalooza.

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Time to go golfing!