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Corvid-19

V-Zero Day: We Have Prevailed Over COVID-19!

May 19, 2020
by Peter Feinman
"We have met the moment and we have prevailed,"

Did you celebrate V-Zero Day? Did you celebrate the day when we finally prevailed over Covid-19?

Ever since the White House Council of Economic Advisers delivered its Happy Talk message showing deaths dropping precipitously to the point of zero by May 15, I have been counting down the days on my blogs.

We’re Number 2! We’re Number 2! We’re Number Two: Trumpicans Rejoice

Measuring His Performance: The Target Dates

May 15 2020: Coronavirus deaths drop to zero: in 3 days!!!!!
May 25 2020: Celebrate the victory over the coronavirus again: in 13 days!!!!!!!

“The Trump Presidency Is Over:” Peter Wehner Is Wrong and Living in an Alternate Reality

Measuring His Performance: The Target Dates

May 15 2020: Coronavirus deaths drop to zero: TOMORROW!!!!!
May 25 2020: Celebrate the victory over the coronavirus again: in 11 days!!!!!!!

As the first promised day drew nearer the excitement mounted. Given the track record of success in White House predictions of miracle cures, it will just go away, and 15 to zero, I anticipated front page coverage of this historic event. I chose not to issue a blog Friday night covering the celebration and I guess I missed the fanfare. On Monday, Rachel Maddow did devote a segment to this auspicious achievement…and heralded the upcoming triumph on May 25. The countdown continues.

REVENGE AGAINST THE NERDS

How popular were nerds in 7th grade, the emotional age of our President? Nerds tended not to be the most popular kids in the class. They knew science. They knew math. They could read books. Remember even non-nerd Tom Hanks when he became big could read a book and understand algebra (see Tom Hanks versus Our Immature Child-President 08/08/17).

For Little Donnee Waney, it is unlikely that nerds were his favorite people. The seventh-grade-smart-aleck-dumb-aleck was superb at insulting and demeaning people. It would be nice to know more about why Fred Trump placed his son in military school in the vain hope that Macho Macho boy would man up.

By coincidence there was a recent book review on And Then They Stopped Talking to Me: Making Sense of Middle School by Judith Warner (NYT 5/10/20). Reviewer Shannon Hale wrote:

Warner shows how for so many of us, our “narrative identity” is greatly affected by what we suffered in middle school, and since our perceptions during those years are undoubtedly distorted, so too might be our sense of self. How many of us are walking around with the unhealed emotional wounds inflicted in junior high?

 Warner recommends “compassion.” She does so both for actual middle schoolers and middle-aged adults who still are middle-schoolers inside and “even now feeling somewhat wrong, inferior and unfinished.” Or as I have written: it is not fair to judge Little Donnee Waney by adult standards since he isn’t one.

Think of what it must have been like for Macho Macho boy to have been repeatedly upstaged by Fauci. Time Magazine’s Person of the Year is someone our immature child president never would have associated with back in junior high school. And now here is Fauci with far higher approval ratings claiming the center stage from the narcissist in-chief, the stage that was supposed to showcase how the war leader with the supergenious medical uncle was saving America. It had to be humiliating to have to stand there while this little nerd commanded the respect the immature child can only fake but never achieve. Think of how Bonespur Boy loved to trot out his Hollywood-cast uniformed generals. He loved playing with his action figure dolls and parading them with all their accessories for the world to see as if he were a real man. Now this little pipsqueak of a nerd was showing him up daily.

People have caught on to his act. Our previous adult President just said at a virtual high school graduation commencement:

Doing what feels good, what’s convenient, what’s easy — that’s how little kids think. Unfortunately, a lot of so-called grown-ups, including some with fancy titles and important jobs, still think that way — which is why things are so screwed up.

Barack Obama grasps the truth about Little Donnee Waney. At some level, it must infuriate the immature child to see the adult President behaving in a way he will never attain…even if there was no racial component.

This background helps explain the science recently demonstrated by the person with the maturity of the seventh-grade-smart-aleck-dumb-aleck. Consider these examples of logic and scientific reasoning by the President who is not Spock or Kirk either.

1. New York City raised the number of Covid-19 deaths by over 3000. Given the uncertainty and chaos of the early days, it is easy to understand why the death totals might not be accurate. People were dying at home as Fauci pointed out. Coroners didn’t know what to look for at first…or have the means to test for it. The volume was overwhelming. Even a normal 7th grader could understand that.

But not the narcissist in chief. Since it is always about him, the reason for the discrepancy could only be due to one thing: the Deep State plot to undermine his presidency by inflating the number of dead on his watch.

2. If he couldn’t handle the increase in death count of over 3000, what are the odds he could accept The New York Times analysis showing up to 20,000 more deaths. The study compared the number of deaths this year during the worst weeks with the death totals from the same time period in previous years. A nerd could understand this, an immature child could not. Our President genuinely lacks the mental necessities to understand this analysis. His uncle may be a super genious who could have but his nephew has been wearing the proverbial dunce cap for decades.

