Creepy Joe is weeping in isolation, according to a source familiar with the former Vice President's thinking™.
"When social distancing was advised, he went nuts," the source continued.
"Only sniffing hair in public can do it for him these days. He's in total meltdown."
This. Couldn't have said it better myself. Too many unknowns, we're behind on testing due to shitty FDA regulations that Trump had to plow through, and symptoms can take up to 2 weeks to manifest. Our actual # of infections is much higher than what's known.
Trump planning on sending all Americans money, whereas the Democrats want it to be merit based
The Democrats are such hypocrites. As TS'/maybe Republicans, we seem to mostly agree that welfare is necessary right now. If there's any time in the world for govt to have a role in welfare, it's now. And if you means-test it like Pelosi wants, and you're allocating $300 billion to the payout, well suddenly after the means-testing is done, you're sending out $225 billion instead, and then after you take into account corruption within those agencies, more like $175 billion.
If we're gonna do cash infusions, make them universal. No means testing. If you have a SSN and you're 18+, you get the money. Democrats want precious time to be wasted while Republicans have to set up some means-testing infrastructure for this program, and they want the money to dwindle as it dies in administrative costs.
There will be a recession, there's no doubt about it. But 1) we'll have a major recovery and 2) if anyone thinks a President can stop a recession caused by an outbreak like this, they're a dumbass who's been consuming too much cable news or "CommonDreams" links on r/politics.
Epidemiologists say without a vaccine, there's no hope of just riding out something like this w/o severe consequences. And we still have no idea of this will become seasonal, and if it does and we don't have a vaccine or aren't prepared in other ways, then we get fucked again. You either let millions die or you take aggressive action.
Trump has taken swift, aggressive action. I will judge President Trump by how he's responded and will continue to respond to the virus. Anyone who thinks "well if Bathtub Bernie was in office the virus would be gone and the economy would be fine!" is delusional and has listened to zero experts on the topic.
The economy is functionally fine. A lot of the loss is from citizens voluntarily banding together to slow the growth of this outbreak so seniors aren't endangered in mass numbers and hospitals don't get overwhelmed all at once. We'll recover tremendously once the virus has been dealt with.
I'm generally not a fan of big government, much less than most Republicans. But a pandemic I think is one of the very few scenarios where I'm okay with them stepping up to this level.
I own a townhouse here, rent it out to make some passive income, and rents have been frozen by the state. I'm not sure what I'll be off the hook for yet in terms of taxes on the property... but everybody's hurtin' right now and I wouldn't have kicked someone out in this shitstorm anyway. It is what it is, things are tough everywhere right now.
With all that being said I think Trump is doing an amazing job listening to the experts here and pushing for exactly what they're asking for. Economists said UBI and small business assistance, GEOTUS delivers.
Trump's team seems like they're following the Imperial College report. Unless we develop a super-effective drug for symptom suppression in the meantime, we'll likely adopt the report's recommendation of isolating until a vaccine is available, with 2-3 week breaks from the lockdown throughout.
I hope I'm wrong and that this will be over sooner than that, but the available models we have are not looking too great for us. Another option, which Trump seems to be doing a bit w/ ventilator production, is ramping up the medical sector to be able to handle tons of active cases at once. Then the lockdowns can be much more spread out and last less time.
Their budget was $6.5b prior to the emergency, which isn't that much compared to the federal budget. Most of it is spent on fighting HIV/AIDS, which is actually still considered a pandemic. The other big chunks of spending seem to go into research on treating heart disease and birth defects.
Obummer didn't think to give them more money, or force them to cut portions to fund stockpiles instead, even after Ebola and H1N1. Trump has been so busy dealing with the million other problems the Democrats left us with that problem #1000001 manifested before he could get there. He's handling it pretty well though IMO. He smelled rot back when they were still trying to impeach him.