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-Signs, Portents, and the Weather-
Bill & Melinda: ‘U.S. still has time to do a far, far better job' on coronavirus
2020-10-18
[Politico] Bill Gates called out the federal government on Tuesday for inadequacies in coronavirus testing and sending out what he called "bad messages" on best practices, such as wearing masks.

The billionaire philanthropist, whose foundation is the largest private underwriter of public health initiatives, said the U.S. still has time to do "far, far better" in its Covid-19 testing implementation, criticizing the government — without calling out the Trump administration explicitly — for long test-result wait times and poor contact tracing efforts.

"If you’re willing to admit that you’re not doing a perfect job, you could improve this thing very, very quickly," Gates said in a POLITICO Playbook interview. "Right now, testing, contact tracing, we’re doing among the worst of any country."

Gates went on to say that "now we’re engaged in something where we’re attacking the government’s top scientists" and "undermining the credibility of the person who’s the most knowledgeable," referring to Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert.
Posted by:Besoeker

#36  What came first, bird flu or the egg?
Posted by: Clem   2020-10-18 20:48  

#35  A major national chicken egg brand making covid jokes during their advertising slot doesn't sound like a major health emergency, especially "During these triggering times..."
Posted by: swksvolFF   2020-10-18 19:58  

#34  I need a clarification.

Is psychopath better or worse than Chinese Agent?

Your earhook masks are garbage, relying of facial features and the mandible muscle and bone structure to somewhat stay in place.

They do work to prevent The Covid from reading your soul.
Posted by: swksvolFF   2020-10-18 19:56  

#33  Looks like he is a member of the Seattle Antifa now.
Posted by: Vespasian Ebbereng3110   2020-10-18 19:31  

#32  I don't know what all the fuss is about. I'm listening to the science. /sarc
Posted by: Clem   2020-10-18 18:34  

#31  ^ Absolutely. Chichton was a treasure
Posted by: Frank G   2020-10-18 18:21  

#30  I think Michael Crichton put it best:

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain   2020-10-18 18:04  

#29  Oooo, rub some dirt on it, Johnny
Posted by: Frank G   2020-10-18 17:44  

#28  What can I say, Frank & Co, your arguments worth their weight in gold.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2020-10-18 17:17  

#27  [i]Not that HCQ bullshit again![/i]

Guess who _I_ think the psychopaths are.
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain   2020-10-18 17:00  

#26  I'm NOT a no-masker. I AM a skeptic of any and all things, especially when I'm called a psychopath, a denier, anti-science, and worse by some asshole who believes provably false test numbers and Covid cases and would (if he could) deny my right to even speak skepticism. Fascism has many faces. Sometimes with mandatory masks
Posted by: Frank G   2020-10-18 16:37  

#25  Mah Numberz! No HCQ!
Posted by: Frank G   2020-10-18 16:33  

#24  ^Not that HCQ bullshit again!
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2020-10-18 16:31  

#23  And I just saw the figures from there for VIetnam and Laos.

You Israelis need to burn all those masks y'all bought from the psychopaths and maybe buy some from Laos instead, or maybe look at what they're doing besides masks that protects them so much better than y'all.

(Stage whisper: helpful hint: they're both malarial zones!)
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain   2020-10-18 16:28  

#22  Is world of meters still considered a good source?

Because they're showing Israel: 32,955 per million for number of cases.

USA: 25,266 per million

Nigeria: 295 per million...

When this is all done we're gonna have to put up with a metric shitload of Ibo Master Race jokes.
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain   2020-10-18 16:13  

#21  /\ Grommet 's links are months out of date. He doesn't really know what the fuck he's talking about.

Attack the data if you will, but not the messenger.
Posted by: Besoeker   2020-10-18 15:41  

#20  Grommet 's links are months out of date. He doesn't really know what the fuck he's talking about.

Here's a review from Education Week about the CDC's latest guidance on schools and schoolchildren

New CDC Guidance for Schools

The screening recommendations were included in a series of new documents posted Thursday that reiterate the Trump administration's position on the importance of in-person instruction, provide more clear recommendations about wearing masks in schools, outline additional guidance for administrators about preparing to reopen buildings, and provide checklists for parents and guardians to help decide if they should send their children back to school.
Posted by: Gerthudion Phailet6274   2020-10-18 14:21  

#19  ^Again mask effects (and everything else) are population level, not individual, effects.
Example Haredi vs. Arab population in Israel. Israeli Arabs wear masks, avoid large indoor gatherings etc... and have the same infection rates as general Israeli population. Haredim don't, and have infection rates 3 - 4 times of the general population.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2020-10-18 13:18  

#18  Re. masks, most of what I have read indicates 'good' masks, worn properly (few seem to) do reduce the risk of the wearer becoming infected, but only by a modest amount. They are more effective at reducing the spread from an infected masked person, especially when combined with good social distancing and hand washing. One interesting study said that even when masks did not prevent infection they did significantly reduce the severity of infection.
My personal experience travelling and observing in parts of the US is that mask use and infection rate are only loosely coupled; also that until this third wave hit rural areas were largely unaffected. So far the third wave has been negligible in places that had a severe first wave (eg. NY, NJ, MA, CT.)
Posted by: Glenmore   2020-10-18 11:26  

#17  @ #11 - That political hack Fauci needs to be bashed at every opportunity.
Posted by: Clem   2020-10-18 10:23  

#16  A bit of Freudian projection there Franky - you are a tireless fighter for turning Rantburg into official organ of "covid-sceptics"
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2020-10-18 10:23  

#15  #12 In Israel we seen that the use of masks cuts down infection rate. As to New England J. Of Medicine 😜
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2020-10-18 10:20  

#14  #8 #6 I call anti-maskers psychopaths because they are.
Posted by g(r)omgoru


You call anyone who questions or deviates even slightly from your delivered wisdon dogma names. FO
Posted by: Frank G   2020-10-18 10:18  

#13  Now they are well on their way to destroying the lives of tens of millions of school-age children who were never at risk to begin with.

