Monday, May 31, 2021

Day by day: What Trump administration officials and GOP sycophants said about the virus (May 16-31, 2020)


GET ME REWRITE:  Rupert Murdoch's New York Post shows the "right" way to Trump sycophancy.  The paper has a long history of cartoonish "reportage".


New York Post, 5/31/2020
For a moment in April, the Internet tried to cancel Florida. Photos showing crowds flocking to Jacksonville Beach amid the pandemic sent the hashtag #FloridaMorons trending on Twitter. The media spun scenes of ignorant spring breakers endangering themselves and others. Here was Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, joining neighboring state Georgia’s “experiment in human sacrifice,” as a writer for The Atlantic put it, by letting locals lift restrictions on their own. 
Nearly a month later, Jacksonville’s Duval County reports new COVID-19 hospitalizations in the single digits. Rates of hospitalizations, cases and deaths remain steady across Florida. So far, fewer Floridians have died of the novel coronavirus than in New York’s nursing homes alone (2,259 compared with 5,800, at least).
A classic case of speaking too soon.

New York Times (arrows added)

On May 31, 2020, Florida's 7-day average of new Covid cases was 757.

Less than two months later, on July 17, Florida's 7-day average of new Covid cases was 11,870, an increase of 1470% since May 31.  Florida surpassed New York's number of Covid cases on July 26.

On January 8, 2021, Florida's 7-day average of new Covid cases was 17,991, an increase of 2275% since May 31.

Florida's current 7-day average of new Covid cases is 1,498, twice its May 31 average.

Heckuva job, Ron!

_________________________________________________________________________

May 28 update starts here


HuffPost, 5/28/2020
Dobbs in the past has claimed Trump is setting a standard for presidents “that most mortals won’t be able to meet,” is “unbeatable at the polls” and has energized the White House in ways that have never been seen before. 
The “Lou Dobbs Tonight” host’s boasts about Trump have been widely ridiculed, with many critics likening them to state television propaganda in North Korea. 
This time, however, Dobb’s praise of Trump as the bleak pandemic milestone was reached was greeted with fierce criticism, given the Trump White House’s slow and sloppy response to the public health crisis:

Dobbs'  sycophancy eventually became too much even for Fox News.

__________________________________________________________________________

May 27 update start here



WQAD, 5/27/2020
When asked when test iowa will reach a threshold of 3,000 tests per day, the governor said the state is nearly there. 
"We've had over 88,000 Iowans that have been tested in the month of May," Reynolds said. "As we continue to build out the testing options as well as continuing our process improvement... we're actually there." The governor said the confirmed cases of COVID-19 are trending toward the western side of the state. 
Reynolds also said 150 National Guard soldiers are assisting with contact tracing to determine those a sick person may have come into contact with.
As if the virus was just going to move on into Nebraska.

On May 27, 2020, Iowa's 7-day average of new Covid cases was 368.

Three months later, on August 31, Iowa's 7-day average of new Covid cases was 1,187, an increase of nearly 220% since May 27.

On November 13, 2020, Iowa's 7-day average of new Covid cases was 4,660, an increase of 1166% since May 27.

Iowa's current 7-day average of new Covid cases is 150.

__________________________________________________________________________


Brad Parscale photo credit:  Gage Skimore vis Wikipedia

The Guardian, 5/26/2020
“We always knew that Silicon Valley would pull out all the stops to obstruct and interfere with President Trump getting his message through to voters,” Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale said. “There are many reasons the Trump campaign pulled all our advertising from Twitter and months ago, and their clear political bias is one of them.“
And then this happened. 

The Independent, 7/28/2020


We always knew that Brad wasn't in it for the long haul.

_______________________________________________________________________

May 23, 2021 update starts here


The Guardian, 5/23/2020
For what it’s worth, public health expert Dr Deborah Birx said at the White House on Friday that it was OK for the public to go play 18 holes: 
“You can all make your decisions about going outside and social distancing, potentially playing golf,” she said. “If you’re very careful and you don’t touch the flags and all of those issues, playing tennis with marked balls with just one other person. So you’re only touching your ball. 
“We found really people who enjoy sports have been able to really adjust to social distancing, but you can see … Maryland, the District, and Virginia … there is still significant virus circulating here.”

