Muir was trying to get Trump to talk about how the reopening would work — whether the results would be monitored and the restrictions reimposed if transmission/hospitalization/death rates go up. Trump continued:
... and we are going to put out little embers and little fires and maybe some big fires, but we still have to go back to work.Muir wanted Trump to speak in the same terms as Governor Cuomo, who'd said — this is Muir's paraphrase — "you just have to be ready to turn the valve off for a time if you see a spike."
But Trump's reaction to hearing Cuomo's name was to remind us that Cuomo had praised him. Trump said: "Governor Cuomo last week said, the president and the federal government have done a phenomenal job. He said that, a phenomenal job."
That's Trump's strategy in dealing with these difficult questions, to get right on the message that his administration has done a great job. Every question is understood first as a prompt to bang us on the head again with that message. He ignored the whole point of the question, which is about how the reopening will be done. Why couldn't he address Cuomo's idea and agree with it or reject it?
Here's Cuomo speaking on May 4th. Trump acted as though he wasn't familiar with this, but I don't believe that. It's so cogent and sensible that it's very disappointing to hear Trump professing unawareness of it and Muir letting him off the hook. Cuomo:
As long as your rate of transmission is manageable and low, then reopen your businesses and reopen the businesses in phases, so you’re increasing that activity level while you’re watching the rate of transmission. Rate of transmission goes up, stop the reopening, close the valve, close the valve right away. So reopen businesses, do it in phases and watch that rate of transmission. If it gets over 1.1 stop everything immediately. That’s where the other countries wound up. They started to reopen. They exceeded the 1.1, it became an outbreak again. They had to slow down. Rather than starting and stopping, you’d rather have a controlled start so you don’t have to stop, right? And that’s what you learn from the other countries. You reopen too fast then you have to stop and nobody wants to have gone through all of this. And then start just to stop again. Well, how does that happen? First of all, it’s not going to happen statewide. This state has different regions, which are in much different situations than other regions in this state. And rather than wait for the whole state to be ready reopen on a regional basis. If upstate has to wait for downstate to be ready, they’re going to be waiting a long time. So analyze the situation on a regional basis. Okay? And you look at a region on four measures, the number of new infections, your healthcare capacity. If the infections goes too high you overwhelm your health system.... [G]uidelines from the CDC... say a region has to have at least 14 days of decline in total hospitalizations and death on a three day rolling average... This is telling you that you are basically at a plateau level that you can actually start to reopen. Then you’re watching the rate of infection and the spread of the infection....
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93 comments:
I think there's not much different between shut the valve off and put out fires, so I don't get why Trump would pretend not to know what Cuomo said. Then again, Cuomo did return a bunch of sick people to nursing homes, so I imagine Trump's real point is that he doesn't want to give Cuomo any cover on that. "Cuomo thinks I'm doing great, but I've got no idea how he's doing," is about the most Politician Like answer you can expect from him.
Which, eh, is better than what I thought Trump's go-to would be which was: "I'm not shutting people's valves off."
Cuomo is an ass. Doctors and nurses came in from other states to help him, and he is going to tax them to death. Why would anybody ever want to help them again??? Donald Trump is doing a great job, and Andrew Cuomo didn't and people died, and now they are trying to blame Trump. NY did a terrible job.
He ignored the whole point of the question, which is about how the reopening will be done.
It’s going to be done state by state. Looking to the federal government for micromanagement of the process is a mistake on your part, Althouse. I don’t see what you can’t see.
I don't think the President of the United States is required to respond to what some individual governor has to say about much of anything. Whether it would be a heads up / thumbs down reaction doesn't matter, either way, the President is smart to let it slide and not engage in some thunderdome death match with Cuomo, which is all the press really wants (two men enter, one man leave, two men enter, one man leave...). The balance of power doesn't work that way. They are not equals.
"Rather than starting and stopping, you’d rather have a controlled start so you don’t have to stop, right?"
Why, exactly?
And by the way, is isolation the corollary of turning off the spigot? Do we know that to be the case?
They're pretending they have these precise and accurate dashboards, and a panel of sensitive social dials that they can adjust ("let's turn it .2 units to the left now"), to steer the populace through the spikes.
The better analogy is that they are trying to steer a hot air balloon over a volcano by hitting it with a sledgehammer.
After he's destroyed Upstate needlessly, he says it doesn't have to be uniform.
St. Andrew Cuomo is the one who contaminated the nursing homes in NY by making them take infected patients. Killed thousands. We are supposed to listen to Gov. Nipple ring why? Nobody has thought their massive infection rate is due to incompetence?
Same thing happened here is Wisconsin in Grafton and Hales Corners. But that was due to cross staffing.
Trump has done a great job. And he hasn’t usurped his power like many Blue State Governors.
