COVID-19 Hospital Data Is a Hot Mess After Feds Take Control (arstechnica.com) 174
slack_justyb shares a report from Ars Technica: As COVID-19 hospitalizations in the US approach the highest levels seen in the pandemic so far, national efforts to track patients and hospital resources remain in shambles after the federal government abruptly seized control of data collection earlier this month. Watchdogs and public health experts were immediately aghast by the switch to the HHS database, fearing the data would be manipulated for political reasons or hidden from public view all together. However, the real threat so far has been the administrative chaos. The switch took effect July 15, giving hospitals and states just days to adjust to the new data collection and submission process.
As such, hospitals have been struggling with the new data reporting, which involves reporting more types of data than the CDC's previous system. Generally, the data includes stats on admissions, discharges, beds and ventilators in use and in reserve, as well as information on patients. For some hospitals, that data has to be harvested from various sources, such as electronic medical records, lab reports, pharmacy data, and administrative sources. Some larger hospital systems have been working to write new scripts to automate new data mining, while others are relying on staff to compile the data manually into excel spreadsheets, which can take multiple hours each day, according to a report by Healthcare IT News. The task has been particularly onerous for small, rural hospitals and hospitals that are already strained by a crush of COVID-19 patients. "It seems the obvious of going from a system that is well tested, to something new and alien to everyone is happening exactly as everyone who has ever done these kinds of conversions predicted," adds Slashdot reader slack_justyb.
As such, hospitals have been struggling with the new data reporting, which involves reporting more types of data than the CDC's previous system. Generally, the data includes stats on admissions, discharges, beds and ventilators in use and in reserve, as well as information on patients. For some hospitals, that data has to be harvested from various sources, such as electronic medical records, lab reports, pharmacy data, and administrative sources. Some larger hospital systems have been working to write new scripts to automate new data mining, while others are relying on staff to compile the data manually into excel spreadsheets, which can take multiple hours each day, according to a report by Healthcare IT News. The task has been particularly onerous for small, rural hospitals and hospitals that are already strained by a crush of COVID-19 patients. "It seems the obvious of going from a system that is well tested, to something new and alien to everyone is happening exactly as everyone who has ever done these kinds of conversions predicted," adds Slashdot reader slack_justyb.
The worst Covid-19 response in the world... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, that's it.
I'm tired of winning.
"hot mess" does not mean that (Score:5, Informative)
"Hot mess" means "sexy but disorganized." There is nothing attractive about this. Stop doing r/mess/hot mess
Re:"hot mess" does not mean that (Score:5, Funny)
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Well we could say it's a "train wreck". Everyone knows they're not sexy.
Re:"hot mess" does not mean that (Score:5, Insightful)
Well we could say it's a "train wreck". Everyone knows they're not sexy.
I think the approved metaphor for all things Trump is "dumpster fire". :-)
Re:"hot mess" does not mean that (Score:4, Insightful)
But ... dumpsters are messy and fire is hot. So a dumpster fire is a hot mess.
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So a dumpster fire is a hot mess.
You think a dumpster fire is sexy? Hey man I'm not gonna judge. You do you.
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Thus, in this situation, the correct nomencalture would be "Shitstorm".
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I don't know, trains. That's got a certain mmm. And then wrecks, well, I mean, that's usually the best part of NASCAR, isn't it? What about a "shit show?" Surely nobody is into that kind of stuff.
Surely.
I mean, ok, you never know what everyone is into. But shit. Shit is shit, right?
Re:"hot mess" does not mean that (Score:5, Informative)
"Hot mess" means "sexy but disorganized."
Uh, no it doesn't - and the phrase suits the real definition to a "T":
'A person or thing that is spectacularly unsuccessful or disordered, especially one that is a source of peculiar fascination." [lexico.com]
"something in a state of extreme disorder or disarray" [merriam-webster.com]
"Hot mess is used to describe a particularly disorganized person or chaotic situation." [dictionary.com]
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Re: "hot mess" does not mean that (Score:2)
In what country?
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Re: "hot mess" does not mean that (Score:2)
English is the predominant language in several countries, and they each have our own mannerisms or even dictionaries.
For example, in London they say "Mind the gap", and in Chicago they say "Watch for train holes"
I've never understood hot mess to mean the semi attractive person you've woken up next to. It's always been something like a mess, that is warmed over, such as by microwave, fire, or some other complicating factor.
