broadsword
Brigadier
Bribe them with toilet rolls
Coronavirus 2019-2020 thread (no unsubstantiated rumours!)
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Bribe them with toilet rolls
bajingan
Senior Member
In this hostile political climate, i dont think this colaboration will produce much results
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
Why this nonsense? The whole administration has been a joke from day 1; what could be serious about them? The US already made it clear that blaming China is for the purpose of winning votes by throwing attention away from Trump's incompetence. There's no court mechanism for this kind of issue, not internationally, and not in the US, so what can they do? Seize Chinese assets? LOL They destroy their own global reputation and there are more American assets in China than vice-versa.
I think we should let this Republican roll-in-the-mud temper tantrum issue die unless there is an actual attempt at creating a legal mechanism. There's no point otherwise and the Republicans have already warned us that there will be a huge influx of this crap for the upcoming elections.
PS. Interestingly, in the article, Trump claimed that Germany sent China a bill for $162B. I was surprised because Germany is one of the more mature nations but also not surprised because Trump lies about everything so this basically couldn't be true. I looked it up and yup, it was a German tabloid that estimated COVID-19 damage to the German economy at $162B.
Time for a lighter off-topic anecdote for a minute...
Way back when...
Near the end of the fiscal year, the QM would get rid of a lot of expendable stores after weekend exercises and just before summer stand down. This usually meant free cases of IMPs (Canadian version of MRE) for anyone who wanted them.
Most IMP main meals were terribly insipid, I especially remember breakfast ones like “Sausage and Hash Browns” being especially greasy slop. There was also a “Beef Chop Suey” (Dinner, I think), which was unlike any Chinese food I ever had from either side of the Pacific. They also came with an inedible piece of hardtack that was (IMO) mislabeled as “bread”. I don’t remember anyone eating it outside of humour purposes/for a dare. I believe it existed only as a historical novelty when such biscuits were actually consumed in the 1800’s as rations.
Admittedly some of the main meals were not that bad, usually the ones that also existed as popular canned goods like “Beef Ravioli”.
As an unapologetic cheapskate I would usually take as many Lunch IMPs as I could find because they contained a full size chocolate bar, which barring the Cadbury Fruit and Nut (yeech, raisins) was usually a treat. I usually had a good shot at them because the Sgt in charge of the QM usually had me help since I had a good handle on organizing. It also thankfully took me off mortars.
The fiscal year end also coincided with the end of the University school year which meant I could go home to borrow the family car to transport the spoils.
So by the time I had finished school for good, I had accumulated enough meals (and those exothermic heaters) to impress any prepper. However, since I had no desire to actually eat them, they eventually all went into the dump.
Pretty wasteful, I admit... but it was going there anyway.
Anyway, now back to your regularly scheduled corona programming...
Quickie
Colonel
Far from 'unrealistic,' close analysis shows China mortality rate in line with East Asian neighbors
by April 27
Deborah Birx, response coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force, speaks as US President Donald Trump listens during the daily briefing on Covid-19 on April 21, 2020. Photo: AFP / Mandel Ngan
At US President Donald Trump’s April 18 press briefing on the coronavirus pandemic, Dr Deborah Birx, coordinator of the US response to the outbreak, criticized China’s reports on the Covid-19 data. She did so by showing a chart with data from the following countries. (I have * from The New York Times of April 19, but the two data sets differ by only a negligible amount.)
Mortality, deaths per 100,000 population
Belgium: 49.8
Spain: 43.8
Italy: 39.2
France: 29.4
UK: 24.2
Netherlands: 21.4
USA: 10.9
Iran: 6.3
Germany: 5.2
China: 0.3
Dr Birx called China’s low number “unrealistic,” saying, “I put China on there so you could see how basically unrealistic this could be.” That was after Trump pointed at China’s number and interrupted Birx to ask rhetorically, “Excuse me. Does anybody really believe this number? Does anybody really believe this number?” (; see minute 37:08 and following.)
The argument that Birx and Trump were making was clear. China’s number was way out of line with the others, lower by more than a factor of 10. Therefore, China’s report was a lie.
But in her chart Birx omitted data coming from countries of East Asia and nearby that have been praised by the US media for their performance and whose data are unquestioned in the West. Here are some relevant omitted data, taken again from The New York Times of April 19, with China included again for comparison.
Deaths per 100,000 population
South Korea: 0.5
Japan: 0.5
Australia: 0.3
China: 0.3
Singapore: 0.2
Taiwan: <0.1
Hong Kong: <0.1
China’s number falls right into line with that of neighboring countries. Birx’s exercise, in fact, is a classic example of lying by omission, a half-truth being a full lie.
Either Dr Birx was aware of these data and dishonestly withheld them, or she was not aware of them and she is incompetent. Neither conclusion is very comforting. Trump is to be criticized both for his jumping in to bash China and for tolerating someone like Birx with the direction of the government’s response to the pandemic.