He doesn't discuss it because re-opening is going to be different for each little part of the country. It is a locally governed event. There is certainly coordination in that each governor talks to other governors, each state health department head talks to other state health department heads, to see how things are going in their states and to compare plans and ideas. At least that has been my impression from our state's daily briefings. Both the governor and the health director have referenced discussions with colleagues.
Also, anything he says will be used to make him look bad, so why bother.
I find it hilarious and infuriating that people are running around with their hair on fire because "many new cases are being diagnosed". This is due to the fact that much more testing is going on. Plus, the majority of those testing positive are either asymptomatic or very minimally ill.
In 1968-1969 the Hong Kong flu killed upwards of 100,000 Americans.
Not one school, not one business closed.
And a little music festival known as "Woodstock" was held.
He would not address the question because any answer would be misconstrued. Intentionally. The notion of "opening" the entire country at once by pronouncement or pulling the invisible switch is nonsense. The openings have to be done on the local and not the state level and the politicians making the call (all of whom have continued to be paid at their full rate) will pay the price for their decisions one way or the other. The president or the governors making decisions for huge bits of geography is and has been stupid. Raybun, Georgia is not the same as Atlanta, Georgia and Seneca Falls, NY is not the same as the borough of Manhattan.
Why does the question even have to be premised with what Gov. Cuomo said? Who cares? Why not preface the question with what Missouri’s Governor has said, or South Dakota? Trump should ignore it’s premise.
Why couldn't he address Cuomo's idea and agree with it or reject it?
Sure sounds like he rejected it. He so rejected it he didn't dignify it with a response. If Trump goes down that path we're all now fretting about and debating every crackpot idea from every leftie crackpot.
Better to act quickly before it goes viral...
...but I'll dignify it with a response. You can't whipsaw people the way Cuomo is proposing. We're not water in a spigot. We're humans and we must do the things that humans do. We're social. We have a social order that includes the decisions and tradeoffs we make in the face of scarce resources. A vaccine is not 'inevitable' 'next year'. It may never come. Trump and others are making cogent and sensible arguments that don't include robbing humans of their humanity by government central planners acting on (very) imperfect information.
Cuomo’s theory sounds good, but lots of good sounding theories don’t pan out. “Head Start” programs sound so good that no matter how much evidence there is showing they don’t work people think that shoveling in more money will fix things (how could the theory not be right?). The greenhouse gas theory sounds really good, too.
President Trump seems to at least have a business person’s ability to see what doesn’t work, and switch away from it. Academics and government people don’t think that way.
Trump knows the limitations of the Presidency and the role of the Federal Gov’t. Closing and re-opening is a State function. What does the re-opening look like, clearly isn’t up to him. Ask Wisconsin.
Already the Dane County executive has said Dane is closed until at least July 15th (keep it closed until Halley’s Comet returns as far as I’m concerned), and Milwaukee’s Mayor Barrett and the County executive are already planning Milwaukee’s extended lock down, in spite of the upcoming WI Supreme Court decision.
I know Wisconsin is heavily German, but I didn’t expect this many Burgermeister Meisterburgers to rise from the swamp.
Trump doesn't want to assume stuff that Cuomo is relying on about how the virus behaves. If the Cuomo plan doesn't seem to work you have to do something else.
Mathematically there's a time delay between input and output that's so long that it's likely to be unstable when you try to control it.
"As long as your rate of transmission is manageable and low, then reopen your businesses and reopen the businesses in phases, so you’re increasing that activity level while you’re watching the rate of transmission. Rate of transmission goes up, stop the reopening"
This not cogent and sensible. This is the essence of the insanity epidemic.
Transmission as such is not bad: for the vast majority of people, the Wuhan virus is harmless, to the point of being unnoticed. There is nothing inherently good or manageable about a particular "rate" of transmission. A low rate among sick seniors can be deadly, a high rate among healthy people under 50 trivial.
Transmission among the young and healthy is necessary. Short of a vaccine, epidemics end with herd immunity. To achieve herd immunity, you need more transmission, among the right sorts of people, especially the young.
Transmission cannot be stopped and should not be stopped. Distancing and shutdowns were never about stopping transmission, only about slowing it down. Slowing it down only mattered to prevent overloading healthcare and, initially, to figure out how to protect the actual risk groups. Healthcare is not overloaded; the old and sick can and should now be isolated with specific measures. Of course, total isolation is impossible for some: nursing homes should take precautions, but cannot guarantee complete safety, nor should they. But shutting down businesses when the "rate" of transmission goes up -- what does that even mean? what low rate is fine, what rate too high? -- does nothing for seniors in nursing homes.
Shutting down businesses simply when we see a rise in "infections" harms the economic health of the country and the mental health of the people--and indirectly, our physical health and the health of health care.
