President Trump

[OrlandoRobert]

A remarkably, fascinating night. The battle for the heart and soul of my party.

[OrlandoRobert]

Joe or Bernie. It doesn’t matter. 2020 Presidential election is for dems to lose depending on the democrats turnout...

I don’t think so.

If Biden wins, yes turnout is important.

If Bernie wins, Dems are dead. It will be a landslide win by the orange monster in office. A self-proclaimed socialist, a Castro appeaser, a man that honeymooned in communist Russia, simply cannot win in the general election. it will be like Raegan v Mondale. It needs to be Biden.

[JimHow]

I have the sound off on CNN as I'm doing work here.
I guess I'll read the newspaper accounts in the morning.
To me, this is one of the most epic nights in American politcal history.
This old, failing, but fighting guy from Delaware just somehow came back from the dead.
I mean, literally, the dude was on his last breath.
He had like one unstaffed campaign office in California.
He had no money.
And then the Barack Obama coalition came out in South Carolina.
And he established himself as the candidate who could appeal to the most diverse electorate.
Why? Because he is fucking Joe Biden, that's why.
The dude who takes the train from Capitol Hill to Delaware.
The guy who will win WI, PA, MI.
Sure, he's a goofball.
Sure, he gets toungue tied.
But in the end he's the guy who appeals to the broadest base.
I want Bernie to win, but I think Joe has the best chance to win, and that's perfectly fine by me!

[OrlandoRobert]

Biden is a good man, a really good man. So is Bernie. Bernie is a remarkable force. I disagree with his policies, but wow is he one impressive candidate. I do not want him to win, at all.

I wish we had better choices.

We are a long way from what was arguably the great president of our modern era, Obama.

I do not see the election the same way you do. This is not about the resurgence of Biden. I expected that. SC was the first real election, frankly. What are are seeing, and what is relevant, is the complete and utter battle for the heart and soul of our party. The growing progressive movement of Sanders/AOC, and the moderate, marketable wing, of Clinton/Obama/Biden. I’m in the latter camp. I do not think Sanders can win the general, and I also think he will be bad for our country and economy.

But as a student of history and policy, his is like watching an Oscar quality movie!

[JimHow]

True, OB, but the number one priority is to get this fascist out of there. You are right, Barack is in my top ten list of greatest US presidents. But right now we are in survival mode. Whatever it takes to get this menace out of there.

[Chateau Vin]

Joe or Bernie. It doesn’t matter. 2020 Presidential election is for dems to lose depending on the democrats turnout...

I don’t think so.

If Biden wins, yes turnout is important.

If Bernie wins, Dems are dead. It will be a landslide win by the orange monster in office. A self-proclaimed socialist, a Castro appeaser, a man that honeymooned in communist Russia, simply cannot win in the general election. it will be like Raegan v Mondale. It needs to be Biden.

Your conclusion is based on the assumption that if Bernie is the nominee, Republicans will come out in droves. My conclusion is based on my belief that Republicans’ turnout in 2016 was as good as it could be and Dems lost in 2016 because of their low turnout.

[OrlandoRobert]

Joe or Bernie. It doesn’t matter. 2020 Presidential election is for dems to lose depending on the democrats turnout...

I don’t think so.

If Biden wins, yes turnout is important.

If Bernie wins, Dems are dead. It will be a landslide win by the orange monster in office. A self-proclaimed socialist, a Castro appeaser, a man that honeymooned in communist Russia, simply cannot win in the general election. it will be like Raegan v Mondale. It needs to be Biden.

Your conclusion is based on the assumption that if Bernie is the nominee, Republicans will come out in droves. My conclusion is based on my belief that Republicans’ turnout in 2016 was as good as it could be and Dems lost in 2016 because of their low turnout.

Two things are different today. Hillary was a HORRID candidate. And two, American now knows what Trump really is. I think - I truly hope - we get a better turnout among Dems.

[Chateau Vin]

True, OB, but the number one priority is to get this fascist out of there. You are right, Barack is in my top ten list of greatest US presidents. But right now we are in survival mode. Whatever it takes to get this menace out of there.

I thought we had a thread/polling about the list of greatest US presidents..,

[Chateau Vin]

.
.
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Two things are different today. Hillary was a HORRID candidate. And two, American now knows what Trump really is. I think - I truly hope - we get a better turnout among Dems.

