US Pledges More Testing as Trump Hints at Aid For Workers (theguardian.com) 177
Warning that the number of coronavirus cases in the United States was expected to grow, the Trump administration on Monday evening said that testing for the virus would ramp up quickly in the coming weeks while declining to estimate how many Americans had already been tested for the virus. From a report: The evening news conference at the White House came as the stock market plunged and an increasing number of Americans wondered how the official count of virus cases in the country, still in the mid-three-figures, could remain so low despite the aggressive spread of coronavirus elsewhere. Trump addressed economic concerns, telling reporters his administration would ask Congress to pass payroll tax relief and other quick measures. He also said he was seeking help for hourly-wage workers to ensure they're "not going to miss a paycheck" and "don't get penalized for something that's not their fault."
Sabotaging Social Security is what he's doing (Score:2, Insightful)
Old people, get ready to die a little sooner than you expected
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Old people, get ready to die a little sooner than you expected
I think it's a dangerous assumption that this will only affect the old. There are lots of people with pre-existing lung issues, such as asthma, or damage to the lungs from wildfires. Lung damage from wildfires IS a workplace injury, since many people have breathed bad air in the workplace - the air can be bad for months after a fire ends and who can simply stop working for that long? - but one not currently covered as such to the best of my knowledge.
A lot of people of all ages and all walks of life in th
Here’s a “novel” idea (Score:5, Insightful)
How about guaranteeing the wages (up to a certain amount) of anyone who, responsibly, stays home sick?
Uh oh, but there’s that dirty “S” word...
Re:Here’s a “novel” idea (Score:5, Informative)
It's our response where I work now that we will extend paid sick leave now to anyone who feels sick. Yes, it's going to cost the company some cash, but not nearly enough if a third or more of the staff end up getting sick, or worse, operations have to shutter. For anyone to feel that financially they have to come to work, even if they're sick (whether it's COVID-19 or some other infectious disease) is not only cruel, but utterly self-defeating.
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But in real life, many jobs will penalize you for any time off, whether it's for being sick or not. Especially with unions being as weak as they are these days. The employers don't care, they're not getting sick but it's other workers who will get sick. And employers are more concerned that someone might be faking it, or wanting to stay home because of a hangover, rather than actually being ill.
Hourly workers in general have to work hourly to get paid, and if they have sick leave it's a very limited amount
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There's already talk around here of ways to get around such union contracts and company policies. One such tactic is, if needed, to hire temporary workers. Of course, these "emergency workers" would be a new classification so it will be okay to pay them $8/hr instead of the $10-$12/hr starting workers would normally be paid. This cost savings would then be used as a "special fund" to offset operational costs.
Translation: It would be sad if management couldn't get their bonuses as well as their regular paych
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There's also the pressure that if you're home for two weeks and your employer has a temp worker filling in, that they employer might decide to keep the temp worker who's more productive and isn't whining about green phlegm.
At some point the USA should join the civilised world and introduce worker protections. Replacing a worker for being sick is grounds for a huge fine in most countries.
Incompetence exacerbated by malevelence (Score:2)
Decided to post this as a reply to your comment so I can congratulate you en route. Too bad so few people work for such enlightened companies. Of course the obvious next question is "How long can your company afford to keep it up?"
Next question premise: Even insurance companies MUST have profits.
Deep question: How can ANY insurance system work for disasters like Covid-19?
Delusional Trumpists like the lying Conway will insist there's a profit to be made in there somewhere. They are lying. Health care is NOT
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It's our response where I work now that we will extend paid sick leave now to anyone who feels sick.
I'm genuinely curious as to what you used sick leave for before it was extended. Did it only cover amputated limbs? Industrial accidents?
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It's our response where I work now that we will extend paid sick leave now to anyone who feels sick.
I'm genuinely curious as to what you used sick leave for before it was extended. Did it only cover amputated limbs? Industrial accidents?