As I have seen/read elsewhere and have been thinking/saying the same; we have gone from "OMG this is going to be a catastrophe and we MUST flatten the curve or EVERYONE WILL DIE" which most people went along with, even if you did not 100% agree, in order to avoid an overrun of the healthcare system to where we are now with "NOT ONE SINGLE DEATH". We must stay LOCKED DOWN because if we don't SOMEONE could die! This is getting ridiculous. The politicians and "experts" and MSM and "Karens" pushing "not one life" are living theirs, are earning, are socializing, are NOT worried about their individual future. Sure they have been "inconvenienced" some but they are not OUT OF WORK.
If you cut off paychecks for politicians and Government workers at ALL levels and cut off paychecks for all these experts, the lock down talk would be gone by Monday.
People are NOT stupid, individually. Each person can make their own individual threat assessment as to what is more dire. Not being able to eat, keep a house, earn a living compared to the risk of catching this virus and the possible consequences there of.
Fascists going to fascist. They will always have a reason why the lock-down must continue regardless of the social and economic harm it causes because for the most part, they are insulated from the worst of it.
Not sure why you're focusing on Cuomo (of course, that was what he was asked). In his own guidelines for reopening, each of the steps is dependent on there being no bounce in cases.
His guidelines weren't too specific, though. Cuomo is very specific but in a pretty useless way: it would be weeks before you really can tell what's happening with the transmission rate.
My guess is that Trump is working with the idea that the median American really wants to open more things faster than his guidelines might really recommend, and he isn't comfortable discouraging them; they have a valid point of view.
"It’s going to be done state by state. Looking to the federal government for micromanagement of the process is a mistake on your part, Althouse. I don’t see what you can’t see."
The issue is Trump's avoidance of the question, not whether I have alternative sources for the same information.
If you attempted a comment that did not make it through, here are a few tips:
1. Stay on the topic. Don't introduce a new topic that this one reminds you of. Go back to the last cafe or wait for the next cafe if you have something new.
2. Don't just put a URL (or a link to another website) with no explanation of why this is related to the post topic. I am not going to go over there and read that to find out if you're on topic. Make it clear to us here why it's on topic.
So reopen businesses, do it in phases and watch that rate of transmission. If it gets over 1.1 stop everything immediately. That’s where the other countries wound up. They started to reopen. They exceeded the 1.1, it became an outbreak again. They had to slow down.
What other countries are these?
"He ignored the whole point of the question, which is about how the reopening will be done. Why couldn't he address Cuomo's idea and agree with it or reject it?
"Here's Cuomo speaking on May 4th. Trump acted as though he wasn't familiar with this, but I don't believe that. It's so cogent and sensible that it's very disappointing to hear Trump professing unawareness of it...."
I'm surprised you can be disappointed by Trump, or that you have to ask why he would ignore the point of a question or not acknowledge statements made by others that would tend to reflect well on their knowledge and ideas. Trump is only interested in claiming credit for himself, bragging that he is the best, he is first, he is the font of all human wisdom.
"Why couldn't he address Cuomo's idea and agree with it or reject it?"
The press has been after Trump just about forever, trying to find ways to trip him up. Remember the "Trump says to drink bleach!" nonsense? If I were him, I wouldn't have much interest in any encounter with a reporter other than getting my message out. Answering their questions? They can go screw themselves.
why is Cuomo an authority, he has enabled consecutive mistakes on his watch at least two involving seniors, provisioning of ppe,
The issue is Trump's avoidance of the question, not whether I have alternative sources for the same information.
Yet you spent the entire last paragraph of your post detailing exactly what Cuomo said, as though you think Trump should have responded directly to that. It's a gotcha move by Muir, and you should have seen that. That's why he didn't respond as directly as you think he should have. Why give the media the ammunition for which to hold something over Trump's head?
"Our country has to go back to being our country again."
Bingo. Exactly right. Hosanna in the Highest, baby!
The shoddy science, hyperfueled by that British asshole, Dr. Ferguson, and his "model" of 2.2 Million US deaths, has to be formally rejected.
The panic and fear-mongering and scare-mongering has to be formally rejected.
The overly broad non-sensical lock downs (really, closing the parks and beaches?!!) has to be formally rejected.
Let the people work!
I am tired of hearing about 'new infections.' Who gives a shit about new infections. There is no way to avoid them completely, and as everyone has said forty billion times, we need them for herd immunity. Most infections are harmless and while I get that if it's harmless in me it might not be harmless in you if you get it from me ... well, here we are back to if it's going to kill you you need to stay in your house so those of us it won't kill can share it with each other so eventually none of us has the ability to give it to you and you can come out of your house after we were all busy working and keeping a functioning economy. Why isn't the metric we are using for opening hospitalizations, or covid deaths, or even better, total deaths to get around the attribution game-playing. More tests = more positives.
