What are your thoughts on how government is handling COVID-19

[Phoenix]

SG is on full lockdown... as of Tues next week.

While this will cause some inconvenience, I fully support the SG govt's decision. Our cases have gone up quite sharply last few weeks, with more community spread cases. On the rare occasions that I've been out, I don't see many people wearing masks and they're still hanging out when they shouldn't have been/ when they should have kept social distance. Even as restaurants and stores have standing and sitting places clearly marked and spaced out, there were still gatherings that were bothersome. For example, some of the cases reported today were from a night club, Ce La Vi!! Why the hell would you want to go clubbing at a time like this?

 

[AGBF]

How is the government handling covid-19? "The New York Times" has an opinion piece by Michelle Goldberg that they called, "Jared Kushner Will Get Us All Killed". It details his incredible arrogance.

Opinion | Putting Jared Kushner In Charge Is Utter Madness (Published 2020)

Trump’s son-in-law has no business running the coronavirus response.

www.nytimes.com

 

[missy]

How is the government handling covid-19? "The New York Times" has an opinion piece by Michelle Goldberg that they called, "Jared Kushner Will Get Us All Killed". It details his incredible arrogance.

Opinion | Putting Jared Kushner In Charge Is Utter Madness (Published 2020)

Trump’s son-in-law has no business running the coronavirus response.

www.nytimes.com

 

[missy]

SG is on full lockdown... as of Tues next week.

While this will cause some inconvenience, I fully support the SG govt's decision. Our cases have gone up quite sharply last few weeks, with more community spread cases. On the rare occasions that I've been out, I don't see many people wearing masks and they're still hanging out when they shouldn't have been/ when they should have kept social distance. Even as restaurants and stores have standing and sitting places clearly marked and spaced out, there were still gatherings that were bothersome. For example, some of the cases reported today were from a night club, Ce La Vi!! Why the hell would you want to go clubbing at a time like this?

The masses are you know what. Infuriating and upsetting. Putting everyone at risk because they’re selfish and stupid.

 

[Phoenix]

The masses are you know what. Infuriating and upsetting. Putting everyone at risk because they’re selfish and stupid.

Yep, Covidiots!

 

[mellowyellowgirl]

SG is on full lockdown... as of Tues next week.

While this will cause some inconvenience, I fully support the SG govt's decision. Our cases have gone up quite sharply last few weeks, with more community spread cases. On the rare occasions that I've been out, I don't see many people wearing masks and they're still hanging out when they shouldn't have been/ when they should have kept social distance. Even as restaurants and stores have standing and sitting places clearly marked and spaced out, there were still gatherings that were bothersome. For example, some of the cases reported today were from a night club, Ce La Vi!! Why the hell would you want to go clubbing at a time like this?

Can you go to get groceries or is it eat whatever you have left at home?

I'm really curious as to what lock down is in each place.

 

[Tekate]

In an ideal world we could provide for everyone. But I just fear that the poor would overpopulate, and there's just not enough of the middle-class, and, after a certain population number, even the rich to keep everyone well off and comfortable. I'm afraid of what will happen if there's not enough economic differentiation to make poor people realize that the more kids they have the worse off everyone will be. My point is that in a world of finite resources (numerator in a fraction), it totally depends on the number of people those finite resources have to support (denominator in a fraction) whether we can guarantee a decent basic living for everyone. It totally depends on how much we can produce and how many we can support. Just realize that we cannot indefinitely support everyone this way from now until forever. We need to keep enough incentive for people to educate themselves and stop overpopulating the Earth. Just like with climate change, there is objectively a tipping point somewhere where the system will crash. I don't know exactly where that is, but we shouldn't let people believe there can be infinite welfare, because in reality there's not. If poverty were such an easy problem to solve, it wouldn't still be around!

Why are you 'afraid' the poor will over populate???? Free birth control for us all, it should be the case anyway. We will eventually have to provide basic income as robots and programs take over our jobs.

