DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus COVID-19: Fright Night

I think you missed the part about the surgeon talking about their patients.

Maybe you should invest in some glasses.

""even those who contracted the virus but did not experience symptoms — they were asymptomatic — show a severe chest X-ray roughly 70% to 80% of the time. ""

Dear God, what part of this refuses to sink in?

Why does an asymptomatic person need a trauma surgeon?

Did you ever stop to think that he may just be reporting results he has seen from the medical community? Or that maybe even those asymptomatic people realized that for some reason there had been a huge change in their breathing and sought to find out the cause of it?

Either you believe what the doctor is saying or you don't. That however does not change what he is saying here.

Well now you are making ASSumptions. If you have symptoms then you are not asymptomatic. The whole rest of the article is talking about hospitalized patients.

And maybe it's just me and a wild, crazy, looney-toons idea - but maybe they are running tests and x-rays and examining people who test positive that were asymptomatic so they can, you know, learn stuff?

Well they wouldnt be doing that on asymptomatic people. The hospitals are already overflowing with people who have actual problems.

Even my hospital says dont come here for covid unless you have a severe problem.

Dear Lord, talking to you is like talking to a brick wall. Let me try to clue you in. Symptoms you have while you have the virus can be asymptomatic and that has nothing to do with the impact you suffer AFTER the virus is no longer in your system.

But the again you're still hanging out at the sports bar with your buddies so there's really no sense trying to explain any of this to you.

Thats somewhat plausible.

Also, I intend to live my life as I see fit and not hide in my house like a scared crapless libtard.

Common sense isn't something only libtards are allowed to use. Caring about not spreading a deadly virus to other Americans and risking their health and their life isn't a libtard issue. It's an issue of patriotism and giving a damn about someone other than yourself.

I no longer have the virus and it's not likely that I will become re-infected so there is no reason not to go out with my friends.

I'm not about telling others how to live, but I didn't follow that thinking.

I think now that, perhaps I had a spell of covid in September 2019, early that month, but all along since this became a wide spread, known issue, going back to March-april, I've always treated myself as if I'm contagious, and everyone around me is contagious.

and started wearing masks when the others around started as a majority to wear the masks too.

this and the 1918 flu, (hundred year flu) have been similar,
today for the first time I found pictures of mask wearing in the 1918 flu, so some wore masks back then.

In 1918, they had the first wave, and they shut down for 6 weeks and then opened back up.

In 2020 similar things happened.

in 1918, they had a worse 2nd wave after a short lull in the increase of effects

similar in 2020, now 2021

In 1918, I read they had a 3rd wave months later that was worse than the first but not as bad as the 2nd,

.. so what's the time frame of that? August of next year, October, November?

I was hoping we would be getting back to normal by July.

The Dr. is a woman. Read the article.

Friend of mine I told you all about having a mild symptoms case while infected has been really struggling with the after effects. Horrible joint pain, headaches, and lung deterioration. She felt like she had a mild cold while still contagious. Since she has felt like it's killing her.

every 26 seconds.

It's sobering, and alarming, and somehow makes me want to do something I wouldn't normally,
Can't be the only person on earth to react that the fact another American is going to die of Covid by the time I type this from the start, and another by the time the frickin submit button hits the post shows up on the board,

makes me want to go out and chug a bottle or, go out and smash a bottle on the pavement just to watch the liquor slide into the gutter.

Oh well, today and for the next 100 days, and the last 20, another American, dying of covid,
kind of feels like everythings gone to pot, don't do something rash.

3200-4000+ per day, one every 26 seconds on the low side.

Yes it is...LOl.

That would be a interesting thread...what could you do to a bottle that rhymes with chuck?

We’re getting close to 400k deaths.

But hey, them stock market gains!!!

Just went over 400k minutes ago. 400,000 American’s dead under trump’s watch. What a National disgrace. And he still has American’s supporting him. Pffff trump and his supporters! Traitors every one of them who still support him now.

400,000 was my guess going into this. Little could I have guessed we’d have so many mask Karens, science deniers, and generally have people that’d just ignore it all and would continue to go to Applebee’s to get their chili fries because freedumb. I figured trump would screw it up but I had no idea our populace was as ignorant and self entitled as they’ve proven themselves to be.
‘Murika.

If we get out of this under 750,000 I’ll be shocked.

That about covers it.

JC

France is top skeptic of covid vaccine

Chagrin Falls woman, 106 years young, gives vaccine advice to seniors

By: Joe PagonakisPosted at 11:02 PM, Jan 20, 2021 and last updated 12:34 AM, Jan 21, 2021

CHAGRIN FALLS, Ohio — Mathilda Kolt of Chagrin Falls has a strong opinion about the importance of Ohio seniors getting the COVID-19 vaccine in the coming weeks and months.

Kolt will turn 107-years-old on Feb. 10 and received the first dose of the vaccine on Jan. 16.

She lives at The Weils at Menorah Park Assisted Living Community and told News 5 the shot made her shoulders sore for a day but said the pain was well worth the gain.

“It hurt my other arm, very painful, the whole night," Kolt said.

“That’s what my son said, better to have the pain than get the virus.”

“The vaccine, yes, I think everybody should get it if they have the opportunity.”

On Jan. 19, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine announced Ohioans in phase 1B, ages 80 and above can now sign-up for the vaccine.

DeWine said that group is made up of 425-thousand Ohioans statewide.

Kolt said seniors 80 and above shouldn't be afraid to get the shot and sign-up as soon as possible.

“Take it, I wouldn’t hesitate," Kolt said. "That’s the way the pandemic will end."

