You Will Anyway: It's their JOB, FFS

Sunday, March 8, 2020

It's their JOB, FFS

Top federal health officials on Saturday said they don't know how many people in the U.S. have been tested for coronavirus — or how many will need to be in the coming weeks.

[...]

They said said that 5,861 specimens have been tested across the country, but it's not clear how many people that translates to because each test requires multiple specimens and people get multiple tests.

Politico

I can understand they might not know how many will be needed in the future (although they should have projection data with which to estimate), but WTF? Why don't they know how many have been tested? Shouldn't collecting that data be a major coponent of handling the outbreak? While you're collecting the number of tests given, why can't you have a count of how many of those are repeats and multiples? Jesus F.C.

The administration has previously struggled to communicate how many tests have been conducted. Azar last Sunday said more than 3,600 people had been tested, but two days later Anne Schuchat, a top CDC official, testified in the Senate that more than 3,000 specimens had been taken from 500 people — a fraction of what Azar claimed.

No worries, folks. Everything under control.

The health officials, in an untelevised briefing at the White House, also defended President Donald Trump's claim on Friday that anyone seeking a test can get one, even as state officials voice frustration with the availability of tests.

[...]

Trump officials said Trump's claim that "anyone who wants a test can get a test" was accurate, but that people still need the approval of their doctors and state public health officials.

So....NOT accurate.

[O]n Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence told reporters that that “we don’t have enough tests today to meet what we anticipate will be the demand going forward.”

[...]

Asked in the White House briefing about the discrepancy between Trump and Pence’s language, [HHS Secretary Alex] Azar said, “It's just different ways of phrasing it.”

Yeah. With different meanings. Heck of a job, Al.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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"It takes only a bit of knowledge of history to realize how dangerous it is to think that the people who run the country know what they are doing." -- Howard Zinn

"It’s not about not having something to hide; it’s about having something to lose. What we lose when we’re under observation is our humanity...Rights are inherent to our nature, they’re not granted by governments, they’re guaranteed by governments. They’re protected by governments." -- Edward Snowden

"Terrorism is the willingness to kill large numbers of people for some presumably good cause.” -- Howard Zinn

"What we have is a foreign policy which is essentially a marketing strategy for selling weapons." -- Jill Stein

"We should always remember that the danger to societies from security services is not that they will spontaneously decide to embrace [Stasi style] mustache twirling and jackboots to bear us bodily into dark places, but that the slowly shifting foundation of policy will make it such that mustaches and jackboots are discovered to prove an operational advantage toward a necessary purpose.” ~ Edward Snowden

"America: just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable." ~ Hunter S. Thompson

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." ~ Mayer Rothschild

"News is what somebody does not want you to print. All the rest is advertising." ~ LACUNA

"What matters in journalism isn't politics, which are as universal and inescapable as breathing. What matters -- along with a fundamentally adversarial attitude toward government, without which "journalism" is simply public relations -- is integrity, transparency, evidence, coherence, and principle. These are the principles on which we should evaluate the quality of journalism, and their absence is why some journalists are so desperate to get you to focus on something else." ~ Barry Eisler

"There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack." ~ Molly Ivins

"The brain of our species is, as we know, made up largely of potassium, phosphorus, propaganda, and politics, with the result that how not to understand what should be clearer is becoming easier and easier for all of us." ~ James Thurber

"The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of one's country deep enough to call her to a higher plane....When you hold up your arm and swear to uphold the Constitution, you don’t say, 'Except in wartime.'" -- George McGovern

"I’ll believe that corporations are people when Texas executes one." ~ Bill Moyers

"When did hope become a political dynamic? Hope is right below wishful thinking and right above performing a rain dance on the scale of activity." ~ Rich Hall

Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

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ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

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GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

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GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

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PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.