Schools Are Reopening, Then Quickly Closing Due to Coronavirus Outbreaks

Is that you, Lex?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2020-10-18 10:13  

#12  Project much?

Here are the "psychopaths" at the New England Journal of Medicine on masks' effectiveness earlier this year:

"We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection. Public health authorities define a significant exposure to COVID-19 as face-to-face contact within 6 feet with a patient with symptomatic COVID-19 that is sustained for at least a few minutes (and some say more than 10 minutes or even 30 minutes).

"The chance of catching COVID-19 from a passing interaction in a public space is therefore minimal. In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic."
Posted by: Slatch Hapsburg9209   2020-10-18 10:03  

#11  #9 Told you Fauci is an a$$hole.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2020-10-18 10:03  

#10  Aside from that, who made this slime ball Gates an expert in viruses?

Just because he's a slime ball, doesn't mean he's wrong here - except on Fauci.

And he's especially right on tests.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2020-10-18 10:01  

#9  Wake me up once they decide if masks help or not. Fauxi ("Mr. Science") can't make up his mind.
Posted by: Clem   2020-10-18 09:59  

#8  #6 I call anti-maskers psychopaths because they are.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2020-10-18 09:56  

#7  Panicky elected officials overreacted - and then tried to cover their asses. Had they protected the vulnerable and taken sensible precautions without locking down and tanking our economy, we'd have had fewer deaths overall. Cuomo actually killed thousands of people, directly, through his stupidity and incompetence.

Now they are well on their way to destroying the lives of tens of millions of school-age children who were never at risk to begin with.
Posted by: Zenobia Lover of the Boskonians1259   2020-10-18 09:36  

#6  Why just call people who disagree with you psychopaths? Wouldn't Nazis be easier to say quickly?
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-10-18 08:15  

#5  USA public is, ridiculously, uninformed about covid 19 epidemic outside USA.

Given our woeful educational system and nightly news focused more entertainment & one-sided reporting, one can argue the American public is uninformed about most things.

Aside from that, who made this slime ball Gates an expert in viruses? The fix is in.
Posted by: Clem   2020-10-18 08:10  

#4  You mean tests as reliable as his early versions of Windows? How many versions are we on now that involved clean up of bad execution because of 'it all has to fit in one'? And it still gets hacked.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2020-10-18 07:22  

#3  This mornings China Flu Updated figures.

70,078 New Cases for the week so far.
1,001 New Deaths for the week so far.

A 70,078 out of 342,000,000 = 0.020490643274853802 of 1% chance of being Infected.

Then IF infected a 1 in 70 chance of dying.

NATIONAL PICTURE
In the USA, to die from the Virus this week
so far, you would have to be part of the 0.020490643274853802 of 1% that got in Infected. Then also part of the 0.00029269005847953216 of 1% of the 342M in the USA.

That works out to about 1.4% IF infected die.

MY PICTURE
I am still just not buying the claimed numbers, as I have 3 family in the medical field (LPNs and RN's) ages 25 to 68 and 1 in Law Enforcement age 26.3, and 1 in Fire Rescue/ EMS.

Between the 5, they have had 2 False Positives that allowed them to sit at home for days. ZERO SYMPTOMS or ISSUES.

That's a 40% false Positive rate for our family.

Of the 3 that got it and all were better in 2-3 days each claiming a good cold or very mild flu. Of these 2 are Older ages and are type 2 diabetics.

NOTE: All with no Family cross/related infections occurring by just following basic Flu Season precautions.
Posted by: NN2N1   2020-10-18 06:38  

#2  (2) Somebody also should write a series of articles on Sweden focusing on.
(a) Sweden had (and still has) a lockdown - they just don't call it "lockdown".
(b) Sweden, where 40% of households are a single person households, has a natural level of distancing that's unattainable in USA.

(3) USA public is, ridiculously, uninformed about covid 19 epidemic outside USA. A few articles analyzing other countries successes/failures could do a lot to educate American public (when it comes to different states in USA, party affiliation is principal determinant for Americans: "their governors can't do anything right", "ours can do anything wrong"; "Trump is H*tler" vs. "Trump is demigod".)
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2020-10-18 05:42  

#1  Better,faster tests Yes

contact tracing Won't work - too many recent government overreach scandals.

wearing masks Make efforts to disprove faux-libertarians (or simply psychopaths) counra-factual anti-mask propaganda. Masks work and prevent lockdowns.

Anthony Fauci is an ignorant a$$hole - probably didn't even bother to review (or have some gofer do it for him) the available literature on coronaviruses. In fact, the entire CDC is a joke.

Most important, inform the public (in appropriate terms - there must be somebody who can explain in layman terms how immune memory works) that "natural herd immunity" doesn't exist in this particular case.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2020-10-18 05:25  

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