A hot mess is more like waking up next to a dude, but expecting a lady. Not that th
That's weird, where I am "hot mess" (Score:2)
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Yes, that's what it means.
It can be after it comes out of your ass, instead of out of your dog, though
Re: "hot mess" does not mean that (Score:2)
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False, sexy has nothing to do with it. "hot mess" is a mess so spectacular that it generates its own intrigue.
The urban dictionary is generally not the best source of definitions in the english language and you are describing a subset of one of the recognized and generally used definitions.
Mirriam Webster:
1 informal : something or someone that is emphatically a mess: such as
a: something in a state of extreme disorder or disarray
b: a disorganized, disheveled, or self-destructive person
also : such a person wh
Re:How is more data not attractive (Score:4, Insightful)
Because instead we get LESS data being made available, and it's horribly late?
You know, you could RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
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One hospital
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Multiple ICUs in South Florida are full but they've been able to air lift patients to other hospitals. Meanwhile we're about to reopen schools even thought this happened [youtube.com].
The best part? Schools reopen in August. It'll take 2-4 weeks for the virus to spread and another 60 days for bodies in the ground (average infection time to death, rough guess based on CDC numbers).
In other words the shit'll hit the fan right after the election. Meanwhile it's leaked that Don Jr didn't bother wi
Your numbers don't come from the CDC (Score:2)
The best part? Schools reopen in August. It'll take 2-4 weeks for the virus to spread and another 60 days for bodies in the ground (average infection time to death, rough guess based on CDC numbers). In other words the shit'll hit the fan right after the election.
Here are the actual CDC numbers: [cdc.gov]
Time from exposure to symptom onset: ~6 days (mean)
Median number of days from symptom onset to death (interquartile range)
18-49 years: 15 (9, 23) days
50-64 years: 15 (9, 25) days
65 years: 12 (7, 19) days
That puts "bodies in the ground" at around 18-31 days, not 74-88 days. Wherever your numbers come from, it isn't the CDC. Since they stink so bad, I have an idea where they actually came from - straight out of your ass.
Still not sure why you've been trying to sell t
Those are the overall numbers (Score:2)
But hey, Maybe you're right and come mid Sept - early Oct we'll have a bumper crop of dead kids, teachers and parents. Won't that be fun?
Seriously, I hate this timeline. What the hell is wrong with people?
LOL! No. (Score:4, Interesting)
Those ARE NOT the overall numbers. They're numbers you completely fabricated to support you ridiculous "the man is engineering a spike in deaths after the election" propaganda. Your lie about them coming from the CDC is just a pathetic attempt to give your BS numbers credibility.
and include the start of the pandemic.
The CDC's numbers are based on the best available information, including from the start of the pandemic. Your numbers are a steaming pile of shit after a long night at Taco Bell.
Treatments have improved. It's slightly increased survivablity but it's mostly slowed down how long until folks die.
Jesus F. Christ. The number of days from symptom onset to death has gone from your claimed 60 days to 15 days and you think that means treatments have improved? That's an amazing level of stupidity even for you.
The median number of days from onset of symptoms to death was shown to be 17.8 days in March, [thelancet.com] entirely consistent with the current CDC number of ~15. That number has never been 60 days. Not even close. Your numbers are a complete fabrication. Made up shit trying to support your ridiculous propagandist narrative.
What the hell is wrong with people?
The question is "what the hell is wrong with people who continuously and blatantly lie, try to backpedal when caught, and say even more stupid nonsense? Why don't they just shut up?" Who knows? Some people are just habitual liars who don't know when to quit.
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Better not get sick. COVID has a 20% hospitalization rate.
SMH. This is a perfect example of you repeating a lie that has been shown to you to be false. You're a pathological liar. [healthline.com] What more can be said?
Let's pretend it's half that.
There's no pretending necessary. The CDC says the hospitalization rate is a little over 9%. [cdc.gov] I've pointed this out to you before.
How's a 1 in 10 chance of dying suit you?
Sounds pretty bad. Do you have anything, anything at all, that supports that scenario? Of course you don't, except maybe from of your YouTube experts.
Speaking of your YouTube experts, your favorite YT doctor [youtube.com] (remember? the one you s
Re:How is more data not attractive (Score:4, Informative)
It doesn't say "MORE data". It says "more TYPES of data".
Can you understand the distinction?
