Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
Trevor Noah points out that while some other countries are experiencing a disturbing second wave of coronavirus cases, their numbers are still way smaller than what is happening in the US where the first wave never ended because Trump never put in place the measures necessary because of his beliefs in crackpot theories and not in science.
Apparently back in June, a section of Trump’s border wall in New Mexico fell over, though this only came to light a couple of days ago.
When Trump announced that he was going to restart the daily coronavirus press conferences, I assumed that it would include the scientific and medical members such as Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx, and the head of the CDC Robert Redfield. But no. Trump has decided to do them solo. Trump does not even include lackeys like the secretary of health and human services Alex Azar or Mike Pence, the head of the Task Force.
So basically these press conferences are a waste of time because Trump is ignorant and never has anything useful to say but will just ramble and issue statements that are useless at best and dangerously misleading at worst. Trump is just starved for attention and is no doubt hoping that he can reverse the beating he is taking in the polls on his handling of the pandemic and can be seen as more authoritative than Fauci behind whom he lags woefully in the polls in terms of being trustworthy about the issue. Trump is clearly irritated by this and is being peevish.
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Most people do not even think about whether they are cognitively impaired or not. It is only those who fear that there is a problem who may obsess about it. Seth Meyers looks at the way that Trump keeps boasting about the results of his ‘cognitive test’, a test that is not used to test how smart you are, as Trump seems to think, but to see if you are showing signs of dementia. (Note that he took this test back in 2018 and it was administered by his then White House personal physician Ronny Jackson who subsequently resigned amid allegations of misconduct and is now running for a Texas congressional seat on an ardently pro-Trump platform.)
Two men who look like surfer dudes try to hand out free masks to people in Huntington Beach, CA who were not wearing them. Hilarity ensures, except that what it reveals about people’s beliefs is not funny. It is quite extraordinary the kinds of reasons people give for not wearing masks.
I almost never thought about eels, dismissing them as somewhat boring snake look-alikes that live in the water. So I was intrigued by this article that says that these creatures are very mysterious and it took researchers a long time to figure out the basic facts about them that had stumped scientists from the time of Aristotle through to Sigmund Freud, the main mystery being that however many eels European researchers dissected, until very recently, they simply could not find their reproductive organs. And the reason was bizarre.
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Seth Meyers says that the US is experiencing a confluence of bad events triggered by the pandemic while at the same time its leadership is utterly incapable and unwilling to take the measures to deal with it.
Some time ago, I had a post about how I was surprised that my new doctor in California had to have my old medical records transferred from Ohio by fax and not by any other more efficient electronic means. In the comments, lochaber suggested that this may be due to HIPAA and they were right.
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One of the things about the people in the Trump administration is that thought they may be corrupt and incorrigible liars, they are also not that smart and will sometimes inadvertently tell the truth. Consider what Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said yesterday at her press conference.
In response to a question about what President Donald Trump would say to parents who have kids in school districts that may be online-only, McEnany said: “The president has said unmistakably that he wants schools to open. And when he says open, he means open in full, kids been able to attend each and every day at their school.
“The science should not stand in the way of this,” she added, saying it is “perfectly safe” to fully reopen all classrooms. [My italics-MS]
She must have realized what a stupid thing that was to say because she later tried to cover up the blunder by saying “science is on our side here”, even though it is patently not, and if true would make her earlier statement nonsensical.
Just another day in the Trump stupidverse.