John Oliver on Coronavirus

[FORD]

Speaking of which......

[Seshmeister]

Fuck sake.

Also what is wrong with this chant 1776 TEXAS?

At the end a commercial for his 'supplement' to change your DNA to beat COVID?

[FORD]

Jesus H. Christ, my sister has lost her fucking mind.....

She just parked her car at my house so she could walk down to the Capitol and participate in this stupid "protest" against Jay Inslee and his "Stay home" orders.

Ironic thing is, she's no fan of the Orange Asshole, and not even a political right winger. She IS somewhat of a Fundagelical though, and doesn't like the fact that she can't go to church on Sunday.

Told her that this shit was all being bankrolled by EriKKK Prince and his dumbass sister, but to no avail.

[Seshmeister]

Don't let her anywhere near you.

[FORD]

I'm not so worried about myself as I am my 78 year old mother.... because my sister's been living with her the last few years due to mom's health issues. Most of which involved brittle bones, but there were a couple of cardiac issues in there as well.

Told my sister she needed to take a Purel shower when she got home, before she went in the house.

[Seshmeister]

[FORD]

[Nickdfresh]

Protesting for the Freedom to Catch the Coronavirus
The reopen America protests are the logical conclusion of a twisted liberty movement.

By Charlie Warzel

April 19, 2020

A demonstrator in Lansing, Mich., walked between a line of cars as they drove past the State Capitol and honked in protest against coronavirus restrictions.Credit...Paul Sancya/Associated Press

At a string of small “reopen America” protests across the country this week, mask-less citizens proudly flouted social distancing guidance while openly carrying semiautomatic rifles and waving American flags and signs with “ironic” swastikas. They organized chants to lock up female Democrat governors and to fire the country’s top infectious disease experts. At one point during protests at the Michigan Capitol, the group’s orchestrated gridlock blocked an ambulance en route to a nearby hospital.

For those who’ve chosen to put their trust in science during the pandemic it’s hard to fathom the decision to gather to protest while a deadly viral pathogen — transmitted easily by close contact and spread by symptomatic and asymptomatic people alike — ravages the country. But it shouldn’t come as a surprise. This week’s public displays of defiance — a march for the freedom to be infected — are the logical conclusion of the modern far-right’s donor-funded, shock jock-led liberty movement. It was always headed here.

Few demonstrate this movement better than Alex Jones of Infowars — one of the key figures of Saturday’s “You Can’t Close America” rally on the steps of the Capitol building in Austin, Tex. For decades, Mr. Jones has built a thriving media empire harnessing (real and understandable) fear, paranoia and rage, which in turn drive sales of vitamin supplements and prepper gear in his personal store. The Infowars strategy is simple: Instill a deep distrust in all authority, while promoting a seductive, conspiratorial alternate reality in which Mr. Jones, via his outlandish conspiracies, has all the answers. He’s earned the trust of a non-trivial number of Americans, and used it to stoke his ego and his bank account. And he never lets reality get in the way (case in point, holding a stay-at-home order protest in Texas the day after the state announced it would begin efforts to carefully reopen in coming weeks).

Former employees have described Mr. Jones to me as master of manipulating the truth into a convenient worldview in which Infowars and its listeners are constantly victimized by powerful institutional forces. “We kept saying ‘We’re the underdogs’ — that was our mantra,” one former employee told me in 2017. To make this work, Mr. Jones molds the day’s news into conspiratorial fables.

A novel virus — about which so much is unknown and where expert opinion is constantly shifting — is a near perfect subject for Infowars to fit the news to its paranoid narrative. Uncertainty over the virus’s origins in China is a springboard to float unproven theories about bioweapons. Discussions about a vaccine to end the epidemic become conspiracies about billionaire tech leaders pushing population control. Changing epidemiological models that show fewer projected Covid-19 deaths (because social distancing has worked to slow infections) provide an opening for Mr. Jones to rant about stay-at-home lockdowns. Genuine fears about deeply unfair job losses and economic recession become reckless theories about Democrat-led plans to punish American citizens by driving them into poverty.