I think you're misinterpreting "extend". He doesn't mean "let people use their accrued sick leave"; he means "extend the amount of sick leave people are able to use".
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I interpreted as "extend the umbrella" to reach over positions who are given no leave at all.
I think our place did similarly - there wasn't a formal memo from HR or anything, just "we'll work with you", but it's the sort of place where they usually mean it (civic job)
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Yes, in a perfect world that would be the case. But this isn't a perfect world, and lots of people, for lots of reasons good and bad, don't have those cash reserves. If businesses don't support them with some sort of paid leave so they can stay home and not infect everyone else, regardless of what one might call life choices, then that company is going to end up paying a lot more if a fair chunk of their workforce is taken out. An imperfect world requires imperfect solutions.
Inflation has eaten wages (Score:4, Informative)
And yes, I'm aware you can't really boil a frog slowly. That just goes to show you that frogs are smarter than most Americans, who continue to blame their steadily increasing debt not on a desperate attempt to hang onto their standard of living in the face of plummeting wages but on their own lack of moral character*.
(*Angry as hell because my kid graduates as an RN from a major university with a 4 year degree this year... and will somehow make less than an LPD did 20 years ago _without_ adjusting for inflation. I mean, what the actual fuck?).
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You're assuming workers get paid enough to have a little left over at the end of the month. It is very common for many families to not have enough savings to cover a month off of work. Much of the new wave of homeless is coming from people who can barely keep up with rent, despite the glowing economic reports being manufactured by the government, and an unexpected illness can tip one over the edge and their car now becomes their home. These aren't irresponsible employees, they're just not as rich as you.
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People should have enough money saved to easily afford a few days at home if sick. It's not the responsibility of employers to cover irresponsible employees.
But it is the responsibility of employers to pay employees enough that they CAN save money in case they are sick. Or really, they should provide paid sick/personal days.
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People should have enough money saved to easily afford a few days at home if sick. It's not the responsibility of employers to cover irresponsible employees.
But it is the responsibility of employers to pay employees enough that they CAN save money in case they are sick. Or really, they should provide paid sick/personal days as well as pay them enough to save.
FTFY
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People should have enough money saved to easily afford a few days at home if sick. It's not the responsibility of employers to cover irresponsible employees.
But it is the responsibility of employers to pay employees enough that they CAN save money in case they are sick. Or really, they should provide paid sick/personal days.
And where does that responsibility end? How many of these employees will take that extra pay and upgrade to the new 65" TV, latest smartphone or PlayStation or Xbox when it comes out? Or use it to pay off unsecured debt used to buy the current cache of luxury items they chose to purchase, then purchase more on the newly paid off credit? The employers can't force their employees to save, so how many times do they have to raise pay when the employees spend the money rather than save it?
People don't save be
I think I see your problem (Score:2)
It is not. It is a fundamentally antagonistic relationship, especially when it scales above around 50-100 employees. At that point the employee becomes a faceless, soulless machine to extract shareholder value from.
By and large the well to do are not job creators. They're mostly people in the right place at the right time. Steve Jobs made very little of what he's credited for possible.
Re:Here’s a “novel” idea (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Here’s a “novel” idea (Score:5, Insightful)
in an economy on the brink of collapse, we don't unnecessarily increase expenses.
This is completely backward.
When the economy is on the brink of collapse is exactly when the government should open the spigot and spend like a drunken sailor.
Conversely, the government should conserve money and pay down debt when the economy is strong.
Keynesian Economics [wikipedia.org]
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Yes, because it's somehow the employees' fault that the healthcare system is broken, that Federal minimum wage is below the poverty line, and interest rates on savings are below the inflation rate.
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Riddle me this genius, How will you feel about it when a cafeteria worker at your kid's school (who right or wrong can't afford to miss a couple day's pay) shows up sick and gives half the kids there the virus to take home to their parents.
Don't be so smug if you don't have kids, one or more of your co-workers probably does, and they will be showing up for work after their kids bring the virus to them.