I agree that Hillary was damaged goods in 2016. Even then, she could have won if soured dems over 2016 nomination fight had voted instead of staying home...Afterall, Trump won three of her firewall states with a combined total of less than 75k votes...

[JimHow]

Bloomberg may have cut into Biden's support, but Warren cut into The Bern's support.
Sadly, Liz will be out by this time tomorrow.

[Chateau Vin]

Bloomberg may have cut into Biden's support, but Warren cut into The Bern's support.
Sadly, Liz will be out by this time tomorrow.

Why not tonight? So far she is doing so badly in her home state...

[Chateau Vin]

All this is fine for uncle Joe, but would be interesting to see Bernie vs Joe in meaningful swing states such as Ohio, Wisconsin, Penn and Michigan... that would be the key...

[OrlandoRobert]

Bloomberg may have cut into Biden's support, but Warren cut into The Bern's support.
Sadly, Liz will be out by this time tomorrow.

Why not tonight? So far she is doing so badly in her home state...

Yea she’s done. Not a good candidate either, leaving aside that the track record of liberal MA candidates winning being quite low.

[Claudius2]

Guys
The arguments here about C-19 killing 32-68 million people is not just the "worst case" situation, it is science fiction.
That would be based on the assumption that just about every person over 7 yrs in the world gets it.

Now, before forming an opinion, please check the following WHO report. It is up to date as of yesterday.
https://www.who.int/docs/default-source ... 2c21c09c_2

Can I make a few points:

A). The virus is now largely contained in China, which has 1.428 B peoplle, and for the first time, non-China deaths (38) have outpaced Chinese.
B). The total death rate for the day at 69 means that it has fallen for the last 3 days
C). There were NIL deaths outside on Hubei in China - quite remarkable outcome
D). The rate of new infection (1992) despite the fact that the virus is present in 70 odd countries, is now slowing
E). Assuming 32M-68M, it would take 1,270 years to 2,700 years at the current mortality rate.
F). Of the 69 deaths yesterday, all but three were in China, Iran, Italy or South Korea. It is nowhere near a pandemic when three people in the remaining 194 countries die.
G). The death rate from road accidents including pedestrians and cyclists averages 4000 every day. That is why I use it as a comparison.
H). The NYT yesterday did a good job of scaring Americans by comparing C-19 to the Spanish flu, which affected 27% of the world''s population and killed around 50M
I). Researchers in HK for example three weeks ago mentioned that the virus could kill 50M BUT on the proviso that containment approaches fail. So for, despite a slow start by China, they have worked and no deaths outside of Hubei Province were recorded yesterday.
J). Doomsday preachers are conveniently ignoring the fact that only a minority (around 20%, and so far 25% in Singapore) get the most serious symptoms of the disease. That is one reason why the mortality rate is well below that of SARS.

I am pretty used to manipulating statistical data, and have even been on a consultant panel for the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The aggregate on infections and deaths shows a slowing in the rate of both.
Initial rates showed a monotonically increasing (geometric) function which means that the rate (in simple terms) is compounding.
At around the 7th Feb, not withstanding the revisions to how it is counted in Hubei, I noticed a horizontal asymptote.
That gave me some confidence that the virus is no longer out of control.
Since then, the rate of increase has largely been arithmetic and not geometric, and in recent days, deaths have decreased in simple terms.

Next point is that the RECOVERY rate keeps improving. This is a salient point that the media in their haste for headlines seems to miss.
Of the 91,000 total infections recorded so far, the Singaporean authorities report that there have been 49,000 recoveries.
So over half of the infected people are now virus free.
The gap between total infections and recoveries is now relatively flat. That is, the number with the active disease is relatively stable.

I am not sure why Italy has spiked, but I DO know that over HALF of all Korean cases are linked to one secretive church (more like a cult) where the head thinks he is related to God in some way, and actively and wantonly ignored health warnings, covered up infections and lied to both health authorities and police when cases started popping up. The individual (named Lee Man-hee) has now been arrested by police and charged with murder.
Even in Singapore, one church (Grace Assembly of God, which was operating illegally here) has accounted for half the infections and most of the remaining few serious cases.

[DavidG]

I disagree.
I don't think Bloomberg ended up hurting Biden, Joe is winning all those close states.
We'll see what the next three hours bring in TX and CA, but I think you are going to be surprised.
a fight to the finish?
I don't see how Bernie gets to the finish line.
At best he is a player at the convention, keeping the AOCs and Bernie Bros in line.
In other words, 2016 all over again.
Except this time I don't think Joe has the negatives of Hillary, and I suspect Joe will campaign in WI, PA, MI.