By infinite welfare do you mean a rising income or basic subsistence? Why are worried about this? Time Machine movie? where the gorloks eat us? (which was stupid because the gorloks provided food for the blonde and blue eyed people).

 

[arkieb1]

How is the government handling covid-19? "The New York Times" has an opinion piece by Michelle Goldberg that they called, "Jared Kushner Will Get Us All Killed". It details his incredible arrogance.

Opinion | Putting Jared Kushner In Charge Is Utter Madness (Published 2020)

Trump’s son-in-law has no business running the coronavirus response.

www.nytimes.com

I've been saying for weeks Trump and his team are handling this like clueless idiots that article suggests the situation is worse than I imagined. Something like this needs a combination of medical experts and military leaders to deal with it in a calm, methodical way to solve each medical problem, each supply shortage, and each logistical issue and so on, BEFORE it occurs.... these guys are clearly not listening closely enough to experts and seem to be just responding to whatever happens after it happens.

Kushner is a mini Trump - another narcissist who favours power, money and his own self importance over saving people's lives.

 

[Phoenix]

Can you go to get groceries or is it eat whatever you have left at home?

I'm really curious as to what lock down is in each place.

It's the same as what's going on in the UK, meaning you can still go to the supermarkets, wet/open markets to buy groceries. You can go to restaurants but can only take out (cannot dine in). Only essential personnel are allowed to go to work. Places like hospitals will still remain open.

But queues at supermarkets are very long, and everyone has to stand on the pre-allocated standing slots spaced apart by 1 metre.

 

[mellowyellowgirl]

It's the same as what's going on in the UK, meaning you can still go to the supermarkets, wet/open markets to buy groceries. You can go to restaurants but can only take out (cannot dine in). Only essential personnel are allowed to go to work. Places like hospitals will still remain open.

Ahh ok that's like us in Australia!

Were you guys not locked down before?

 

[Phoenix]

Ahh ok that's like us in Australia!

Were you guys not locked down before?

We were on a limited close-down basis, meaning places like cinemas, pubs, amusement parks were closed and people were "advised" not to go out and socialise. But some idiots still went out and didn't follow the spacing out directive, didn't mask up, still gathered and we've seen a sharp uptick in community spread cases these last few weeks, hence now the full lockdown.

(One thing I do not understand is that clubs were also supposed to be closed, but as I mentioned above, some cases reported today were from a night club Ce La Vi. So not sure how that's come about).

 

[mellowyellowgirl]

I feel like our State and Federal governments are doing a decent job in Australia. Yes they have made mistakes (oooh that cruise ship) but they try to fix them along the way. There no insane declarations and I can understand most of the decisions taken (such as our PM's hesitation to close schools down. There was a lot of outrage but I personally got where he was coming from).

What I loathe is the media! They would do anything for clicks. I have read too many frenzied articles designed to whip everyone up on a frenzy when it was clear the journalist had NO FFing idea what was going on.

One that stood out was where the journalist basically had hysterics about how we Aussies were doomed because of America's issues. DOOMED! SUPER DOOMED. They did not clarify why or how. Not even with the most basic reaching reason. I really wonder what went on in their head as they drafted that article. Did they even have a chain of reasoning for the DOOM somewhere in their brain that they didn't care to share?

I distinctly remember in high school year 9 we were forced to review poorly written articles and comment on why they were nonsense. These people are journalists! If a bunch of 9th graders have more sense........

Today there was an article on how our supermarkets were going to limit the number of people entering at any one time. Of course they ended the article highlighting that only 8 people might be let in at any one time. Not true of course if you look up the details but they pushed the point in a blatantly manipulative way. Guess which idiots in the public are probably going to start hoarding again tomorrow? WHAT IS EVEN THE POINT OF THIS KIND OF JOURNALISM????? HOW IS IT HELPFUL IN THIS CRISIS? Why would you want to make people panic and hoard again when there is no cause?????