Also, we're being pretty generous to the valve and spigot turners by granting that opening/closing has any effect at all. There is no clear data on that. Every country and every city is unique and we don't really know anything about this.
Our church, by order of the bishop, cannot begin in person worship until we have BOTH 14 days of declining 'new cases' and 'widespread and increasing community testing.' This is Pritzker-level nonsense. This literally will not happen for months or years.
"As long as your rate of transmission is manageable and low, then reopen your businesses and reopen the businesses in phases, so you’re increasing that activity level while you’re watching the rate of transmission. Rate of transmission goes up, stop the reopening, close the valve, close the valve right away."
Andrew Cuomo
"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."
Friedrich von Hayek
The professor's admiration for a governor who sent infected people back to nursing homes because of his bureaucracy's incompetence, which has caused thousands of deaths, and who didnt shut down the subway in New York City, causing thousands more deaths, seeding outbreaks in multippenstates and panicking the country into destroying the economy, is inexplicable to me.
Trump is neither accepting or rejecting what governors are doing, or propose to do. He's letting them do their own thing, while supplying the rope.
Muir wanted Trump to seem like he was following Cuomo. You can't expect Trump to cooperate with that. Trump's effort to turn it around was to imply that Cuomo is looking to Trump and his team as a model.
zipity said:
"I find it hilarious and infuriating that people are running around with their hair on fire because "many new cases are being diagnosed". This is due to the fact that much more testing is going on. Plus, the majority of those testing positive are either asymptomatic or very minimally ill.'
In fact, this is good news. Asymptomatic cases build herd immunity and cause the death rate to decline. It would be wonderful to wake up some morning to the news that 50% of the population has been infected without symptoms.
I think he didn't answer the question on purpose. Because he can't sppok business owners that everything would be shut down again. It's a lot of money businesses are investing by getting things started again. If there's a chance things will shut down in another six weeks then they won't commit the investment.
My assessment is that President Trump wisely didn’t answer the question directly. First, he seems to understand that questions are innately hostile. Any failure to predict the nuances that will be interpreted in the harshest light for the next news cycle with be POUNCED on. So he doesn’t even accept the initial premise. Having been deposed in a medical toxicology case by a talented hostile attorney was enlightening. Asking very similar questions repeatedly, with subtle alterations of my prior testimony he turned previously clear testimony into damnation. I left the three hour deposition thinking, “what an asshole, if I ever need an attorney I’m calling him”. He beat hell out of all the pundits we all know and disrespect and loath.
muir's query is laughable, holding up Cuomo as a standard for anything,
Ann Althouse said,"The issue is Trump's avoidance of the question, not whether I have alternative sources for the same information."
Trump could have answered truthfully, but he can’t...yet:
“It’s going to be unbalanced chaos. People from Southern Illinois will cross the Mississippi to party in St. Louis. Blue States will fight long and hard to remain locked down to do as much economic damage as possible to affect November. Democrat Governors with a great deal of power will whittle away at the civil rights and economic health of their citizens. State budgets will be massively short in those areas. Equal protection under the law is out the window. Mayors and County Executives will become much more powerful locally. Cops won’t know which side of the line they are on. The reopening will divide families and end friendships. State and Local political disagreements will become deeper than ever and the scars will remain for a long time. Eventually shots will be fired, but like Lexington and Concord, we’ll never really know who shot first. It’s going to get really ugly. I can tell you that.”
I think that many people, including Althouse, do not yet accept the fact that we are going to have to live with this virus, at least for a while, that many more people are going to get sick, in particular because they have been sheltered from exposure so far, and once we start up again, we aren't going to stop, because lock downs don't help that much. Cuomo is shocked, shocked to find that many of NYC's new cases are people who are at home. Lock downs slow things down, they don't avoid infections.
Look at the UK, if you can't sort out the US in your head: locked down since March 17, its political leader almost dead from the virus, universal health system in place, case counts and deaths finally trending down, 66,000,000 population and over 30,000 deaths with lock down. Folks, lock downs only slow things down, they don't suppress or eliminate the bug. We need to get on with life. Older people know the risks. We have certainly have heard enough about them for the past two months.
rehajm said...
"You can't whipsaw people the way Cuomo is proposing. We're not water in a spigot. We're humans and we must do the things that humans do. We're social. We have a social order that includes the decisions and tradeoffs we make in the face of scarce resources. A vaccine is not 'inevitable' 'next year'. It may never come. Trump and others are making cogent and sensible arguments that don't include robbing humans of their humanity by government central planners acting on (very) imperfect information."