Re:How is more data not attractive (Score:4, Informative)
Before:
Infected/Not infected
Dead/Recovered
Now
Infected with no symptoms
Infected with mild symptoms
Infected with complicating comorbidity
Contributing cause of death
Primary cause of death
Unrelated to case of death
You know, all the things you need to make informed decisions
Re:How is more data not attractive (Score:4, Informative)
What's funny is the right-wing nutjobs who were fighting this exact thing tooth and nail back in 2014. Specifically, when the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) mandated a switch from the ICD-9 to ICD-10 billing codes. The number of possible medical procedure codes jumped from 20,000 to 155,000+.
This was touted by Republicans near and far about government over reach, wasteful bureaucracy, and a horrible way to run a medical system. The idea it was "capturing more data" and "how can that be bad" escaped them all.
The reality was the change reflected essentially what your example was -- more specifics. From "broken arm" to "broken right ulna".
Now the shoe is on the other foot. It'd be funny if it wasn't so sad.
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This was touted by Republicans near and far about government over reach, wasteful bureaucracy, and a horrible way to run a medical system. The idea it was "capturing more data" and "how can that be bad" escaped them all.
I recall a long WSJ article that pointed out a lot of the new codes seemed to be quite strange when you browsed the list, for example this one:
W61.62XD: Struck by duck, subsequent encounter [adsc.com]
Perhaps there was a reason to distinguish between waterfoul caused injuries and all other wildlife (for example bacteria might be different?) but it does infact seem wasteful to make doctors spend more time looking through 150,000 (thousand!) entries in the system to find the correct code for billing to match a diagnosis. There were already many many issues with codi
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In the days of predictive and suggestive searches, I'd imagine medical professionals are spending less them than ever looking thru ever more codes in the system.
You example strikes me as a perfect one for simply typing in "duck" and not seeing too many options Maybe first duck occurance versus recurring duck occurances. Probably something to do with an increase of specific injuries during hunting season and maybe gathering comparative data based on which season.
The thing to remember is the codes were create
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Your brain is broken.
To quote "What's funny is ... It'd be funny if it wasn't so sad."
You're trying to use some weird whataboutism to defend not collecting more data now? And to compare going from 2 to 6 is the same as going from 20k to 155k? Especially when the 2 to 6 change is addressing the fucking pandemic we're all in?
I don't really care about any of this, nor the politics of it, but your logic is funny, and sad.
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It's hard to see the benefits to society for knowing the johnny broke his right ulna, except perhaps in a child abuse case.
Knowing how many people are affected and the manner in which they are affected by a pandemic disease is pretty god damned fucking important. And it's clear the "dead or not dead" metric is a fucking useless bit of info except for POS politicians and Slashdotters to use as a rhetorical weapon.
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It's hard to see the benefits to society for knowing the johnny broke his right ulna, except perhaps in a child abuse case.
That's the fastest self-debunking I've ever seen. Do you ever stop to read the shit you write?
So "the data is useless except when it's not." Got it.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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The whole thing is astounding.
Not really. It matches the overall administrative skill level displayed by this administration so far. The level of stupidity in doing something like that _is_ astounding, but even that is not surprising.
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I"ve seen one hospital IT staff that could find their ass with a map and both hands (Childrens Hospital of Seattle, very talented and dedicated folks). Hospital chains chronically underpay and overwork their IT staff, and turnover is atrocious. I saw a hospital in Anchorage lose its entire IT staff in a week because the chain insisted on paying Lower 48 wages. Then three months later when they finally had hired new people the whole team quit again.
Wrong, now is the best time. (Score:2)
This would be completely obvious to anyone that has had anything to do with implementing data migrations across different organisations,
Yes I have done this many times, for some very large companies. This is Slashdot you are talking about, many of us are familiar with large scale data migrations.
Guess what? There is NEVER a good time to do this.
The best time to do it is to just do it NOW and get it over with.
In the current case it is a VERY good idea to do this during the summer, as whatever uptick we are
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Ever hear of parallel migrations? You keep the old system going to avoid disruption and to verify the new system.
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The best time to do it is to just do it NOW and get it over with.
No.
The best time to do it is after you've prepared a migration scenario, accounting for possible fallbacks and with well-developed mitigation strategies, not "right now".
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When it was announced that the White House would take this over from the CDC, I said it was an obvious attempt to control the narrative.
Now I'm saying that it was an obvious attempt to control the narrative, and that it's not going especially well.
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Now I'm saying that it was an obvious attempt to control the narrative, and that it's not going especially well.
