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German school kids now know a new word: Coronaferien (Corona holidays).

Almost all major European football leagues postponed their match days, as did most other sports as far as I'm aware. The German Bundesliga, meanwhile, thinks it's a great idea to have this weekend's match day being played out in empty stadiums, then postpone from next Tuesday on. Meaning, millions of Germans will go to pubs or meet with friends to watch matches being played in empty stadiums, and multiplying the number of affected people.
 
Oh wow. Green Bay is taking a wait and see approach, but Spring Break is next week so I wouldn’t be surprised if the week after is cancelled.
They're moving spring break up to next week and shifting to distance learning after that - which, let's be real, is not going to work very well.

My kids are still in preschool, but the school has said they'd follow DCPS' lead.
 
German school kids now know a new word: Coronaferien (Corona holidays).

Almost all major European football leagues postponed their match days, as did most other sports as far as I'm aware. The German Bundesliga, meanwhile, thinks it's a great idea to have this weekend's match day being played out in empty stadiums, then postpone from next Tuesday on. Meaning, millions of Germans will go to pubs or meet with friends to watch matches being played in empty stadiums, and multiplying the number of affected people.
Everything but golf is canceled here. Which means SportsCenter for the next month is going to be 24 hours of Stephen A yelling about Rory McLroy
 
Ted Cruz is self quarantining again after learning he was in close contact with a Spanish govt official who has since tested positive. Doctors told him that his first quarantine was not medically necessary, but he did it anyway. He hasn't been tested, doctors told him without symptoms there isn't sufficient viral load to show up in a test. And he's got the best doctors and is also consulting with the CDC.

He just said all of this on CBS This Morning. They asked him about a poll that showed that Republicans are not seeing this virus as being as serious as Democrats are. That's been obvious and it's pathetic that it's a political issue. He said the virus is not a Democratic or Republican issue. Ted Cruz, voice of reason.:ohmy:
 
Everything but golf is canceled here. Which means SportsCenter for the next month is going to be 24 hours of Stephen A yelling about Rory McLroy

Here, TV in a way is even responsible for the weekend's matches to be played, as Bayern's President Karl-Heinz Rummenigge admitted: Bundesliga teams are making much more money from TV licensing fees than stadium tickets, and if the match day is being played, it will trigger the next payment to the teams on which especially the smaller ones are depending. So his argument is, the matches must be played, else some teams might go broke. So yeah, instead of finding a deal, either between the teams or together with DAZN and Sky, that would ensure liquidity for all, they rather opted to have Corona football viewing this weekend.

The city of Bremen therefore showed responsibility and blocked Monday's match from being played. And another team's coach is being tested for Corona.

What a three-day delay can mean in terms of infections and deaths can be tested on the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/13/opinion/coronavirus-trump-response.html
 
Pence should say exactly who he's referring to. Smart people can figure it out anyway. Ooh, don't upset Donnie or put integrity and truth over a VP slot. Trump DOES have a higher priority, it's himself and his reelection. Not believable to me at all.

WASHINGTON — Vice President Mike Pence said Thursday that there has been “irresponsible rhetoric” from people who have downplayed the seriousness of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak.

In an interview on the “TODAY” show, Savannah Guthrie asked what message Pence sends to people who aren’t afraid of the coronavirus and think it’s just politics and hype, quoting from President Donald Trump who said on Monday that the “fake news media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything to inflame the coronavirus situation.”


“There's been some irresponsible rhetoric, but the American people should know President Trump has no higher priority than the health and safety and well being of the people of this country,” Pence said in response but it was not clear who he was referring to.
 
When in doubt point the finger at the CDC and Obama. Honestly I can foresee a day when Trump tries to get rid of Dr. Fauci, if he already hasn't tried.

NBC News


WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for being ill-prepared to test for the coronavirus and he blamed former President Barack Obama for the situation.

"For decades the @CDCgov looked at, and studied, its testing system, but did nothing about it. It would always be inadequate and slow for a large scale pandemic, but a pandemic would never happen, they hoped. President Obama made changes that only complicated things further," he wrote.

In a follow-up tweet, Trump continued his broadside: "Their response to H1N1 Swine flu was a full scale disaster, with thousands dying, and nothing meaningful done to fix the testing problem, until now. The changes have been made and testing will soon happen on a very large scale basis. All Red Tape has been cut, ready to go!"

On Thursday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testified at a House hearing that the U.S. has failed to meet the capacity for testing.


"The system is not really geared to what we need right now," he said. “That is a failing. Let's admit it."

Two issues have led to the slow process in testing for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. One was that the CDC had initially put out narrow guidelines for who could be considered for testing. Those criteria were eventually expanded and so far about 11,000 specimens have been tested, according to the agency. South Korea, on the other hand, has been testing nearly 20,000 people each day for the disease, according to reports.

There were also technical issues with the test kits in which they tested for more than just the coronavirus, and the glitch affected the integrity of the kit.


Trump tweeted Thursday that "Sleepy Joe Biden was in charge of the H1N1 epidemic which killed thousands of people," and said that "the response was one of the worst on record."

Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates responded that Trump should focus on fighting the current outbreak instead of "desperately tweeting lies about the Obama-Biden Administration."
 
I am not sure people in this country understand how much of a clusterfuck this is compared to any other place.

Who would have thought that the combination of dysfunctional leadership, a dismantled state apparatus, lack of a public healthcare system, state propaganda-propagating news channels, and businesses that will wait until the last minute not to hurt the bottom lines would be so damaging when a predictable crisis emerged?
 