We have the most low rent journalists in Australia! Idiots!

Sorry for the long rant!

 

[happybear]

We were on a limited close-down basis, meaning places like cinemas, pubs, amusement parks were closed and people were "advised" not to go out and socialise. But some idiots still went out and didn't follow the spacing out directive, didn't mask up, still gathered and we've seen a sharp uptick in community spread cases these last few weeks, hence now the full lockdown.

(One thing I do not understand is that clubs were also supposed to be closed, but as I mentioned above, some cases reported today were from a night club Ce La Vi. So not sure how that's come about).

I'm so glad the government is finally asking people to mask up. I've a feeling the whole "wear a mask only when you're unwell" was to prevent panic and conserve whatever stock they had for the frontline people. I would totally understand that, but to insist that people should NOT wear a mask unless unwell didn't really help the situation.

Nevertheless, the SG government will be distributing reusable masks to all households from this Sunday, which is amazing. Last week, they gave out free hand sanitizer.

 

[Phoenix]

I'm so glad the government is finally asking people to mask up. I've a feeling the whole "wear a mask only when you're unwell" was to prevent panic and conserve whatever stock they had for the frontline people. I would totally understand that, but to insist that people should NOT wear a mask unless unwell didn't really help the situation.

Nevertheless, the SG government will be distributing reusable masks to all households from this Sunday, which is amazing. Last week, they gave out free hand sanitizer.

Yep, agreed.

My friend has been making fabric re-usable masks and I think she's looked up how to make them so as to mimic the surgical masks as much as possible. I already placed an order, as of yesterday.

 

[jaaron]

I've been saying for weeks Trump and his team are handling this like clueless idiots that article suggests the situation is worse than I imagined. Something like this needs a combination of medical experts and military leaders to deal with it in a calm, methodical way to solve each medical problem, each supply shortage, and each logistical issue and so on, BEFORE it occurs.... these guys are clearly not listening closely enough to experts and seem to be just responding to whatever happens after it happens.

Kushner is a mini Trump - another narcissist who favours power, money and his own self importance over saving people's lives.

And you know the absolute saddest, saddest, most horrifying thing about all of this? There are so many smart, capable, experienced people out there - Andy Slavitt, Jeremy Konydyk, Scott Gottleib (fired by Trump), Ronald Klain, Laurie Garrett, Lisa Monaco. They're all out there talking about solutions and forethought and cooperation and supplies and preparation and modelling. With the right words, any and all of them would step in, but the administration turns to Kushner instead.

 

[AGBF]

And you know the absolute saddest, saddest, most horrifying thing about all of this? There are so many smart, capable, experienced people out there - Andy Slavitt, Jeremy Konydyk, Scott Gottleib (fired by Trump), Ronald Klain, Laurie Garrett, Lisa Monaco. They're all out there talking about solutions and forethought and cooperation and supplies and preparation and modelling. With the right words, any and all of them would step in, but the administration turns to Kushner instead.

I am not always a fan of the military. For example, I do not think they should be allowed to make law . However, I have been convinced by observing all the commentary about distribution of materials (materiél), that bringing in a military supply expert to coordinate this might be best. Someone needs get the correct goods produced; then get them sorted out according to need; then get them moved. Apparently the military moves things very efficiently. (I was convinced at how efficient The Army Corps of Engineers is at building when I saw them rebuild The Javits Center in New York City for Governor Cuomo. They lived up to their reputation.)

If a civilian (one of the ones jaaron named would be fine) is put in charge of the entire project (to include the manufacturing part), at least a military expert could handle distribution and transportation.

 

[cmd2014]

3M pushes back on Trump administration order to stop sending N95 masks to Canada

Wow. Just wow. Great way to remember how many of us rushed to the US's aid after 911 and again after Katrina and the Boston Marathon Bombing and the California wildfires with blood, people, resources, donations, and anything else we could think of. I can't speak highly of how the US federal government is handling things. I do, however, think that most of the State Governors are doing a phenomenal job. I wish some of them could run for president.

