Covid-19 and Politics
 

This is a general discussion thread for non-USA Politics as related to the Covid-19 Novel Coronavirus Pandemic.

So far most of the politics discussion is on Donald Trump in the USA Politics forum. But many other leaders and national staffs and policies could be discussed here.

The world is becoming infected at a rapid pace. Governments must act quickly and properly. Who is doing it right and who is doing it wrong?

Oh I know the answer to that one.

Doing it "right" (where right simply means controlling it as best as possible and nothing to do with whether it is right in terms of human rights etc.)

China
South Korea

And that is it.

Italy has acted too late and although are now taking more sensible steps in their state policy it doesn't seem that the policy is being enforced.

We've already got a health minister infected, another MP has gone into self quarantine as she had met her a few days ago.

BBC News - Coronavirus: Health minister Nadine Dorries tests positive
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51827356

I expect we will hear more given how much work and social interactions politicians tend to have.

We won't really know until summer.

At this point, any country that manages to slow the spread to a drip that doesn't overwhelm hospital capacity has to be considered to be doing it "right".

It is remarkable how well China has managed the outbreak. They were first and were dealing with the most amount of uncertainty of all the major outbreak countries, but seem to be handling it the best.

It's not reassuring that this may be due to their authoritarian levels of social control. It is worrying that in nations with a strong respect for individual liberty, compelling people to actually follow social distancing protocols may be very difficult.

China gets half marks. Remember that they also punished a lot of people who spoke out early on, and they also seem to have disappeared some journalists.

But in addition to South Korea, whose drive through tests should be emulated by the rest of the world (I wonder if this is something that their version of the CDC had ready to go in advance), there is also Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Macao:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ow-coronavirus

I'd say we won't know for sure untill next year when we can look at countries' health statistics for the year. My guess is that some countries will have an unexplained spike in deaths attributed to the flu...

Obviously Dorries hasn't been praying hard enough.

Mike Pence
@Mike_Pence
I'm pleased to report that at President @realDonaldTrump's request, all the insurance companies at the @WhiteHouse today agreed to waive all copays on coronavirus testing and extend coverage for coronavirus treatment in all of their benefit plans.

Trump Tweets

I am fully prepared to use the full power of the Federal Government to deal with our current challenge of the CoronaVirus!

I want to thank all of our Great Government officials on the CoronaVirus Task Force who are working around the clock, in response to the CoronaVirus. Continue to check http://CDC.gov for updates, and follow all recommendations that are available....

....We have the greatest healthcare system, experts, scientists and doctors anywhere in the world. Together, we will PREVAIL!

America is the Greatest Country in the world. We have the best scientists, doctors, nurses and health care professionals. They are amazing people who do phenomenal things every day....

....Together we are putting into policy a plan to prevent, detect, treat and create a vaccine against CoronaVirus to save lives in America and the world. America will get it done!

Someone needs to tell the Democrats in Congress that CoronaVirus doesn’t care what party you are in. We need to protect ALL Americans!

Pathetic.Just Pathetic. Glittering Generalaties and no specific,s and trying to politicize it.

I wonder if those insurance companies at the White House included the ones that regained the ability to sell garbage policies that don't actually cover anything significant once the ACA was gutted. We don't know which companies he's referring to.

We are in deep doo doo, folks....

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/0...message-125902
Now Trump's refusal to admit he was wrong will kill people.

Trump Tweets

I will be addressing the Nation this evening at 9:00 P.M. (Eastern) from the Oval Office.

Thanks for the warning. Now I can turn of my BS meters and keep them from exploding.

Sounds like a bit of a scoop for the small left-wing publication.

Please do, the shrapnel damage could exceed the current Covid bodycount.

White House won't decide on coronavirus 'emergency' status until Jared Kushner does own 'research'

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/202...s-own-research

Oh man, does this mean peace in the Middle East is going to be delayed?

A friend of mine (who is Jewish) on Kushner:
"How can a Jew be so ***** stupid"?

Quick! How many lies will Trump make in this speech! According to Politifact, or whoever.
5? 10? 20? 40? 100?

That was sorted out weeks ago.

Trump Retweeted

Ryan Fournier
@RyanAFournier
77% of Americans are confident in the Trump Administration’s ability to handle the coronavirus.

Just 58% of Americans were confident in the Obama Administration’s ability to handle the Ebola virus.

Funny how the media doesn’t report this fact!

In other news people say comforting lies make them feel better than scary facts. News at 11.

If you ignore they utterly botched the initial handling of the case that enabled the pandemic to occur anyway.

And believe their official numbers.

I have a great business opportunity if you do. It involves a bridge. PM me for details.

