Coronavirus Nat’l Emergency, and More

| March 14, 2020

President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference about the coronavirus in the Rose Garden of the White House, Friday, March 13, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Trumps is being proactive on several fronts in combating the Wuhan virus. Along with declaring a National Emergency, he’s pushing for a payroll tax cut, is waiving interest on student loans, and urging the Fed to cut interest rates. He’s also taking advantage of the Russia-Saudi oil war.

The Trump administration has extended federal resources across the country to help states and hospitals tackle the coronavirus. On Friday, President Trump held a press conference at the White House to declare a national emergency and affirm the administration’s new response efforts.

“To unleash the full power of the federal government in this effort, today I am officially declaring a national emergency,” he said. “The action I am taking will open up access to up to $50 billion…for states, territories and localities in our shared fight against this disease.”

The national emergency has been declared under the Stafford Act, which will mobilize the federal emergency management agency to quickly provide disaster funds and federal assistance to impacted areas. FEMA will also be deployed to help provide emergency relief and allocate necessary resources to hospitals.

“In furtherance of the order, I’m urging every state to set up emergency operation centers, effective immediately,” continued President Trump. “I’m also asking every hospital in this country to activate its emergency preparedness plan, so that they can meet the needs of Americans everywhere.”

The plan will also provide Telehealth access, which will allow doctors and patients to interact remotely. This will hopefully free-up hospital space and focus treatment on infected patients.

As part of the plan, hospitals have been temporarily cleared to operate without obtaining certain federal telecommunication licenses. This will help them provide quick and more effective care.

“We’ll remove or eliminate every obstacle necessary to deliver our people the care that they need and that they’re entitled to,” stated President Trump. “No resource will be spared, nothing whatsoever.”

According to the president, 1.4 million new tests for the coronavirus will be available next week. 5 million tests will follow next month. Drive-thru tests will be implemented in critical areas.

Read the entire article here: One American News Network

Trump is also ordering the Department of Energy to replenish the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

President Donald Trump announced during his press conference on Friday on the coronavirus outbreak that the United States will be replenishing its Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to ensure the nation’s energy security.

“Based on the price of oil, I’ve also instructed the Secretary of Energy to purchase at a very good price large quantities of crude oil for storage in the U.S. strategic reserve,” Trump said at the press conference in the White House Rose Garden.

More here: Breitbart Link

There is a potential Coronavirus Testing Breakthrough, too.

By CHRIS ARNOLD

The Food and Drug Administration has just approved a new test from the giant pharmaceutical company Roche that could represent a major breakthrough.

The initial test approved by the FDA is complex and requires specialized training and equipment. Until this week, some of the supplies required to do the test had to come from a single company in Germany that couldn’t meet the demand.

“The big players that normally sell things like the [regular flu] test kits or rapid strep test kits to hospitals, they haven’t had assays authorized yet by FDA,” says Kelly Wroblewski, director of infectious disease programs at the Association of Public Health Laboratories.

So in other words, the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the U.S. and the world haven’t been able to pitch in and help.

But that just changed in a very big way.

“We’re very excited to share the news that overnight we got emergency use authorization from the FDA,” says Paul Brown, a senior executive for Roche. He says the company has a new test that’s more simple, and quicker to get results.

Roche has already begun production while it awaited FDA approval, he says.

“We have about 400,000 tests that are available for the U.S. market,” Brown says. And he says Roche expects to manufacture about 1.5 million tests per month.

And Brown says there are about 100 Roche machines already in use across the country, each capable of processing more than of 1,000 tests per day.

The entire article here: NPR

Stay calm, wash your hands, avoid crowds, and use common sense.

Category: Administrative, America, Trump!

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Roh-Dog

“Stay calm, wash your hands, avoid crowds, and use common sense.”
AH-MEN!
May I add: BE KIND! (I know, preaching to the choir)
Also, if you’re gtg the Red Cross is hurting for blood donations.
I may crawl out of the bunker for a prick tomorrow.

Toxic Deplorable Racist SAH B Woodman

Sorry! Red Cross can kiss my 5th point of contact.
I used to donate on a semi-regular basis until they changed their rules to exclude anyone that had stayed (been stationed) in Europe more that 6 months post 1980 (IIRC).
Whenever I’m asked, “will you donate blood?”
I reply, “have you created a test to detect Mad Cow/CJD?”
Their answer is invariably, “No”. So that’s my answer to them as well. I figure when they get desperate enough for blood donations, they’ll come up with a blood test for Mad Cow/CJD/wasting.

SFC D

Yup, I’m on the Red Cross shitlist too.