Jones’ opportunistic rantings fit neatly into a larger right-wing strategy, which has grown alongside Infowars. Just as Infowars rallies are tied to the media outlet’s financial interest in antigovernment paranoia, a few of this week’s rallies have been underwritten by political organizations with ties to the Republican Party and the Trump administration. Regardless of who’s behind them, the intent is to sow division and attempt to reshape public opinion. As Vox’s Jane Coaston wrote, they’re “designed to pit Republican-voting areas of states against their Democratic-voting neighbors, even rural Republicans against urban Republicans.”

It’s important to note that the reopen protests have been generally small (at most, hundreds of people in states of millions of citizens responsibly staying at home) and don’t even reflect the polled opinions of many conservatives. But they fit neatly into a larger campaign playbook and take on outsize importance. They take place frequently in swing states or states with Democratic governors and are plastered across social media, reported in mainstream organizations, openly cheered on by Fox News and right-wing media, and ultimately end up amplified (tacitly or explicitly) by the president. The strategy has worked well in recent years, consolidating support among the Trump base.

As a political movement, the Make America Great Again crowd relishes turning criticism from ideological opponents into a badge of honor. Confrontation of any kind is currency and people taking offense to their actions is a surefire sign that they’re correct. The MAGA mind-set prioritizes freedom above all — especially the freedom from introspection, apologizing or ever admitting defeat. But the movement, which has been building since the Tea Party protests, has created a reflexive response among both Jones’s audience and far-right Trump supporters.

This response is disguised as an expression of liberty, but it’s a twisted, paranoid and racialized version. Slate editor Tom Scocca defined it recently as a political ideology where supporters are “conditioned to believe that thinking about other people’s needs or interests in any way is tyranny by definition.” This wholesale rejection of collective thinking is, as Vice’s Anna Merlan notes, the cornerstone of the anti-vaccine and “health freedom” movements, which reject public health because they “don’t think their choices affect other people.”

Unmentioned by the protesters are the workers actually keeping America open, many of them afraid for their health, with no choice and in communities devastated by the virus. The result, as my Times colleagues described Saturday, is “images of nearly all-white protesters demanding the governor relax restrictions while hoisting Trump signs and Confederate battle flags, as the virus disproportionately impacts Michigan’s black residents.”

This coronavirus protest movement is merely the confluence of this perverted liberty ideology — honed and pushed by Mr. Jones, right-wing interest groups and pro-Trump media — and the dynamics of an online information ecosystem that prioritizes conflict to generate attention. When Infowars-style tactics meet online platforms the result is a flattening of all nuanced arguments of science and politics into a simplified struggle between patriots and tyrants. Small protests incorrectly blossom into a false national narrative.

And so here we are in 2020, protesting statewide lockdowns intended to save lives while thousands of Americans across the country grow sick and die each day. That a virus that demands a united front — where our public health is only as strong as our least vigilant citizens — should come at a moment of extreme polarization is a tragedy. But this moment is what we’ve been headed toward for years. And so the “reopen America” protests feel unconscionable and yet completely predictable. The playbook isn’t new. The only thing that’s changed are the stakes, which get higher every day.

NY Times Editorial

[Nickdfresh]

[Seshmeister]

[Seshmeister]

Two stories I saw today


Top vaccine expert says he was fired for resisting Trump on hydroxychloroquine

Rick Bright, who directed key government agency, tells New York Times refusal to embrace unproven treatment led to departure



A senior US government doctor who worked on the search for a coronavirus vaccine has claimed he was fired after resisting Donald Trump’s push to use the unproven drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.

Rick Bright was this week ousted as director of the US health department’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or Barda, and as the deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response.

In a stunningly candid statement, Bright highlighted his refusal to embrace hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug relentlessly promoted by the president and Fox News despite a lack of scientific studies.