I’m surprised and relieved to see how well Biden did. I thought SC was a flash in the pan, last stand sort of thing. I didn’t think that Buttigieg and Klobuchar throwing their support to him came early enough to make a difference. Boy was I wrong. Maybe more people are paying attention than I gave them credit for.

I still worry that Sanders will fight on and make it difficult for Biden not just at the convention, but that his supporters won’t turn out in the general. I refuse to get my hopes up like I did in 2016.

I agree Biden has fewer negatives than Clinton. Or Sanders. But that’s now. Just wait until the Rs get revved up. If you think email servers and Benghazi were bad, wait until they get all the Burisma investigations going. And the clips of Biden looking or sounding confused. It will be relentless and ubiquitous. I worry about this too.

What gives me hope is the huge turnout. Maybe enough people are indeed sick enough of Trump to get out and vote even if they haven’t been personally affected. As you have said Jim, people have jobs, crime isn’t spiking. Are they fed up with Trump's incessant buffoonery, race baiting, etc? Is it a temporary thing related to incompetent handling of SARS-CoV-2? Will people show up in November? Turnout yesterday offers hope that they will.

[DavidG]

Claudius2
no, I'm not distorting any of the rubbish you spout.

out of interest, all the headlines in the Australian press this morning show the Dept of Health figures sent to us doctors 48 hours ago.... nothing is confidential these days.
This virus is expected to kill between 32 and 68 million people World-Wide in the next 18 months.
Not sure what else needs to be said about this "simple bug"

It’s too soon for predictions like this to be any more than speculation based on assumptions of facts still unknown. Curious who made this prediction. I’d like to see their work.

[jal]

This is a report issued yesterday evening by the Morgan Stanley Research Dept. Hope it helps...


March 2, 2020 04:11 PM GMT
Biotechnology | NorthAmerica
Key Takeaways From COVID-19 Expert Call

We hosted a call with Dr. Amesh Adalja of Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security on his views on the impact of the novel coronavius COVID-19 and his expectations around how the situation is likely to evolve in the coming weeks and months. Relative to the current level of concern, we believe Dr. Adalja expressed a more reassuring tone.

Base case view - The virus is likely to become endemic and seasonal, given its similarity with other cornaviruses. Most of the cases are mild and Dr. Adalja believes that there is significant under-reporting of mild cases since many of those patients are not being tested or seeking care. He believes the virus has been circulating with community spread since November in China and does not believe containment is possible given that it is an easily spread respiratory virus. Importantly, while the magnitude of infection is likely to grow, the overall impact from the virus is likely to be modest. He believes the fatality rate is low.

Fatality rate - He believes the case fatality rate is below 1% and will likely drop further once pervasive testing is broadened to find mild cases.

Need for greater testing - While the US has limited its testing to potential travel-related imported cases, testing should ramp in the near-term. Broad testing is needed to better understand the case fatality rate.

Spread in the US - Given that Dr. Adalja does not believe containment is possible given this is an easily spread respiratory virus, he believes that ~20-60% of the population will ultimately be infected. As an example, when H1N1 spread in 2009, there were ~60M infections or ~20% of the population. Herd immunity starts to develop with ~20% infection rates. Given his view that the virus is likely seasonal, he would expect a near- term peak in April/May to potentially be followed by greater spread in the Southern hemisphere.

Key preparations - While the rates of severe and critical disease are likely to be low, hospitals are generally close to capacity so there will need to be novel solutions to accommodate patients. Some communities may limit events to slow the spread of disease and let hospital prepare, but since Dr. Adalja doesn't believe containment is possible he see broad "lock-down" measures as not productive.

Vaccine and therapeutic development - Dr. Adalja believes that a vaccine could be available in ~1 year, but that mass production remains a potential issue. He highlighted several therapeutic options which could help treat infected patients and believes data on those treatments could be available over the next few months.

Dr. Adalja is not a member of Morgan Stanley's Research Department. Unless otherwise indicated, his views are his own and may differ from the views of the Morgan Stanley Research Department and from the views of others within Morgan Stanley.

[Blanquito]

On NPR this morning, it stated that the new WHO estimate of the COVID-19 is 3.4%!!!! Can this be right? I listened to the segment twice to make sure I heard it correctly. Last I’d been hearing was less than 1%.

If true and accurate, this is an enormous change. 0.7% is seven times more deadly than influenza, 3.4% is thirty-four times more deadly.