A Proud Infidel®™

I’ve seen the Red Crock (*OOPS!*, Cross) pull some really chickenshit stunts, so I’m reluctant as hell to donate to them.

11B-mailclerk

Good advice. Sensible precautions for any communicable bug, any year. On this point “dont share!”

And staying socially engaged, just with more space, is also a big help. Folks who need a little help still need a little help. These events are hardest on those on the he margins.

Be of good hygiene. Be a good neighbor.

26Limabeans

Red Cross will not take blood from in-country
Viet of Nam vets. Maybe now but it was that
way for decades.
I would love to donate blood but I have Iron
Overload Disease (Hemochromatosis) and that
alone disqualifies me.
The reason they can’t use it though is because
the hospital charges for the service.
Medicare pays $105 about every two months.
Good iron rich blood going into the furnace.

26Limabeans

Clarification:
I need to have a pint of blood removed
every two months. Done in the hospital lab.
It is just like donating blood but it gets
thrown into the furnace as bio waste. Pity.

5th/77th FA

No matter what daTrumpster does, it is too little too late. Notice how Big Pharm is now getting it’s defecation in sequence since there is money involved. The aggravating, self centered, asinine seagull will be showing up right shortly, again, to tell us how his empirical data indicates that we still have the worst health care in the world.

I’m currently self quarantining on the couch, awaiting part II of the Gunsmoke episode that I missed the opening on from yesterday’s WOT dustup. Keeping my strength up by snacking on a big pot of chilli and a skillet of buttered milk cornbread. Self medicating with some frosty Yuenglings. Did go to the Dollar General a bit ago for some canned critter food, bottle of milk, and a loaf of bread. They had TP, baby and sanitary wipes in stock. May have a nap later, idk.

Skippy

Exactly thanks for posting this
There is so much stupid going on now
That me and some friends of mine decided to troll the web
To debunk the BS and believe me it’s thick too
All will be fine

Jeff LPH 3, 63-66

At least he is being honest and not promising the world a rose garden.

26Limabeans

My doctor advised me decades ago that I should
go back to Maine and stay there.
He said the fewer people I interact with the
better life will be.

akpual

There were a few properties near Mattawamkeag for sale. Not too crowded there.

26Limabeans

Just up the road from stinkin Lincoln were
there is a paper mill. Keep going north
another ten miles and you enter the famous
Haynesville Woods:

rgr769

The stinkyest town I have ever visited was Rumford, ME. They had a paper mill as well that was the source of the stench.

26Limabeans

Yep, been there many times.
Surrounded by hills so it lingers.

akpual

Some call it loony Lincoln now. Because of the loon statue.

Toxic Deplorable Racist SAH B Woodman

“…..the better life will be.”

For who? You? Or the other people?

26Limabeans

Everyone

Poetrooper

Beans, I’ve always called that my “Piss off my porch,” attitude. If your neighbors are distant enough that you can piss off your back porch then you’re good. If you can piss off your front porch, you’re in paradise.

26Limabeans

I can piss off all four sides and shoot
squirrels while doing it.

Poetrooper

Paradise–even without 72 virgins.

Who’d only kill ya anyway…

timactual

Now that’s talent!

Buckeye Jim

For you or for them? Just joking.

timactual

Wouldn’t mind moving there myself. Lived in NH for a few years. Aside from the mosquitos, I loved it. Breakfast seems to be the official state meal.

Poetrooper

A bit of irony regarding the Democrats’ favored presidential candidate and COVID-19: One of Biden’s medical advisers is non other than Ezekiel Emanuel, the physician brother of Rahm (never let a crisis go to waste) Emanuel, a long-time proponent of restricting health care to us old geezers. Now, while I’m inclined to agree with him to some extent, that’s certainly a problematic position for a party whose two finalists in the presidential race are both past the three-quarter century mark. Moreover, most of those who remain of the moderate sector of the party and are Biden supporters, are the elderly. As to my partial agreement, working in the hospice movement back in the 90’s, I was well aware that by far the largest expenditures for most Medicare recipients occur during the last six months of life. Why is that? Because of all the heroic, but futile, measures taken to prolong the lives of those individuals who refuse to sign an advance directive preventing such wasteful use of medical resources. All those ambulance rides to the emergency room and the brief hospital stays to stabilize them, followed by a couple of weeks observation in a nursing home, add billions to Medicare expenditures that could find far better uses in pediatrics, obstetrics and adolescent medicine. When I was giving talks to the medical community on the benefits of hospice care, I used to ask doctors, “What’s a more dignified death for your elderly patients, dying comfortably in their own beds with their pain and symptoms managed, or dying in the back of a speeding, swerving ambulance with EMT’s pounding on their chests, or, worse, all alone in the wee hours of the morning in a sterile hospital room? I know what my choice is–Miz Poe and I have had advance directives for decades. For once, Lars probably won’t tell this ol’ “Boomer” (although technically I’m not) that I’m fulla bullshit. Mind you now, I’m not saying we just let all seniors go untreated, as Lars seems to desire in this current dust-up, but rather that we apply common sense to our allocation… Read more »