The history of socialism is a history of arrogant tyrants forcing their citizens to act contrary to their human nature. Every attempt at creating a socialist paradise eventually fails for that reason.
The overly broad non-sensical lock downs (really, closing the parks and beaches?!!) has to be formally rejected.
I wish Trump would do just that, but he hasn't yet. And the only reason I can think of as to why he hasn't is because it's an election year, and he's not willing to stick his neck out. But let's face it, until the president does just that, these state governors are going to ride this through as long as they possibly can. They're not getting any pressure otherwise.
Much ado about metaphors. Trump does not control a metaphorical valve, Cuomo as a governor does. So Trump won’t turn off any valve and Cuomo might.
Trump will see outbreaks in different places at different times that will need handling individually. A good metaphor for that is fires. You don’t close a valve on widely separated fires, you snuff them out.
I think that answers the question why they use different metaphors.
Zipity,,
Also,
The tests have very high false positives. In some tests as many as 50% who test positive are actually negative.
Some, perhaps all?, of the tests are unable to distinguish between kung flu and regular, run of the mill annual flu.
In other words, the tests, like pretty much all of the info we are being fed, are shit and meaningless.
Other than for political OMB purposes of course.
And for making a lot of money for the test makers.
John Henry
Trump is only interested in claiming credit for himself, bragging that he is the best, he is first, he is the font of all human wisdom.
Like every other politician in the history of mankind. The fact that it bothers you more when Trump does it than when Cuomo does it is a reflection on you, RC, not Trump.
Trump is doing what all politicians do. After seeing it first hand at the RNC in 1992; I learned to be weary of politicians speaking. By the end of 2003; I no longer listened to politicians. By the end of 2008, I quit watching the news regularly. When I see people complain about what Trump says; I first wonder why they spend so much time listening to him and then I recognize he's becoming ever more the politician than the business man.
Judge them by their actions and not by their words. The words are just a show. The actions count.
Why would you want to shut off the valve to put out a fire?
I would think you would want to open it up all the way to get maximum water flow.
But that's just me. I'm not a governor.
John Henry
"The issue is Trump's avoidance of the question, not whether I have alternative sources for the same information."
Yeah, but that's your issue. Trump doesn't need to answer the question the way you think he should, because you and your fellow liberals won't be voting for him whatever he says or accomplishes. Trump rightfully considers people like you and the corrupt liberal media as non entities, at least for the next few years. Oh yeah, hell yeah!
"It would be wonderful to wake up some morning to the news that 50% of the population has been infected without symptoms."
I get the sense that there are a not insignificant number of people who would consider that less than wonderful.
He didn't call Muir a '3rd rate reporter', and not answer the question.
He just didn't answer the question.
Muir's got that going for him.
Trump refused to go into the discussion that would arise from his answering the question of when to use a Government Executive Ordered quarantine of all of the people. Because the American voters know by now that the answer is "never do something that stupid." So he changed the subject in a New York second.
Now the Media will run horrible doom and certain destruction stories 24/7 until the November election. The only Goal of all electoral politics is convincing voters that they are dissatisfied.
I was looking at Virginia stats today. About 50% of cases are in Northern VA area (DC). Another 25% are in high population areas of Richmond and Tidewater. Add in nursing homes and prisons and the number is over 80%. So the entire rest of the state is closed down for about 4k cases.
State governments have authority over nursing homes, hospitals, meat processing plants, and prisons. Maybe if the states got their acts together we could open back up.
New York has been hit hard by the virus, so I understand Cuomo's reluctance to go "too fast" on the reopening. That said, he does not show that he understands the economic devastation that many New Yorkers are suffering. It is not a balance of lives against money but lives against lives. Economic depression also costs lives. Maybe when government workers start getting laid off or furloughed without pay (like that will ever happen) he may understand a bit better what small business owners and private sector employees feel. He is looking at it from one angle only. You would think that he should be able to use his eloquence to demonstrate his understanding of the economic suffering, but he has to understand it first and I don't think he does.
I think President Trump understands that all questions are innately hostile. Any nuanced deviation from the desired terminology or opinion will be POUNCED on for the next news cycle and regurgitated into the fermented baseline case against his existence. He wisely refuses to step into the fastballs thrown at his head, and stays on his own primary message.
I was enlightened during a medical toxicology case. A talented hostile attorney repeatedly asked me similar questions about my prior testimony with subtle rephrasing. This twisted an otherwise clear case into the muddle he intended. I left the three hour deposition thinking, “what an asshole, if I ever need an attorney I’m calling him”.
He far exceeded the pundits we know and scorn and loath. The networks represent the worst of middle school student government. Why engage with them, except to speak over their heads to the masses?
