Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Politics In General Concerning prediction for the COVID-19 pandemic

The first "reopening" fatality:

Security Guard Shot In Mask Dispute

He just was supposed to deny entry to customers without masks. Now the entry-denied wife, her husband, and their son are all wanted for First Degree Murder. They are considered armed and dangerous (despite hubbies' previous felony conviction) so I expect police will end up putting them down when a confrontation occurs.

I think states need to issue immediate arrest orders for anybody found in public without a mask. We need to nip this in the bud. An appropriate penalty would be one month of house arrest with an ankle monitor. Step out without your mask and you go right back into quarantine for a month.

I suspect if we had 4 more weeks of mandatory shut down .... zombie apocalypse would be in full force

It should be free of charge? There is no free lunch. Someone will have to pay for it. If you feel the government should pay the company, so be it, but be aware that it's not free in this case; it's the taxpayers paying for it.

If we were to impose that a company that invests literally billions in R&D must deliver their product free of charge, then there will be no more R&D and no more new medications, period.

Sure, that's an argument for universal healthcare / single payer and I'm for it. But while we don't have it, someone will need to pay for remdesivir. The company did donate 140,000 doses to the government but at some point for subsequent doses they'll need to get paid.

Yes. In Italy they passed a law establishing that someone violating the stay-at-home order is charged with a felony they called "aiding an epidemic" and the sentence guideline is up to 12 years in prison. Last time I checked the Italians had indicted 40,000 people.

Us old folks remember a greater scourge that was hitting the country.

Dr. Jonas Salk gave away his Vaccine and every kid in the country got it for free, the government paid for it. The government can do it again.

It is not socialism, it is not the nanny state, it is nothing but a government doing what it is supposed to do, protecting the people. By the way a Republican was in charge then.

To any anti-vax'rs out there, vaccines work, when is the last time you saw a kid in an Iron Lung

If you went in, it was two weeks, kind of Ironic don't ya think...

Dr. Salk's wiki page


People can be ... I'll leave the rest of it unsaid.

I just agreed with you. Go back and re-read.
I'm saying that slamming the fiscal responsibility for development and deployment of new medications deemed essential for continued survival onto the shoulders of people who can't even afford their rent is a guaranteed recipe that we will NEVER get out from under this.

And even if we should, by some miracle, it will fundamentally change how we value life itself. The American working family should not be held financially responsible for mistakes made by the top leadership.
The American working family deserves the help it needs.

No, it is not free, no I do not believe anything is ever free, no I do not believe in free lunch. I also do not believe in Charles Dickens as a moral plank on protecting society.
I believe in the constitutional guidelines on promoting and providing for the general welfare.
And if that means that a chunk of the hundreds of billions being handed out to Fortune 500 corporations needs to be diverted, then so be it.

You ARE AWARE that Fortune 500 corporations have received at least one if not TWO 500 billion dollar handouts, yes?
Okay then, divert two hundred billion of that and earmark it for a dose of Remdesivir for every person living in the United States, legal or illegal.
If that is not enough, divert another two hundred billion.
These corporations have stashed TRILLIONS of dollars offshore and gotten away with it for years, and furthermore, once a majority of Americans begin to come out of this dark hole, they're going to spend plenty of money and these corporations will be made whole again anyway.
I don't buy the notion that they are all suddenly insolvent and those trillions they stashed overseas just evaporated.

I am arguing about the slices of pie being given out, to whom those slices are going and how big a slice they are getting.
I am arguing that the American working family needs and deserves more than what they are getting if we expect to see people going back to work and moving toward recovery.

Big businesses are being made whole. Make the American working family whole instead, starting with saving their health with this essential lifesaving drug.
That is all I am arguing.

We would not (hopefully) be even having this argument if this was a real life version of "Independence Day" where an alien race has decided we are their lunch.
This pandemic might as well BE that alien race, and while we are arguing, it IS eating us.

This is exactly what I am talking about.
We should be treating this exactly the same way we treated polio.
Americans and anyone else living IN America deserve to have this essential medication given to them simply because they are IN AMERICA, a country which "provides for the general welfare" during things like public health emergencies.

Not a single person should be told, "Sorry, no Remdesivir for you, you can't afford it."

We CANNOT AFFORD TO EVEN THINK OF saying that.
It's pure insanity.
We aren't talking about an ordinary disease, we're talking about a pandemic, a global pandemic.

I too grew up in the shadow of the polio years.
I DID see children who had to live in an iron lung, I DID see children who had to use crutches for the rest of their lives due to polio.
This is worse than polio because it has the potential to kill you outright, not just take your ability to walk.
It not only takes your ability to move your diaphragm to breathe, it takes your ability to even get oxygen if you CAN move your diaphragm.
An iron lung isn't even enough to keep someone with CV19 alive.

Think about that.

I'm going to suggest that both the defense clause and the welfare clause apply to make the government constitutionally required to do everything in its power and with no regard to cost in the effort to stem this pandemic.

President Trump doesn't give a flying f*ck whether you live or die. He's only in it for the money. Republicans everywhere are guilty of murder and worse as their only goal during this crisis is to make more money.

They are spending MY taxpayer dollars to keep oil companies, cruise ship lines, and airlines afloat. Nothing in the constitution about any of that...

I am so thrilled to see a substantive discussion on the topic, free of rancor and name-calling! I'll be back after some digestion, as there is a lot to digest here. My initial thoughts, though (and I know there is a more specific thread on the topic) is that there needs to be a lot more study, and that means money, and that means government intervention in a big way. There is no question in my mind, as Greger suggests, that this is well-rooted in the Constitution and is a federal responsibility. The implications of both General Welfare and Defense are legion. More thoughts to come!

I am afraid that those who are blaming greed and lust for bucks is the problem are absolutely right. I just wonder what the Trump little taste is for those companies being guided to by Trump appointees are kicking back. While that is a distinct possibility the real problem seems to be the Trump 'supporters', particularly those armed with military grade weapons. They too are insisting that we 'open' up the city, state, etc. What is also interesting is that even after an 'opening' people are not flooding out in huge numbers to get infected. The bad thing is that it doesn't take all that many to get the virus active and new victims appearing. I watched tv a bit this morning and it seems that the graphs are already starting to show that some states are progressing enough to satisfy those determined that more should die. The shame is that is happening under the encouragement of the president of the United States and his greedy fellow travelers.

So, what we now have are states moving right back to where they were a month ago and any efforts to not get there were in vain (thereby probably creating a somewhat pissed off group that really tried). The concern is that also means that those living in those states will move through those states what have done well, so far, and reinfect those too. I wonder what happens when the states that are paying attention, doing the right thing, and having success against the virus are going to do about those travelers from states that are "back up" and full of dying victims of Trump and friends. I suspect that the successful states will start policing their borders to control virus incursions. From there it might get REALLY interesting?

As an aside. Is anybody but me wondering why the hell Trump has not been infected yet? He seems intent on getting infected. One can only wonder..........