Bingo. If you can't see the numbers you can't complain about the bodies piling up.
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It is true. A reminder from TFA itself.
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Because by reaching for more, they're getting less. There are many fables and cautionary tales about that. I remember them from kindergarten.
Re:How is more data not attractive (Score:5, Insightful)
Remind me again why we are supposed to be mad about MORE data being collected than before???
That is because you have no clue how data-collection works in the real world. The thing amateurs routinely overlook is that you have to _train_ people to use such a system. Combining categories can often be done without retraining, but splitting them cannot. So you either get a lengthy ramp-up phase or you get defective data. The absolute last thing anybody competent does is to change such a system to use more categories right in the middle of a crisis.
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Because it was done on short notice and the data is going to a company that has little public trust or respect during a pandemic. Now we don't know if states are doing better because the numbers are being altered (intentionally or accidentally) or being collected correctly.
There could have been a period where both systems were in place so we could see that the new system had advantages or was working correctly, but it was just an instant switchover.
Maybe it wouldn't be so suspicious if the company now coll
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Have you ever had any experience with or responsibility for a large system migration? It's something that is typically planned for months.
Key rule about data collection in disasters (Score:2)
Is to avoid significant change from 'business as usual' because otherwise your data quality will be junk.
In the UK we set up a monitoring system 'Syndromic Surveillance' which uses routine data that has proved to be invaluable in tracking COVID (and also the collateral damage - patients not attending) in near real time:
https://www.gov.uk/government/... [www.gov.uk]
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Because they're using this as a way to hide the data- data that shows that the pandemic is completely out of control in the US.
That was the point, wasn't it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That was the point, wasn't it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Story contains basic factual errors (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sure hospitals are actually having issues submitting data. Not all hospitals are very good at that sort of thing, but like many news stories, this one reveals that the writer doesn't appear to actually be very familiar with the technology nor topic of the story. That implies they took something a "source" told them and just ran with it without any critical thought at all.
Some basic facts you may be missing if this is all you've read:
If you read the directive they linked, you'll notice a curious thing... it starts with "On March 29, 2020". That's because that's actually when hospitals were notified about this "new" system, which went live in April [magnetmail.net], not on July 10th. At that point they were sending different sets of data to the CMS and the CDC (and also typically their state authorities).
The July directive, in response to the hospital associations complaining about having to submit data in multiple places, was to stop the CDC submissions because the CMS was (as noted in the story) purpose-built for COVID and collecting more relevant data more often.
The real pointer that a story on this whole thing is clueless is when they begin talking about the "switch to the HHS database". It's almost as if they don't understand basic facts like the CDC and the CMS [hhs.gov] (which is where the other database actually resides, because they're paying for all the COVID-related stuff for hospitals and testing centers) are both departments of HHS, on the same level in the HHS org chart.
Expect anything less (Score:4, Informative)
Did you expect anything other than a hot mess given that it's the Trump admin? Everything Trump or his people touches turns into a huge disaster.
Re:Expect anything less (Score:5, Funny)
Trump thinks that when it gets bad enough he'll just declare yet another bankruptcy and walk away.
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Trump thinks that when it gets bad enough he'll just declare yet another bankruptcy and walk away.
I am absolutely sure he will do that. 100k additional deaths due to his failure are nothing to him. All his lies are nothing to him. The guy is barely human in his complete lack of honor, integrity and compassion.
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And it tells a lot about the so called values of his voters.
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Did you expect anything other than a hot mess given that it's the Trump admin? Everything Trump or his people touches turns into a huge disaster.
Lets just hope that happens to his attempt to get re-elected as well. Because the absolutely only achievement that Trump has in his long history of failure is getting elected POTUS. Sure, that is because of stupid people and corrupt Republicans that cannot admit they screwed up massively, but in the end he got the office.
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Everything Trump or his people touches turns into a huge disaster.
Cuomo and Whitmer and Brown are trying their hardest...
Re:Expect anything less (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of this is being driven by a career military officer who specializes in logistics.
Then he should be fired like the con artist has fired all those other career military officers when they were upholding their oaths and the Constitution. Sorry, I keep forgetting, it's only the incompetents the con artist hires because he only gets the best. Which is why he's such a failure.
, it shows it's not the Trump admin having issues. It's the hospitals having issues collecting and collating all the data for submission.
Fucking hell. Can you plague rats come up with any more pathetic excuses? Collecting data by hospitals is the easiest part. They know how many cases they have. State health departments know how many cases they have. All they have to do is submit what they already know to HHS.
