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Hermit-The-Prog
Hermit-The-Prog's Journal
Hermit-The-Prog's Journal
May 30, 2020
Just 3 states meet these basic criteria to reopen and stay safe
Just 3 states meet these basic criteria to reopen and stay safe
Most states still need to reduce coronavirus cases and build up their testing capacity.
By German LopezAll 50 states are moving to reopen their economies, at least partially, after shutting down businesses and gatherings in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
But a Vox analysis suggests that most states havent made the preparations needed to contain future waves of the pandemic putting themselves at risk for a rise in Covid-19 cases and deaths should they continue to reopen.
Experts told me states need three things to be ready to reopen. State leaders, from the governor to the legislature to health departments, need to ensure the SARS-CoV-2 virus is no longer spreading unabated. They need the testing capacity to track and isolate the sick and their contacts. And they need the hospital capacity to handle a potential surge in Covid-19 cases.
More specifically, states should meet at least five basic criteria. They should see a two-week drop in coronavirus cases, indicating that the virus is actually abating. They should have fewer than four daily new cases per 100,000 people per day to show that cases arent just dropping, but also below dangerous levels. They need at least 150 new tests per 100,000 people per day, letting them quickly track and contain outbreaks. They need an overall positive rate for tests below 5 percent another critical indicator for testing capacity. And states should have more than 40 percent of their ICU beds free to actually treat an influx of people stricken with Covid-19 should it be necessary.
[ ... ]
May 8, 2020
They Are Giving You Death and Calling It Liberty
They Are Giving You Death and Calling It Liberty
The reckless Republicans opening America up to a deadly pandemic want us to risk sacrificing our lives for their power
By Jamil Smith
[ ... ]The Republican rush to reopen is projecting a simulacrum of the American normal that existed before the pandemic. The genuine article needed improvement, seeing as the pandemic has revealed the fragility of our systems in health care, education, tech, criminal justice, and throughout our federal government supply infrastructure, just to name a few. And rather than noting how it has sought to unbalance and defund many of the very systems that have proven deficient during this crisis, the GOP has kept behaving as if the coronavirus calamities are part of some divine plan. As such, before they ever reopened a single state, Republicans were demanding that we willingly embrace a lesser life before we bow out early.
Many cultish movements have deadly culminations, so it only seems natural that some of Trumps most avid fans might be willing not merely to use the fiction of what they understand as freedom, risking their health for Dear Leader. But whether or not that is true, Republicans offer this fraudulent version of liberty because their true goal, plutocracy, is the diametrical opposite of freedom. It is a life lived to spite other lives, and often take advantage of them. They have profited from the vulnerable, whose literal freedoms are limited in various ways that, at times, overlap: communities of color, incarcerated populations, service workers, the homeless, disabled people, and others for whom liberals regularly advocate.
The right has built a thin veneer that looks like independence and freedom, but the pandemic has stripped away that myth in a matter of weeks. We can love our country enough to want to build it stronger than it was before, not paint some shoddy lacquer over top of it and call it brand new again. Why should we lay our lives down for a system this fragile and rotten, and for people this desperate?
[ ... ]
May 3, 2020
Edit to add: "Lie-Lie-Lie-Lie Lysol"
runtime 4:18
Everybody sing! The Liar Tweets Tonight
runtime 2:36
Edit to add: "Lie-Lie-Lie-Lie Lysol"
runtime 4:18
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Member since: Fri Jan 26, 2018, 02:50 PMNumber of posts: 33,328