The Ohio Department of Health set-up a webpage, with the state vaccination schedule and portal to search out vaccine locations by county or zip code.

Kolt, who moved to Northeast Ohio with her family when she was just three months old in 1914, said the pandemic has prevented her from enjoying the activities that are keeping her vibrant.

“The hardest thing for me is to be in my room constantly," Kolt said. “The pandemic is the worst thing to ever happen in my lifetime.”

Kolt credited the staff at The Weils for helping to keep her mind sharp and active, and said walking and exercise most of her life are some of the biggest factors for her longevity.

“I ordered French lessons, and I study them. I play bingo, for a quarter I get two cards,” Kolt said.

“I have a book club, I have art lessons.”

Kolt said she still does some of the workout routines she learned from News 5 exercise legend Paige Palmer in the 1950s, 60s, and early 70s.

"Paige Palmer was on Channel 5, I used to get on the floor with her," Kolt said. "I ordered her exercise mat, she was just fantastic."

Kolt said she has a huge amount of appreciation for front-line workers, doctors, and the scientists who created and are administering the vaccine.

“Oh my goodness, I couldn’t wait till I got that vaccine," Kolt said.

"How would I say thank you to the doctors? If I had a chance I’d kiss them."

https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/cont...vice-to-seniors

Trump Administration Had ‘No Plan’ For COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution, Dr. Michael Osterholm Says

On his first full day in office, President Biden is expected to sign more executive orders and directives, including one calling on agencies to use the Defense Production Act to boost supplies of medical equipment, COVID-19 tests and vaccines.

A year ago, on Jan. 20, 2020, the first case of COVID-19 was diagnosed in the U.S. On that very day, Dr. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, issued a paper warning of the imminent pandemic and urging the U.S. to respond.

Since then, more than 406,000 people in the country have died of the disease.

Biden is promising to administer 100 million vaccinations in his first 100 days, but the vaccine rollout across the country has been slow. That’s because the Trump administration didn’t have a plan for vaccine distribution, says Osterholm, who also serves as a member of Biden’s coronavirus advisory board.

“There is no plan, or was no plan, by the Trump administration in terms of distribution, how to actually talk to the public about these vaccines and educate [people] about why they're so important to their health,” he says. “The issue, however, is what can we do going forward? And yesterday, the White House issued a national strategy for COVID-19 response and pandemic preparedness, which has seven major goals, which is the plan that we've all been looking for the last year.”

Despite the delay, Osterholm says reaching 100 million vaccinations in 100 days is “doable” and is commending the Biden administration for setting this ambitious goal. Ramping up vaccinations is critical now since we are in the “most dangerous part of the pandemic,” he says.

“I think the next six to 14 weeks could be the darkest days,” he says. “We've watched our case numbers basically continue to hit a peak and then come down, hit a peak and then come down. And each time the peaks get higher and each time the coming down doesn't get nearly as low.”

Right now, the U.S. is reporting 185,000 cases a day, which is already down from 300,000 per day earlier this month, Osterholm says.

But if this new, highly contagious variant of the virus takes off in the U.S., “we could be looking back at a day in the near future where 300,000 cases a day doesn't seem all that bad,” he says. “That's a very chilling thought, but I think that's exactly where we're at.”

Even if the U.S. does administer 100 million doses of vaccine in 100 days, that will only protect about 14% of the population, Osterholm says. That’s why wearing masks and social distancing remains important, actions Biden is now mandating for employees working in federal buildings.

During his inaugural address Wednesday, Biden called for a moment of prayer to honor the victims of COVID-19. For health care workers on the frontlines of this pandemic like himself, Osterholm says that moment of solemn recognition was very moving.

“We've tried to address this pandemic over the course of recent months with vaccine, and it sure makes sense, but we've not explored our soul. So yesterday was a recognition of that,” he says. “And it spoke much more loudly than just a virus. It spoke to the very heart and soul of who we are as a country.”

https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2021/01/21/biden-covid-19-osterholm

Oh there was definitely a plan.

The plan was to Ignore it and hope it magically disappears.

There was a plan. 81 million of us implemented it this past November 3rd.

https://apnews.com/article/sacramento-ca...f6f6c621daeaf10

I have a feeling we're going to be reading and finding out about California's handling of the virus for a long time.

In other words: Crap, they're asking questions.

And:

Odd. It's like things just changed overnight.

Newsome is having a real tough time since he started governing. I'm not a fan of the guy, and the whole situation is too much for a message board post. I just think we're going to be hearing about California's and the pandemic for a very long time in a way that's not all that different from how we're taking about trump and the virus right now.

I dont really know how Cali is handling it. But I would guess something is lacking as I saw them have 60k cases in one day.

CA is huge, so you're only going to hear about the major cities even though you can get the whole spectrum throughout CA.

At one point, their ICU capacity was maxed out in Orange county. Lots of stories of lines of ambulances waiting for hours to deliver patients to the hospitals. Orange County (I'm told) was largely open for business during this time. Things got pretty bad in SoCal (specifically LA) over the holidays.

It's also worth pointing out that they're on their 3rd or 4th surge or something.

Maybe he can regroup at The French Laundry and figure out how to improve the situation over a glass of $4,500 wine.

I can confirm Colorado is approaching a 5% positivity rate, keep up the good work everybody.

We're going to be hearing a lot about how many places handled this virus. I'm just wondering what people actually expected? When there's no national plan or strategy to combat a virus that's killing off hundreds of thousands of your citizens, the very national experts who actually have the experience to set such guidelines are silenced.

