Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[Winstonm]

By touting old malaria drugs as "the answer", Donald Trump has finally emerged from his chrysalis state to his true form: Snake Oil Salesman.

[kenberg]

Trump didn't even seem to understand the question when a reporter asked what he thought of a WH official calling it "kung-flu". I got the feeling that he's never heard the term "kung-fu" or doesn't know what it refers to. How can someone so incredibly ignorant be President?

 

 

Oh, I agree. Even though my knowledge of kung-fu is about zero, I still agree.

I was going to say that I had never seen a kung-fu film but I checked the wik and found

"In the west, kung fu has become a regular action staple, and makes appearances in many films that would not generally be considered "Martial Arts" films. These films include but are not limited to The Matrix Trilogy, Kill Bill, and The Transporter."

I did see Kill Bill 1 and the first Matrix movie. I cannot recall for sure which one I thought was more atrocious but I certainly never saw Kill Bill 2 or any of the Matrix follow-ups.

With Trump it is partly ignorance but partly something else. He is not really given to conversation, he expects deference. So when someone asks a question, his reaction is "Hey, you need to be kissing my butt, not asking some stupid question that I don't want to talk about". So he doesn't think, he sees no reason to think. Thought would indicate that he takes the other person seriously, and he does not. In the back and forth that Winston quotes, he makes this lack of interest very clear.

[Cyberyeti]

By touting old malaria drugs as "the answer", Donald Trump has finally emerged from his chrysalis state to his true form: Snake Oil Salesman.

This is not as ridiculous as it sounds, "On 17 February, the Chinese State Council announced that chloroquine phosphate — a structural analogue of quinine, originally extracted from the bark of cinchona trees — can be used for treating COVID-19 patients. This anti-malarial also has broad-spectrum antiviral activity and regulatory effects on the immune system. Clinical evaluation of chloroquine phosphate in more than ten hospitals across several provinces in China has shown that it alleviates the symptoms for most patients and expedites virus seroconversion." from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41477-020-0628-0

[Winstonm]

This is not as ridiculous as it sounds, "On 17 February, the Chinese State Council announced that chloroquine phosphate — a structural analogue of quinine, originally extracted from the bark of cinchona trees — can be used for treating COVID-19 patients. This anti-malarial also has broad-spectrum antiviral activity and regulatory effects on the immune system. Clinical evaluation of chloroquine phosphate in more than ten hospitals across several provinces in China has shown that it alleviates the symptoms for most patients and expedites virus seroconversion." from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41477-020-0628-0

 

 

 

From your article:

The epidemiologist Nanshan Zhong, who is credited with discovering the SARS coronavirus in 2003 and is advising on the management of the COVID-19 outbreak, has said that chloroquine phosphate is not a highly effective cure

 

From as different article:

Writing in the journal Antiviral Research, French scientists Franck Touret and Xavierde de Lamballerie urged caution, noting that chloroquine had been proposed several times for the treatment of acute viral diseases in humans without success, including HIV.

 

They added that finding the right dose was crucial because "chloroquine poisoning has been associated with cardiovascular disorders that can be life-threatening."

 

As usual, Trump is overselling to make himself look good. Like a snake oil salesman. ;)

[shyams]

As usual, Trump is overselling to make himself look good. Like a snake oil salesman. ;)

Perhaps the interesting thing would be to check the stock trading patterns of those Pharma companies whose drugs are touted to be good during the briefing. I haven't checked the price behaviours but it seems likely that the share prices of companies whose drugs are named by the President see a spurt. Decent enough to benefit from, if one knows the info in advance.

[Cyberyeti]

From your article:

 

From as different article:

 

As usual, Trump is overselling to make himself look good. Like a snake oil salesman. ;)

 

It's not a cure, it's a treatment of the symptoms which seems to be fairly effective.

 

It's also comparatively cheap. a few dollars a tablet.

[johnu]

From your article:

 

From as different article:

 

As usual, Trump is overselling to make himself look good. Like a snake oil salesman. ;)

Please have some respect B-) The Dear Leader should be addressed as Conman in Chief, or Grifter in Chief. He worked his entire life to be the best at what he does, so address him with his official title.

[johnu]

It's not a cure, it's a treatment of the symptoms which seems to be fairly effective.

Chloroquine can be deadly if overdosed. Except for anecdotal reports, there have not been any peer reviewed studies that have shown it to be effective, and if effective, better than any of a number of other drugs. E.g. favipiravir has had some good preliminary results for some patients (again, not a peer reviewed study).

 

And there are other treatments being considered.

