Quote:Senator Mitch McConnell took a hard line on Wednesday against giving cash-short states more federal aid in future emergency pandemic relief legislation, saying that those suffering steep shortfalls amid the coronavirus crisis should instead consider bankruptcy.

“I think this whole business of additional assistance for state and local governments needs to be thoroughly evaluated,” Mr. McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, said in an interview with the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. “There’s not going to be any desire on the Republican side to bail out state pensions by borrowing money from future generations.”

(04-22-2020, 02:32 PM)DHBirr Wrote:

(04-22-2020, 11:57 AM)SilverFang01 Wrote: Trump will soon be making noises of "hydroxychloroquine? Never heard of it"

It may've brought covfefe for him once or twice.  Or was that Stephanie Grisham?

(04-21-2020, 11:51 AM)Norgarth Wrote:

(04-21-2020, 09:31 AM)robkelk Wrote: Georgia Governor orders state re-opened on Friday.

Yes. This Friday.

Despite all of the medical advice to the contrary.

Well, nice of them to volunteer as (bad) example/petrie dish  

...

Quote:“We’re very close to a vaccine,” Trump said, before immediately contradicting himself. “We’re not close on testing” the vaccine, he clarified.

Quote:The president said “you won’t even believe” how the virus reacts to sunlight.

“Supposing you brought the light inside the body - either through the skin or some other way,” Trump wondered.

Quote:He also mused about ways to use disinfectants on people, “by injections inside or almost a cleaning.”

“It’d be interesting to check that,” the president said. “You’d have to use medical doctors.”

The DHS’s Bryan is asked about the president’s suggestions that disinfectants be injected into a person. “We don’t do that within our lab,” Bryan said.

“Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t work,” Trump interjected — but disinfectants like isopropyl alcohol definitely has an effect on “stationary objects.”

Quote:“Medical doctors,” should see “if there any way to apply light and heat to cure”, the president said. He asked Dr Deborah Birx if that’s possible.

“It’s just a suggestion,” Trump said. “If heat is good and if sunlight is good, that’s a great thing as far as I’m concerned.”

(04-23-2020, 06:53 PM)SilverFang01 Wrote: Today during the briefing:

Quote:“We’re very close to a vaccine,” Trump said, before immediately contradicting himself. “We’re not close on testing” the vaccine, he clarified.

Does any of that make sense?

(04-23-2020, 06:53 PM)SilverFang01 Wrote:

Quote:The president said “you won’t even believe” how the virus reacts to sunlight.

“Supposing you brought the light inside the body - either through the skin or some other way,” Trump wondered.

Now we are trying to recreate an episode of Star Trek

(04-23-2020, 06:53 PM)SilverFang01 Wrote:

Quote:He also mused about ways to use disinfectants on people, “by injections inside or almost a cleaning.”

“It’d be interesting to check that,” the president said. “You’d have to use medical doctors.”

The DHS’s Bryan is asked about the president’s suggestions that disinfectants be injected into a person. “We don’t do that within our lab,” Bryan said.

“Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t work,” Trump interjected — but disinfectants like isopropyl alcohol definitely has an effect on “stationary objects.”

I am NOT taking an injection of Clorox. I don't care what the president* says.

(04-23-2020, 06:53 PM)SilverFang01 Wrote:

Quote:“Medical doctors,” should see “if there any way to apply light and heat to cure”, the president said. He asked Dr Deborah Birx if that’s possible.

“It’s just a suggestion,” Trump said. “If heat is good and if sunlight is good, that’s a great thing as far as I’m concerned.”

<facepalm>

Quote:In a viral essay, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen makes a simple exhortation: It’s time to build. Behind the coronavirus crisis, he writes, lies “our widespread inability to build.” America has been unable to create enough coronavirus tests, or even enough cotton swabs to fully utilize the tests we do have. We don’t have enough ventilators, ICU beds, personal protection equipment. The government hasn’t built the capacity to quickly get money to people or businesses who need it.

(04-23-2020, 08:13 PM)hazard Wrote: I will point out that the EU's top level government is entirely dependent on every nation in the EU not vetoing an agreement. And generally the EU does get things done.

