RANT:
1/ Trump says it's up to the governors to do testing.
That means no federal financial support.
He also says we are at war, and he's a wartime president.
If he's a wartime president, the governors are his generals.
He is sending his generals into battle without weapons.
1/ Trump says it's up to the governors to do testing.
That means no federal financial support.
He also says we are at war, and he's a wartime president.
If he's a wartime president, the governors are his generals.
He is sending his generals into battle without weapons.
2/ Imagine if Obama had said to Chris Christie after Hurricane Sandy, "this looks like a war zone, Chris. Hey, good luck cleaning it up! What? You need federal assistance? You really should have been prepared for this so no, you don't get any federal aid, you whiner." 
3/ Imagine if Bush had said to Giuliani after 9/11, "damn, bud, this is pretty bad, but you really should have prepared for it, so we're not going to send any federal aid to New York. Suck it up, quit complaining, and get to work, whiner."
4/ I could go on and on with examples, but you can already see how absolutely stupid this is, right? Paying for testing is not the governors' job. The federal government is LITERALLY there for this purpose. This is why we pay taxes to the federal government.
5/ We need a national testing strategy. Until we have a centralized, standardized, fully funded, fully staffed, Marshall Plan-esque testing strategy for all 50 states, we are going to be social distancing in one form or another until we have a vaccine.
6/ If social distancing is not mandated by state governments before we have testing or a vaccine, people will self-isolate out of fear. A portion of the population might go back to work, but movie theaters will be empty, stores, restaurants and bars will close. For good.
7/ This disruption of the economy–loss of jobs, shuttering of small businesses–will cost trillions of dollars more than a national testing strategy would.
The short-sightedness of refusing to invest in testing & contact tracing is mind-boggling. blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/t…
The short-sightedness of refusing to invest in testing & contact tracing is mind-boggling. blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/t…
8/ We are already experiencing food supply chain insecurity on a massive scale because meat plants are shutting down all over the country. Migrant farmworkers are considered "essential", but they are the population most vulnerable to COVID-19. bpr.org/post/migrant-f…
9/ I know this thread won't get the kind of attention my "fuck you, Trump, you fucking fuck" tweets get, and that's okay...I just wish this kind of information could pierce the bubble the Trump supporters are in.
10/ Right now, this virus is hitting people of color especially hard because it's primarily in the cities. When the small towns start losing poor white folks who have the exact same pre-existing conditions and lack of health care, all hell is going to break loose.
11/ Somehow it will be Obama's fault. Or the Democrats' fault. Or Hillary's emails' fault. Somehow, Trump will be able to convince 35% of this country that the Democrats are to blame for this pandemic.
But the majority of the country knows the truth.
nytimes.com/2020/03/28/us/…
But the majority of the country knows the truth.
nytimes.com/2020/03/28/us/…
12/ And they'll know the truth because the truth killed their grandmother. Or their grandfather. Or their mother. Or father. Or best friend. Or best friend's grandma. There is not one person in this country who won't lose someone or know someone who lost someone.
13/ In 1918, the first H1N1 flu pandemic (sometimes known by the misnomer "Spanish Flu"), came in 3 waves. The first wave hit the poor. The second wave hit the rich.
Look at the second wave.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
Look at the second wave.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
14/ While there was quite a bit of laxity in the social distancing after the first wave, the majority of the spread of the second wave came from infected soldiers coming home from WWI. By then, the virus had mutated into a *much* deadlier strain.
15/ Soldiers took it home to their families in small towns, rural areas, big cities...everywhere. The strain was so deadly, it killed 200,000 US citizens in October 1918 alone. People had high fevers, pneumonia, and nasal hemorrhaging so severe, they drowned in their own blood.
16/ Now imagine this: starting May 1, the red states open up completely. Young people from the blue states who are tired of social distancing go to red states to visit the beaches, clubs, friends...and then come home. They are asymptomatic.
miamiherald.com/news/state/flo…
miamiherald.com/news/state/flo…
17/ But now, the virus has mutated into something much more deadly. They go to their grandma's birthday party at her nursing home. They go to college and talk with their professor with a heart condition. Within days, that young traveler doesn't feel so great.
18/ And it turns out, the mutated virus doesn't just affect old people and sick people and poor people. It affects *everyone*. So, that young person dies just as fast as his grandmother and his professor and anyone else he came into contact with.
19/ This is just a thought exercise. COVID-19 *is* mutating, but some researchers think it mutates more slowly than the flu virus and might not be a problem at all. But that's not really the point. npr.org/sections/goats…
20/ Even if it doesn't mutate, relaxing social distancing without having a solid federally funded, state-run testing and contact tracing plan in place will lead to economic collapse and a disastrous second wave of this pandemic. That's just a fact. /fin
That was just a long-winded way of saying "we are so fucked."