It's counting resources to spot problem areas to get help where help is needed.
No, it's not. It is deliberately fucking with the figures [imgur.com]. If it were counting resources to spot problems it would be sending every person it could lay its hands on to Florida, Arizona, and Texas. Florida, where Dade County is at 146% ICU utilization [yahoo.com]. Arizona and Texas, who have called for more body bags and refrigerator trucks [forbes.com] to handle the dead bodies.
Of course, if HHS, or even the CDC, would publicly state all people should wear a mask when in public, and the con artist would make a federal mandate to the same effect, we wouldn't have 1,300 people dying every single day from this virus. But since when have Republicans ever cared about people? It's only making sure women pop out as many babies as possible by the power of big government. Once you're born, you're on your own.
To be fair ... (Score:5, Informative)
The data was previously sent to and collected by the CDC -- a government agency. Now it's being sent to and collected by a private company for HHS -- which is probably a worse situation. The private company, TeleTracking won a no-bid contract, that was changed on paper to a competitive-bid contract *after* being awarded and the Senate and Press noticed, according to NPR [npr.org]):
Initially, there was confusion about the way HHS awarded the contract to TeleTracking. Public records originally displayed it as a sole-source contract — essentially a no-bid deal.
But after a Senate inquiry and controversy over the mandatory shift to the TeleTracking system, HHS said that there had been a "coding error" and that it had in fact been awarded after a competitive process.
"The TeleTracking contract was part of a competitive solicitation process and was not sole source," an HHS spokesperson said. "One of the websites that tracks federal spending contained an error that incorrectly categorized the award as sole source. That coding error is being corrected."
HHS has said that six companies bid for the contract but declines to say who they were or release the evaluations that the department would have done before awarding the contract to TeleTracking
But NPR reached out to more than 20 of TeleTracking's competitors in the fields of hospital workflow management and infection control data and was unable to find a single company that said it had bid on this contract.
One major company told NPR that it hadn't even heard about the HHS announcement.
Also of interest in that article:
TeleTracking CEO Michael Zamagias had links to the New York real estate world — and in particular, a firm that financed billions of dollars in projects with the Trump Organization.
I don't understand how anyone can still support (Score:5, Insightful)
There have been so many Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200 Dollars moments in the last 3 1/2 years, and yet his approval with likely voters is still 42% and there's many on this forum (a science and technology forum with an emphasis on free discussion) that still support him (though they're a lot quieter than they were in January.
What's it going to take? He's shooting over 1000 people a day on mainstreet and that wasn't enough. What's it gonna take? Is there any bridge he can't cross? We've got prison labor all over the country. [businessinsider.com] It wouldn't be a stretch if we stopped feeding those prisoners so much. And if we stop feeding them so much pretty soon they get thin. Weak. Too weak too work. At that point you can talk about the "humane thing to do"...
But hey, it can't happen here, amiright?
Re:I don't understand how anyone can still support (Score:5, Informative)
It's a cult. There is no reasoning with them, and they seem to be doubling down as the pendulum swings as hard as it can away from them. In 10-15 years, none of these clowns will even admit to saying the things they say in the open now.
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Re:I don't understand how anyone can still support (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm genuinely worried we're about to become a dictatorship. And not for vague, unsubstantiated reasons, but for the very specific reason I outlined above.
That will not happen. The only thing Trump ever accomplished was getting elected. Immediately after that, he continued his otherwise uninterrupted string of failures, cons, borderline (and not borderline) criminal acts, failing business ventures, perpetual lying and utterly stupid statements. He and his followers are not smart enough to stage a successful coup and Trump is incapable of tolerating anybody that could plan and execute such a coup in his team. Hence he may get more people killed, probably a lot more, but he will not establish a dictatorship.
Re: I don't understand how anyone can still suppor (Score:3)
He is now trying to postpone or cancel the election, or at least delegitimize it in the eyes of enough of his supporters to destabilise things.
It's unclear if he can succeed, but he is trying. Very.
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This is Slashdot. We never forget. We're still beating up Microsoft years after the fact.
Re: I don't understand how anyone can still suppor (Score:2)
Microsoft deserve it.
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Re:I don't understand how anyone can still support (Score:5, Informative)
Trump has floated delaying the election, which if you're not a fool you know means cancelling it.