5th/77th FA

I’m wid you on this one too, Poe. I have been made very aware, again, of my own mortality AND impending demise. I have had a “Death with Dignity” contract for a good long while now and have made sure that it is maintained current and up to date. My Daughter doesn’t like to discuss this but she understands and accepts it. Back yonder from Sep of ’79 til Feb of ’81 we watched, helpless as brain tumors took out Mama. The hospice thing was not an option and Kervorkian hadn’t come along yet. I can still see and hear her asking me to take my pistol and end her misery. Ex wife # 2’s Mama (a sweet Godly woman) was put thru torture as you described above because the oldest daughter didn’t want to let her go. She, too, begged me on her death bed for a mercy shot. This was in the late ’89s. Ex #3’s Mom (another Angel on Earth) made her own arrangements with hospice in ’03 and passed very peacefully, at home, in her bed, with her favorite furbabies with her. I still remember the smile she had on her face when she breathed her last. During my last hospital stay, while being poked, prodded, and tested I saw a number of tortured souls being kept alive because of the family not being able to turn loose, the hospital knowing how much money they were making, and or the patient not making arrangements before it became to late.

If you haven’t done so yet, that whole living will thing is something you need to take care of. DO NOT leave that decision in the hands of your family. Dying ain’t hard for people like us, and getting old ain’t for sissies.

Poetrooper

KOB, that “child being unable to let go” phenomenon has a name: In hospice it’s referred to as “The California Daughter Syndrome,” taking it’s name from the all-too frequent occurrence of the adult offspring who lives farthest away and has spent the least time with Mama suddenly flying into town as Mama is dying and demanding that she be kept alive at all (taxpayer paid) costs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daughter_from_California_syndrome

I wasn’t aware until Googling it just this moment that it now has its own Wikipedia page. I first encountered the term in 1991 and it was very common in the early days of hospice before the concept of accepting death had become more widespread. Like Wiki says, it’s usually driven by guilt.

As your account demonstrates, there is a time to forego further treatment and focus on dying comfortably. And, to the point of my comment above, at less cost to your fellow citizens.

Comm Center Rat

I fear dying in a hospital or nursing home more than I fear death itself. And, I pray I’ll be in Heaven half an hour before the Devil knows I’m dead.

Sparks

You and me both Brother.

Slow Joe

Whoa Poetrooper. Very disappointed that hold this position. I think this is the first time I disagree with you.

Why it is critical that we continue to fight to extend the life of our senior population regardless of the cost?

Because that is were the most progress we have been doing in medical research for decades. Our entire nation, and the rest of the stinking world which we have been dragging into the 21st century kicking and screaming, benefits from this research.

The large population of seniors with covered insurance provide a pool of resources for research. That’s why our lifespan keeps growing and our quality of life during our last decades keep improving. A 80 year old today is healthier and more mobile than a 70 year old barely 20 years ago, and it keeps improving.

Remember when you were a kid. 70 year old was the goal. Very few people lived pass that, and most people died much earlier than 70.

Therefore, we disagree.

Poetrooper

No, we do not disagree. You just missed my point. I’m not saying ration health care to all seniors. But I AM saying we should quit wasting Medicare dollars on futile, pointless interventions that only serve to prolong a usually miserable end-of-life existence. I’m not talking about pulling the plug on seniors who just get sick and need treatment to return to good health. I, myself am living evidence of that after my bout with cancer.

Your claim about seniors’ private insurance funding research is off-base as well. More than 95% of Americans over age 65 are on Medicare. For most of those folks, the biggest percentage of their Medicare expenditures will occur in the last six months of their lives, when it does them (and the nation) the least good.

All I’m saying is just let the dying folks die–peacefully and painlessly–without all the money-wasting heroics, keeping them alive just because we can.

11B-Mailclerk

Did we not rig the laws to force seniors onto government health care?

Then it is kinda … wrong … to then say “we now withhold that which is essential to life”.

Of course, if we put things back to “free market” and “let folks make their own choices with their own money” and “help the -truly- needy” , then most of the problem goes away.

If you want to spend your estate on six more months, so be it. Or not. Your money, your choice.

