Covid-XIX Part VI - 90 cases ROI (1 death) 29 in NI (as of 13 March) *Read OP*

Xertz wrote: »

It comes down to the fact that Trump's a jingoistic xenophobe and that has played through all of his rhetoric in his presidency.

He went on TV to blame foreigners for the outbreak. It was a simple as that. He even referred to it as a "foreign virus" then went on a rant about the European Union for some reason.

Not only that but he made a hash of the statement by implying that it also applied to goods and did not mention the Schengen free travel area, rather just want on a rampage about the European Union and 'seeding' and all sorts of weird stuff.

He's managed to politicise the COVID19 mess in domestically in the US, provide little or no leadership, just fear of others and blaming the Democrats anytime he can.

To him this is all about the November election and settling scores.

He is quite literally the last person you would want to have in charge during a crisis like this. Anyone would be better! Even all of the previous GOP presidents would be leagues ahead of this guy.

It's been spin and 'make America great' claptrap without any serious help like making testing and hospital treatment available to people who need it.

I was talking to a friend of mine in the US who isn't all that well off and has dubious insurance cover and he basically reckons he's not going to survive this and is hiding in his house afraid to go outside on the basis that if he catches this he is pretty sure he will have no help at all. He was saying he can't afford to get tested, and even if he did get tested, he'd be potentially left with a huge bill for hospital anyway, so he's not going to even expose himself to that. Instead, like I would suspect many others, he's just going to hide.

Even if he developed symptoms, it's quite likely he wouldn't go near healthcare as there's a very large risk of an enormous bill.

So not only is the US not testing, but they will probably have a whole load of people who won't come forward even if they have it and there are even more who will turn up for work regardless of who sick they are, and they already do this with flu and other illnesses.

There's also huge variation from state to state depending on who's been in charge over the years. Some of the more developed / progressive states have a lot more systems in place than some of the more conservative ones that have either never had or have slashed and burned public programmes.

All Trump wants to do is create some fantasy nonsense about how the US is different, special, exceptional. When it comes to a virus of this type going pandemic, if it overwhelmed very developed healthcare systems in Europe, it has every ability to do precisely the same in the US, just generating enormous bills along the way.

Tasfasdf wrote: »

Yawn, nobody cares about your Trump hating rant.

is_that_so wrote: »

It will go past containment in pretty much most countries. The general overview of it at this stage, China & S Korea aside, is that it's flattening the curve is where efforts will mostly be focused. As Holohan said yesterday so much is unknown here. A microbiologist on MI made a point that a true number of infected will be very hard to determine as some could have been through it with little to no effect.

FutureGuy wrote: »

You’re immunocompromised and he was *thinking* of not going.

Jesus ****ing Christ.