Or perhaps it'll be the barista at the Starbucks half a block from your office, or one of the guys that va
Re: Here’s a “novel” idea (Score:2)
Throwaway assertions are superior in every way to whatever.
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What do bread and cheese have to do with socialized medicine? Just because we socialize some things, like libraries, schools, roads, fire and police departments, and hopefully health care, does not mean we socialize everything.
At least try a more original fallacy than the old slippery slope.
We socialized Bread & Cheese (Score:2)
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Provide a citation or be content with the liar label.
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If non-working people recieve NIT, then that it is a huge disincentive to work.
Consider the irony in your statement. If the people who can't find a job receive NIT, they might not get a job.
Re:Here’s a “novel” idea (Score:4, Insightful)
If the people who can't find a job receive NIT, they might not get a job.
If people can qualify for NIT by quitting their job or working fewer hours, many will.
If people lose their NIT benefits when they get a job, many won't seek one.
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Doesn't a NIT work such that you have to be making over $20K-30K before it negatively impacts workers? Here the NIT was introduced so minimum wage workers had more take home pay but it is not enough to even come close to living on if you don't work.
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Doesn't a NIT work such that you have to be making over $20K-30K before it negatively impacts workers?
$20k-$30k in annual income is equivalent to a full-time hourly rate of $10 to $15. In many areas, that is below minimum wage.
NIT generally does not have a set income threshold. It depends on household income, not individual income. It also depends on the number of dependents.
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Doesn't a NIT work such that you have to be making over $20K-30K before it negatively impacts workers?
$20k-$30k in annual income is equivalent to a full-time hourly rate of $10 to $15. In many areas, that is below minimum wage.
Yes, minimum wage at the time was about $10 an hour and the government didn't want to raise it so their solution was more tax credits which worked as a NIT for low or no income people/households.
NIT generally does not have a set income threshold. It depends on household income, not individual income. It also depends on the number of dependents.
Yes, that is how income tax works in general and why I said 20k-30k as it depends on whether a single person or family. I'll note that the family benefit, which works as a NIT for low income workers did more to get people out of poverty then the tax cuts.
I'm in BC.
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The same place as the money that banks are allowed to poof into existence in order to loan out for a tidy profit.
It's funny how it's OK when the banks do it, but if someone does it in order to not live under a bridge the Earth will spontaneously fall into a black hole, isn't it?
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This only works for the banks because the money that is poofed into existence isn't actually poofed from noting, it's converted to money by a signature and promise by the borrower to give his future labor plus interest back to the bank. This is the same as money. The bank just converted it from one form (signature) to another (cash). With UBI this money is simply printed into existence much the same way Venezuela did it. Sure it works great at first but given enough time at a large scale it collapses badly
Re:Here’s a “novel” idea (Score:5, Insightful)
How about Congress passing a law to that effect, approved by the Senate, and then signed? Trump cannot dictate what private companies have to do unilaterally, and there's no taxpayer money intended for this purpose, so it would be unfunded if the government did it in place of the companies?
For the most part, we didn't suspend the laws of the nation *during the civil war*, and the few attempts were rebuffed as unconstitutional. Sure don't need to do it during a flu outbreak.
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For the most part, we didn't suspend the laws of the nation *during the civil war*, and the few attempts were rebuffed as unconstitutional. Sure don't need to do it during a flu outbreak.
They're not going to do it unless the death toll exceeds the civil war either. Nobody from upper management needs to physically be at work, all the money wants the wheels to keep turning. Most people in working age will pull through fine, it's those who are 70 and maybe could have lived until they're 90 that'll pay the price.
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HB1 was passed by the House and is sitting in the Senate, where it, along with many others, will continued to be ignored by McConnell for no apparent reason.