How did he respond to these numbers? The answer is exactly the same as when he is forced into an adult conversation and realizes that he cannot function at that level. In a press conference exchange with adults, the nasty cutie pie always resorts to his seventh-grade persona when the going gets tough because that’s what he really is. The temper tantrum via tweet or verbal putdown is the only weapon in the arsenal of Macho Macho boy. In this case of the number of Corvid-19 deaths that means the numbers are false. The unhappy talk numbers are part of the Deep State attack on him. Given his middle-school mind, what other possibility is there?

3. His lack of reasoning skills has been on full display. After all, if we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases of Covid-19, right? If President Joe Biden institutes a robust national testing program and the number of cases increases dramatically, what would that mean? Right now the mortality rate is averaging 6% of the infections. That is fairly high, in fact, 60 times the mortality rate for flu and 6 times the projected rate of 1%. Is that infection rate valid? If the number of infections also was six times the present number, then the mortality rate would decrease to a less scary 1%, still 10 times worse than the flu but much less terrifying than the present numbers. Unfortunately the very stable genius is far from being the smartest person in the room. By his calculations, that increase in infections would mean that as soon as Biden became president, the number of cases skyrocketed because Biden was a failure as President. That is the level of his thinking. STOP THE TESTING TO STOP THE NUMBER OF INFECTIONS!

So what can we look forward to?

“By Memorial Day weekend we will largely have this coronavirus behind us.” Just ask him.

After Memorial Day, there will no longer be any need to take hydroxychloroquine. Just ask him.

How many lawsuits will there be against the President on behalf of people who take   hydroxychloroquine and have adverse effects? Just ask him.

Note 1: Tubby-wubby is not “morbidly obese.
Note 2: How many of the 3 Foxettes are taking hydroxychloroquine?

Measuring His Performance: The Target Dates

ATTENTION WASHINGTON POST: IT’S NOT ENOUGH TO TRACK HIS 16,000+ TRUMPS, TRACK HIS PROMISES TOO.

April 2011: Birtherism – reveal Hawaii findings on Obama soon: STILL WAITING
October 2016: sue all his women accusers after the campaign: STILL WAITING
May 5 2020: “There is tremendous hope as we look forward and we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel.” DO YOU SEE THE LIGHT YET?
May 8 2020: “Those jobs will all be back, and they’ll be back very soon.” WHEN IS SOON?
May 15 2020: Coronavirus deaths drop to zero: WE HAVE PREVAILED!!!
May 25 2020: Celebrate the victory over the coronavirus again: in 6 days!!!!!!!
June 2020: Back to Normal economy
July 2020: We’re rockin’ now: “We will transition into greatness. That’s a phrase you’re going to hear a lot, because that’s what’s going to happen.”
July 4 2020 Supreme Court rules Republican President is above the law; American experiment ends short of 250th anniversary
Fall 2020: Deep State Indicted
Fall 2020: Deep State proves China responsible for coronavirus
Fourth Quarter 2020: economy will be tremendous
October 2020: announce vaccine cure in election day surprise
November 3 2020: Deploy army of real Americans to suppress vote of…you know…those people – Vote Suppressors to become a TV reality show
November 3 2020: CLAIM VICTORY NO MATTER THE RESULTS
November 3 2020: Democratic coronavirus hoax magically disappears and all lockdowns and restrictions end
January 1, 2021: begin distribution of miracle vaccine
January 20 2021: Nancy Pelosi becomes President
January 20 2021: Arrested by New York, spends night at Rikers

If Mike Pence Were President, How Many More Americans Would Be Alive Today?

April 27, 2020
by Peter Feinman
Are we living in an alternate reality? (amazon.com)

If Mike Pence were President, how many more Americans would be alive today? The “what if” counterfactual has a special niche within historical thinking. It may be best known from science fiction for history scholars also engage in it. The time travel stories are a way to “fix” a wrong which had occurred. The result is a better timeline. In practice, such stories typically end with failure in that the past cannot be changed…or if it is changed, it is for the worse due to the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Still, it can be fun to stretch one’s mind and consider a different future. In the very popular podcast Ben Franklin’s World about early American history, host Liz Covart ends her interviews with guest scholars with what she calls the “fun part” of the show: she asks the interviewee to comment on what if something had happened differently in the topic they are discussing. It is not unusual for the guest to conclude that the change proposed by Covart might have made a difference in the short run, but in long term, the greater momentum of history would have prevailed. I wonder.

During the Covid-19 crisis, BBC has been posing such questions to scholars. The most recent one (April 24) asks an eminent Cambridge classical scholar: “What if Alexander the Great had lived longer?”

In America, two counterfactuals loom large. First, suppose John Kennedy had not been assassinated, what would have happened specifically in Vietnam? Would Kennedy have followed the route Lyndon Johnson took? Less frequently is it asked, “Would the Civil Rights Bill have passed?”

The second one involves Abraham Lincoln. I grew up on the Twilight Zone episode Back There and Superboy’s attempt to prevent the assassination of Lincoln through time travel. Those efforts failed. If Lincoln had lived, sooner or later would the Confederacy have returned to power as in some ways it still is today? After all, after World War II, wasn’t the great hero whose words we keep hearing during the present crisis dumped from office in England?

