Die, peasant
God damn that festering piece of dung
Despite mounting pleas from California and other states, the Trump administration isn’t allowing states to use Medicaid more freely to respond to the coronavirus crisis by expanding medical services.
In previous emergencies, including the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina and the H1N1 flu outbreak, both Republican and Democratic administrations loosened Medicaid rules to empower states to meet surging needs.
But not Attila the Trump.
But months into the current global disease outbreak, the White House and senior federal health officials haven’t taken the necessary steps to give states simple pathways to fully leverage the mammoth safety net program to prevent a wider epidemic.
That’s making it harder for states to quickly sign up poor patients for coverage so they can get necessary testing or treatment if they are exposed to coronavirus.
And it threatens to slow efforts by states to bring on new medical providers, set up emergency clinics or begin quarantining and caring for homeless Americans at high risk from the virus.
They hate poor people that much.
I feel murderous.
Understandably, OB. But please don’t do anything rash. Right now, Trump appears to be shedding supporters like a dog sheds fleas.
@Omar;
What’s the evidence he’s losing supporters?
Maybe, but the headlines I see from FOX are mostly fawning over what a great job he’s doing. All the measures he’s taking that seem desperate (aforeign virus) have usually worked.
Sastra,
I am going by what the sharemarkets are doing, where Trump has not inspired confidence, and stuff like https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-declares-national-emergency-over-coronavirus-pandemic
Trump never had a popular majority, as against an electoral college one.
Fox News is Murdochthink, and Murdoch has staffed it with his own toadies. But all the panic-buying etc indicates that people individually do not like having their own lives threatened. And Trump is changing what passes for his his mind every 5 minutes.
Here I stand.
Well, 538’s poll of polls suggests that his average approval rating might have dropped about 1% in the last 14 days.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/
Then again, he’s still solidly in the middle of the range he’s had throughout his ‘presidency’. I think the claim he’s shedding supporters like a dog sheds fleas is both premature and hyperbolic. Still, happy to be proven wrong. Really, really happy.
I think it’s too early to say whether his approval rating has been affected. It’s only been in the last couple of days that the bubble really got punctured for some people, with the stock market crashing and sports leagues suspending play, and Trump’s disastrous Oval Office address. Even some non-conservative people I know were still scoffing at the “overreaction” until then.
And it takes some time to do a poll, so I don’t think there’s much polling data available yet that would reflect these recent developments.
I’m not saying that we will see a big drop; I’m really not sure what to expect on that front. I’ve been burned so many times before by thinking that surely THIS was the thing that would cause his support to crater.
More to the point, die old or slightly ill peasant. I saw this comment on what I thought was a local group, but turns out to be from a landscaper from Louisiana:
“I personally think we are taking a backwards approach to a nonexistent problem. 99% of the population will have minor symptoms. The only group that is effected by the virus is >75 yo or terminally ill. Those effected should be quarantined and everyone else should conduct their lives normally. “
Also worth considering:
Trump has gone from calling the coronavirus a ‘hoax’ to his present stance. Christ only knows what his tiny humourless mind will have brought forth by the middle of next week.
.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/mar/13/can-coronavirus-be-the-crisis-to-shake-us-out-of-our-alternate-reality
Theo Bromine, I have heard others report hearing the same thing. Because old people don’t matter (what if it’s your grandmother, asshole?). Because “terminally ill” people don’t matter. For the record, I am not terminally ill, I have a chronic condition known as asthma, and that puts me at a high risk. I am also not over 75, I am not even over 60 (but only just barely under it). And I don’t know their current status, but there was a 36 year old in Omaha (I think) in critical condition.
I tend not to wish horrible things on people, but there is one landscaper from Louisiana that I might be able to see it as schadenfreude should coronavirus decide to strike a fatal blow to one younger.
Speaking here for the entire population of the planet, what we could really use right now is the services of a professor of postmodernism; to prove that the whole Covid-19 business is just a social construct. But where can one be found?
;-)
Why should we need the services of a professor of postmodernism when we have Trump, the Republicans, Kellyanne Conway, Whatshername Grisham, Sean Hannity & the rest of intellectuals at Fox News who all appear to think that a pandemic is merely a social construct?
Worth noting–the story’s been updated. Apparently the Great Orange One finally caved in and gave the go-ahead. Weeks later than he should’ve, of course.