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The media is helping make this problem worse with this kind of reporting. Also, as Eric has pointed out, the media is giving tons of coverage to lockdown protesters despite polls showing they represent a tiny portion of the public. And now the anti-vaxxers are getting the spotlight. Today’s WaPo has an article highlighting the anti-vaxxer protests which was placed prominently at the top of their website. These people also represent a teeny, tiny percentage of the American people but they are giving the spotlight which gives them even more influence.

Paul Krugman’s column today points out that the media isn’t making it clear that the many of the people advising Trump are longtime pillars of the conservative movement. He cites the example of Kevin Hassett, the man Trump appointed to be in charge of epidemiological modeling despite having no background in that field. The WaPo made that fact clear but not the fact that Hasset has a long history of being seriously wrong about his real field of expertise, economics, but that he is still an influential conservative voice. I noticed that the media made a big deal of the fact that Trump disbanded the pandemic response team when it was actually John Bolton, a powerful neocon and Bush’s former ambassador to the UN, who actually made that disastrous decision. He is as prominent a conservative as it gets and has been seriously wrong about a lot, especially the Iraq War yet media is portraying him as a good guy because he is critic of Trump, ignoring the fact that he is one of the people responsible for the mess we are in.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/opinion/trump-coronavirus.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

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yes, excellent Krugman column. he's constantly willing to address the larger issue of how deeply radical and dangerous today's GOP has become

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The press, or "Main Stream Media" has failed America. They have simply become a mouthpiece or megaphone for Trump. They parrot his talking points as if he is the absolute authority instead of doing the footwork and finding an authority of their own. Instead of being champions of the truth and uncovering it, the press simply looks the other way and covers these "press conferences" as if they are legitimate sources of knowledge instead of as the circus side shows they are. What happened to the Woodward and Bernstein style search for the truth and the balls to buck the powers that be? These tv talking heads have become lazy and uninspired. They no longer search for anything remotely resembling truth, instead they wait for it to be dropped in their laps. When Trump goes, so should they. It is time for a fresh start all the way around.

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“Making a small gesture to concede the grim realities of our still-growing pandemic, Trump this week admitted that 100,000 Americans will likely die from the coronavius.”

Maybe Donnie meant the end of this week, not the end of the pandemic, and the lamestream media twisted what he said like they always do? Or maybe he was just spewing words and the press had to figure out what he’d be saying if he was speaking in coherent sentences, now just stringing random words together. (Actually, IIRC, he said 70k or 80 or 100k, who knows.)

“That's why California Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu recently tweeted that Trump needs to stop relying on IHME's work. The same should also be said for the press.”

So unfair. Fish gotta swim, Trump needs to lie — and the media overwhelmingly enables it.

And then there’s the regularly ignored factoid via Andy Slavitt: If New York’s number are taken out of the national number, we’ve yet to flatten the curve. Think about that. So I can see 135,000 by end of August at least and a couple of hundred thousand by November. At least. And of course that all excludes the massive undercounting, in turn related to how unprepared we are, how limited access to healthcare is in numerous parts of the country, insufficient testing resources and leaders who are stifling counting because they want low numbers: Don’t count, don’t know; ignorance is bliss and Trumpy.

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“Making a small gesture to concede the grim realities of our still-growing pandemic, Trump this week admitted that 100,000 Americans will likely die from the coronavius.”

Maybe Donnie meant the end of this week, not the end of the pandemic, and the lamestream media twisted what he said like they always do? Or maybe he was just spewing words and the press had to figure out what he’d be saying if he was speaking in coherent sentences, now just stringing random words together. (Actually, IIRC, he said 70k or 80 or 100k, who knows.)

“That's why California Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu recently tweeted that Trump needs to stop relying on IHME's work. The same should also be said for the press.”

So unfair. Fish gotta swim, Trump needs to lie — and the media overwhelmingly enables it.

And then there’s the regularly ignored factoid via Andy Slavitt: If New York’s number are taken out of the national number, we’ve yet to flatten the curve. Think about that. So I can see 135,000 by end of August at least and a couple of hundred thousand by November. At least. And of course that all excludes the massive undercounting, in turn related to how unprepared we are, how limited access to healthcare is in numerous parts of the country, insufficient testing resources and leaders who are stifling counting because they want low numbers: Don’t count, don’t know; ignorance is bliss and Trumpy.

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I understood the whole point of “flattening the curve” to be to reduce the peak number of infected by spreading the number out over a longer time. So why are people upset that it’s taking longer? What did I miss?

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I think bc flattening the curve would be considered a success if the numbers were relatively low over long time VS spike. we currently have worst of both worlds, which is a plateau at high rate

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Relatively low? How many is that?

I suspect we’re about to find out. Over the past 6 weeks we’ve had a relatively subdued Trump and competent Governors calling the shots. We’ve had lockdowns, quarantines, and economic stress.

Now Trump is back to his normal unhinged. Governors are competing to gain Trump’s favor. And they’re opening businesses as if that alone will restore the economy.

I suspect June will have us yearning for the days of a “mere” 2000 deaths daily.

Just one other point. Based of the crew of the USS Roosevelt, fully 60% of those testing positive for COVID, never showed symptoms. Given that we’ll never test everyone. Only high-risk & symptomatic patients will be tested. We’ll never know the extent of the spread of the virus as asymptomatic positives will never be tested. Thus everyone’s figures are off & all measurements and predictions are guesswork.

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TVyes.com leads to a website that is for sale.

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author

thanks, will fix.

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