Assassinations make for better “what ifs” than more general questions. An assassination may fail as it did with Ronald Reagan. So it is easy to contemplate a different scenario with Lincoln and Kennedy. The possibility of failed assassination attempt is very believable. Similarly, it is just as believable with Reagan to imagine a successful one. Very little needs to change for those moments to have ended up differently.

Bigger events are more problematical. For example, during the Covid-19 crisis, The Plot Against America by Philip Roth has been shown as a TV series on HBO. It is about an alternate America where Charles Lindbergh defeats Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election. He then steers America towards a more accommodating relationship with Hitler than Roosevelt pursued. This counterfactual is less convincing. Here the change is not a matter of a bullet being moved a fraction of inch. Instead it requires a change in the American populace whereby such a person could have first become a viable national candidate and then triumph. That change moves the alternate reality to not totally farfetched but not quite believable either. It’s a really big change.

So it would be if the Senate had voted a President out of office and made Mike Pence the new President. Still, given all that has happened since February –– ONLY FEBRUARY? REMEMBER WHEN WHAT JOHN BOLTON WOULD SAY WAS IMPORTANT? THAT WAS IN FEBRUARY….OF THIS YEAR?! FEBRUARY! WAS IT REALLY ONLY FEBRUARY! HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE!?

If only there weren’t a Trumpican majority in the Senate, think how different America would be today.

If only Mitt Romney hadn’t been the one Republican in the Senate, think how different America would be today.

If only the Senate hadn’t gambled that what harm could the ignorant inept immature President do, think how different America would be today.

Did we lose that gamble or would the events have been the same if Mike Pence had become President then?

This time we have hard-based scientific evidence that the situation could have been different. We know that social distancing and lock-downs work. It is possible to examine the dates of when cities in the United States (like New York) and cities throughout the world commenced a lock down. The numbers aren’t hidden figures. They are visible in plain sight. We know that the earlier these actions were taken, the fewer deaths there would have been and would be.  The same applies to the states. It is possible to examine the numbers from the 50 states and observe how many lives would have been saved if a state had acted a day earlier, two days earlier, a week earlier, or two weeks earlier. We know with different national leadership fewer Americans would have died and the economy wouldn’t have collapsed as much.

Would Mike Pence have acted faster to implement what we know to be the successful way to curtail the spread of Covid-19?

Would Mike Pence have ignored all the warnings about the pending crisis?

Would Mike Pence have prevented a cruise ship from docking in order to keep the number of infections down in his country?

Would Mike Pence have claimed there were only 15 infected people and the number would soon be zero?

Would Mike Pence have said everything was under control?

Would Mike Pence have promoted hydroxychloroquine as a “game changer”?

Would Mike Pence have targeted Easter Sunday and then May 1 as dates when the country could be reopened?

Would Mike Pence have asserted his royal powers to do what he wants because the President calls the shots even if he is not responsible because the buck does not stop with him unless you are staying at one of his properties?

Would Mike Pence have conducted disorganized press conferences full of dishonesty and ignorance?

Would Mike Pence have used the press conferences as political rallies where he exults in insulting people?

Would Mike Pence have contradicted the scientific evidence about the possible return of Covid-19 in the fall or next year (assuming it ever disappears in the first place)?

Would Mike Pence have banished scientists who contradicted him or who have better ratings than he has? Ratings for honesty. Ratings for competence. Ratings for trustworthiness.

Would Mike Pence have suggested the ingestion of disinfectants should be investigated?

It is really not so difficult to imagine a different scenario being played out. The evidence is right there before us. We have the numbers. We have the multiple examples from the different cities, states, and countries. When the Unpresidential Library is built, an entire room will be dedicated to the failure of Donny Disinfectant to guide the ship of state through the turbulent wave of infection that washed over our country. Students of all ages and scholars, too, will debate the issue of the price America has paid because Mike Pence did not become President in February 2020. We the People will wonder what if we had had an adult in the White House instead of Donald Trump, the singularly most incompetent, inept, ignorant, and immature president in American history. How many more tens of thousands of Americans might be alive today if only Mike Pence had been President? On Election Day, we will have the opportunity to vote on whether we would have been off if Mike Pence had been President.

 

P.S. The previous post on Post-Trumpatic Stress Disorder: Is There A Cure? needs to be amended. If the Senate had voted to remove the President, would he have complied? Based on his words, he would have brought the matter to HIS Supreme Court to squash this hoax. Therefore additional requirements to prevent a re-occurrence of Trumpatic Stress Disorder are needed.

Congress shall have the authority to enforce subpoenas through the Sergeant at Arms seizing people who choose not to comply.

Congress shall have the authority to hold subpoenaed people in custody during their testimony.

Congress shall have the authority to indict people who are in violation of their subpoena or who fail to cooperate with the investigation.

Congress shall have authority over the Secret Service in cases where the President has been voted out of office by the Senate.