Friday, March 6, 2020

Trump Admin. Reverses Obama-Era Regulation Blocking Coronavirus Testing



Weaponized Coronavirus dominates airwaves

First, yes it’s hard to find sanitizer right now. Some jerks are charging $400 or more on Amazon.  You can make your own.

The House passed an $8.3B measure for emergency funding to combat coronavirus and now it will go to the Senate. Meanwhile, we have some more cruise ship trouble.

Two shiploads of passengers may have been exposed. State and federal officials are scurrying to contact 2,500-plus passengers who disembarked Feb. 21 from the San Francisco-Mexico cruise at the same time as the man who died, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday.
California is also keeping Grand Princess passengers on the current San Francisco-Hawaii trip in the Pacific Ocean indefinitely until state and federal officials can assess how many passengers and crew have coronavirus or have been exposed.

Twenty-one people on the Grand Princess are showing signs of possible infection.
The Trump Administration has rolled back an Obama FDA rule that required “state-run laboratories to only run medical tests pre-approved by the F.D.A.”

“The Obama administration made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we’re doing, and we undid that decision a few days ago so that the testing can take place at a much more accurate and rapid fashion,” Trump stated. “That was a decision we disagreed with. I don’t think we would have made it, but for some reason it was made. But we’ve undone that decision.”

Keep calm, wash your hands and don’t panic. People are freaking out that they can’t get tested for the virus, but does it matter if you aren’t showing life threatening symptoms in this time of crisis? If you go to the ER, and you aren’t sick you will be when you leave because that is where the sick people are. If you do have the virus but aren’t dangerously sick, they are going to send you home to self-quarantine, you won’t be admitted because hospitals are saving space for really sick people like the elderly and immuno-compromised.

The Trump deranged are acting like the people working at the CDC are inbred, Jesus morons Trump put in the agency when he was elected. NO. The CDC are career employees, they are the same people who worked there under Obama, W and probably Clinton. THE SAME PEOPLE. Why did Obama get the white glove treatment on Ebola but now Trump is personally responsible for the jacked up agency response? Because Trump. There’s only so much a centralized government can do during a nationwide epidemic. Give the resources to the states, remove the roadblocks of federal regulations and let the states and localities handle it the best they can. Local is always better than the fedgov.

I just returned from a medical emergency, cross country trip where I spent 5 hours on an airplane each way. [Random story: On my return to the swamp, I sat in the row behind Donna Brazile who had hand sanitizer and wiped down her seat and was very polite.] I’ll have to make the same trip in a few weeks, I have hand sanitizer and travel sized Lysol. It’s just life, don’t freak out, stay away from sick people and wash your hands. Stop hoarding water, go buy a filtration system like a Brita or a Berkey (I have one) because the water supply will probably not be compromised. The panic is always worse than the actual crisis.

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