Friday, October 23, 2020

On The Day The US Reports A Record 82,000+ New Cases And Its Death Toll Hits 230,000 (And May Actually Be 300,000+), Trump Calls Biden The Candidate of "Needless Death"

New US Cases

October 22, 2020: 74,380 (3rd-highest day of pandemic (CDC))
October 23, 2020: 82,000+ (shatters the previous single-day high, set in July)

This has been Trump's campaign message for the last four months:
President Joe Biden has ruined or destroyed every aspect of this country over the last four years. Vote for me because I alone can fix everything and I will Make America Great Again.
 Amazingly, that strategy has not been a total failure. It's working far more than it should. Trump has a solid lead in 14 states and is slightly head in six others. Eight other states are a toss-up. That's almos half the states in the country (28 out of 50).
Campbell Robertson, Edgar Sandoval, Lucy Tompkins and Simon Romero, New York Times, Octover 23, 2020:
U.S. Sets Coronavirus Case Record Amid New Surge
More than 82,000 new cases of the virus were reported across the country on Friday, shattering an earlier single-day record and stirring new fears about the months ahead.

The United States is in the midst of one of the most severe surges of the coronavirus to date, with more new cases reported across the country on Friday than on any other single day since the pandemic began.

Since the start of October, the rise in cases has been steady and inexorable, with no plateau in sight. By Friday evening, more than 82,000 cases had been reported across the country, breaking a single-day record set on July 16 by more than 6,000 cases.

By that measure, Friday was the worst day of the pandemic, and health experts warned of a further surge as cold weather sets in. The number of people hospitalized with Covid-19 has already risen 40 percent in the past month. Deaths have remained relatively flat but are often a lagging indicator.

The latest outbreaks, tracked by The New York Times using reports from state and local health departments, are scattered across the country, in states like Illinois and Rhode Island, which are experiencing a second upswing, and in places like Montana and South Dakota, which are still enduring a first flood of cases.

Thirteen states have added more new confirmed coronavirus cases in the past week than in any other seven-day stretch. As of Friday, six states had set or tied weekly records for new deaths. Wisconsin had its deadliest day of the pandemic on Wednesday, with 47 total deaths announced.

The geography of the pandemic has constantly changed since the coronavirus reached the United States last winter. Outbreaks struck the Northeast in the spring, the Sun Belt in the summer and now the states of the Midwest and the West, which hold the 10 counties in the country with the most recent cases per capita.

"It's been rise after rise after rise, week after week," said Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "Nothing has been added to the mix that's going to make things slow down."
And STILL all of the nation's newspapers REFUSE to call Donald Trump a liar in headlines.

I foolishly entertained the thought about six weeks ago that Trump's multiple admissions of deliberately allowing the virus to surge across the country (heard on the Woodward tapes) might finally turn the tide. Silly me. After about a week, that news, which in a normal country would have forced the president and vice president out of office, had fallen completely off the radar screens of most people, even as they dealt with the deadly virus every day, as if it had never happened.

At this point, there is nothing Trump could do that would cause the reporters who cover the White House to stop acting like he had been a normal politician for four years who has been simply engaging in the usual squabbles with the other party.

How horrible and unprecedented has Donald Trump been? Click here.

4 comments:

johngoldfine said...

His two metaphors are interestingly horrible.

'Rounding the turn' only makes sense if you spend much time at race tracks, preferably ones with horses, not cars. I doubt Trump is much interested in horses.* There are two turns: the clubhouse turn, more or less at the start of a race, and the far turn near the homestretch at the end.

If he means 'rounding the clubhouse turn,' fine, we have barely begun. If he means the far turn (and he thinks he does), the thing to remember is that the only finish lines we are approaching are a) a vaccine, b) continued preventive measures, or c) death. The finish line where it all magically disappears is, um, not available to those who daily fight to maintain a modicum of rationality.

As for 'rounding the corner,' President TinEar probably has never heard of the quotation ascribed to Herbert Hoover about where prosperity might be lurking (right around that good old corner.) Waiting to round that corner got awfully old, awfully fast.

* I thought I had reached peak disgust, teetering high on an Everest of Disgust, no place further to go, but one never does reach that peak with Trump, does one? It's Zeno's Paradox in real life!

When I read this, awww, you know what I thought and felt when I read this. That fucker, that fucker!!!

https://theweek.com/speedreads/700230/trump-once-almost-killed-racehorse-named-dj-trump

allan said...

Also, he gets a phrase in his head and starts repeating it every day. Like the "blood in the sand" nonsense in the Middle East or everything getting great "like a rocket ship".

He has no idea what the phrase means or how it *should* be used. Can you imagine him even trying to define "socialism"? Or spell it? He ranted for days about the biggest crime in American history ("Obamagate") and when asked what the crime was, his best (and only) answer was "It's very bad and it's been going on for a long time."

He has been saying (for months) that testing causes cases. Of course, he has also gone from "everyone can get a test" (never been true) to "you don't need to test so much" (not true) to "we are great because we test so much" (nope) to "slow down the testing" (because it creates bad numbers) to "we are doing badly because of all the tests" (no).

Testing is a peculiar thing with him. He loves to brag about the number of tests that have been done (biggest number = we're #1) but in the next breath says testing is so horrible because it "causes" all these cases to appear (biggest numbers = bad image).

And because he says whatever he thinks is best for that particular moment, whenever someone points out that he said the opposite last year (or last month or last week or 45 seconds ago), he either flatly denies it and/or is completely flummoxed as to how to react.

It's endlessly fascinating. If only he wasn't killing people and ruining so many lives...

johngoldfine said...

He also loves to brag about 'passing' the test for dementia--of course, the real sign of dementia is bragging about passing the fucking test.

The other thing he says that drives me crazy is his longstanding use of 'dog' as an insult. He knows less about dogs than about horses than about 'suburban housewives.'

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/like-a-dog-trump-has-a-long-history-of-using-canine-insults-to-dehumanize-enemies/2018/08/14/d0c67fb8-9fce-11e8-83d2-70203b8d7b44_story.html

johngoldfine said...

https://www.thecut.com/2018/08/everyone-donald-trump-has-called-a-dog.html