[Blanquito]

I just checked, that 3.4% rate doesn’t reflect unreported cases, so it’s not really a game change: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytime ... s.amp.html

[Jay Winton]

Mike is gone. My prediction Biden-Klobuchar ticket.

[Blanquito]

Our best prior on likely turnout in 2020 is the 2018 Mid-Term election when a “total of 50.3 percent of eligible voters voted in 2018, compared to a turnout of just 36.7 of eligible voters in 2014. The 2018 elections had highest turnout of any mid-term election held since the 1914 elections.”

I’m still optimistic about the Dems chances in 2020. Trump has historically low approval ratings, worse than any president in history (since Gallup began tracking these things during the Truman administration). No president with his net disapproval ratings has ever been re-elected. The only person with negatives as high as Trump was Hillary, and they had 30 years to build the case against her. Biden’s negatives will go certainly up once the Republicans go after him, but not enough to counteract Trump’s radioactive persona.

Bloomberg will spend 1 billion fighting to defeat Trump. Young people will turn out. So many things had to go wrong for Trump to win in 2016: Russian hacking and interference; Hillary not campaigning in WI, PA, MI; the Comey debacle X2; suspiciously perfect "straight-flush" wins in WI, PA, MI by Trump; etc.

The electoral map is likely to look similar to 2016 and if it ends up a close election, it will all come down to Wisconsin. I think PA and MI will go blue this year, whether its Bernie or Biden at the top of the ticket. If the Dems can expand the map and win any one of the red-leaning swing states (NC, AZ, OH, IA or FL), then it's over for Trump.

If I was running the Biden or Bernie campaign, I would go to the other campaign manager right now and say, "we have to beat Trump, and the best way to do that is together. So whomever wins the nomination will make the other his VP candidate on the ticket. Let's unite the moderate and progressive wings of the party!"

Biden-Bernie 2020. Or Bernie-Biden 2020.

Awesome.

[marcs]

I just checked, that 3.4% rate doesn’t reflect unreported cases, so it’s not really a game change: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytime ... s.amp.html

\

no case fatality rate, including that for the ordinary flu, includes unreported cases. In a number of areas, including China, governments have probably been more aggressive about seeking out and diagnosing this new virus than they were the flu so I don't think this "unreported cases" angle really works to minimize the threat of the disease as compared to an ordinary flu.

The CFR seems to be rather dependent on the availability of treatment...

[Blanquito]

I just checked, that 3.4% rate doesn’t reflect unreported cases, so it’s not really a game change: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytime ... s.amp.html

no case fatality rate, including that for the ordinary flu, includes unreported cases. In a number of areas, including China, governments have probably been more aggressive about seeking out and diagnosing this new virus than they were the flu so I don't think this "unreported cases" angle really works to minimize the threat of the disease as compared to an ordinary flu...

This is true on some level, but the biology of pathogens like influenza are so well known and studied, epidemiologists don't need the data to understand the disease; we just know its mortality rate from decades of study (with small posthoc tweaks for each flu season).

But yes, the level of care is a major wildcard in these estimates.

[stefan]

The big Chinese analysis I alluded to earlier showed the mortality rate in China outside of the Hubai province to be .4%. I did not look into how that was calculated. I think the best figure to use is deaths/(deaths + recovered) when the disease is still spreading, although that overstates the death rate if there is a sizable number of unreported cases.

[Blanquito]

I thought last night that Biden's resurrection was like McCain's in 2008 (he was also out of money and counted out).

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/opin ... e=Homepage

[JimHow]

Yes, I thought the same thing.
Hopefully he fares better in November.

[DavidG]

I just checked, that 3.4% rate doesn’t reflect unreported cases, so it’s not really a game change: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytime ... s.amp.html

\

no case fatality rate, including that for the ordinary flu, includes unreported cases. In a number of areas, including China, governments have probably been more aggressive about seeking out and diagnosing this new virus than they were the flu so I don't think this "unreported cases" angle really works to minimize the threat of the disease as compared to an ordinary flu.

The CFR seems to be rather dependent on the availability of treatment...

Availability of treatment is an important factor. So are the underlying health and age of the infected population.

CFR becomes more reliable over time with a novel infection and tends to decrease as testingavailability increases. Milder survivable cases which are undetected in the early days ("just a bad cold") are more likely to be detected and added to the denominator as testing is more available.

Availability of treatment, underlying health, and age of the infected population can also affect CFR.