Each state, city and sometimes even counties have their own rules. Many of these places find their politicians setting those guidelines rather than the scientific community. So there is no standard and how areas respond have been everything from reasonable to idiotic.

That's why America has the National Institute of Health, the CDC and other national resources to set guidelines in the case of such a national emergency.. We have things like FEMA, The Red Cross and the Defense Production Act that can be used to ramp up production of PPE and many of the essential products needed to administer the vaccine. We had a national roadmap available that was a guideline of how to deal with a coming pandemic that was trashed.

This was a predestined outcome when your government refuses to use its resources to actually combat a national emergency with no national plan to deal with it.

But ....

Hilary !

It's just like the seasonal Flu.

It's the next media Hoax.

They are overcounting to get paid more $.

It'll disappear in the warm weather.

It'll disappear after the election.

The Vaccine companies delayed making the vaccine because they are anti Trump.

Decided to look and see if someone has a comprehensive list of Trump's lies and contempt for this pandemic that's taken 400,000 lives.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/11/trumps-lies-about-coronavirus/608647/

President Donald Trump has repeatedly lied about the coronavirus pandemic and the country’s preparation for this once-in-a-generation crisis.

Here, a collection of the biggest lies he’s told as the nation endures a public-health and economic calamity. This post will be updated as needed.

On the Nature of the Outbreak

Sign up for The Atlantic’s daily newsletter.

Each weekday evening, get an overview of the day’s biggest news, along with fascinating ideas, images, and voices.

When: Friday, February 7, and Wednesday, February 19
The claim: The coronavirus would weaken “when we get into April, in the warmer weather—that has a very negative effect on that, and that type of a virus.”
The truth: When Trump made this claim, it was too early to tell whether the virus’s spread would be dampened by warmer conditions, though public-health experts and epidemiologists were immediately skeptical of Trump’s comment. But the spring and summer have passed, and the pandemic is still raging.

When: Thursday, February 27
The claim: The outbreak would be temporary: “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle—it will disappear.”
The truth: Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned days later that he was concerned that “as the next week or two or three go by, we’re going to see a lot more community-related cases.” He was right—the virus has not disappeared.

RECOMMENDED READING
A person stands on a street corner at night in the snow.
How We Survive the Winter
JAMES HAMBLIN
A human who multiplies into many humans
How the Coronavirus Became an American Catastrophe
ALEXIS C. MADRIGAL AND ROBINSON MEYER

The Winter Will Be Worse
JOE PINSKER

When: Multiple times
The claim: If the economic shutdown continues, deaths by suicide “definitely would be in far greater numbers than the numbers that we’re talking about” for COVID-19 deaths.
The truth: More than 200,000 Americans have died from COVID-19. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is one of the leading causes of death in the United States. But the number of people who died by suicide in 2017, for example, was roughly 47,000, nowhere near the COVID-19 numbers. Estimates of the mental-health toll of the Great Recession are mixed. A 2014 study tied more than 10,000 suicides in Europe and North America to the financial crisis. But a larger analysis in 2017 found that although the rate of suicide was increasing in the United States, the increase could not be directly tied to the recession and was attributable to broader socioeconomic conditions predating the downturn.

When: Multiple times
The claim: “Coronavirus numbers are looking MUCH better, going down almost everywhere,” and cases are “coming way down.”
The truth: When Trump made these claims in May, coronavirus cases were either increasing or plateauing in the majority of American states. Over the summer, the country saw a second surge even greater than its first in the spring.


When: Wednesday, June 17
The claim: The pandemic is “fading away. It’s going to fade away.”
The truth: Trump made this claim ahead of his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, when the country was still seeing at least 20,000 new daily cases and a second spike in infections was beginning.

When: Thursday, July 2
The claim: The pandemic is “getting under control.”
The truth: Trump’s claim came as the country’s daily cases doubled to about 50,000, a higher count than was seen at the beginning of the pandemic, and as the number continued to rise, fueled by infections in the South and the West.

When: Saturday, July 4
The claim: “99%” of COVID-19 cases are “totally harmless.”
The truth: The virus can still cause tremendous suffering if it doesn’t kill a patient, and the WHO has said that about 15 percent of COVID-19 cases can be severe, with 5 percent being critical. Fauci has rejected Trump’s claim, saying the evidence shows that the virus “can make you seriously ill” even if it doesn’t kill you.

When: Monday, July 6
The claim: “We now have the lowest Fatality (Mortality) Rate in the World.”
The truth: The U.S. had neither the lowest mortality rate nor the lowest case-fatality rate when Trump made this claim. As of July 13, the case-fatality rate—the ratio of deaths to confirmed COVID-19 cases—was 4.1 percent, which placed the U.S. solidly in the middle of global rankings. At the time, it had the world’s ninth-worst mortality rate, with 41.33 deaths per 100,000 people, according to Johns Hopkins University.

When: Multiple times
The claim: Mexico is partly to blame for COVID-19 surges in the Southwest.
The truth: Even before Latin America’s COVID-19 cases began to rise, the U.S. and Mexico had jointly agreed in March to restrict nonessential land travel between the two countries, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection says illegal border crossings are down compared with last year. Health experts say blaming Mexican immigrants for surges is misguided, especially when most of the individuals crossing the border are U.S. citizens who live nearby.

When: Multiple times
The claim: Children are “virtually immune” to COVID-19.
The truth: The science is not definitive, but that doesn’t mean children are immune. Studies in the U.S. and China have suggested that kids are less likely than adults to be infected, and more likely to have mild symptoms, but can still spread the virus to their family members and others. The CDC has said that about 7 percent of COVID-19 cases and less than 0.1 percent of COVID-19-related deaths have occurred in children.