 

Seattle nonprofit to start immunotherapy trials for coronavirus

 

The Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI) will "enroll approximately 100 patients diagnosed with a COVID-19 infection causing a moderate to severe pneumonia. Participants will be provided with infusions of Celularity’s...product, which is based on a critical immune cell known as a 'natural killer' (NK) cell."

 

Hopefully one or more treatments will prove to be effective before it is too late.

[Cyberyeti]

Chloroquine can be deadly if overdosed. Except for anecdotal reports, there have not been any peer reviewed studies that have shown it to be effective, and if effective, better than any of a number of other drugs. E.g. favipiravir has had some good preliminary results for some patients (again, not a peer reviewed study).

 

And there are other treatments being considered.

 

Seattle nonprofit to start immunotherapy trials for coronavirus

 

 

 

Hopefully one or more treatments will prove to be effective before it is too late.

 

Paracetamol is deadly if overdosed as are many things, including stuff I take daily. There are very few peer reviewed papers on coronavirus because it's so new. Gathering the info and getting it reviewed takes time. Favipiravir is not I believe licensed outside Japan and appears very dangerous if not used correctly. It is also orders of magnitude more expensive than Chloroquine.

 

The immunotherapy drug is 2 years away. The language coming out of China for Chloroquine and Faviparivir is similar, Chloroquine should at least be trialed here (which Faviparivir can't be atm) as in the right conditions it's perfectly safe as it's been licensed for years.

[akwoo]

I saw a statistic that said about 30% of employed Americans do jobs that can be done from home. (I would guess it's roughly the same in Western Europe.)

 

A bunch more work in health care and its supply chain. Some work in food and its supply chain. There are a few other odds and ends that have to be kept running. (But some of the work from home is supporting other work that can't be done for a while, so it will stop.)

 

This means, if we're shut down for more than a couple months, we should be at 50% unemployment or thereabouts. Otherwise, there would be people unnecessarily going to work and spreading the disease.

 

I don't think anyone's ever dreamed of circumstances where we're trying to keep unemployment at 50%, but here we are. If the worst case happens, we'll all be improvising as to how to keep society running, and how to return it quickly to something more sustainable once the whole thing is over.

 

If the worst case assumptions about what we need to do to contain coronavirus are true, there will be more people who say that 150 million dead worldwide is better than everyone staying at home with 50% unemployment for 2 years. I hope most people are better than that.

[Winstonm]

It's not a cure, it's a treatment of the symptoms which seems to be fairly effective.

 

It's also comparatively cheap. a few dollars a tablet.

 

As Dr. Fausti said today in a press conference with Don Trump - the only evidence for this drug is anecdotal and there are no studies done. So, if you and Don want to bet your life on what Ol' Joe down at the bar said his wife saw on QVC about this drug, and Aunt Mary heard about it from Susan, who had a friend whose ex-husvand took it, well, it will probably work - as well as snake oil, anyway. :P

[johnu]

Pompeo accuses China, Russia and Iran of spreading coronavirus disinformation

 

We may be short of respirators, medical gloves, medical face masks, ICU beds, but America leads the world in gaslighting. As if anybody could be putting out more disinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic than the Manchurian President.

[Cyberyeti]

As Dr. Fausti said today in a press conference with Don Trump - the only evidence for this drug is anecdotal and there are no studies done. So, if you and Don want to bet your life on what Ol' Joe down at the bar said his wife saw on QVC about this drug, and Aunt Mary heard about it from Susan, who had a friend whose ex-husvand took it, well, it will probably work - as well as snake oil, anyway. :P

 

It's a bit better than that, "Chloroquine was among the first group of therapies Chinese scientists identified as being effective in curbing the new coronavirus. Clinical trials on about 130 patients demonstrated the drug’s ability to reduce the severity of the illness and speed up virus clearance, according to China’s Ministry of Sciences and Technology." but it is toxic and you don't have to overdose by that much (twice the recommended dose) for it to be dangerous, which is why the Chinese have somewhat rolled back its use.

[y66]

From Shane Harris, Greg Miller, Josh Dawsey and Ellen Nakashima at WaPo March 20, 2020 at 8:10 p.m. EDT

 

U.S. intelligence agencies were issuing ominous, classified warnings in January and February about the global danger posed by the coronavirus while President Trump and lawmakers played down the threat and failed to take action that might have slowed the spread of the pathogen, according to U.S. officials familiar with spy agency reporting.

 

The intelligence reports didn’t predict when the virus might land on U.S. shores or recommend particular steps that public health officials should take, issues outside the purview of the intelligence agencies. But they did track the spread of the virus in China, and later in other countries, and warned that Chinese officials appeared to be minimizing the severity of the outbreak.