My impression is Trump is extremely saddened at the state of affairs of the economy he maneuvered to such heights (with others), having had to bring it to a screeching halt. He talks about this all the time. There is no way he will be turning off the spigot in such a way again for this virus. He has learned a lot, as have we all, through this. So I think that's why he blew off that question.
"The press has been after Trump just about forever, trying to find ways to trip him up. Remember the "Trump says to drink bleach!" nonsense? If I were him, I wouldn't have much interest in any encounter with a reporter other than getting my message out. Answering their questions? They can go screw themselves."
You don't think the POTUS should answer questions that may inform the public, that they should only go before the public to "get their message out?" The whole point of a free press is for them to be hostile to those in government--from the POTUS on down--whose decisions affect us all. The POTUS serves and is answerable to all the people, even those who hate him. An adept politician who was an emotionally healthy mature adult would learn how to deal with challenging questions, even hostile ones, and respond in such a way as to answer the questions and to make him/herself look good and disarm his/her critics.
"Why couldn't he address Cuomo's idea and agree with it or reject it?" --AA
The short answer is because he's President and must cover an entire country over which his own policies are limited by federalism. And, second part, because Cuomo is governor of the one, single, hardest-hit state, has made some awful mistakes, and has no jurisdiction over the other 49. Why would the President feel he has to own or disown Cuomo's particular experiences and ideas? Just because the interviewer preferred it that way?
Or maybe that was the longer answer. The short answer is, Trump did answer it. "... and we are going to put out little embers and little fires and maybe some big fires, but we still have to go back to work."
There isn't going to be any overall, nationwide shutdown-again order, suggestion, request.
When Cuomo sees a "spike" of virus cases, he wants to "turn off the valve" which, I assume, means close down again.
Trumps wants to go back to work and puts out the little "embers" or "fires" which is Cuomo's "spike".
Trump wants to turn on the valve to put out the fires, Cuomo wants to turn off the valve to avoid the spikes.
I assume Cuomo's close down will be a localized close down, not the statewide close down. I also assume Trump puts out local flareups with local shutdown.
They were saying the same thing with different metaphors. Trump's "embers" and "fires" referred back to Cuomo's "valve"
Of course, Trump ignored the premise of the question. The whole point of going on ABC, is NOT to answer to the same ol' gotcha questions, or accept ABC's skewed premises, but to get out the message that Trump and the CDC are doing a great job.
Because guess who else is getting out the Pro-Trump message? No one. The Republicans in Congress just cower in the corner and hope the Media will forget they exist. The Media gives Trump 92% negative coverage. Trump has to take every chance to get a Pro-Trump message out.
Further, I'm sick and tired of reporters asking long-winded questions. They all seem to think, they need to make a little speech, when the real point is simply to ask the newsmakers what they think. I've done word counts on Meet The Press and Chuck Todd speaks almost as much as his guests. And I don't give a damn what Chuck Todd and his producer think.
"Like every other politician in the history of mankind. The fact that it bothers you more when Trump does it than when Cuomo does it is a reflection on you, RC, not Trump."
Who says it bothers me at all? I'm making an objective statement about Trump, in the context of asking why Prof. Althouse would (or could) be disappointed by Trump or wonder why he would ignore what another politician said or proposed. That it is true of other politicians--though in varying degrees--is beside the point. (It is certainly more pronounced in Trump, even if only because he is less skilled at hiding it.)
Cuomo and De Blasio, despite Trump's politically driven praise have done a terrible job. They were so to react, had made no preparations, and in Feb/March were more interested in fighting Trump then the virus.
NY state now has 40 times the CV-19 death rate/per million that California has. 50% of the CV deaths are in the NY Metro Area. They've let down the whole country.
CV-19 deaths per million:
NY state - 1,323
Calf -63
Texas - 36.
so, tell me Cuomo has done a good job again.
Cuomo and De Blasio, despite Trump's politically driven praise have done a terrible job.
Not necessarily disagreeing with you, but what should they have done differently?
The Media was screeching hysterically about "Death stalks Florida Beaches" a while back. So what are the numbers?
CV-19 deaths in Florida? 75/million.
You don't think the POTUS should answer questions that may inform the public, that they should only go before the public to "get their message out?"
You don't think "informing the public" and "getting his message out" are the same things?
The whole point of a free press is for them to be hostile to those in government--from the POTUS on down--whose decisions affect us all.
Sounds good. When do we get one? And by that, I mean one that is hostile to all those in government, not just the ones they don't like. You must be old enough to remember how they fawned over the previous president, right?
"Not necessarily disagreeing with you, but what should they have done differently?"
How about supporting Trump's China/EU travel bans? Or not telling everyone to go to NYC chinatown and have a party?
Or spent some money on ventilators and spare hospital space instead of whatever NY state/NYC spend their money on? I know NYC is a poor area- almost like Appalachia - and has little money, but maybe they could've prepared for a possible pandemic?
BTW, is the NYC subway locked down? Or is it still running? Is De blasio still going to the Gym?
"The whole point of a free press is for them to be hostile to those in government--from the POTUS on down--whose decisions affect us all."
LOL, this ol' Left-wing lie. Yeah, 'member Dan Rather speaking "Truth to power" - when it was REPUBLICAN POWER. Go show me all the "hostile" questions that Joe Biden got when he recently went on Meet the Press.
Althouse, tell us why you think that anybody can determine when the rate of transmission exceeds 1.1. Where did Cuomo say what the % of use of a hospital constitutes an unacceptable “curve”? His blather was not in any way something that I am interested in nor am I liable to follow anything he said.
Is this the same Cuomo that announced more than 50% of new hospitalizations were people who didn't go out in public? How do you reverse those conditions?
Is the the same guy who announced more than 50% of new hospitalizations were people who did not get exposure in the public square?
And how do you shut that spigot, put that fire out?
I would like answers, as a citizen, as to why we have these giant federal bureaucracies to prepare for pandemics which, it seems, never in fact prepared for pandemics.
I'd like other citizens to ask these questions as well, but they are too busy sharing scary stories and stroking each other's collections of fear nerve endings. If you know what I mean.
A friend sent around a request for kids to make art to send to isolated seniors in our community ... then had to rescind it because tHe ViruS liVEs oN PapER foR sIX daYs!!!!. People mean well but come ON.
lock them inside, like in Wuhan, of course,
Can we just get to the part where we all conclude it's time to just fucking live with it? As was pointed out by the new NY, lockdowns don't seem to work. We're not getting a vaccine. No one is coming to save us. We can't be afraid of our mail and borrow trillions of dollars from the magic money bucket forever. Enough is enough. Accept reality.
That's Trump's strategy in dealing with these difficult questions, to get right on the message that his administration has done a great job. Every question is understood first as a prompt to bang us on the head again with that message. He ignored the whole point of the question, which is about how the reopening will be done. Why couldn't he address Cuomo's idea and agree with it or reject it?
Why don't you take off your clothes, Ann?
The issue is Trump's avoidance of the question, not whether I have alternative sources for the same information.
Ann, which of your tits is bigger, the right or the left? The issue is your avoidance of the question, not whether I have pictures of them.
The issue is Trump's avoidance of the question, not whether I have alternative sources for the same information.
It's a "gotcha" question and Trump rightfully deflects.
If he had answered like you wanted him to, there would be two possible narratives:
1) Trump agrees this opening is only temporary, everybody stay in your house and don't make any long term plans. Governors feel free to fiddle with the spigot and Trump takes all the blame for any mistakes.
2) Trump values the economy over people dying!
then had to rescind it because tHe ViruS liVEs oN PapER foR sIX daYs!!!!.
And if they just leave the paper outside in the sun for 30 seconds... no virus.
Making nursing homes take Covid patients though. That's hunky dory.
Agreeing or asserting that you need to turn the valve off, of a reopened America, if you see a spike is an assertion that the shutdown was justified all along.
I do not understand how you could possibly consider Cuomo's "plan" to be either cogent or sensible. Like other commenters above I see absolutely nothing rational or even workable about his "plan" because life doesn't work the way his delusions tell him it should, and a man who is that delusional has no business whatsoever trying to run anything at all.
"Go back to being America? What, you mean with all that life, liberty and pursuit of happiness thing? With free enterprise and the 2nd Amendment? With rebellious serfs demanding freedom? No way!"--Your Average "Liberal" or "Progressive" State-shtupper,
Blogger I'm Not Sure said...
"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."
Friedrich von Hayek
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not a big fan of Hayek or his buddy Popper at LSE
FWIW - I would have used /serious/ instead of /curious/
"You don't think "informing the public" and "getting his message out" are the same things?"
No.
"'The whole point of a free press is for them to be hostile to those in government--from the POTUS on down--whose decisions affect us all.'
"Sounds good. When do we get one? And by that, I mean one that is hostile to all those in government, not just the ones they don't like. You must be old enough to remember how they fawned over the previous president, right?"
Well, that's part of the freedom of a free press...they can pick sides. That's why those with alternative points of view can create their own press organs. Discerning citizens will read press coverage from different perspectives. The essential thing is to determine what the facts are; one can argue over the meaning and significance of the facts, but one has to start with the facts. If the facts as presented by one news organ differs from the facts as presented by others, one has to dig deeper to learn what is true, what is false, and what is merely inaccurate or may be intentional distortion or falsification, for purposes of propaganda. Just because one doesn't like what one reads in the news doesn't mean it's false, and just because one likes what one reads in the news doesn't mean it's true.