When: Thursday, August 27
The claim: The U.S. has “among the lowest case-fatality rates of any major country anywhere in the world.”
The truth: When Trump said this, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and India all had lower case-fatality rates than the U.S., which sat in the middle of performance rankings among all nations and among the 20 countries hardest hit by the virus.

When: Thursday, August 27
The claim: Trump “launched the largest national mobilization since World War II” against COVID-19, and America “developed, from scratch, the largest and most advanced testing system in the world.”
The truth: These claims are incorrect and misleading. The federal government’s coronavirus response has been roundly criticized as a failure because of flawed and delayed testing, entrenched inequality that has amplified the virus’s effects, and chaotic federal leadership that’s left much of the country’s response up to the states to handle. Trump vacillated on fully invoking the Defense Production Act in March, set off international panic when he mistakenly said he was banning all travel from European nations, and was slow to support social-distancing measures nationwide. Widespread use of the DPA was still rare in July, despite continued shortages of medical supplies.

Another claim: Trump celebrated a gain of 9 million jobs as “a record in the history of our country” and said that the United States had experienced “the smallest economic contraction of any major Western nation.”
The truth: The country did gain 9 million jobs from May to July—after losing more than 20 million from February to April, during the pandemic’s first surge. And more than a dozen developed countries have recorded smaller economic contractions than America’s recession.

When: Multiple times
The claim: America is “rounding the corner” and “rounding the final turn” of the pandemic.
The truth: Trump made these claims before and after the country registered 200,000 coronavirus deaths. As the winter approaches, the number of coronavirus cases is increasing in almost every state; in the last week of October, cases rose faster than reported tests in 47 of the 50 states, according to the COVID Tracking Project.

When: Multiple times
The claim: The media is overblowing fears about the virus ahead of Election Day.
The truth: There is no media conspiracy to hype up the virus threat. Cases and hospitalizations are rising across the country, and America set and broke multiple daily case records during the last week of October, nearing 100,000 cases in a single day on Friday.

When: Multiple times
The claim: "What happens is, you get better” after being sick with COVID-19. “That's what happens: You get better.”
The truth: While most cases of COVID-19 are mild, that doesn’t negate the risk the virus poses. As of the beginning of November, it has killed more than 220,000 Americans.

Another claim: “You get better and then you’re immune.”
The truth: Although similar viruses provide some short-term immunity after recovery, doctors don’t yet know how long COVID-19 immunity lasts, especially given anecdotal reports of reinfection. Trump’s claim also ignores the long-term side effects of contracting COVID-19 that so-called long-haulers have reported.

When: Multiple times
The claim: A CDC study shows that “85 percent of the people wearing masks catch” the virus.
The truth: The CDC study that the president cited in interviews does not suggest that people who wear masks get the virus at higher rates than those who don’t, CNN reported. The lie also distorts the purpose of mask-wearing, which is chiefly to protect other people from the virus, not to protect only the mask-wearer herself.

Blaming the Obama Administration

When: Wednesday, March 4
The claim: The Trump White House rolled back Food and Drug Administration regulations that limited the kind of laboratory tests states could run and how they could conduct them. “The Obama administration made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we’re doing,” Trump said.
The truth: The Obama administration drafted, but never implemented, changes to rules that regulate laboratory tests run by states. Trump’s policy change relaxed an FDA requirement that would have forced private labs to wait for FDA authorization to conduct their own, non-CDC-approved coronavirus tests.

When: Friday, March 13
The claim: The Obama White House’s response to the H1N1 pandemic was “a full scale disaster, with thousands dying, and nothing meaningful done to fix the testing problem, until now.”
The truth: Barack Obama declared a public-health emergency two weeks after the first U.S. cases of H1N1 were reported, in California. (Trump declared a national emergency more than seven weeks after the first domestic COVID-19 case was reported, in Washington State.) While testing is a problem now, it wasn’t back in 2009. The challenge then was vaccine development: Production was delayed and the vaccine wasn’t distributed until the outbreak was already waning.

When: Multiple times
The claim: The Trump White House “inherited” a “broken,” “bad,” and “obsolete” test for the coronavirus.
The truth: The novel coronavirus did not exist in humans during the Obama administration. Public-health experts agree that, because of that fact, the CDC could not have produced a test, and thus a new test had to be developed this year.

Read: Joe Biden’s invisible pandemic expert

When: Multiple times
The claim: The Obama administration left Trump “bare” and “empty” shelves of medical supplies in the national strategic stockpile.
The truth: The 2009 H1N1 outbreak did deplete the N95 mask supply and was never replenished, but the Obama administration did not leave the stockpile empty of other materials. While the stockpile has never been funded at the levels some experts have requested, its former director said in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic, that it was well-equipped. (The outbreak has since eaten away at its reserves.)

When: Sunday, May 10
The claim: Referring to criticism of his administration’s response, Trump tweeted: “Compare that to the Obama/Sleepy Joe disaster known as H1N1 Swine Flu. Poor marks ... didn’t have a clue!”
The truth: It is misleading to compare COVID-19 to H1N1 and to call the Obama administration’s response a disaster, as my colleague Peter Nicholas has reported. In 2009, the CDC quickly flagged the new flu strain in California and began releasing antiflu drugs from the national stockpile two weeks later. A vaccine was available in six months.

Another claim: Trump later attacked “Joe Biden’s handling of the H1N1 Swine Flu.”
The truth: Biden was not responsible for the federal government’s response to the H1N1 outbreak, as Nicholas has also explained.