(04-23-2020, 07:35 PM)hazard Wrote: Light and heat could be part of the effort to excise COVID-19 from society. It's just that when it's inside a body, the sort of conditions that would be necessary to destroy the disease would do massively greater damage to the body it's in.

(04-23-2020, 07:35 PM)hazard Wrote:

(04-23-2020, 06:53 PM)SilverFang01 Wrote: Today during the briefing:

Quote:“We’re very close to a vaccine,” Trump said, before immediately contradicting himself. “We’re not close on testing” the vaccine, he clarified.

Does any of that make sense?

Sort of. IIRC there's something like 70 different vaccines being worked at for COVID-19, many of which are taking absurdly short routes to testing for effectiveness and safety. And I mean absurdly short routes, several vaccines have already had the requirement for animal testing waved for them because SARS-COV-2 is so new a virus we don't have a test animal we can use to do the animal trials on, and the work necessary to determine which animal if any is the best option would delay the vaccine testing process by months at best.

Many vaccines are getting to the stage they can be tested however, which means that in theory we do have a functional vaccine nearly to completion. We just don't know if any of those vaccines are sufficiently safe to use compared to the risk of not using the vaccine.

(04-23-2020, 07:35 PM)hazard Wrote: ...

(04-23-2020, 06:53 PM)SilverFang01 Wrote:

Quote:He also mused about ways to use disinfectants on people, “by injections inside or almost a cleaning.”

“It’d be interesting to check that,” the president said. “You’d have to use medical doctors.”

The DHS’s Bryan is asked about the president’s suggestions that disinfectants be injected into a person. “We don’t do that within our lab,” Bryan said.

“Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t work,” Trump interjected — but disinfectants like isopropyl alcohol definitely has an effect on “stationary objects.”

I am NOT taking an injection of Clorox. I don't care what the president* says.

Disinfectants also have an effect on non-stationary objects, and that effect is usually that the previously non-stationary object is definitely and fatally stationary now.

Quote:A 36-year-old man pulled a knife Friday on a television news team covering an anti-lockdown protest in Huntington Beach, California, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Christien Francis Petersen of Costa Mesa has been jailed on suspicion of exhibiting a deadly weapon other than a firearm and kidnapping, The Orange County Register reported.

Petersen approached a KTTV cameraman and reporter, produced a pocket knife and forced them into a news van to delete any footage in which he may have appeared, the station reported.

The journalists had been covering a Huntington Beach protest against a state shelter-in-place order issued to try to curb the spread of coronavirus, the Los Angeles Times reported.

(04-24-2020, 07:20 AM)robkelk Wrote: While SARS-COV-2 is new, SARS as a family of virii is not. I suspect the "it's new so we can't do animal testing" excuse doesn't hold water, but I'm not a biologist of any sort.

(04-24-2020, 07:20 AM)robkelk Wrote: And if a vaccine is released without testing, I will insist that the people who allowed it to be released without testing be the first to receive it.

(04-24-2020, 09:03 AM)hazard Wrote:

(04-24-2020, 07:20 AM)robkelk Wrote: While SARS-COV-2 is new, SARS as a family of virii is not. I suspect the "it's new so we can't do animal testing" excuse doesn't hold water, but I'm not a biologist of any sort.

The problem is that just because we know the family doesn't mean that we automatically know which species are good test subjects. It's not so much 'it's new so we can't do animal testing' as it's 'it's so new we don't know which animals are cost effective to test or give a response to this virus and anything we can use to treat the disease it creates that we can accurately translate to humans. Never you mind both'.

What you are basically saying is 'dogs are canine, wolves are canine, hyenas are canine, dingoes are canine and coyote are canine, so the way I treat my well trained and domesticated lap dog will work exactly the same for all those other canines'. And that's presuming SARS-COV-2 is that closely related, because in microbiotics, like bacteria and virus', figuring out how closely related two different subjects are can be quite difficult. The problem with the common cold is that it's actually a massive range of different pathogens, not all of which are closely related to other pathogens that are none the less dropped under the title of 'common cold'.