Finally doing what he was reluctant to do

Bloomberg News

Trump to Declare National Emergency to Speed Virus Response

By Jennifer Jacobs, Saleha Mohsin, and Jenny Leonard
March 13, 2020, 11:19 AM EDT
Updated on March 13, 2020, 12:02 PM EDT
Stafford Act lets president give federal aid to states, cities
Democrats say it will unlock more than $42 billion in funding

President Donald Trump plans to declare a national emergency on Friday over the coronavirus outbreak, invoking the Stafford Act to open the door to more federal aid for states and municipalities, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The president said he will hold a news conference at 3 p.m. in Washington. Trump spoke Friday with Emmanuel Macron, the French president tweeted, about the pandemic, and agreed to organize a video conference with world leaders on Monday to coordinate research efforts on a vaccine and treatments and work on how to respond to the economic fallout.

Trump is under increasing pressure to act as governors and mayors nationwide step up actions to mitigate the spread, closing schools and canceling public events. Declaring a national emergency would allow the government to marshal additional resources to combat the virus, and also marks a symbolic turning point for the president, who has repeatedly compared the coronavirus to the seasonal flu and insisted that his administration had the outbreak under control.

U.S. stocks struggled to hold onto gains on Friday. The S&P 500 rose less than 1% in mid-day trading after climbing 6% at the open, following stocks’ worst day since 1987. Treasury yields increased as the Federal Reserve said it was buying $37 billion of bonds across maturities

Senate Democrats have urged Trump to invoke the Stafford Act and other disaster declaration requests they say would free up more than $42 billion in funding for states available in the Disaster Relief Fund.

An emergency declaration would allow a state to request a 75% federal cost-share for expenses that include emergency workers, medical tests, medical supplies, vaccinations, security for medical facilities, and more, according to a letter Democrats sent the president earlier this week.

Only a few emergency declarations for public health threats have been made since the 1960s, and only two have targeted disease outbreaks, when President Bill Clinton in 2000 declared emergencies in New York and New Jersey in response to the West Nile Virus.
 
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Arrived in Barcelona yesterday morning for a work trip that was abruptly cancelled late last night. We were assured that the companies involved in this trip and the Spanish government had taken all necessary precautions to ensure our safety, but a few government officials have been diagnosed with the coronavirus, forcing pretty much everything into a frenzy.

Currently waiting for return flights (which is already becoming a headache for everyone returning to the U.S.) and they have already asked me to self quarantine for 14 days once I return home, as a preventive measure.

Many restaurants, hotels and attractions have closed and there’s rumors that Spain will enact the same measures as Italy in the next few days.

“This is insane” is an understatement. Hope everyone stays clean and safe.
 
We were supposed to travel today for spring break (spoiler alert: we didn't), rescheduling to next year. Have a trip to Europe planned the last week of June and not sure what will happen with that. If the situation calms down by the fall we're going to Turks or St Barths or somewhere with the kids and my parents just to destress from all this.

Toronto is slowly shutting down. The local grocery store (loblaws) in the west end by our house is out of bread, out of chicken, out of all ground meat and random things like bananas. It looks like the apocalypse. Other stores have lines out the front. Costo is madness and people are now obsessively buying flour and yeast in bulk.

Canadians look to be getting cash from the govt as soon as Monday, massive stimulus.

My husband has been on the phone with US bankers. They are all uniformly of the opinion that the US is the next Italy and things are going to spiral totally out of control.

We have criticized Trump here a lot but there he was last night tweeting about Joe Biden and H1N1. He must be removed for the good of humanity. I firmly now believe that he will be out of office in a landslide. It's easy to roll eyes at his idiotic pronouncements but now it will become obvious to every single person that having him in office is not costless.

This will be very, very bad.
 
The Canadian/US border needs to be closed immediately.

Most of the new cases in Canada are US exports.

They are not taking it seriously and we must act NOW.
 
my fiancee works in the international departures area of pearson airport and she says it's a ghost town there today, on what is always the busiest day of the year (friday before the schools take march break).
 
this doctor fauci guy is literally the only one of this entire administration that i trust to be even a little bit honest about any of this.
 
When in doubt point the finger at the CDC and Obama. Honestly I can foresee a day when Trump tries to get rid of Dr. Fauci, if he already hasn't tried.

NBC News

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for being ill-prepared to test for the coronavirus and he blamed former President Barack Obama for the situation.

"For decades the @CDCgov looked at, and studied, its testing system, but did nothing about it. It would always be inadequate and slow for a large scale pandemic, but a pandemic would never happen, they hoped. President Obama made changes that only complicated things further," he wrote.

In a follow-up tweet, Trump continued his broadside: "Their response to H1N1 Swine flu was a full scale disaster, with thousands dying, and nothing meaningful done to fix the testing problem, until now. The changes have been made and testing will soon happen on a very large scale basis. All Red Tape has been cut, ready to go!"

On Thursday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testified at a House hearing that the U.S. has failed to meet the capacity for testing.

"The system is not really geared to what we need right now," he said. “That is a failing. Let's admit it."

Two issues have led to the slow process in testing for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. One was that the CDC had initially put out narrow guidelines for who could be considered for testing. Those criteria were eventually expanded and so far about 11,000 specimens have been tested, according to the agency. South Korea, on the other hand, has been testing nearly 20,000 people each day for the disease, according to reports.

There were also technical issues with the test kits in which they tested for more than just the coronavirus, and the glitch affected the integrity of the kit.

Trump tweeted Thursday that "Sleepy Joe Biden was in charge of the H1N1 epidemic which killed thousands of people," and said that "the response was one of the worst on record."

Jesus, Trump, shut the goddamn fuck up already.

Seriously. The White House needs to permanently muzzle him. Now. Don't let him do any more speeches or speak to anyone privately or anything. I'd of course prefer they just kick him out completely at this point, but at the VERY least, they really do need to take away his phone, put him in a room, and leave him there.
 
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