On Coronavirus Testing

When: Friday, March 6, and Monday, May 11
The claim: “Anybody that needs a test, gets a test. We—they’re there. They have the tests. And the tests are beautiful” and “If somebody wants to be tested right now, they’ll be able to be tested.”
The truth: Trump made these two claims two months apart, but the truth was the same both times: The U.S. did not have enough testing.

When: Wednesday, March 11
The claim: In an Oval Office address, Trump said that private-health-insurance companies had “agreed to waive all co-payments for coronavirus treatments, extend insurance coverage to these treatments, and to prevent surprise medical billing.”
The truth: Insurers agreed only to absorb the cost of coronavirus testing—waiving co-pays and deductibles for getting the test. The Families First Coronavirus Response Act, the second coronavirus-relief bill passed by Congress, later mandated that COVID-19 testing be made free. The federal government has not required insurance companies to cover follow-up treatments, though some providers announced in late March that they will pay for treatments. The costs of other non-coronavirus testing or treatment incurred by patients who have COVID-19 or are trying to get a diagnosis aren’t waived either. And as for surprise medical billing? Mitigating it would require the cooperation of insurers, doctors, and hospitals.

Read: The dangerous delays in U.S. coronavirus testing haven’t stopped

When: Friday, March 13
The claim: Google engineers are building a website to help Americans determine whether they need testing for the coronavirus and to direct them to their nearest testing site.
The truth: The announcement was news to Google itself—the website Trump (and other administration officials) described was actually being built by Verily, a division of Alphabet, the parent company of Google. The Verge first reported on Trump’s error, citing a Google representative who confirmed that Verily was working on a “triage website” with limited coverage for the San Francisco Bay Area. But since then, Google has pivoted to fulfill Trump’s public proclamation, saying it would speed up the development of a new, separate website while Verily worked on finishing its project, The Washington Post reported.

When: Tuesday, March 24, and Wednesday, March 25
The claim: The United States has outpaced South Korea’s COVID-19 testing: “We’re going up proportionally very rapidly,” Trump said during a Fox News town hall.
The truth: When the president made this claim, testing in the U.S. was severely lagging behind that in South Korea. As of March 25, South Korea had conducted about five times as many tests as a proportion of its population relative to the United States. For updated data from each country, see the COVID-19 Tracking Project and the database maintained by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

When: Monday, May 11
The claim: America has “developed a testing capacity unmatched and unrivaled anywhere in the world, and it’s not even close.”
The truth: At the time, the United States was still not testing enough people and was lagging behind the testing and tracing capabilities that other countries had developed. The president’s testing czar, Brett Giroir, and Fauci confirmed the need for more testing at a May 12 Senate hearing.

Another claim: The United States has conducted more testing “than all other countries together!”
The truth: By May 18, when Trump last made this claim, the U.S. had conducted more tests than any other country. But it had not conducted more tests than the rest of the world combined. (As of May 27, more than 14 million tests have been administered in America.)

When: Multiple times
The claim: “Cases are going up in the U.S. because we are testing far more than any other country.”
The truth: COVID-19 cases were not rising because of “our big-number testing.” Outside the Northeast, the share of tests conducted that came back positive was increasing in the summer, with the sharpest spike happening in southern states. In some states, such as Arizona and Florida, the number of new cases being reported was outpacing any increase in the states’ testing ability. And as states set new daily case records and reported increasing hospitalizations, all signs pointed to a worsening crisis.

When: Multiple times
The claim: “The Cases are up because TESTING is way up”
The truth: The president made this claim multiple times during the summer surge of the pandemic, and is repeating that lie now as the country experiences a third surge. In reality, positive cases are outpacing tests around the country, the COVID Tracking Project reports, following a similar trajectory as the summer surge.

On Travel Bans and Travelers

When: Wednesday, March 11
The claim: The United States would suspend “all travel from Europe, except the United Kingdom, for the next 30 days,” Trump announced in an Oval Office address.
The truth: The travel restriction would not apply to U.S. citizens, legal permanent residents, or their families returning from Europe. At first, it applied specifically to the 26 European countries that make up the Schengen Area, not all of Europe. Trump later announced the inclusion of the United Kingdom and Ireland in the ban.

Another claim: In the same address, Trump said the travel restrictions would “not only apply to the tremendous amount of trade and cargo but various other things as we get approval.”
The truth: Trump followed up in a tweet, explaining that trade and cargo would not be subject to the restrictions.

When: Thursday, March 12
The claim: All U.S. citizens arriving from Europe would be subject to medical screening, COVID-19 testing, and quarantine if necessary. “If an American is coming back, or anybody is coming back, we’re testing,” Trump said. “We have a tremendous testing setup where people coming in have to be tested … We’re not putting them on planes if it shows positive, but if they do come here, we’re quarantining.”
The truth: Testing was already severely limited in the United States when Trump claimed this in the spring. It was not true that all Americans returning to the country were being tested, nor that anyone was being forced to quarantine, CNN reported.

Read: Trump’s European travel ban doesn’t make sense

When: Tuesday, March 31
The claim: “We stopped all of Europe” with a travel ban. “We started with certain parts of Italy, and then all of Italy. Then we saw Spain. Then I said, ‘Stop Europe; let’s stop Europe. We have to stop them from coming here.’”
The truth: The travel ban applied to the Schengen Area, as well as the United Kingdom and Ireland, and not all of Europe as he claimed. Additionally, Trump is wrong about the United States rolling out a piecemeal ban. The State Department did issue advisories in late February cautioning Americans against travel to the Lombardy region of Italy before issuing a general “Do Not Travel” warning on March 19. But the U.S. never placed individual bans on Italy and Spain.