Re:Here’s a “novel” idea (Score:4, Insightful)
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They've got distractions for that (Score:2)
Oh, and they cut all the post 2008 Wall Street regulations. Brought back Credit Default Swaps they did. Did them with business loans instead of Mortgage loans. You know all those crazy, crappy start ups you keep seeing? They're borrowing money like it's free and then their risky loans are being bundled up into high risk investment vehicles that get passed around until
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Care to explain or give a link as to what HB1 is for those of us who have better things to do than memorize dead House bills?
Answer: Nothing useful in this discussion (Score:2)
For the People Act of 2019 This bill addresses voter access, election integrity, election security, political spending, and ethics for the three branches of government. Specifically, the bill expands voter registration and voting access, makes Election Day a federal holiday, and limits removing voters from voter rolls. The bill provides for states to establish independent, nonpartisan redistricting commissions. The bill also sets forth provisions related to election security, including sharing intelligence
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Numbering of House bills starts over with each new Congress. There have been literally dozens of "HB1"s. Not to mention the fact the "HB1" can mean lots of things other than a bill in the House of Representatives. Googling on such a generic term didn't seem like it would terribly productive. Just because it's the center of the world to you doesn't mean it's incredibly important to everybody else.
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Wow, you're going to give yourself an ulcer over the fact that the bill didn't pass. Calm down, you'll live longer.
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The payroll tax relief idea is for *economic stimulus*. It's not a public health measure.
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Because the president is more concerned about having a good economy to ensure a good re-election than the health of the citizens. The same money being given in tax cuts could be spent getting more testing kits and restaffing gutted health services.
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Well, the president *should* be concerned about the economy. I wasn't necessarily being critical of him by saying this is not a public health measure.
His problem, that is to say one of his problems, is that he's already painted himself into a corner by running a trillion dollar deficit. That leaves him with little choice but to raid the social security and medicare trust funds.
Re:Here’s a “novel” idea (Score:5, Insightful)
That was by design. The goal was always to cut social security and medicare. Didn't you wonder where all the GOP deficit hawks went when we ran the deficit up to unprecedented levels? They knew that they'd get what they want.
The two santas: (Score:2)
First, when Republicans control the federal government, and particularly the White House, spend money like a drunken sailor and run up the US debt as far and as fast as possible. This produces three results – it stimulates the economy thus making people think that the GOP can produce a good economy, it raises the debt dramatically, and it makes people think that Republicans are the “tax-cut Santa Claus.”
Second, when a Democrat is in the White House, scream about the national debt as loudl
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The President should also be concerned about the deficit, but, so far, he hasn't. All he has shown concern for is the wealth of the wealthiest people.
You're surprised that the self-described "King of Debt" doesn't care about the deficit? (google: Trump king of debt)
He doesn't really understand that a Country is not and cannot be run like a company and, apparently, many of his followers don't either -- quoting Trump: "I love the poorly educated". (google: Trump love poorly educated) (His educated followers are often rich enough to not be affected by or they actually benefit from his/Republican policies -- in the short-term anyway.)
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Perhaps he should consider that based on demographics, if covid-19 isn't contained, he will lose more voters than Bernie will.
Perhaps he'll start tossing rolls of paper towels again.
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won't matter, they'll both be 'out of commission'
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How does cutting the payroll tax stop people from going to work?
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Trickle down, if the employer has higher profits, he'll share them. This is why peoples wages have increased so much since Reagan, every time the rich get richer, they pass all the new wealth to their employees. /s
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'he was seeking help for hourly-wage workers to ensure they're "not going to miss a paycheck" and "don't get penalized for something that's not their fault."'
The article doesn't have specifics so who knows what it actually is.
Re:Here’s a “novel” idea (Score:5, Informative)
There aren't any specifics. It was a throwaway comment. When asked, he'll say either that he's "looking at it very closely" or that we'll "hear about it very soon".
Rest assured, no one is working on anything remotely resembling help for the working poor.
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Considering that we're still waiting for that replacement for Obamacare that we're all going to love nearly 4 years later, I wouldn't hold my breath.
