the scientific expert on the subject firmly refutes Woodward (an amateur reporter who got famous for doing a primitive version of copy-pasting someone else’s words in the 70s) and his claims.

*trump displays unprecedented amounts of incompetence, lack of leadership, and behaviour completely inadequate to his office* - trump cult: "well, he's not a politician, he does things his own way"
*trump gets caught in yet another blatant lie, also a discipline he set new terrible standards in* - trump cult: "politicians lie, it's their job, stop blaming him"

boot lickers gonna lick...

This post was edited by fender on Sep 9 2020 03:24pm

Ahem, maybe it will be gone by april 2021.... Yet the second wave is starting for real along with cold weather for north hemisphera, possible catastrophic situation in 2 weeks IMO, including US.
If this scenario applies US elections will be horrible. What is the ratio of crippleds/dead ?

This post was edited by Saucisson6000 on Sep 9 2020 04:08pm

It'd be real cool if this national nightmare ended asap.

The sad thing is that it doesn't fucking matter. People like Goomshill will come up with absurd reasons for why Trump didn't mean what he said or why it was a good thing to do what he did. That, or he'll simply ignore it.

To be honest, most governments got caught napping and many of them downplayed the threat of the virus during the onset of the pandemic. Here in Germany, our federal minister of health was on a political talkshow in late February, saying "there is nothing to worry about, we are perfectly prepared for this virus". Less than 3 weeks later, the country was on lockdown and it became clear that the public health officials and institutions were totally unprepared.

The key distinction between Trump and other world leaders isnt that he tried or wanted to downplay it, it's that he didnt reverse his rhetoric when it became abundantly clear that the virus was indeed super serious. Still downplaying it in late March cannot be excused with "I didnt want people to panic" anymore. He badly botched his part of the coronavirus response, and the deserved punishment is that it's probably gonna cost him his reelection.


The statement about his generals and Mattis/Tillerson/Cohn seem spot on btw, they dont bother me in the slightest. *shrug*

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Sep 9 2020 08:37pm

if there is one key distinction, it's that trump deliberately made the pandemic a partisan issue - something that very directly lead to tens of thousands of completely avoidable and UNNECESSARY DEATHS.

deliberately withholding help from the early hit blue states and governors not sufficiently 'loyal' to him, trying to portray masks and distancing as signs of weakness and oppression (to this day btw), using desperately needed items to enrich himself and his family, actively slowing down testing to conceal numbers... those were political decisions that any rationally thinking person can easily identify as being immediately detrimental to fighting a pandemic, unquestionably killing tens of thousand.

that will be his legacy, and history will not look kindly on his enablers, appeasers, and defenders.

This post was edited by fender on Sep 9 2020 10:01pm

Faucis right, at least about being wrong
Its pretty blunt and simple: Trump was wrong just like everyone was wrong, and Trump was saying in public what Fauci was telling him.
All the predictions scientists made using the best available methods turned out to be massively wrong, both those predicting far worse outcomes and those far less serious.

Its ironic enough that these journalists who all engaged in the exact same false predictions of coronavirus at the outset are now trying to condemn Trump for it
but its even more ironic that they're now railing against Fauci to try to decry Trump not listening to the scientists

Yeah, when Trump compared the coronavirus threat to the flu, the CDC and media were both making that same comparison and nobody really knew if it would be better or worse. We were having that same debate early on in this very thread. Some predictions were that it would be 100x worse and an apocalyptic plague far worse than the spanish flu. Some people thought it would just blow over with less impact than the flu. Well, it took months of data gathering and the excess death numbers show it was ~3-6x worse than the flu. We're still in the middle of learning the full impacts and how effective our responses have been. At first the WHO was telling people not to wear masks, even after the CDC started recommending they do. But there's still reason to doubt whether widespread mask usage is currently having any effect on covid-19 spread at all, the statistics don't show the huge improvements hoped for, perhaps just marginal benefits, perhaps offsetting other factors that would skyrocket it without a mandate. We can't know yet.

Trump is weak on coronavirus and an easy target particularly because of his far too prolonged resistance to masks, but its definitely sinners throwing stones in this story
especially considering Joe Biden opposed Trump's actions to close the borders in the first place

This post was edited by Goomshill on Sep 9 2020 10:20pm