I think our provincial government is doing a good job. Not sure about how effective our Federal Government has been.

 

[missy]

3M pushes back on Trump administration order to stop sending N95 masks to Canada

Wow. Just wow. Great way to remember how many of us rushed to the US's aid after 911 and again after Katrina and the Boston Marathon Bombing and the California wildfires with blood, people, resources, donations, and anything else we could think of. I can't speak highly of how the US federal government is handling things. I do, however, think that most of the State Governors are doing a phenomenal job. I wish some of them could run for president.

I think our provincial government is doing a good job. Not sure about how effective our Federal Government has been.

Wow so awful of the Trump administration.

To our fellow Canadians most Americans do NOT feel this way. We are all in this together. I am embarrassed and disgusted by the Trump administration.

 

[voce]

Why are you 'afraid' the poor will over populate???? Free birth control for us all, it should be the case anyway. We will eventually have to provide basic income as robots and programs take over our jobs.

By infinite welfare do you mean a rising income or basic subsistence? Why are worried about this? Time Machine movie? where the gorloks eat us? (which was stupid because the gorloks provided food for the blonde and blue eyed people).

Income and fertility - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Except in places where educational level is high despite poverty, the overwhelming impression I have is that it's the poor who are not practicing birth control even when birth control and abortions are available to them. The poor stay poor because of poor behaviors and decision making, such as (for examples) young mothers using drugs and birthing kids who are disabled rather than just practicing birth control in the first place. A good proportion of the poor may turn to religions that encourage them to have as many kids as possible because God will always provide. Religious fanatics (who don't have to be poor) might treat any and all new life they could bring into being as "good". They see the leaves, not the forest. The way the natural world works, when you birth too many animals and there's not enough food, they starve. When you seed a plot of soil too densely, you get thousands of young sprouts that don't survive to maturity, because resources are limited. Why do we spay and neuter rescue animals, if not to prevent creating a situation where there's more young strays who suffer and starve? Yet why is it that people don't think about the strain on resources they themselves bring to the world? I suspect that the poor are, through no fault of their own, unlikely to think about issues like overpopulation and the direct connection between human overpopulation and climate change. It's proven there's more of them, and they're having more births compared to those of us making more income, so it's the poor (I expect) who tend to contribute more to the problem of overpopulation.

By infinite welfare I mean the expectation that there's somehow magically going to be enough for everyone if we simply expand welfare. I am worried about this because I am looking far ahead the present day to what the future would be. The course we're cruising on, if we don't find effective ways to curb climate change and world overpopulation, even if machines did all the work, and we had universal basic income, that universal basic income might not be enough for subsistence, as there could be so many people fighting over limited resources (minerals, food, and materials needed to construct the equipment we need to harness and distribute renewable resources) that if you just distribute everything equally that would not ensure survival for everyone.

Believing that there's somehow magically going to be enough to provide a good life for everyone, if only we are more caring and expand welfare, that's belief, faith, religion and fiction. There's no data to support this. I am afraid there's not going to be enough goods and services if the poor (not just in the US, but in all the world) get to consume goods and services at the same rate.

 

[cmd2014]

@mellowyellowgirl, I share your view of the media. My husband has had CNN on non-stop and I finally had to ask him to turn it off because I felt that they were taking every opportunity to turn this crisis into disaster **** for the sole purpose of lining their pockets by making people watch. There is absolutely no reason to sensationalize the tragedy that people are experiencing, engage in fear-mongering that encourages people to stockpile food, swarm to buy out the N95 masks that are in such short supply for our front line health care workers, or run out to buy ammo - which horrifies me tbh.

 

[missy]

This is incredibly upsetting. Please skip if you are overwhelmed enough. I just couldn't not share this.
From Medscape online. If I link it my name shows up so just copying and pasting.