When: Multiple times
The claim: “Everybody thought I was wrong” about implementing restrictions on travelers from China, and “most people felt they should not close it down—that we shouldn’t close down to China.”
The truth: While the WHO did say it opposed travel bans on China generally, Trump’s own top health officials have made clear that the travel ban was the “uniform” recommendation of the Department of Health and Human Services. Fauci and Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the coronavirus task force, both praised the decision too.

When: Multiple times
The claim: The Trump administration’s travel restrictions on China were a “ban” that closed up the “entire” United States and “kept China out.”
The truth: Nearly 40,000 people traveled from China to the United States from February 2, when Trump’s travel restrictions went into effect, to April 4, The New York Times reported. Those rules also do not apply to all people: American citizens, green-card holders and their relatives, and people on flights coming from Macau and Hong Kong are not included in the “ban.”

On Taking the Pandemic Seriously

When: Tuesday, March 17
The claim: “I’ve always known this is a real—this is a pandemic. I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic … I’ve always viewed it as very serious.”
The truth: Trump has repeatedly downplayed the significance of COVID-19 as outbreaks began stateside. From calling criticism of his handling of the virus a “hoax,” to comparing the coronavirus to a common flu, to worrying about letting sick Americans off cruise ships because they would increase the number of confirmed cases, Trump has used his public statements to send mixed messages and sow doubt about the outbreak’s seriousness.

When: Thursday, March 26
The claim: This kind of pandemic “was something nobody thought could happen … Nobody would have ever thought a thing like this could have happened.”
The truth: Experts both inside and outside the federal government sounded the alarm many times in the past decade about the potential for a devastating global pandemic, as my colleague Uri Friedman has reported. Two years ago, my colleague Ed Yong explored the legacy of Ebola outbreaks—including the devastating 2014 epidemic—to evaluate how ready the U.S. was for a pandemic. Ebola hardly impacted America—but it revealed how unprepared the country was.

On COVID-19 Treatments and Vaccines

When: Monday, March 2
The claim: Pharmaceutical companies are going “to have vaccines, I think, relatively soon.”
The truth: The president’s own experts told him during a White House meeting with pharmaceutical leaders earlier the same day that a vaccine could take a year to 18 months to develop. In response, he said he would prefer that it take only a few months. He later claimed, at a campaign rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, that a vaccine would be ready “soon.” Many months later, this is still not true.

When: Thursday, March 19
The claim: At a press briefing with his coronavirus task force, Trump said the FDA had approved the antimalarial drug chloroquine to treat COVID-19. “Normally the FDA would take a long time to approve something like that, and it’s—it was approved very, very quickly and it’s now approved by prescription,” he said.
The truth: FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, who was at the briefing, quickly clarified that the drug still had to be tested in a clinical setting. An FDA representative later told Bloomberg that the drug has not been approved for COVID-19 use, though a doctor could still prescribe it for that purpose. Later that same day, Fauci told CNN that there is no “magic drug” to cure COVID-19: “Today, there are no proven safe and effective therapies for the coronavirus.”

When: Friday, April 24
The claim: Trump was being “sarcastic” when he suggested in a briefing on April 23 that his medical experts should research the use of powerful light and injected disinfectants to treat COVID-19.
The truth: Trump’s tone did not seem sarcastic when he made the apparent suggestion to inject disinfectants. Turning to Birx and a Department of Homeland Security science-and-technology official, he mused: “I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning? … It would be interesting to check that.” When he walked this statement back the next day, he added that he was only asking his experts “to look into whether or not sun and disinfectant on the hands [work].”

When: Friday, May 8
The claim: The coronavirus is “going to go away without a vaccine … and we’re not going to see it again, hopefully, after a period of time.”
The truth: Fauci has repeatedly said that the coronavirus’s sudden disappearance “is just not going to happen.” Until the country has “a scientifically sound, safe, and effective vaccine,” Fauci said in May, the pandemic will not be over.

Read: Why does the president keep pushing a malaria drug?

When: Multiple times
The claim: Taking hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 is safe and effective. “I happen to be a believer in hydroxy. I used it. I had no problem. I happen to be a believer,” Trump said on one occasion. “It doesn’t hurt people,” he commented on another.
The truth: Trump’s own FDA has warned against taking the antimalarial drug with or without the antibiotic azithromycin, which Trump has also promoted. Several large observational studies in New York, France, and China have concluded that the drug has no benefit for COVID-19 patients, and Fauci and Trump’s testing czar, Brett Giroir, have also cautioned against it as the president has repeated this claim in recent months.

Another claim: “One bad” study from the Department of Veterans Affairs that found no benefit among veterans who took hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 was run by “people that aren’t big Trump fans.” The study “was a Trump-enemy statement.”
The truth: There’s no evidence that the study was a political plot orchestrated by Trump opponents, and it reached similar conclusions as other observational reports. The VA study was led by independent researchers from the University of Virginia and the University of South Carolina with a grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Another claim: Many frontline doctors and workers are taking hydroxychloroquine to prevent COVID-19.
The truth: Multiple trials are under way to determine if health-care workers should take the drug as a preventative. But there are no conclusive numbers for how many workers are taking the drug outside of those studies.

When: Thursday, August 6
The claim: A coronavirus vaccine could be ready by Election Day.
The truth: The timeline Trump proposes contradicts health experts’ consensus that early 2021 is likely the soonest a vaccine could be widely available.

