Not for many I fear. the corona-virus appears to me to be completely out of control in the United States and, with the greatest respect, I have to say the President Trump’s dismissal of the spike in cases as simply reflective of their world beating testing regime is so much tosh as to yet again call into question his mental competency. He is treating people as idiots.
Right from the word go the US response to Covid-19 has been chaotic, lacking in direction and leadership. And Mr President, unfair or not … the buck stops with you.
Trump is the Democrats not so secret weapon. He is as David Clark was to National. Every time he opens his mouth another idiotic statement emerges. He has become unbelievable and he’s handing the election to Biden on a plate. Biden doesn’t need to do much … Trumps doing it for him.
A commentator on an earlier post of mine argued that America was on a downward trajectory. If that is true then one thing for sure … neither Trump nor Biden have the skill set to MAGA. I fear for America.
No Minister 
If America is on a downward trajectory it is not reflected in the performance of the Dow, Nasdaq or S&P500 indexes.
None of which have anything to do with the real economy.All the economic indicators are declining, except the gambling houses on Wall Street.
AT – I am not a big follower of what happens in the USA apart from the markets, but I seem to recall an announcement that employment numbers were up for June.
Is America on a downward trend? Not in absolute terms, it is a relative change. China fundamentally has a faster growth rate than the US. They train more engineers and scientists. Contrary to popular right wing opinion, they don't just steal everything. They have a powerful innovation engine themselves. For instance all their current space rockets are indigenous. They are building a full-scale CATOBAR carrier, around 75,000 tonnes, no doubt the first of many. They build their own nuclear blister missile submarines. All these things require deep technological capability. China has built the worlds largest freeway network in the world along with the worlds largest high speed train system. They build more cars than any other nation. All done in the last 30 years.The point of all this is that China is a world class competitor to the US, it is no paper tiger.Trump understands this and is trying to derail China's rise. As have done previous Presidents. It is not working, the reason being that China's growth is not fundamentally dependent on the US.Where does all this take us? Potentially into dangerous waters. I don't see war breaking out. Both China and the US are continental sized nuclear powers. Unless someone goes crazy, nuclear war does not happen between powerful nuclear states.But is a new cold war possible? Again somewhat unlikely. Too many of of the allies of the US are invested in China's market. They simply wont follow suit. This all means a smarter way forward is required. Something like a group of powerful Asia Pacific countries acting in an agreed way where they all understand each nation has to get a \”win\”. Not easy. APEC was supposed to be a forum for this sort of dialogue, along with the East Asia Summit. Probably there needs to be a special Group of Seven for the Asia Pacific. Membership being China, the US, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam and Australia.
Is America on a downward trend? Not in absolute terms, it is a relative change.Shock, horror. I agree with Wayne Mapp.China fundamentally has a faster growth rate than the US.China's going to get old before they get rich. In terms of GDP per capita they're still far behind the USA and they have debt problems that are not minor and not improving, mainly thanks to the insane amounts of capital they poured into infrastructure as a way of holding off the GFC. As is usually the case with such Think Big efforts that does not mean the investments were good.As far as the argument about engineers and the like are concerned I suggest you read this article by David P Goldman, who often writes for the likes of the Asia Times (also as \”Spengler\” for other publications), where he bangs the same drum of warning and makes suggestions for the what the USA needs to do in response. Note that he absolutely does not agree with Trump's tariff approach.But frankly I've heard or read about all this before: with the USSR's growth rates in the late 50's and with Japan in the 1980's. China and it's Western supporters seem to think that this version of State Capitalism is the future. I think it's the past and all the graduate engineers and scientists will count as little unless their system allows them the freedom to think – which it cannot do.To believe otherwise is effectively to lack faith in democracy and democratic civil institutions – such as those of the USA. As crazy as the place is, I'll place odds on it over Communist China in the long term, which is just one reason why I will be celebrating Independence Day.