Topol: US Betrays Healthcare Workers in Coronavirus Disaster
Eric Topol, MD
DISCLOSURES
March 30, 2020

The year 2020 started with American physicians, nurses, and the whole healthcare workforce dispirited, in a deep state of burnout, with the worst rates of clinical depression and suicides that have been recorded. Indeed, this was not confined to the United States; a global epidemic of burnout had been diagnosed. But things were about to get considerably worse for the healthcare workforce.

In December 2019 an epidemic of pneumonia, with many fatalities, erupted in Wuhan, China. The pathogen was sequenced and determined to be a novel coronavirus on January 5, 2020, and was subsequently named SARS-CoV-2. The first patient in the United States with COVID-19, the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, was diagnosed in Seattle on January 21, which was within 24 hours of the first patient diagnosed in South Korea, a key country for comparison (Figure, adapted from Our World in Data).

Figure 1. Testing for COVID-19 in the United States and South Korea

The First Phase: "Silent" US Spread
Unlike South Korea, which quickly started testing for COVID-19 using the World Health Organization (WHO) test, the United States refused the WHO test, opting to develop its own through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). But the CDC test was ultimately found to be flawed and represents one of many government stumbles. Without an adequate test, there were nearly 50 days from the first patients in both countries before the United States started to ramp up testing. Why was this so critically important?

During this extended phase in the United States, there were countless numbers of patients presenting with pneumonia and respiratory tract symptoms to emergency rooms, urgent care centers, and doctors' offices. Without the ability to make the diagnosis of COVID-19 or even suspect it, these patients unwittingly spread their infections to healthcare workers. Also, during this first phase of spread, there was likely — albeit still not yet validated — a high rate (approximately 30%) of asymptomatic carriers for COVID-19, which further amplified the chances for doctors and health professionals to be infected.

For the sake of comparison, during the month of February, South Korea performed more than 75,000 tests (versus just 352 in the United States) and adopted all of the WHO best practices, which includes massive testing, tracing every contact of a person infected and testing that person, quarantine of all known cases, and social distancing.

The United States did none of these. Instead, officials repeatedly made bad choices that put public health in jeopardy, along with the healthcare workers charged with caring for the public.

South Korea, meanwhile, got ahead of its outbreak and became a model in the world for how that was achieved. But it wasn't just South Korea that reacted well. As Atul Gawande summarized, Singapore and Hong Kong also adopted all of the WHO practices, including providing protection for their healthcare workers. In both places, healthcare professionals were expected to wear surgical masks for all patient interactions. That practice turns out to foreshadow the second phase of failure in the United States.

The Second Phase: The War Without Ammo
Although Seattle is where the first cluster of cases occurred, it was the unchecked number of patients diagnosed in New York City in early March that led to the full realization of how ill-equipped the country is in terms of personal protective equipment (PPE), intensive care unit beds, and mechanical ventilators.

The dire, inexplicable lack of masks is well recapitulated by Farhad Manjoo in "How the World's Richest Country Ran Out of a 75-Cent Face Mask", and Megan Ranney, MD, MPH, and colleagues similarly describe the profound deficits in PPE and ventilators in a perspective published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Together, a situation was set up for healthcare workers to not have masks — or to reuse them for days on end — and lack other protective gear. And this is about plain 75 cent masks, not the N95s that are better for blocking aerosol droplets.

But the required sharing of equipment is not just among doctors and nurses; it even extends to patients sharing a ventilator in some intensive care units. To put some numbers on ventilators, we will need several hundred thousand to a million but have fewer than 160,000 throughout the country.

It's bad enough that the United States was totally unprepared for a pandemic and has such an unimaginable shortage of requisite resources. But the situation still gets worse. On a widespread basis, doctors and nurses are being gagged and muzzled by administrators for expressing their concerns, and penalized or even fired when they do speak out.

