re: #251 Dr Lizardo

This is turning into a very bad year for Putin.

themoscowtimes.com

I read elsewhere that his polling is tanking, which is perhaps no surprise. Oh well.

This has been a surprising turn of events to me. I was expecting Putin to conceal this outbreak entirely, and at least minimize the numbers being reported. It is certainly very likely that the numbers are so bad that even Putin could not suppress all the data and that he is releasing a much lower set of cases and deaths than actually occur. And that the defenestrations were a result of doctors pushing to get the real numbers out there.

Trump and his minions are downplaying the extent of the pandemic here and, simultaneously, promoting the notion that the deaths are not important compared to good economic numbers.

My financial analyst (who does hate Trump) keeps posting on how we need to get the economy going. He sees the devastation among small businesses and is also eager to be out again, enjoying friends, theater, etc. But he does have cognitive dissonance — his wife has serious health issues and he is very careful in minimizing risk to her. No one can see that we do have to rethink the way our economy operates — that the libertarian perspective can be disastrous. He had FB posts that included a comparison to the 1968 epidemic as well as a rant against Pritzker’s measured approach.