One more reason to drive a stake through the heart of the monster of “government health care”. It’s spawn is “euthanasia” for folks deemed “burdensome to the State”.

timactual

The VA has already been doing medical research for just about a century now. There is no lack of research subjects, particularly geriatric subjects. No need to expend treatment resources needlessly. There is really not that much to learn from terminal patients except how to treat terminal patients.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5672823/

https://www.research.va.gov/programs/

Dave Hardin

I might consider “Pay As You Go” plans.

Berliner

In the malls in the Philippines, you had to bring your own TP or use a “Muslim hand bidet sprayer” attached to each toilet and then “air dry” yourself or use what little TP you could carry with you afterward. Wife wants one and that big orange hardware store has them for online order.

Poetrooper

Fortunately we have one of those sprayers in the Poe household. Less fortunately perhaps, it’s on the kitchen sink.

Gonna be a bitch gettin’ our old, stiff, achy butts up there…

timactual

OH, lordy. Almost broke a gut on that one. It’s been a good day on TAH.

You fellas obviously spend a lot of time thinking about these things. Consider what you would do if your hand was unavailable. “Trigger finger” surgery, for example. Or just the inflexibility that often accompanies our chronological state.

26Limabeans

First time I saw a bidet was in a hotel
room in Antwerp while delivering a POV for
shipment back to the states.
I thought it was a urinal…

timactual

My first time (with a bidet) was in the Maritim hotel in Nuremberg. I washed clothes in it. And the tub, and the sink. But not the toilet! I’m not stupid, ya know. Do you know how expensive laundries are in Germany? Hung them all over the room to dry. Still wonder what the maid thought.

Where did I get the laundry detergent, you ask? Simple. I went to the nearest Kaufhaus and bought some. As most of us sophisticated international travelers know, German laundry detergent makes no suds and is milky white. My wife, being illiterate in German and an unsophisticated world traveller, trusted me not and made me check my dictionary. Alas, much to my chagrin, I discovered that Waschestarke(both ‘a’s umlaut ) does not mean detergent; it means starch.

My wife likes to regale her friends with this and similar tales. What is it about women that they feel the constant need to keep their husbands humble?

Mason

Those hand sprayers are awesome. Put them on every toilet in the new casa.

Argument in favor of bidets: When you’re out cleaning up dog shit in the back yard and get some on your hands, do you just grab a paper towel and scrape it off or do you wash and dry your hands?

OWB

This may all be worth it if only so that more folks will learn to wash their hands. Who knows – it might even save some lives next winter if that knowledge carries through the next flu and cold season.

Anyone else hear the Prez say during that speech that many of the restrictions they untangled to get here will remain gone when the current threat is over? He kinda just threw it out there, moving on quickly, but some of us caught it. That could be quite significant for us all in the coming years.

11B-Mailclerk

All this fuss and fluster might be somewhat useful as practice for a real problem bug.

Of course, more likely it will be seen as an epic waste, and “wolf! Wolf!”

Thus when we get a real pandemic killer, the idiots will have squandered all credibility on their quixotic China coronavirus crusade against Trump and Liberty.

And more blood on their hands….

OWB

Indeed. That is what concerns me most about all this contrived hysteria.

Mason

I think that might happen here. People are panicking prematurely. In a week they’ll all think this was for naught and then it’ll hit their area. This panicking will actually make it worse once the wave hits.

Not that the wave of the virus will be any worse overall than the common cold or flu (which it essentially is). Even once it hits, it’ll be a big burger of nothing.

LC

Interestingly, the approach England is taking is banking on this, in a sense – they’re one of the few countries carrying on like normal, with the intention of some spread occurring, and thus cultivating some herd immunity, and saving the drastic measures for a later peak. Lots of people are against this, and I don’t have any epidemiological models showing its better or worse, but I can see some merit in the idea.

As for the virus not being any worse than the common cold or flu, I’ll flatly disagree. Anyone who has experience with this disagrees. Heck, here’s Newt Gingrich’s op-ed in Newsweek saying we need to do more:

https://www.newsweek.com/newt-gingrich-i-am-italy-amid-coronavirus-crisis-america-must-act-now-act-big-opinion-1492270

11B-Mailclerk

Politician, right?

Wolf wolf.

The actual numbers so far, -here- are low end flu.

But Global Coronavirus is gonna get us.

Wolf wolf

The numbers, the actual effects, do not add up to crisis.

Wolf wolf.

Not
That
Bad

marinedad61

Coincidentally,
the name of Pennsylvania’s Governor is WOLF.

Also, the State Secretary of Health
is a transgender doctor.

No surprise, most of the Facebook comments on Pennsylvania news pages aren’t about the news topic,
but rather the appearance and voice of the Secretary of Health.