So... maybe that's what Trump wants, but if so, he's an idiot. Okay, so he's an idiot regardless, but the point is that canceling the election would not do him any good, because the Constitution extremely clear about when the presidential term ends. The 20th Amendment says:
So, without winning an election to authorize a second term, Trump and Pence are done as of noon (presumably Eastern Time, though the Constitution doesn't say) Jan 20, 2021. There is no constitutional way they could stay in office.
This, of course, raises the question of who would be president on Jan 20, 2021, if there were no election. Well, the next in the line of succession is the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Trump's primary political nemesis, Nancy Pelosi. Yeah, he's not gonna like that.
But, she's not gonna like it either, because like every member of the House of Representatives, she's up for re-election this year. And the 20th Amendment also says:
So, she'd also be out of office by the 20th. Next in line is the President Pro Tempore of the senate, Chuck Grassley, who isn't up for re-election this year and so won't be out of a job. Trump might be happier about that outcome if he were actually a Republican, but he doesn't care about the GOP, he just cares about ruling (not least to let the statute of limitations run out on the crimes Mueller documented).
But... the senate picks a new President Pro Tempore for each new senate... So Grassley will only hold that position if the Republicans hold a senate majority. I looked at this a while ago and IIRC, removing all of the senators up for re-election would still leave the Republicans in the majority of the reduced Senate.
But... unlike the House of Representatives, who must be elected, state governors appoint replacement senators when there are vacancies. States are unlikely to leave these positions vacant. And, if I counted right, enough of the states whose senators would be out of a job are led by Democratic governors that if all the governors picked replacements from their own parties, which of course they would do, then the Democrats would actually gain a majority in the senate. The governors in question may also be up for re-election and may be out because they didn't have an election but that doesn't matter because they'd have plenty of time between November and the ends of their terms to appoint replacements.
So... if all of this happened, Pat Leahy would probably be the ranking member of the majority party in the senate, and therefore the President Pro Tempore, and therefore the next in the line of succession for the presidency of the United States.
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because the Constitution extremely clear
Let me stop you there, because the constitution says a lot of things that Trump flat out ignores. Speaking of the constitution you should have seen William Bar answer this question with a (paraphrasing) "No idea I've never been asked the question so I won't comment".
Let that sink in for a moment. The Attorney General couldn't answer a question that is unambiguously written in the constitution, not some edge case legal document, not some odd case law needing careful study, but the constitution.
For another la
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is next in line in the succession if that happens. I forget why but Pelosi is out and the next highest ranking official is Grassley. So if the GOP let him do it then it's a win either way.
You maybe should have actually read the post you replied to. I covered all of that, why Pelosi is out, why Grassley is probably also out and why the most likely outcome is Pat Leahy.
Re:I don't understand how anyone can still support (Score:4, Insightful)
Donald Trump. I mean that.
I concluded while a while ago that you cannot be a decent human being and a Trump supporter at the same time. I stand by that statement. Anybody supporting him is complicit.
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And we see people here who seem to be IT literate pivoting at the drop of a hat to justify...well, anything that Trump does. The cognitive dissonance is increasing daily. Eventually they will get so out-of-synch with reality that we all will suffer for it.
I remember some of the insanity here when Obama was in office (dare I call it ODS?). Remember how we were to fear the unidentified black vans? And not to forget all the FEMA camps for the 2A protesters. Personally, there were some things that I didn't appr
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How? The alternative is Pelosi and Biden.
Re: I don't understand how anyone can still suppor (Score:2)
Pelosi and Biden are deeply flawed, but they're infinitely superior to Trump or any supporter thereof.
Not all failures as human beings are equal, and Biden is definitely a major improvement.
they won't change (Score:2)
This is what happens when... (Score:5, Interesting)
Our country let's a corrupt president award a no-bid contract to a company [npr.org] whose CEO is cozy with Trump, and whose founder helped connect Trump to Deutsche Bank, securing him billions of dollars in financing. [npr.org]
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No bid contracts occur all the time...get over it. Google "Obama no bid contract" and the first result is a WaPo article from 2013...
"No-bid U.S. government contracts jump 9 percent.."
This was... (Score:2)
Let's us not forget deliberately letting people di (Score:5, Interesting)
Sooooo, remember that guy, the one put in charge with coming up some kind of national testing plan? A plan whose function was to have been finding out who was infected and get them to quarantine so they wouldn't infect others?
It seems the guy in charge shot down any type of planning because it was blue states which were suffering and helping them wouldn't have been good optics, politically [imgur.com].