Meanwhile, the unconscionable lack of COVID-19 testing has continued in this second phase. And with that, systematic testing of the workforce has yet to start, despite being desperately needed.

The Third Phase: Healthcare Professionals Broadly Infected and Dying
Back in Wuhan, Li Wenliang, a 33-year-old ophthalmologist, was one, if not the first, doctor to alert people in China of the outbreak. He died on February 7, 2020. But he certainly wasn't the youngest doctor to die in China. Xia Sisi, a 29-year-old gastroenterologist, also died after a 35-day hospitalization.

Yet on March 11, from the Oval Office, President Trump stated, "Young and healthy people can expect to recover fully and quickly."

By late March more than 54 doctors in Italy had already died, and in the Lombardy region of northern Italy, one of the worst hit regions in the world, 20% of the healthcare workforce have become confirmed cases. Now, in the United States, as large numbers of healthcare professionals are getting diagnosed with COVID-19 in Boston, New York, and other hotspot cities, young doctors are writing their wills and making provisional funeral plans.

COVID-19 was not supposed to kill young people, but young nurses and doctors are dying in the United States. There are many theories as to why this is happening, perhaps the best one is the viral load — the mass of COVID-19 inoculum.

Because healthcare workers are exposed to the sickest patients — often without access to the proper protective equipment — the heavy viral load may be overwhelming even young clinicians' ability to mount a sufficient immune response to counter the infection.

That doctors and clinicians are succumbing to the virus is beyond a tragedy, as many of these dedicated individuals are dying unnecessarily, as a result of the no-testing and no-PPE fiascos.

Yet a far greater toll in numbers is the temporary loss of clinicians to infections and sickness. This is the other poorly recognized exponential growth curve: As each doctor, nurse, respiratory therapist, paramedic, and patient-care person takes care of tens to hundreds of patients at any given time, the loss of even one of these individuals has a dramatic ripple effect on the shortage of professionals trained to care for affected patients, no less the non-COVID-19 usual patient mix. No number of accelerated medical school graduations (which are being announced) can compensate for these losses, not just by numbers but also by experience.

The handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States will go down as the worst public health disaster in the history of the country. The loss of lives will make 9/11 and so many other catastrophes appear much smaller in their scale of devastation. Perhaps what we in the medical community will remember most is how our country betrayed us at the moment when our efforts were needed most.

Eric J. Topol, MD, the editor-in-chief of Medscape, is one of the top 10 most cited researchers in medicine and frequently writes about technology in healthcare, including in his latest book, Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again.

 

[Matata]

 

[voce]

@missy I got so emotional reading that Medscape article, my hands were shaking.

How infuriating, that the CDC refused the WHO test, and then failed to develop a better test. How arrogant to think they would do better than the WHO, at the risk (and cost) of American lives. They could have taken the WHO test and have continued to work on developing their own test.

The failure of this administration (and I believe that of Bernie Sanders would be no different), is in the lack of appreciation of diverse perspectives. This administration has been carefully curated so that the majority are Trump yes-men who silence dissenting views Trump doesn't like to hear. Handing off coronavirus task force responsibilities to Jared Kushner? It's a sign of continued lack of trust in anybody who doesn't support his own narrow agenda.

Any leader who feels the need to surround himself with "his own people only" and cannot trust the experts, is a weak leader. Strong leaders like JFK are masters of critical decision making, which involves taking in diversity of information and opinions, not only the things you WANT to hear. Xi Jinping is a weak leader for purging out anybody who's not supportive of him, and Trump has done the same, so I see Trump (and even ideologues like Bernie Sanders) who surround themselves with sycophants and yes-men also as weak leaders.

I think in this country pragmatism and wisdom in politicians is undervalued, unfortunately. Stubbornness in "sticking to their values" is vastly overvalued.

 

[missy]

@missy I got so emotional reading that Medscape article, my hands were shaking.