Strangely enough I agree with Wayne and Tom, Vet.I think this analysis in Breibart covers it nicely.\”The Battle of Cowpens could also be a metaphor for the Trump campaign. The president again faces incredible odds: race riots, a pandemic, a hostile media, censorship by the tech giants.His enemies, tasting victory, are tearing down statues, preparing to rewrite history.But ours is a history of heroes like Daniel Morgan, and of comebacks like Cowpens.And history may yet have the last word.\”As for China I am very worried. The current leadership or leader of China seems intent on annoying a lot of people, India included. They are threatening their own internal growth, as despite what Wayne, says they rely on exports to the rest of the world.Like the Japanese before them in their arrogance they could misread the strength of America, and India, and I would imagine if some showdown did breakout Japan would side with America.The US can project force, if needs be, China cant. Europe will stand on the sidelines, except perhaps the UK, as it has been the victim of a long term Socialist plan of undermining its institutions.Either it will reach a crisis or I think China may have a new leader before long.The world needs Donald Trump to be elected in 2020. Despite your misgivings Anitifa and its acolytes, plus the Democrat's behaviour is frightening a lot of ordinary Americans. Seeing the chaos caused by the Left will be making a lot of Americans think hard.I think Vet you just look at the Mainstream media too readily.
I've celebrated Fourth of July under a couple of Presidents that I did not approve of, both personally and in terms of policy. I am not going to get sucked into election-year bullshit pumped by the Democrats.Now that the riots and BLM have burnt themselves out and are merely turning into street-level cop abuse and increased criminal behaviour, and targeting the good little Middle Class Lefties like the Seattle Mayor, the mainstream US Left realise it could take them out next. So hey-ho it’s goodbye to CHAZ/CHOP and others.And it also means that it’s back to COVID-19 and a full-court press by the MSM to try and scare re-opening state economies into shuttering themselves again in the hope that Biden and company can ride the economic destruction train all the way to November 3 for a win.Won’t work. People have had enough of lockdowns and after Public Health officials made fools of themselves by blessing the BLM protests a month ago they’ve lost the public trust, which is why millions of kids decided to go back to partying like they would any summer.It’s over.And all the scare tactics in the world won’t change it. The best they can hope for now is to have the TV anchors intoning mournfully with Serious Face each night about “Another Grim Milestone Passed Today with the death toll and hope that can keep Trump down instead.Mind you, that’ll have to compete with the rapidly rising tide of shootings, murder and the like in NYC, Chicago, Baltimore and other Democrat-run death camps.
Much to agree with here … but not much comment on the 55,000 new covid-19 cases recorded yesterday. By any measure the epidemic is out of control and nobody seems to have the answer … Trump, Biden more so.
Vet, Death rate in the US is going down ,recovery rate is going up.That statistic in isolation is meaningless like most of the Covid stats worldwide.Out of control… nope. Stop reading the MSM and get some real analysis.Covid like Global Warming is a complete crock
but not much comment on the 55,000 new covid-19 cases recorded yesterday. By any measure the epidemic is out of control…NO!. As a counter to the deliberate screamfest of the MSM, here's an interview with Dr. Scott Atlas from Stanford University Medical Center. To summarise his points:- With more mingling and more testing, rising cases were inevitable. The USA is not isolated like NZ and the lockdowns could not be made to last longer.- The case metric just means a positive test. In the context of COVID-19, where approximately half the cases are asymptomatic, it is a meaningless statistic. But it's a great scare story for the MSM: if it bleeds, it leads.- As testing has become proactive, or required in some cases, and more widely available, saying there is a new case doesn’t denote illness.- State data shows that those who have confirmed cases of COVID-19 are in the younger age groups who do not suffer from severe illness. Yes, there is still a chance they could pass that on to the at-risk groups, but that can only ultimately be prevented by sanitising measures around places like Long Term Care facilities. The sort of measure in place in NZ at present and which have been in place in various states like Florida right from the start.- Even the hospitalisation numbers are misleading, since 25-30% of patients are in the hospital with COVID-19, not for it. They come in for another medical reason and are tested, but have no symptoms.- In Texas only 15% of ICU beds are occupied due to COVID-19. Regular medical care re-started recently and patients not suffering from COVID-19 occupy the vast majority of the beds.– The time a COVID-19 patient spends in the hospital is half of what it was early in the pandemic. The mortality rate is 25% of what it was, probably because of the spread into lower-risk populations and improvements in treatment.- COVID-19 has a 99% recovery rate for the general population.To put it bluntly, an increase in cases now – and they've actually been rising for several weeks – is not going to translate into deaths the way it did have in the early parts of the pandemic when high-risk groups got hit. They certainly have not so far and we're well into the period when they should have IF all of the above was not true.And that protection of the highest-risk group is the thing that NY Governor Andrew Cuomo should be hung, drawn and quartered for what he did to LTC units. No wonder 30,000 have died in his state. But what was Trump supposed to do there given that he did not have, and does not have the power to tell State Governors how to run their states on specific issues like this.Chances of you hearing an interview like this on cable or sat TV? Zero.
