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Good morning. We're now into the 8th month of the #COVID19 pandemic. In the United States, we've learned that plans for scale-up of testing were abandoned after being far along in the planning stages. 1/ https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/07/how-jared-kushners-secret-testing-plan-went-poof-into-thin-air#intcid=recommendations_vf-trending-legacy_caf2a6d7-20e9-4632-9889-3fd0a42b15c4_popular4-1
Meanwhile @HHS_ASH w/ track record of overpromising & underdelivering, who is in charge of US testing effort, still has a job. Decides to blame all of us for his incompetence. under guise of personal responsibility. We're just not trying hard enough. 2/ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/31/brett-giroir-trump-coronavirus-testing-tsar
Meanwhile, erstwhile economist, now playing doctor on TV #peternavarro continues to push #hydrochloroquine with help from a misguided fellow faculty member here @Yale. 3/ https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/presidential-trade-adviser-peter-navarro-continues-tout-unproven/story?id=72041560
The testing failures are leading to failures in contact tracing, basically undermine the second leg of the three-legged stool of our ability to test-trace-isolate. 4/ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/health/covid-contact-tracing-tests.html
Meanwhile in a collective exercise in wishful thinking many states in the red zone, with out-of-control epidemics are still talking about school reopening this fall. 5/ https://www.texastribune.org/2020/07/29/texas-schools-reopening-coronavirus/
And it's not clear that the northeast is in the clear as worrying signs point towards upticks along the I-95 corridor, in bigger cities. 6/ https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/07/24/895144417/coronavirus-hot-spots-could-the-mid-atlantic-and-northeast-see-a-covid-19-reboun
It's bizarre, everyone is thinking of a way out except the obvious one, we need to RESET, shut down in a way that provides support for ordinary Americans & get our testing, tracing and isolation resources in order. Why is Europe in better shape than us? 7/ https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1289201051187523592
Everyone wants a different answer, a short-cut to the way out. It's not just @realDonaldTrump & @GOP, everyone I know is focused on when things go back to normal, thinking of it as a passive thing that will just "happen." 8/
“There are no magic answers. There are no spells here,” Ryan said. “You can't divine this away.” 9/ https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-06-24-20-intl/h_33de24c3e4434655165b9c0dcce7c8bd?utm_medium=social&utm_term=link&utm_content=2020-06-25T01%3A18%3A04&utm_source=twCNN
A vaccine? Maybe we'll see encouraging results from phase 3 studies in a few months. BUT anyone who says that we will have a vaccine by the end of the year is soothsaying. We do studies to answer these very questions. Y'all need a reality check. 10/ https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2020/07/things-you-should-think-about-when-you-hear-vaccine-by-end-of-the-year/
We sadly are a basket case of a nation. @realDonaldTrump is barking mad (yes, can we just say this, please, out loud), malevolent (he doesn't really care what happens, can we say this out loud too?) and @GOP is all-in with the woo-woo from @WhiteHouse. 11/
So, just dig in. More deaths--we'll top 200,000, at the very least by end of year. More infections. More chaos in our lives as we move indoors in the winter and open up more and more, despite the epidemiological facts on the ground. 12/ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/29/health/coronavirus-future-america.html
It didn't have to be this way. It still doesn't. But we have no political will. No desire to change things. We're putting all our chips on the election, but there will be many more dead bodies before a new President is in office and things can change from the top-down. 13/
As @GavJacobson has said, we are: "at the end of history, cut off from its past and pessimistic about the future, and facing slow death under rising tides, humanity has resigned itself to a somnambulant life..." 14/ https://www.newstatesman.com/children-men-alfonso-cuaron-2006-apocalypse-coronavirus
"It is a life of finitude, routine and conformity; one without vision, spontaneity or surprise, where we no longer seek to live larger lives or even strive for our continued existence. We have become Nietzsche’s 'last men'." 15/ https://www.salon.com/2020/07/23/ruth-ben-ghiat-on-trump-and-the-bitter-american-truth-we-do-not-have-a-real-democracy/
At this point, if #COVID19 doesn't destroy us, the next thing will. We have no appetite for a future, only resignation to this present. end/