How infuriating, that the CDC refused the WHO test, and then failed to develop a better test. How arrogant to think they would do better than the WHO, at the risk (and cost) of American lives. They could have taken the WHO test and have continued to work on developing their own test.

The failure of this administration (and I believe that of Bernie Sanders would be no different), is in the lack of appreciation of diverse perspectives. This administration has been carefully curated so that the majority are Trump yes-men who silence dissenting views Trump doesn't like to hear. Handing off coronavirus task force responsibilities to Jared Kushner? It's a sign of continued lack of trust in anybody who doesn't support his own narrow agenda.

Any leader who feels the need to surround himself with "his own people only" and cannot trust the experts, is a weak leader. Strong leaders like JFK are masters of critical decision making, which involves taking in diversity of information and opinions, not only the things you WANT to hear. Xi Jinping is a weak leader for purging out anybody who's not supportive of him, and Trump has done the same, so I see Trump (and even ideologues like Bernie Sanders) who surround themselves with sycophants and yes-men also as weak leaders.

I think in this country pragmatism and wisdom in politicians is undervalued, unfortunately. Stubbornness in "sticking to their values" is vastly overvalued.

Yes I agree on all counts. I was crying reading it aloud to my dh. Devastating. Furious. So many emotions. All bad.

 

[Calliecake]

The following was just announced at Trump‘s Covid-19 Briefing today:

The CDC recommends voluntary use of non-surgical face masks.

Trump went on to say he wasn’t going to wear a mask.

A source is saying: Last minute decision, Dr. Fauci was excluded from the briefing.


Melania Trump tweeted the following at 4:49 PM today:

As the weekend approaches I ask that everyone take social distancing and wearing a mask/face covering seriously.
COVID-19 is a virus that can spread to anyone - we can stop this together

 

[MakingTheGrade]

The following was just announced at Trump‘s Covid-19 Briefing today:

The CDC recommends voluntary use of non-surgical face masks.

Trump went on to say he wasn’t going to wear a mask.

A source is saying: Last minute decision, Dr. Fauci was excluded from the briefing.


Melanie Trump tweeted the following at 4:49 PM today:

As the weekend approaches I ask that everyone take social distancing and wearing a mask/face covering seriously.
COVID-19 is a virus that can spread to anyone - we can stop this together

Did trump say WHY he won’t wear one?!

Edit: found it
“Explaining his own decision not to wear a face mask despite the CDC urging it, he said he can't imagine being seen in a mask while greeting “presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens” in the Oval Office.

“I'm feeling good, I just don't want to be doing, somehow sitting in the Oval Office behind that beautiful resolute desk, the great resolute desk, I think wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens, I don't know somehow I don't see it for myself. I just don't. Maybe I'll change my mind.”


Ugh. What a malignant narcissist
I imagine this is what a lot of the spring break kids said too, “but I feel great..”

 

[Calliecake]

@MakingTheGrade, I don’t believe Trump gave a reason. I’m still stunned that he said he wasn’t going to wear a mask right after making the announcement.

Did anyone else hear if Trump gave a reason for not wearing a mask?

 

[Dee*Jay]

Is there really a lot -- or ANY -- greeting of "presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens" going on right now...?

Oh, and: DICTATORS???

 

[Calliecake]

@MakingTheGrade Now Trump just said “he just doesn’t choose to. It’s a voluntary thing” . A few minutes later he went on to say he was just tested and he doesn’t have the virus.

Trump stated he is NOT endorsing a national stay at home order. He said it’s up to the States.

 

[Garry H (Cut Nut)]

Ahh ok that's like us in Australia!

Were you guys not locked down before?

Not quite true - Australia is not locked down. We have restaurant and you cant go to a beuty parlour or nail sallon - all other retail should remani open but most have closed and layed off their staff which is a mean b#@%&^*d act in my opinion.
We are trading with half working from home to increase work place distance.
Here is the Victorian Australia rules: