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Comments
It is incredibly shady that
It is incredibly shady that the Globe is keeping coronavirus coverage behind paywalls.
Why is the Coronavirus info
Why is the Coronavirus info released by county and not by city and town? It would be more useful to know if there is an outbreak in my city rather than in my county.
I can only think the reason
I can only think the reason is that so many of the early cases were from the Biogen conference, that releasing the town numbers would have narrowed down where they live?
With it now so widespread, they should break it down further by town.
Newton up to Friday had been informing its residents by email of the number of cases (11), but have not over the weekend.
Two reasons
1. confidentiality requires aggregating data to conceal the identity of people when the numbers are low.
2. Massachusetts and New England are atypical in their lack of use of counties as a structure for delivering public health services. The rest of the country does not use municipalities like we do. CDC does not recognize sub county geographies.
Mass Testing
There's so little testing going in Massachusetts that stats are totally unreliable. It's disgraceful and dangerous.
A modest proposal
ALL elected officials with legislative and executive power (yes City Council and Mayor Walsh and Governor Baker and legislators, Congresspeople, Mssrs. Trump and Markey and Madam Warren - this means you and all of your colleagues) in this country should immediately cease receiving paychecks and benefits so they feel the pain of so many Americans. Extend this to other incompetent officials so that cabinet members, chiefs of staff etc. suffer the same fate.
The proceeds of these savings gets poured into the state unemployment fund.
Federal officials (Senators, Congress, President etc.) should also be subject to an "incompetence tax" of 1% of their net worth for every month these shutdowns drag on. The "it was somebody else or somebody before me" excuse does not get to count (and if you don't want to pay this - quit now.
I'm only about 10% kidding. Medically, mentally, economically - you name it - this is a crime against everyone in this country and is due only to the longstanding incompetence of government officials. While we all pay the price they enjoy job security, pay, benefits and in a few cases, an opportunity for insider information to trade stocks against the interests of their own constituents (criticize him all you want - Scott Brown was the leader in the crusade to finally make it a crime for members of Congress and the Senate to trade on insider information).
That's all. I'm too ferklempt - talk amongst yourselves.
Libertarian tax
How about a tax on all the libertarians who did everything they could to make an effective response impossible? Who constantly objected to every form of communal effort as Big Government, who labored hard to make government weak and ineffective, and now complain when they are confronted with the consequences of their success?
R u wacked
Somewhere about 40% of our economy is government. There is no shortage of money, only a shortage of intelligence and foresight. And this stuff in the scheme of things is the shortest of short money. Try again.
... longstanding incompetence...
Bingo. This didn't happen overnight. I've read that N95 mask drawdowns from H1N1 in 2009 (!) are affecting the response today. There's no way that should have happened. This is on the bureaucrats that are there no matter the administration.
If you're (not you, Stevil, the generic 'you') going to blame Trump, why let Obama skate? He was there from 2009 until 2017. Truth is that Presidents have the responsibility, but the reality is that the government cannot be micromanaged at that level by any president. Who gets the blame when the GSA runs out of pencils?
"Medically, mentally, economically - you name it - this is a crime against everyone in this country and is due only to the longstanding incompetence of government officials."
One hundred percent true.
As far as the clever stock sellers...unfortunately, the senators that sold stock possibly didn't violate the law, by trading on specific stock insider knowledge. That's SEC territory, perhaps. But, the voters have a say in it and they should be judged harshly by them.
Obama
The reason why the response has been so shitty under Trump is that his administration sat on their ass for months while China's infection rate grew and grew. The experts in government tried to warn Trump about it but he ignored them.
Meanwhile, various members of the GOP found the warnings so convincing they dumped stock to pocket millions while outwardly backing Trump. They absolutely knew this was coming but didn't do a damn thing.
Unsurprisingly, the virus made it to the US. So now the US is playing catchup and since we're so unprepared the only thing we can do make everyone stay home.
Had the Trump administration started preparing for this moment back in February there wouldn't be a shortage of masks or tests and maybe everyone wouldn't be locked inside by themselves as a last resort.
Who knows what Obama would have done but based on his response to other pandemics, it seems safe to say the country would be more prepared by the time the storm hit.
New law
I believe since 2012 it is illegal for a member of Congress/Senate to trade on knowledge obtained as a result of their position such as the pending award if a contract. Or in this case, confidential security briefings. Apparently one Senator has already requested an ethics investigation on himsekf and perhaps others. He might be sorry about that. We'll see.
They can defend themselves
They can defend themselves under the Selective Reality Clause. The President chose not to take action, they made their investment decision after that - ergo, they weren't profiting from advance knowledge of action. [/s]