[felixp21]

When the number of recorded Covid-19 reaches 100,000, an "official" mortality rate can be calculated. That figure of 100k will likely be achieved in the next 48 hours, with the preliminary mortality rate likely to be around 3.37%
no endemic or pandemic mortality rate includes non-presentation mild cases, never has, never will. So that number, by most estimates, will hover between 2.4-3.3% over the next 12 months.
the mortality numbers I provided were published by the Australian Department of Health, highly respected, and remembering that Australia has one of the top three ranked medical systems in the World, both clinical and research. Their prediction of deaths from H1N1 in 2009 was laughed at by many international institutions, having claimed as many as 250,000 people would die of the disease..... the final count was a staggering 280k, but that looks like being a drop in the ocean compared to Covid-19.

As is ALWAYS the case with any pandemic, there is a "lull" at 8-12 weeks, followed by spiralling numbers world-wide. We are just about thru the lull, and can expect an incremental rise in both cases and deaths over the next two months. The good news for those in the Northern Hemisphere is that the warmer weather is approaching, and by the end of May the numbers should start to decline. Sadly, without any vaccine, countries like Australia and New Zealand are going to be absolutely smashed come July.... authorities are predicting carnage down here. Ironically, China is going to be a far safer place to be in three months time.

I've seen the Johns Hopkins research, as always it is more reassuring than other World data, as it was with SARS and H1N1. It got H1N1 horribly wrong, the final 2012 figures showing they under-estimated World-wide deaths by more than 250%. I would take their optimism with a large grain of salt.

Absolute best case scenario of this? Absolute best case is still well into the millions of deaths. Not fussed at all if you think that is fiction, but history should tell you otherwise.

[Claudius2]

Folks
I have included a link to Channel News Asia which has a very useful real time map.
https://infographics.channelnewsasia.co ... 022020_cna

The count as at the time of writing was 96,170 cases and 3,305 deaths.

Now, researchers in China (Beijing and Shanghai) have found that there are likely to be two versions (L type and S type). Check out the following:
https://academic.oup.com/nsr/advance-ar ... chresult=1

The conclusions say that: "Human intervention may have placed more severe selective pressure on the L type, which might be more aggressive and spread more quickly. On the other hand, the S type, which is evolutionarily older and less aggressive, might have increased in relative frequency due to relatively weaker selective pressure".
The findings suggest the need for more research though I do hope that it is the less aggressive S-type that has relatively increased.

[Blanquito]

Monday, March 9
General Election: CNN Biden 53, Trump 43 — Biden +10
General Election: CNN Sanders 52, Trump 45 — Sanders +7

Trump is looking like a distressed asset.

Trump is a paper tiger and the first proof of a recession will sink his chances, to where he’s likely to get crushed in November.

[AlexR]

Hmmm.

I wonder what special bottle I wlll open when Trump is ousted....

Alex R.

[Chateau Vin]

While poll numbers are something, unfortunately turnout is not baked into poll numbers...

[JimHow]

We saw poll numbers like that in 2016, even late into election season, and Orange Head got the last laugh.
These numbers mean absolutely nothing.

[Blanquito]

We saw poll numbers like that in 2016, even late into election season, and Orange Head got the last laugh.
These numbers mean absolutely nothing.

Unless they show Trump ahead, then you’d tout them!

[Blanquito]

I’m 100% guilty of cherry picking polls, it makes me feel better.

I agree that a poll 8 months out is pretty meaningless though.

I think the bigger point is a recession will crush Trump, more than it normally hurts the incumbent.

[Blanquito]

He’s run on the economy. And his handling of the Coronavirus, connected as it is to the economy, will add more doom. Finally, I think a big part of Trump’s coalition is entirely fair weather and they will turn on him (or fail to turn out) once the chips are down.

[DavidG]

National polls are less relevant in an electoral college scenario.
Need to see state by state polls.
Polls don’t always reflect votes.
Anything can happen in 8 months.
Patrick, your comments are logical. Hope you’re right.
Staying gloomy and prepared for the worst here.

The D candidate will have to be aggressive, relentless, and uncompromising in fighting R disinformation.

[JimHow]

I pray that you are right, Patrick, and that I am wrong.
Believe me, nothing would make me happier.

[AKR]

Trump could always declare martial law and suspend all campaigning & voting until the pandemic is over.

Or maybe just in select regions like NY or WA.

[JimHow]

Don't laugh....