These data make it quite clear that countries of East Asia and Australia have performed better than the US and Europe. Why is this? Two categories of explanation suggest themselves. First, different strains of the virus may differ in lethality. There is no proof for this, but there is some suggestion of it in laboratory tests.
A second reason for the better performance of East Asian countries and Australia is that they paid attention to what China was doing, perhaps because they are neighbors and better informed of what was going on in China. Much news about China is simply not reported by the mainstream media in the US and among US “allies.”
In this case, however, concern about a developing pandemic right next door may have lofted news from China over the information blockade. These countries may have seen that China had accumulated considerable experience with the virus and at great cost in life and suffering was having success in stopping its spread. As a result, they followed what China did in many respects.
But no matter the reason, China’s data fall right in line with many of its neighbors. That is the main point. The bottom line is that these data provide us with no reason to doubt China’s reporting. And the correspondence between the data China released and other regional data is consistent with the fact that China reported Covid-19 deaths accurately.
Since so much attention is devoted to fact-checking Trump’s press conferences, I thought surely the press would have picked up on this obvious manipulation of data. I checked on the , no friend of the Trump administration, and there was no mention of this lie by omission.
Next, I checked the Public Broadcasting Service, a pillar of probity and respectability and also no friend of Trump. PBS does a brief online look at each press conference with anchor Hari Sreenivasan and Zachary Green. They showed Birx’s chart and noted Trump’s comments of the omitted data. A check of the NYT, another arch-foe of Trump, on the following day disclosed no mention of the Birx-Trump deceit.
How can this be explained? One cannot help but feel that the idea of Chinese malfeasance in all things has become so deeply embedded in the body politic that to challenge charges made against China is now beyond the pale. No charge, no matter how unfounded or contrary to actual fact, is too brazen to report without a moment’s consideration. In fact, to tell the truth in such a situation may damage the career of a rising journalistic “star.”
Why are we to be concerned about this matter? Because China’s experience has had much to teach us. And since China is now emerging from the recession caused by the pandemic, it may have more to teach us as we move to economic recovery.
For example, to get back to normalcy, on a territory roughly the size of the US. How is that working and how might it be improved? To ignore China’s experience without careful evaluation at a time like this could well end up as a self-destructive act.
But there is an even bigger danger here. There has been a growing antagonism between China and the US since former president Barack Obama’s ill-advised “pivot” against China, followed by Trump’s equally ill-advised trade war. Now we find Trump and Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden competing to be the No 1 China basher.
The press conference of April 18 falls into this pattern, allowing Trump to parade as tough on China and escape from a thrashing by China-hostile media for his earlier praise of President Xi Jinping and China for their response to Covid-19.
To take the route of hostility to China can lead to a clash between two economic giants and nuclear powers, which could lead to a disaster for all humanity. As Henry Kissinger reminded us some time back, armed conflict between the two giants could bring the same level of devastation to all the world that World War I brought to Europe. And that is likely to be an underestimate. Let us step back from this path before it is too late.
*Data are taken from this . Data are refreshed several times daily so the latest data will be posted there. Hold mouse arrow over the country and the deaths per 100,000 will appear.
This article appeared previously at and is reproduced with permission. Read the original .
The article forgot to mention South East Asian countries, their deaths per 100,000 is way lower even using today's figure.
So, what does Dr Birx has to say about these figures?
Deaths/100,000 Today's figure.
Vietnam 0.00
Cambodia 0.00
Laos 0.00 That's right. No deaths for these 3 countries for the past 4 months of the pandemics.
The following countries can be considered to be in their second wave of infections after letting their guards down after achieving zero infections for weeks.
Malaysia 0.31
Singapore 0.24
Thailand 0.14
Philippines 0.50
Indonesia 0.29
Jura The idiot
General
did you perhaps refer to
13. 3. 2020
?
Can you summarised what the doctor said or the picture represented? Thanks, much appreciated.
Brief extract
April 28, 2020 at 5:22 a.m. GMT+8
U.S. intelligence agencies issued warnings about the novel in more than a dozen classified briefings prepared for President Trump in January and February, months during which he continued to play down the threat, according to current and former U.S. officials.
The repeated warnings were conveyed in issues of the President’s Daily Brief, a sensitive report that is produced before dawn each day and designed to call the president’s attention to the most significant global developments and security threats.
For weeks, the PDB — as the report is known — traced the virus’s spread around the globe, made clear that China was suppressing information about the contagion’s transmissibility and lethal toll, and raised the prospect of dire political and economic consequences.
But the alarms appear to have failed to register with the president, who routinely skips reading the PDB and has at times shown little patience for even the oral summary he takes two or three times per week, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified material.