And yes, the press, by and large, did fawn over Obama. They rarely challenged Obama or pressed him with hard questions.
“He ignored the whole point of the question, which is about how the reopening will be done. Why couldn't he address Cuomo's idea and agree with it or reject it?
Here's Cuomo speaking on May 4th. Trump acted as though he wasn't familiar with this, but I don't believe that. It's so cogent and sensible that it's very disappointing to hear Trump professing unawareness of it and Muir letting him off the hook.”
Trump cannot disappoint anyone who has been paying attention all along. Trump has always avoided difficult questions, either by immediately defending himself even if no one accused him of anything, or bragging, or lying, or changing the subject. He is either unwilling to answer directly or incapable of answering cogently. He sounds as if he is so upset that anyone dare ask him a difficult question, because the answer is possibly one that doesn’t reflect well on him or because he needs to actually think about it and come up with something that sounds halfway intelligent and he’s too impatient (or ?) to do that.
You don't think the POTUS should answer questions that may inform the public, that they should only go before the public to "get their message out?"
Yes, but this question wasn't designed to inform the public - it was designed to catch the president in a "gotcha".
The whole point of a free press is for them to be hostile to those in government--from the POTUS on down--whose decisions affect us all. The POTUS serves and is answerable to all the people, even those who hate him.
Except the free press doesn't do that and you know it. They do it when it fits a narrative they're trying to put out (Orange Man Bad), and they go full softball when it doesn't fit a narrative. Any coverage of Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton over the past 25 years should prove that to anyone with two working brain cells.
An adept politician who was an emotionally healthy mature adult would learn how to deal with challenging questions, even hostile ones, and respond in such a way as to answer the questions and to make him/herself look good and disarm his/her critics.
Oddly enough, that's EXACTLY what happened. Because he didn't answer it to your specifications doesn't mean he didn't deal with this hostile question and disarm his critics. But let's face it - his critics will never be satiated.
Trump has a hand in why we are now our country now.
He turned two scientists, two scientists that have been wrong about nearly everything from the start, into saints.
Who gets to edit the tape of the interview? It seemed to me that there were lots of edits, cutting short answers. Then one can criticize everything the president didn't say.
Yes, phenomenal. Adjusted for population, Germany has 40% of the deaths that we do, and deaths are trending down much more sharply there, and they are reopening there with testing and tracing far better than ours, but Trump is doing a phenomenal job. Just phenomenal! What a complete loser.
Not only is Trump not answering the question of how to come back safely and sensibly, but he's killing off sensible guidance from the CDC on that question. Apparently their draft guidelines, which from public accounts look clear, detailed and sensible, "will never see the light of day."
Could it be that our fearless leader (and yes, I am referencing Boris and Natasha) actually doesn't want Americans to know best practices for opening up safely? Better to have state health departments, no matter how underfunded, understaffed or short of expertise, develop them separately, with no guidance from the best scientists in the country? Sure, makes a LOT of sense. Phenomenal, indeed!
Wish I lived in South Korea.
Shorter Stephen: I hate Trump. He sucks.
Try that. Saves time.
Wish I lived in South Korea.
And what's stopping you from doing just that?
Well, no Jim, because I am responding to Trump's performance as chief executive and national leader. We are doing demonstrably worse with BOTH the public health and economic consequences of CV-19 than a bunch of other countries that we like to pretend we are better than. Germany, South Korea, Singapore, etc. That's a fact.
When Trump pretends otherwise, or blames it all on governors, he should be called out. When he urges states to reopen in violation of his own guidelines (WTF is that about!), he should be called out. When he actively misinforms the public, or prevents good information from coming out from the CDC, he should be called out. This is not hatred, it is calling for him to meet his basic responsibilities as a leader.
"Adjusted for population, Germany has 40% of the deaths that we do..."
Okay, but what does that mean? Are the people doing the counting in Germany doing it the same way as those doing the counting in the US? Seems like it would be helpful to know that.
"and they are reopening there with testing and tracing far better than ours"
Reopening in the US is under the control of the states, but it's Trump's fault that it's not going better? How's that work?
There's no point in replying to liberals. Its just a battle of the talking points. A propaganda exercise, there's no intellectual honesty.
I'm Not Sure:
1. The data is from the Johns Hopkins Medical School site, https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/ The site's experts are drawing the data from what they describe as multiple credible sources. I know of no reason why the numbers are not a fair starting point for analysis.
2. As for the question of Trump's responsibility for the poor US performance in the pandemic, it's true that legal responsibility for closing and opening states lies with state governors--although Trump has sometimes falsely claimed otherwise. His failures lie elsewhere. Maybe I should flip the question: Within his sphere of responsibility, what, other than the early ban on travel from China, has Trump done well?
What else do want him to do, Stephen?
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