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All consumed (and then some) by increases in health insurance premiums.
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Uh oh, but there’s that dirty “S” word...
It's okay, Trump's into it. He's suggesting bailouts -- I mean, financial help -- for airlines, cruise ship, and shale oil companies impacted by the Corona virus downturns and drop in oil prices. Wonder if he'd want to do all that in a non-election year? Then there's his proposal to eliminate payroll taxes through the election / end of the year -- at an estimated cost [washingtonexaminer.com] of $40B / month -- which actually only helps people *still* working, if the little it would actually help matters.
It's not just the dirty "S" word (Score:2)
And if there is the possibility that you are off in your calculations by 35 cents or more the entire plan is scrapped in favor of Status Quo.
Re: Here’s a “novel” idea (Score:2)
Road subsidies are for people who drive, ride and walk on the roads. Not for "Big Oil" or other contrived fantasies.
When government subsidizes something, the payer is who benefits. That translates to the people using the transportation, not some rich guy in a top hat you saw on a graphic in your Monopoly game set.
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That's true, when the government subsidizes fuel, the person paying for fuel benefits. However, the taxpayer who subsidizes that fuel does not benefit. The person who breathes in the fumes and particulates kicked up by car tires also does not benefit. And the driver sitting in traffic because all the drivers around him are taking advantage of artificially cheap fuel also doesn't benefit. (Sometimes these are all the same person, sometimes not.
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Road subsidies are for people who drive, ride and walk on the roads.
Not to mention all that transport goods on the roads, but that's too simple a model. For example when the government subsidizes public transport it'll reduce congestion which is a benefit to car drivers. Reduced pollution will benefit everyone. Sure, you shouldn't "oversell" it like you bought a burger at McDonald's and the McDonald's employee used his paycheck at Wal-Mart and the Wal-Mart employee... in fact the whole world economy runs off that burger.
It's not hard to see that good roads leads to people w
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Socialized roads are also not socialism because it's really just a form of corporate welfare for Big Oil
I used no oil when I drove to work this morning, yet I benefit from roads. I also benefit by being able to go to the grocery store, doctor, and hot grits shoppe.
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Don't those businesses benefit from you being able to access them? Without subsidized roads, wouldn't they find some way to get people in and out?
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Socialized roads are also not socialism because it's really just a form of corporate welfare for Big Oil
I used no oil when I drove to work this morning...
Do you know where automotive fuel comes from? The tires on your vehicle and the road surface also comes from oil.
It's already widespread in the US (Score:3, Insightful)
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The CDC doesn't have the budget to do that unilaterally without support from the administration, and they likely don't have authority to bypass FDA either without a nod from the higher ups.
If so, great news (Score:2)
There are likely hundreds of thousands of people exposed already.
If that's true, then it's great news - with just a handful of Covid deaths and hospitalizations to date, it means the disease has a very low mortality and severity rate.
Also if you look at the official contraction rates, around 97% of people exposed showed symptoms within five days if they caught it after exposure. So we would see a ton of people sick by now if it's truly widespread. The 14 day figure for quarantine is an outlier.
Tips to avo
Re: If so, great news (Score:2)
Re:If so, great news (Score:4, Funny)
The (intentional?) lack of tests has, quite obviously, kept numbers here artificially low.
If you don't have a test to show that a patient is infected, they've just got the flu, right? Severely restrict the number of tests and you can claim victory for the wonderful response to the outbreak. KAG, right?
Which numbers though (Score:2)
The (intentional?) lack of tests has, quite obviously, kept numbers here artificially low.
Only detected cases. Not deaths - you can be sure that everyone who dies of "flu" currently is being looked at very carefully.
That's what I am saying. Yes there are probably a lot more people being infected than reported, but since the death rates have not risen dramatically the mortality rate is not very high.
It will be interesting to see what actual infection rates are like when we get more tests going (in the U.S.