 

Taken together, the reports and warnings painted an early picture of a virus that showed the characteristics of a globe-encircling pandemic that could require governments to take swift actions to contain it. But despite that constant flow of reporting, Trump continued publicly and privately to play down the threat the virus posed to Americans. Lawmakers, too, did not grapple with the virus in earnest until this month, as officials scrambled to keep citizens in their homes and hospitals braced for a surge in patients suffering from covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

 

Intelligence agencies “have been warning on this since January,” said a U.S. official who had access to intelligence reporting that was disseminated to members of Congress and their staffs as well as to officials in the Trump administration, and who, along with others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive information.

 

At least seven times over the past two months, President Trump said the number of coronavirus cases in the U.S. were falling or contained even as they rose.

 

“Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were — they just couldn’t get him to do anything about it,” this official said. “The system was blinking red.”

[gerry]

My step-daughter and family live in Washington. She, like many, supports Sanders but seems to believe that Biden should get the nomination as he is the candidate most likely to beat the RIC (Rapist-in-Chief). I believe she is wrong.

 

Four years ago they thought they had a candidate who could beat the RIC. Biden is more of the same.

 

No in my view you have to give people a reason to get out of bed. US voter turnout last time was 55% (!!). Last New Zealand election voter turnout was 80%. Almost half of US voters don't bother.

 

This is the key for me - the 45% who don't vote. The great unwashed need an actual alternative. For the most part Dem candidates have nothing to offer poor voters. Why should they bother? Presidents come and go, parties change but their poverty remains. People will vote for seemingly unlikely candidates if they believe they will get something out of it. Yes most people are scared of change, but millions have nothing to lose. I don't believe you can fight the right by aiming for the middle. You need to take a risk and aim for the left.

 

Sadly it seems that this is not going to happen.

[hrothgar]

 

This is the key for me - the 45% who don't vote. The great unwashed need an actual alternative. For the most part Dem candidates have nothing to offer poor voters. Why should they bother? Presidents come and go, parties change but their poverty remains. People will vote for seemingly unlikely candidates if they believe they will get something out of it. Yes most people are scared of change, but millions have nothing to lose. I don't believe you can fight the right by aiming for the middle. You need to take a risk and aim for the left.

 

Sadly it seems that this is not going to happen.

 

I prefer Bernie's policies to Biden's.

 

Balanced against this, I think that its much more likely that Biden can get stuff implemented.

And even more important, Biden's supporters show up and vote.

 

Bernie's did not.

 

(FWIW, I voted for Warren)

[gerry]

I agree. I just wonder if they would have come out and voted in a presidential election, when the choice is stark, as opposed to a primary.

[Winstonm]

I prefer Bernie's policies to Biden's.

 

Balanced against this, I think that its much more likely that Biden can get stuff implemented.

And even more important, Biden's supporters show up and vote.

 

Bernie's did not.

 

(FWIW, I voted for Warren)

 

I donated to and voted for Warren but I knew after a few debates she would not win. I also prefer Sanders ideas but I do not think the time is right for that fight.

[Winstonm]

It's a bit better than that, "Chloroquine was among the first group of therapies Chinese scientists identified as being effective in curbing the new coronavirus. Clinical trials on about 130 patients demonstrated the drug’s ability to reduce the severity of the illness and speed up virus clearance, according to China’s Ministry of Sciences and Technology." but it is toxic and you don't have to overdose by that much (twice the recommended dose) for it to be dangerous, which is why the Chinese have somewhat rolled back its use.

 

You will excuse me if I take Dr. Faust's word over yours? And I sincerely mean you no offense.

[Cyberyeti]

You will excuse me if I take Dr. Faust's word over yours? And I sincerely mean you no offense.

 

No, you're just not accepting the Chinese government medics' views and taking the westerner's. How racist is that, it's not my view, that's why I put the quotes on it.

[hrothgar]

deleted

[johnu]

Balanced against this, I think that its much more likely that Biden can get stuff implemented.

...

(FWIW, I voted for Warren)

TBH, all the talk about who can get things done is silly and premature. If they Democrats don't also get at least 50 seats in the Senate, basically nothing will get done if Moscow Mitch is still the Majority Leader. Only innocuous bills that are non-partisan will get passed, so none of any of the Democrats goals have a chance to get passed by the Senate.

 

And for any "real" Democratic proposals to get passed, the Senate will have to repeal the filibuster and other delay tactics the frequently make the Senate non-functional, no matter who the Democratic candidate happens to be.