One more thing. Here in NZ we have several hundred people who have \”escaped\” from quarantine without testing and of whom there must be some with the virus. Yet there has been no community transmission that we know of – which likely means that just because you have the virus does not mean you can pass it on to others, something that has been debated from the beginning as one of the factors needed to drive the whole pandemic.Likely the same thing applies to the USA, which is yet another reason why \”cases\” no longer translates into \”deaths\”. Sadness only for the Democrat Party and their mates in the MSM.
A recent German study claims that the basis supposedly underpinning the lock-down was “grossly unscientific” and that the numbers were padded to create fear and panic among the public.1. Watering down definition of a pandemicWHO removed 2 criteria that were part of the definition of a pandemic in 2009 thus making it a lot easier to class Covid as a Pandemic when in fact it wasn’t.2. Padding the corona numbersMixing up infected persons with people who test positive3. There never was an exponential growthAuthorities and media made it look like the virus was spreading faster than it really was.4. “Grossly unscientific”There was a failure to distinguish between the number of infected and the number who are actually ill: “Not distinguishing the two is not only negligent, but grossly unscientific.”5. “Falsification of scientific data”The German critic also sharply criticizes the methodology used to count the number of people dying from COVID-19. Every death where the patient tested positive was deemed to be a COVID-19 death, no matter what the real cause was.6. Overstating of the death rate.For instance the total death rate in Germany in 2018 and the year 2019 exceed the death rate in 2020 by a wide margin, and those deaths were from flu
In the US the CDC issued its new profiling guidelines about six weeks ago. I assume that every jurisdiction in the U.S. was given similar guidelines (orders?)Earlier, only proven cases were counted.•Now, there are about 15 new ways you can get counted as positive.•Now, “probable” cases are counted (whether or not the person displays any symptoms).•Now, if you have had close contact with a “probable” case you are counted.•Now, if you display any two of the symptoms as mentioned above (whether you actually have the virus or not), you are counted•Now, if you have been to a location where the virus is endemic (a location where there are lots of cases – such as the entire State of Texas), and you test positive (even if you had it long ago) you are still counted.55,000 new cases in the US..maybe Vet under the new guidleines…
The USA is not isolated like NZ and the lockdowns could not be made to last longer.Fucking hilarious Tom. Donny Two Scoops can't control his borders? Who is getting in to the USA and bring the Virus with them? You're a hoot a minute Tom. A hoot a minute.
Toms Dad, Petri Dish … Rex, I realise Friday and Saturday nights are particularly bad for your personality disorder, and you mix the pills with alcohol together with the fact goes out with her mates to get away from your insuferability but that's no excuse for writing crap. To repeat.. The death rate from covid has been going down and going down for quite a long time. Do I need to explain any further.?In the UK over the lockdown they allowed 2,500,000 people into the country, no quarantine no testing.Why don't you confine your comments to the \”Democrat Weekly\” seems right up your street.