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But there are people who don't understand this, they fail to realize that when there are 1000 cases reported that this means usually means only those sick enough to have gone to the doctor and been tested, and there are likely 10,000 then with milder symptoms, and even more who are symptom free but who can transmit the virus. Then they're dumb enough to go and try to compare those 1000 cases to number of flu cases and declare that the flu is deadlier and more infectious.
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...I guess another side effect of that will be the solvency of Medicare and Social Security will be better than what most experts have been predicting.
Your theory certainly sounds nice, but cannot get any more delusional in reality.
Re:It's already widespread in the US (Score:5, Informative)
There are likely hundreds of thousands of people exposed already. There will be upwards of a million exposed by the end of this week. Community spread is happening and has been since early January.
My girlfriend is a nurse, and has access to the real case information in our area. For our area (Frisco/Plano, TX), the real numbers are higher by an order of magnitude than what's being publicly reported. She lost 3 patients (immune-compromised infants) to it on Friday alone.
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The positive side of this is that the people being detected are the sickest and that the severity of the infection is much lower than initially feared when the entire group of infected people is considered; including those that never seek medical attention.
This is, at best, a distinction without difference in the general case and plain wrong in the specific case.
Given that the number of deaths is a fixed, known number, if you inflate the number of cases in an effort to reduce the fatality rate, what you've actually done is reduce the likelihood that any infected person will die by increasing the likelihood that any given person will get infected. It's a wash. You're robbing Peter (the transmissivity rate) to pay Paul (the fatality rate). Whether you (magicall
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If it were that many why aren't hospitals overflowing and makeshift football field hospitals filling up?
I hope you are right.
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Yes. I agree. Here in Australia, the USA is now close to our biggest source of infection. Based on the number we've seen and the number of travellers coming from the USA, implies around 0.03% of the population in the USA has it as of 5 days ago. That comes to 90,000 cases.
Good strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
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That would be funny if it wasn't true.
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Better that than a sausage party.
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Also: it's a tax cut, which they generally like, but the payroll tax is regressive. That's not the kind of tax cut that they generally go for, though it depends on h
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BTW: after that, social security becomes an unfunded liability.
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Trillion Dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, that was the result of the last tax giveaway. A more reasonable expense would be health care for workers that have none. Republicans would rather die with their money than let that happen.
what? (Score:5, Insightful)
He assured us already there was enough kits to test everyone who needed it, so why is there need for more?
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Oh, that's because he was lying. There is very obviously a severe shortage of tests.
Re:what? (Score:5, Informative)
Nurses who were symptomatic and had worked with patients with the disease were turned away from testing as recently as Friday
News (Score:5, Informative)
Get your news about COIVD-19 from here:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronaviru... [cdc.gov]
They aren't paid by the click.
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The CDC have been absolutely terrible about keeping their website up to date during this. Completely hopeless. They can't even keep important stuff like the official advice for medical professionals on testing up to date and consistent.
Updates (Score:3)
Their current cases page is updated every weekday at 4PM. It was just updated half an hour ago from writing this.
Do you have a source that is verifiably more accurate than the CDC? They can be slow to update their information sometimes because they actually double check with the parties involved instead of reporting rumors, or blatantly making stuff up.
Re:News (Score:4, Funny)
This is my goto site/section for daily numbers on what is happening in the U.S.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Hmm ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump Hints at Aid For Workers
What ever it takes to goose the stock market I guess -- which is what the President really seems to care about. Senator Mitch McConnell has already said he's adamantly opposed to the payroll tax reduction Trump's floating, so it's not going to go anywhere. Trying to force companies to give hourly employees paid sick time is going to end up in court and trying to get the federal/state governments to pay for it isn't going to pass -- 'cause, you know, fiscal responsibility (ha, was almost able wrote that w/o laughing). But seriously, politicians don't really care about poor people 'cause they usually don't vote and can't donate (much).
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This is AMERICA, we don't "pick one" we do both!