________________________________________________________________________

May 21 update starts here

Alex Azar lives in an irony-free world.


Washington Post, 5/21/2020
How can we avoid these costs? The Trump administration has laid out a phased approach for lifting restrictions on work, social gatherings and other activities over time. 
Americans should be proud of the sacrifices they have made, abiding by lengthy stay-at-home orders to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus and buy time. Now, Americans should follow their states’ guidelines as they evolve, and leaders should be cognizant of the health, social and economic costs of maintaining restrictions. 
We have a strategy for how to move forward: A combination of surveillance, widespread and easily available testing, containment of isolated outbreaks, and rapid development of vaccines and therapeutics means we will continue making progress against the virus in the months to come.
Actually, "in the months to come", the U.S. 7-day average of new Covid cases increased from 22,931 to 88,178 on Election Day (11/3/2020).  That's an increase of nearly 300%.  The 7-day average peaked at 254,000 -- a 100% increase -- less than two weeks before Trump's final day in office.  

There was a plan -- a strategy --  but the Trump administration never followed it from the start.  To put it bluntly, Azar was full of shit.

____________________________________________________________________________

May 20 update starts here



White House spokesman Judd Deere said President Trump and “all Americans want to see their churches safely open again. Not only is it good for the community, it’s their right under the Constitution to worship freely without government intrusion. The Trump administration will always protect that right and continue to partner with states to ensure congregations are properly protected as restrictions are responsibly eased.”  [emphasis added]

In other words, it's okey-dokey for Christians to spread the virus freely without government intrusion.   

What happens when people listen to this doofus too much.

______________________________________________________________________

May 19 update starts here

Dictionary definition from Merriam-Webster (box added)

ABC News, 5/19/2020
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has repeatedly said the state needed its economy to start as soon as possible and has cited decreased case counts in counties outside Miami, the state's epicenter, as the reason for easing the stay-at-home orders.


On May 19, 2020, Florida's 7-day average of new Covid cases was 717. 

One month later, Florida's 7-day average was 2,682, an increase of 274%.

Two months later, Florida's 7 -day average was 11,865, an increase of 1550% over the April tally.

Heckuva job, Ron!

___________________________________________________________________________\]

May 18 update starts here

New York Times (arrow added)

In Texas: Officials reported the highest single-day increase in new cases over the weekend, but the governor has attributed it to more testing. Restaurants, movie theaters and malls have been open for a little more than two weeks, and the governor is expected to announce the next step in the state's reopening Monday.
On May 18, the 7-day average of new Covid cases was 1,257.  Two months later, it leapt to 10,481 -- an increase of 730%.  And at that point, the worst was far from over.

Heckuva job, Greg!

_____________________________________________________________________________

May 17 update starts here

Eric Trump claimed Saturday that the coronavirus will “magically” vanish after the November election and allow the country to fully reopen — an assertion that has no basis in science and is contradicted by health experts worldwide. 
In an interview with Fox News’s Jeanine Pirro, Trump suggested the president’s critics were using the pandemic to undermine his father’s rallies, calling it a “cognizant strategy” that would cease once it was no longer politically expedient. 
“You watch, they’ll milk it every single day between now and November 3,” the younger Trump said. “And guess what, after November 3, coronavirus will magically, all of a sudden, go away and disappear and everybody will be able to reopen.”

At its 1/9/2021 peak -- 67 days after the election -- the 7-day average of new Covid cases was more than 10 times the number reported on 5/17/2020.

_______________________________________________________________________

May 16 update starts here

Moscow Mitch straight up lies.


"They claim pandemics only happen once every hundred years but what if that's no longer true? We want to be early, ready for the next one, because clearly the Obama administration did not leave to this administration any kind of game plan for something like this,"

Related series of official/sycophants posts:


No comments: