Thread by @ASlavitt

COVID Update August 4: We’re being asked to swallow an extraordinary amount of bullshit.

The following things are not true. 1/

“We have enough, or too much, testing.”

Yeah, no.

We are 95th in the world in having as many tests we need given number of cases.

China did 11 million tests in a weekend.

And if tests take 8 days to come back, we basically have 0 tests. 2/

“Voting by mail is risky & creates fraud.”

Or....Trump wants to depress the vote particularly among Black people.

If he was really worried about people voting he would have a bipartisan commission working on it. 3/

“Not wearing a mask is a civil liberty.”

Nope. Founding fathers would have said so. (See they had perfect foresight.)

You know what a civil liberty is? Health.

Health allows people more freedom than anything else. 4/

“We don’t need to sacrifice to get through the pandemic.”

Who says? I’ve talked to people in Australia & Italy this week. They go to the beach but have to schedule it. That would cause an armed revolt here. 5/

Trump has led his followers to believe we have to do nothing to get rid of this.

He has asked nothing because he is willing to do nothing. 6/

“Protesters are spreading the virus.”

There are a lot of people who retort if I or someone tweets bars & restaurants should be closed down: “What about protests?”

I think there may be bots &Russian trolls & FL Senators that type “what about protests?” all day long.7/

Look Marco.

If you want to have church outdoors, socially distanced, with no choir, pray away Marco. Marching with masks at a distance. Same.

Spraying mace at protesters, putting them in jails, kettling them. All bad.

Holding an upside down bible at your shoulder, same. 8/

Contact tracing didn’t trace CV to the protests in Minnesota.

It did trace a lot of cases to 15 bars.

I got it Gym, you don’t care for protesters but the virus is coming from Gohmert. 9/

There’s some ratio of something divided by something else that makes our Coronavirus response look good.

Those charts the President was handed. That’s good staff work. 10/

https://twitter.com/aslavitt/status/1290748887117029377

Now I’ve had people tell me all kinds of things on here including that if you divide the number of deaths by county, it’s a really low number; that there are more excess suicides than COVID deaths & that people voluntarily hospitalize themselves to get Remdesivir. 11/

COVID has no shortage of PR agents— willing to squint through just about any lens to find away to stop us from needing to do anything. 12/

Next, to be super clear, I am not taking over the Ellen show. That rumor needs to stop.

13/

“Andy Slavitt, Larry Brilliant, Tom Frieden, Scott Gottlieb, Bill Gates, Tony Fauci, etc. are fear mongering.”

I agree with this one. 14/

I think the words “global pandemic” are also fear mongering. Let’s call it a “holiday barbecue.”

Let’s refer to “intubation” as “strolling in the park”

Let’s call blood clots “happy whispers.”

“Ventilators” should be referred to as “ferris wheels.”

Much better now. 15/

“Only old and at risk people die so let’s just protect the vulnerable.”

First of all, that is Greek for: “I’m not Black.”

Secondly, people have to take care of the mess we make. The average age of health care worker who does is 58. 16/

Third, community spread without any testing makes it impossible to control.

Fourth, just admit you if don’t really want to be bothered to keep other people alive. Just wear a red t-shirt or something though so people can keep away from you. 17/

Besides, for all the people who don’t die, they have a virus in their bodies that appears to do some unpleasant things. We don’t know what they are.

So in the meantime, don’t blame people who ignore you. Or who don’t want you to be a Senator in Arkansas any more. 18/

“We must start schools on time in person nationally.”

See also: “We have a mental health crisis worse than COVID.”

And: “People are dying from no access to care.” 19/

These are all versions of how much someone cares about education, mental health & universal health care” from people who until a month ago wanted to cut the inadequate sum we spend on those things. 20/

If your only time caring about these issues is to prove the point that businesses need to open or AR-15s should be allowed in school, call me skeptical.

Just show a paper or even a single tweet you’ve written supporting any of these things from 2006 to 2019. 21/

“We’ve enough hospital beds/ventilators.”

I think that’s nice. I do. But I really don’t think people need to use them.

ICU beds aren’t hard to create. They’re hard to staff. And that’s one of the things that makes it an IVU bed. 22/

And unless medical staff are getting new masks every day, you’re putting them at risk.

So “enough” ventilators is no reason to open the bars. You’ll just keep the problem going. 23/

News can be good. News can be bad. I think people just want it straight. It’s a lot less scary than feeling misled.

One reason I did the podcast is to get rid of the filter so you can hear & judge for yourself from people who have no agenda: school, science, vaccines, masks..24

People are going to be wrong. Including me.
People are going to have opinions. Politics always mixes in whether people admit it or not.

But an agenda that resorts to lies is another matter. Especially such bad lies. /end

Died not does