Quite the media circus, in Pennsylvania.

Video of both Gov. Wolf and the Dr.

Roh-Dog

What kind of sick freak show are they running over there in Penn’s Woods?!
It’s like a high school production of Hair as a news conference.

marinedad61

Roh-Dog,
I don’t play the shame game on Fakebook,
but I watch it, reading the comments.

The best 2 recent Facebook comments were:
1 – Science denier preaching science?
2 – He/She is actually giving advice on reaching out for CoronaVirus mental health assistance?

26Limabeans

He should do something with
that hair. A pretty barrette
would do wonders.

marinedad61

The curling iron has got to go.
1 day curling iron, 1 day straight,
and back and forth again.
As if the curling iron matters.
Ooops, did I just say straight?

26Limabeans

I see what you mean by
the curling iron.
The straight…er other
way looks even worse.

A Proud Infidel®™

One look at that ratfuckgaggle makes me automatically assume that the PA Governor is a D-rat only interested in political correctness.

LC

Got it. We can’t trust the medical experts, because what do they know? We can’t trust ‘the media’ because they’re in league with the evil Democrats. We can’t even trust aRepublican US Senator because he’s a politician.

But we can trust the guy who said, when we had 15 cases, that it’d ‘blow over’ and be zero soon, even though we now have 2900+.

The annoying thing is that if the measures taken to reduce spread work, you’ll laugh and say, “See? Totally overblown!”, as opposed to, “See? Following the advice of medical people worked.”

26Limabeans

You obviously don’t see that the
driving force behind this Pandemic
is political.
Yet you toss in your own politics in
the next to last paragraph.

LC

Maybe I’m too dumb to understand it, but what part of France’s or Italy’s response is related to US politics?

Or is this some global political thing for reasons I don’t quite understand, and all the medical professionals are in on it with the world governments?

I’m also not sure what you mean by my own politics. I’m an independent, and find both parties to be willfully stupid at times.

timactual

” when we had 15 cases, that it’d ‘blow over’ and be zero soon,”

If you see it with an adult perspective and actually understand a little medicine and history you would realize that yes indeed, it will blow over. Heard much about Legionaire’s disease lately? Or SARS, swine flu, etc.?

LC

Oh, right, from an adult perspective. If only all those medical experts who have pointed out time and time again how this differs from other viruses had your ‘adult perspective’ to counteract all their medical knowledge. Yep, you sure showed them.

After all, we probably shouldn’t have cared about 9/11, right? It was only 3K lives, when as people here rightly point out repeatedly, the flu takes some tens of thousands each year. Adult perspective! And lives lost in war? Pfft. Who cares? And WW1? Come on – amateur hour, the 1918 flu was worse! Why the heck do we need all those memorials and stuff? Life went on, and all that ‘blowed over’. Adult perspective and all.

Good grief.

Berliner

A couple observations from this morning in the Tacoma, Washington area:

7 AM: Stopped by Costco for gas on the way back home after walking the dog in the park and and 10 cars were parked close to the doors, some idling in the falling snow, waiting for the 9 am opening.

9:45 AM: JBLM Commissary @ McChord opened early, parking lot full, and had a line of 30 people outside waiting for a cart to become available. Canned goods flying off the shelf/beef and chicken gone in the meat department. TP gone. I got the dog food I came for and left.

Ex-PH2

Geezo Pete, don’t these people know how to shop/plan ahead?

Tomorrow is not just another day, y’know.

Mason

We hit up the grocery store after dinner tonight. A little busier than normal. No TP or paper towels and canned goods were scarce. For some reason all the spaghetti sauce was gone. Everything else was about normal.

Did hear there were lines wrapping around the building before opening at Sam’s Club and Costco.

Roh-Dog

I know you shouldn’t laugh at others’ misfortune but damnit there should be an exemption for lack of intelligence.
At least they’re not eating tide pods anymore?

11B-Mailclerk

I dunno…

Maybe that sort of thing is evolution in action

If you are stupid enough to eat Tide Pods, or drink bleach…

There are times when I want a t-shirt or big button that says

“Go Lemmings! GO!”

rgr769

I just told someone today that it appears half our population is a bunch of lemmings. Some people are acting like this virus is akin to the one portrayed in “The Walking Dead.”

A Proud Infidel®™️

DARWIN AKHBAR!!!

Skippy

Never ending crap from the left side
Will it ever stop ????
Probably not

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/peter-wehner-trump-presidency-over/607969/

rgr769

The Atlantic is truly a realm of cuckdom in print. It is like CNN and MSDNC in written form.

Skippy

Exactly