When: Tuesday, September 29
The claim: “We’re weeks away from a vaccine,” Trump said at the first debate.
The truth: Redfield has said a COVID-19 vaccine may not be widely available to the American public until the summer of next year. Two of the three drug companies working on a vaccine have said they hope to have only initial clinical-trial results by the end of this year.

When: Multiple times
The claim: A CDC study shows that “85 percent of the people wearing masks catch” the virus.
The truth: The CDC study that the president cited in interviews does not suggest that people who wear masks get the virus at higher rates than those who don’t, CNN reported. The lie also distorts the purpose of mask-wearing, which is chiefly to protect other people from the virus, not to protect only the mask-wearer herself.

On the Defense Production Act

When: Friday, March 20
The claim: Trump twice said during a task-force briefing that he had invoked the Defense Production Act, a Korean War–era law that enables the federal government to order private industry to produce certain items and materials for national use. He also said the federal government was already using its authority under the law: “We have a lot of people working very hard to do ventilators and various other things.”
The truth: Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Peter Gaynor told CNN on March 22 that the president has not actually used the DPA to order private companies to produce anything. Shortly after that, Trump backtracked, saying that he had not compelled private companies to take action. Then, on March 24, Gaynor told CNN that FEMA plans to use the DPA to allocate 60,000 test kits. Trump tweeted afterward that the DPA would not be used.

Jane Chong: How to actually use the Defense Production Act

When: Saturday, March 21
The claim: Automobile companies that have volunteered to manufacture medical equipment, such as ventilators, are “making them right now.”
The truth: Ford and General Motors, which Trump mentioned at a task-force briefing the same day, announced earlier in March that they had halted all factory production in North America and were likely months away from beginning production of ventilators, representatives told the Associated Press. Since then, Ford CEO James Hackett told CNN that the auto company will begin to work with 3M to produce respirators and with General Electric to assemble ventilators. GM said it will explore the possibility of producing ventilators in an Indiana factory. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whose company Trump highlighted in a tweet, has said that the company is “working on ventilators” but that they cannot be produced “instantly.”

On States’ Resources

When: Tuesday, March 24
The claim: Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York passed on an opportunity to purchase 16,000 ventilators at a low cost in 2015, Trump said during the Fox News town hall.
The truth: Trump seems to have gleaned this claim from a Gateway Pundit article. That piece, in turn, cites a syndicated column from Betsy McCaughey, a former lieutenant governor of New York, which includes a figure close to 16,000. The number comes from a 2015 report from the state’s health department that provided guidance for how New York could handle a possible flu pandemic. The report notes that the state would need 15,783 more ventilators than it had at the time to aid patients during “an influenza pandemic on the scale of the 1918 pandemic.” The report does not include a recommendation to Cuomo for additional purchases or stockpiling. Trump “obviously didn’t read the document he’s citing,” a Cuomo representative said in a statement.

Another claim: Trump also repeated a claim from the Gateway Pundit article that Cuomo’s office established “death panels” and “lotteries” as part of the state’s pandemic response.
The truth: The 2015 report and the accompanying press release announced updated guidelines for hospitals to follow to allocate ventilators. The guidelines “call for a triage officer or triage committee to determine who receives or continues to receive ventilator therapy” and describes how a random lottery allocation might work. (Neither should be the first options for deciding care, the report notes.) Cuomo never established a lottery.

When: Sunday, March 29
The claim: Trump “didn’t say” that governors do not need all the medical equipment they are requesting from the federal government. And he “didn’t say” that governors should be more appreciative of the help.
The truth: The president told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Thursday, March 26, that “a lot of equipment’s being asked for that I don’t think they’ll need,” referring to requests from the governors of Michigan, New York, and Washington. He also said, during a Friday, March 27, task-force briefing, that he wanted state leaders “to be appreciative … We’ve done a great job.” He added that he wasn’t talking about himself, but about others within the federal government working to combat the pandemic.

When: Sunday, March 29, and Monday, March 30
The claim: Hospitals are reporting an artificially inflated need for masks and equipment, items that might be “going out the back door,” Trump said on two separate days. He also said he was not talking about hoarding: “I think maybe it’s worse than hoarding.”
The truth: There is no evidence to show that hospitals are maliciously hoarding or inflating their need for masks and personal protective equipment when reporting shortages in supplies. Although Cuomo reported anecdotal stories of thefts from hospitals early in March, he was referring to opportunists trying to price-gouge early in the pandemic. Reuters has reported a handful of stories of nurses hiding masks to conserve supplies amid shortages, but not wide-scale thefts as Trump claimed.

On China

When: Tuesday, April 14
The claim: Asked about his past praise of China and its transparency, Trump said that he hadn’t “talk[ed] about China’s transparency.”
The truth: Trump lauded the country in tweets he sent in late January and early February. In one, he highlighted the Chinese government’s “transparency” about the coronavirus outbreak.

Read: How China is planning to win back the world

When: Friday, May 29
The claim: The WHO ignored “credible reports” of the coronavirus’s spread in Wuhan, the Chinese city that first reported the new virus, including those published in The Lancet medical journal in December.
The truth: The Lancet said it did not publish such reports in December. Its first reports on the virus’s spread in Wuhan were published on January 24.

Another claim: Taiwanese officials had warned the WHO about human-to-human transmission of a new virus by December 31.
The truth: Taiwan did not cite “human to human” transmission in the communications Trump referenced, but it did ask for more information and compared the virus to SARS.