This is why the con artist said states were on their own when it came to testing and why the federal government was stealing supplies and equipment from states [nymag.com]. To hurt one political group because helping Americans would have been seen to be weak.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. Mass killing of citizens as political strategy. On this scale, only the most unsavory characters from human history can still compete. Also, gas chambers are much more humane than letting people die of Covid-19.
Re: (Score:3)
It seems the guy in charge shot down any type of planning because it was blue states which were suffering and helping them wouldn't have been good optics, politically [imgur.com].
Rather than link to a series of cell phone screenshots, here's a link to the actual Common Dreams article [commondreams.org], and the Vanity Fair article [vanityfair.com] that broke the news.
It's always a mess (Score:2)
Hospital data is always a mess. Getting anything to talk/report to anything else is just a nightmare.
Trustworthiness fell (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I've been following the curves on the CDC and other countries sites for months now. The problem is that countries like China, their data can't be trusted, but the CDC has a good reputation. Not perfect, but good. Then there's this announcement about moving data collection through HHS and bypassing the CDC. At exactly the same time that they switched, the curve of new cases per day stops rising abruptly, and I don't know of any big policy changes (nationally) that could account for such a change, so I'm immediately suspicious that the data is now being manipulated for political reasons. Great, now the US is pulling a China... Just what we needed.
There were also some initial delays in reporting that showed that we had suddenly dropped in new cases per day by some 20-30k though the delay was only about 8-12 hours and I think that has been sorted out. Number of cases has stayed almost completely stagnant since this transition, though, which I would not necessarily expect (as a non expert).
Is it Worse (Score:3)
CDC's data collection was far from the gold standard. They still didn't even have a way to electronically collect the data from all of the states, but were said to be working on it. They weren't separating antibody test results from antigen test results, and were heavily criticized for it. So let's not pretend they were doing a good job. I haven't followed what HHS has done with it, but what we should all stop doing is politicizing this...saying that "the Feds" took over is silly. CDC is as much a "Fed" as HHS.
Just another attempt by Trump to retain power (Score:2)
This is just another desperate attempt by Trump to retain power by covering up the horrific Covid19 stats.
It won't work.
Re: When was COVID-19 data NOT a hot mess? (Score:5, Informative)
It has got worse. The whole lesson of this administration is that it can always be made worse, whatever it is
Re: When was COVID-19 data NOT a hot mess? (Score:5, Insightful)
Worse for you, better for Trump. The last thing he wants is hard evidence of how much he is screwing this up, of how many people died on his watch.
Honestly back in 2016 even the worst predictions about that guy's term didn't include 150,000 dead and rising.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Pretty much, ya.
Despite the chaos of the implementation, what stood out to me was that they're apparently trying to collect more data than the CDC was. That, to me, sounds like a good idea as it would allow us to better characterize the virus.
Hopefully the kinks get worked out quickly, but we're talking hospital IT services...if there's anything worse than government IT for red tape, it's healthcare IT.
Re:Orange Man Bad (Score:5, Informative)
We get it. You don't like Trump. The Federal Government is trying to actually standardize data collection rather than relying on faxes cobbled together. But Orange Man Bad. So fucking predictable.
On the other hand ... from this NPR article [npr.org]"
TeleTracking CEO Michael Zamagias had links to the New York real estate world — and in particular, a firm that financed billions of dollars in projects with the Trump Organization.
The article also notes that "HHS had directly phoned the company about the contract, according to a company spokesperson," that the contract was mis-coded as a no-bid contract -- only corrected to be a competitive-bid after is was awarded and the Senate and Press noticed and that NPR contacted 20 companies in the field and none had bid on the contract or even heard of it. So, ya, so fucking predictable -- for this Administration ...
Re: (Score:2)
You know it's almost like the best time to do that is not in the middle of a crisis. So yes, Orange Man has once again demonstrated that he's Bad at even doing things which may ultimately be good (if you ignore his motives and methods that is).
We get it.
Clearly you still don't. And that is truly remarkable.
Re:Orange Man Bad (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I wouldn't be surprised to find that the DNC is desperately trying to outbid the Republicans, paying the voting machine companies to *LOSE* the election because they don't want to have to clean up this clusterfuck.
Re:What happened to ... (Score:5, Insightful)
We have the best people?
To be fair, Trump never detailed what they were best at.
[ It's our fault for inferring he meant that would be a good thing for us, rather than him. ]