“Specifically, and contrary to misguided directives, I limited the broad use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, promoted by the administration as a panacea, but which clearly lack scientific merit,” Bright said.

“While I am prepared to look at all options and to think ‘outside the box’ for effective treatments, I rightly resisted efforts to provide an unproven drug on demand to the American public.”

Trump repeatedly touted hydroxychloroquine as therapy for coronavirus, pointing to a Democratic state representative in Michigan who claimed it benefited her and frequently asking: “What do you have to lose?”


More at https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ne-coronavirus

AND

Hydroxychloroquine as treatment for COVID-19 shows no benefit and more deaths in VA study

Published: April 21, 2020 at 2:16 p.m. ET
By Associated Press

President Trump has frequently touted the malaria drug as a potential breakthrough against the coronavirus-borne disease

A malaria drug widely touted by President Donald Trump for treating the new coronavirus showed no benefit in a large analysis of its use in U.S. veterans hospitals. There were more deaths among those given hydroxychloroquine versus standard care, researchers reported.

More at

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/hydroxychloroquine-treatment-for-covid-19-shows-no-benefit-and-more-deaths-in-va-study-2020-04-21

[FORD]

Actual CNN screen cap....

[Seshmeister]

At this point to influence the people that need to change their minds you need a screen cap without CNN on it...

[Nickdfresh]

Last Sunday's Se7Ep9.

[Nickdfresh]

The Coronacunt of the Day, Cruella de Cunt, er, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds

Iowa has a message for those reluctant to work at re-opened businesses
Many Iowans who may not be altogether comfortable with the governor's decision aren't being given much of a choice.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds speaks during a news conference as acting Lt. Gov. Adam Gregg, from left, looks on during the opening day of the Iowa Legislature at the Statehouse in Des Moines, Iowa on Jan. 8, 2018.Charlie Neibergall / AP file
April 29, 2020, 10:12 AM EDT
By Steve Benen

As coronavirus outbreaks continue to emerge far outside coastal urban areas, there's cause for concern in Iowa. As Rachel explained on the show last night, there have been dramatic reports out of Waterloo, Cedar Falls, and Sioux City in recent weeks, in a state where Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) never issued a statewide stay-at-home order.

What's more, it's difficult to be optimistic about the near future. The Des Moines Register reported yesterday that researchers at University of Iowa warned Reynolds' administration to maintain existing mitigation efforts or "a second wave of infections is likely."

The article added, "The warning was included in a 12-page report sent last week to the Iowa Department of Public Health from a team of researchers at the University of Iowa College of Public Health. The report said researchers found signs of a slowdown in COVID-19 infection and mortality rates in Iowa, 'but not that a peak has been reached.'"

Despite the warnings, and the fact that some of the nation's fastest-growing outbreaks are unfolding in her state, Iowa's GOP governor is moving forward with plans to re-open parts of the state as early as Friday.

But let's say you're one of the Iowans who's currently at home because of the public-health crisis, and you're not too keen on the idea of rushing back to the workplace in a state where the threat is quite real. Let's also say your employer has been directed by the state to re-open its doors.

As the Des Moines Register also reported, Kim Reynolds' administration apparently has a message for you, too.

Iowa is warning furloughed workers that they will lose their unemployment benefits if they refuse to return when their employer calls them back to work.... Iowa Workforce Development said Monday that failing to return to work out of fear of catching the virus will be considered a voluntary quit, which disqualifies workers from receiving unemployment benefits.

In fact, as the governor takes steps to re-open 77 of the state's 99 counties this week, Iowa's Workforce Development department is urging employers to report workers who don't return to their jobs.

In other words, many Iowans who may not be altogether comfortable with the governor's decision aren't being given much of a choice: go back to work during a pandemic or lose the financial benefits keeping many families afloat.

Reynolds, for what it's worth, won a competitive statewide race in 2018 by less than three percentage points. She won't be up for re-election until 2022.

MSNBC