McHrozni

Yeah, because handling a disease "that's worse than the seasonal flu" is totally the same as handling a disease with a mortality rate of ~95%.

The people are mistaken, of course. Handling of Ebola was far simpler than handling the Coronavirus, but Trump doesn't know that.

McHrozni

Vice President Mike Pence said Thursday that there has been “irresponsible rhetoric” from people who have downplayed the seriousness of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/whi...virus-n1156371

Now I am convinced Pence is being set up as the fall guy.....

China was the first country to have the virus. They had no idea what was going on other than just lots of people were getting sick. All that considered, they're doing pretty well.

The US has had weeks of notice to get ready and still are doing terrible with no real sign of improvement.

Trump Tweets

Sleepy Joe Biden was in charge of the H1N1 Swine Flu epidemic which killed thousands of people. The response was one of the worst on record. Our response is one of the best, with fast action of border closings & a 78% Approval Rating, the highest on record. His was lowest!

Trump sets everyone up as the fall guy.

Trump Retweeted

Ronna McDaniel
@GOPChairwoman
Joe Biden has no ground to stand on politicizing coronavirus or attacking @realDonaldTrump

Quote Tweet

Trump War Room - Text EMPOWER to 88022
@TrumpWarRoom
Joe Biden will again politicize coronavirus today. But his record on pandemics is one of incompetence.
During the 2009 swine flu outbreak, Biden made reckless comments unsupported by science & the experts.
The Obama Admin had to clean up his mess & apologize for his ineptitude.

Trump Tweets

“The Obama White House had to immediately issue an apology for Joe Biden’s remarks, and any alarm that he might have caused, an alarm about a Swine Flu outbreak that took 6 months for President Obama to declare a National Emergency, and that killed 12,000 Americans.” @LouDobbs

He only has the one response to everything.

Obama and Biden handled the H1N1 swine flu epidemic by declaring a national emergency when there were only 20 confirmed cases of it in the US.

Trump still has not declared a national emergency that would activate FEMA.

Trump Tweets

For decades the @CDCgov looked at, and studied, its testing system, but did nothing about it. It would always be inadequate and slow for a large scale pandemic, but a pandemic would never happen, they hoped. President Obama made changes that only complicated things further.....

.... Their response to H1N1 Swine Flu was a full scale disaster, with thousands dying, and nothing meaningful done to fix the testing problem, until now. The changes have been made and testing will soon happen on a very large scale basis. All Red Tape has been cut, ready to go

So long before Boris was PM or Covid-19 started turning lives upside down Boris Johnson revealed that one of his heros is Larry Vaughn the fictional town mayor in 'Jaws' who places business over lives leading to the unnecessary deaths of holiday makers.

https://www.politics.co.uk/news/2011...o-the-mayor-fr

Is it worth pointing out that the Mayor's decisions were made because he was in hock to shady, undisclosed, financial backers?

I'm not sure what political discussion there is to be had outside the US. Most countries haven’t bungled their response as badly as the US. The absence of an officially approved test at this point in the game represents a level of incompetence that borders on absurd. Randomly shutting down borders, and saying on public TV that this includes trade, is also stupid.

China can be accused of being far too heavy handed, but we don’t get a lot of posts from China so I wouldn’t expect a lot of political discussion about this.

Sorry, Denmark is closed! (Well, not quite, yet, but tomorrow at noon.)
We expect to open again after Easter!
Statsministeren: Danmarks grænser lukker fra klokken 12 i morgen (DR.dk, March 13, 2020)
The Primeminister: Denmark's borders will be closed at 12 noon tomorrow

Just so long as you keep the bacon coming. The bacon must flow.

In your dreams! We're keeping it all to ourselves from now on!

China now swiping from Stephen King: They are pushing a conspiracy theory that the US military is responsible for the Corona virus.

Who is?

It sounds like sarcasm to me: They've noticed that the U.S. administration is full of lies, that the "numbers" meant to make the (lack of) disease control in the USA appear to be efficient are based solely on the fact that hardly anybody has been tested yet, and that the racist attempts to blame the Chinese for the virus can be turned against them.
It's the obvious thing to do!

You can keep the tins of butter cookies, however. Despite my Danish heritage I find the ones from Scotland much better.

Here’s an opinion piece: China bought the world time with the containment strategy. The world squandered it:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/o...nse-china.html

Mother Nature.

Just tead about the theory behind the UK;s government total inaction on the Virus, and, frankly, it isjust about the craziest damn thing I have read.

What theory?

The UK has a dedicated agency for public health who have been planning for pandemics for years. That some or many people don't like the plan doesn't equate to inaction, total or otherwise.