Another claim: In mid-January, the WHO said the coronavirus could not be transmitted between humans.
The truth: The WHO did say on January 12 that early investigations by China could find “no clear evidence” of human-to-human transmission in Wuhan, but it did not rule such transmission out. Two days later, a WHO official said during a press conference that “it is possible that there is limited human-to-human transmission” among families, and warned hospitals around the world to prepare for a greater outbreak.

On Democrats

When: Multiple times
The claim: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged people to attend “parties” and a parade in San Francisco’s Chinatown to “show that this thing doesn’t exist.”
The truth: Pelosi did visit San Francisco’s Chinatown in late February to encourage residents not to fear the coronavirus in the city. “Precautions have been taken” and the city was “on top of the situation,” she said. But Pelosi did not urge people to attend a parade or parties. San Francisco reported its first case of COVID-19 on March 5, a week later, and the Bay Area ordered residents to shelter in place three weeks after the speaker’s visit.

Another claim: Pelosi was “dancing in the streets of Chinatown, trying to say, ‘It’s okay to come to the United States. It’s fine. It’s wonderful. Come on in. Bring your infection with you,’” Trump said in May.
The truth: Trump is embellishing his original lie: Pelosi was not dancing in Chinatown or urging sick people to bring the coronavirus to the United States.

When: Thursday, August 27, and Tuesday, September 29
The claim: Joe Biden wants an economic shutdown: “He wants to shut down this country, and I want to keep it open,” Trump claimed at the first presidential debate.
The truth: Biden never said this. He has said repeatedly that he plans to “listen to the scientists” when deciding on policies to control the virus. When asked by ABC’s David Muir in August if he would support an economic shutdown, Biden said he “would be prepared to do whatever it takes to save lives.” But in September, he was more specific, saying, “There is going to be no need, in my view, to be able to shut down the whole economy.”

Another claim: Biden wants to “delay the vaccine.”
The truth: Though Biden has claimed that Trump has put political pressure on scientists to accelerate the approval and rollout of a COVID-19 vaccine, the former vice president has never expressed a desire to delay it. He has asked for “total transparency” from drug companies and scientists at the FDA and the CDC about any vaccine, and has called for independent verification of the vaccine’s efficacy.

Read: Joe Biden doesn’t have a plan for that

When: Multiple times.
The claim: Biden called Trump “xenophobic” after the president announced travel restrictions on China in January.
The truth: Biden did refer to the president’s “record of hysteria and xenophobia—hysterical xenophobia—and fearmongering” during a campaign stop on the same day Trump announced his restrictions, but he did not refer to Trump’s announcement specifically. Biden’s campaign told The Washington Post that he was not criticizing Trump’s travel policies, but rather reiterating an argument against Trump’s record that he’d made before.

On Protests

When: Sunday, April 19 and Tuesday, April 21
The claim: Protesters who gathered in a handful of states over the weekend to oppose social distancing were “doing social distancing” themselves and “were all six feet apart.”
The truth: Protesters have clogged streets in at least seven states after an April 15 demonstration at the Michigan state capitol grabbed national attention. In California, Colorado, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, demonstrators did not seem to be following the CDC’s safety guidelines, local news outlets reported, and photos and videos from the ground show tightly packed protests.

Another claim: Racial-justice protests and demonstrations fueled a surge in coronavirus cases.
The truth: There is no evidence to support Trump’s claim, though epidemiologists did fear at first that protests would trigger more infections. A recent study by Northeastern, Harvard, and Northwestern suggests that widespread mask wearing and the outdoor nature of the protests mitigated the spread. Some economists have argued that the protests in more than 300 U.S. cities might have actually encouraged more Americans to stay home during the civil unrest.

I will say one thing... not so much of an argument as it is a side-note.

As a self-described 'almost Libertarian', I was actually a fan of allowing the states to handle things as they saw fit. At the very beginning, NY was looking like it was going to go the way of one of those current-day-apocalypse movies while pretty much everyone else was unaffected. Allowing the states to react/prepare as they saw fit was ideal.

Unfortunately, many of our governors are complete morons (they are elected officials, after all). A semi-competent leader would've stepped in at some point and taken over....

It's just really disappointing that that way was doomed to fail from the beginning.

Actually I don't see any possible way anyone would expect something like this to be handled on a state to state basis. I mean as you have suggested, it sounds good in theory. But let's take a look at things for a minute.

When there's a huge hurricane, or a massive cataclysmic event, states do not handle these things on their own. We have things like FEMA, The Red Cross and other national organizations who come in to help. Individual states do not have things like the NIH or the CDC. That's just not the way things are set up to work.

Here is just how basic the failure is. My mother in law is 82. She knew she qualified to get the vaccine but when she tried to call he local health department they had no vaccines. She had to call around and try to find it. A couple of days later she did thank God.

Something as simple as PSA's to inform the populace of who is eligible for the vaccine and where they can get the vaccine aren't even being provided.

I didn't mean 'handled' like "don't worry, we got this" but more like "this is what we need to do and how we're going to deploy state and federal resources".

I'm not surprised by that either. We kept getting mixed messages from all sides. Trump muzzled the experts and had a radiologist giving Covid advice at Trump held press conferences. We had crazy things being said and Trump recommending medications that had zero research to back them up. It was a crap storm and politicians who were very much a part of the cult of Trump.



Fauci made it plain that he was blocked from going on certain TV shows to talk about Covid. That he was sidelined. That he couldn't believe some of the things Trump was saying.

You see, when you are continually feeding people misinformation, they have a hard time separating fact from fiction.

And Tom Petty described what happened well. "You believe what you wanna believe."