 

I would have voted for Warren but she withdrew from the race before I had the chance, and after Biden has pretty much locked up the nomination. I am proposing that my state move the presidential primaries back to the 1st Tuesday after Nov 1 to coincide with the presidential elections. Since there is basically only 1 candidate left running by the time we vote, there is no point in spending money to confirm the winner when we can do that in the presidential election.

[kenberg]

My step-daughter and family live in Washington. She, like many, supports Sanders but seems to believe that Biden should get the nomination as he is the candidate most likely to beat the RIC (Rapist-in-Chief). I believe she is wrong.

 

Four years ago they thought they had a candidate who could beat the RIC. Biden is more of the same.

 

No in my view you have to give people a reason to get out of bed. US voter turnout last time was 55% (!!). Last New Zealand election voter turnout was 80%. Almost half of US voters don't bother.

 

This is the key for me - the 45% who don't vote. The great unwashed need an actual alternative. For the most part Dem candidates have nothing to offer poor voters. Why should they bother? Presidents come and go, parties change but their poverty remains. People will vote for seemingly unlikely candidates if they believe they will get something out of it. Yes most people are scared of change, but millions have nothing to lose. I don't believe you can fight the right by aiming for the middle. You need to take a risk and aim for the left.

 

Sadly it seems that this is not going to happen.

 

 

I have at least partial agreement with you as to what the problem is. Dems need someone who will inspire voters to, as you put it, get out of bed. Hillary Clinton wasn't what was needed. Joe Biden is not Hillary Clinton, but still.

 

 

I don't move from there to "Well, Sanders then". Mostly, I keep it simple. The Maryland primary is far in the future, the nomination is settled. But if it were to vote tomorrow, Joe or Bernie, I would vote for Biden because I prefer Biden to Sanders. I wish I could say I would vote for Biden because I think he would make a truly great president, but while people surprise you sometimes I am not really expecting that. I wasn't all that fond of any of the candidates. By keeping it simple I mean I vote for the guy I think is best. That's not really crazy. If everyone does that then the one that wins must have a fairly good size group of people who think that s/he is the best.

 

 

The Dems have an identity crisis and it might not be getting all that resolved. Again, it would help if everyone voted for the person they thought best. It would be useful if, after Biden gets the nomination, everyone could agree that this was because a majority actually liked him more than they liked Sanders. But no, the way it is going the argument will be "Well, no, it isn't that people liked him, they actually liked Bernie but they voted for Biden for tactical reasons". But the only thing that can be counted are the votes. I'm saying it would be good if the votes reflected preferences.

 

 

I like simple. I really do. Vote for the person you like best, then count the votes to see who the voters like best. Maybe that would be Bernie, but I don't think so.

[Winstonm]

No, you're just not accepting the Chinese government medics' views and taking the westerner's. How racist is that, it's not my view, that's why I put the quotes on it.

 

China, where the deadly pathogen first emerged in December, recommended the decades-old malaria drug chloroquine to treat infected patients in guidelines issued in February after seeing encouraging results in clinical trials. But within days, it cautioned doctors and health officials about the drug’s lethal side effects and rolled back its usage.

 

Read more at: https://www.bloombergquint.com/china/virus-drug-touted-by-trump-musk-can-kill-with-just-two-grams

Copyright © BloombergQuint

 

More here:

https://www.gazettenet.com/Virus-drug-touted-by-Trump-Musk-can-kill-33461328

 

Trump is a snake oil salesman. Perhaps some day snake oil will actually work. Until that day arrives, I will not buy a bottle of Trump Elixir and neither should you.

 

Max Boot, writing in the WaPo seems to agree with me:

Utterly lacking in empathy, Trump is incapable of rallying a shell-shocked nation. When asked on Friday, “What do you say to Americans who are watching you right now who are scared?,” Trump launched into a tirade against the reporter who asked the question. Like the snake-oil salesman that he is, his version of reassurance is to tout miracle cures that have not been verified by medical science.

my emphasis

[Winstonm]

Worthwhile read: https://www.emptywheel.net/2020/03/21/the-costs-of-letting-trump-believe-his-authoritarian-buddies-instead-of-his-intelligence-community/

 

The money line repeats one the CIA used to describe how George Bush ignored warnings about 9/11: the system was blinking red.

 

“Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were — they just couldn’t get him to do anything about it,” this official said. “The system was blinking red.”

 

What’s key though (and, because of editing decisions, doesn’t get a lot of focus in the story) is one reason why Trump didn’t heed the warnings of his briefers: because he believed Xi Jingpeng more than he believed the US intelligence community.

my emphasis