Tuesday, October 6, 2020

Is Trump Dead?

The man who walked out of the hospital and into the White House was not the real Donald Trump.

The first thing I noticed is that photo doesn't match the video, and the tell is the hair. It's neatly cut above while the video (which could have been made anytime) has his trademark tussle.

That was the Globe's front-page photo, and the same video accompanies this photo from their ostensible lead story:

President Trump left Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. He will continue to have 24-hour medical care at the White House.

President Trump left Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. He will continue to have 24-hour medical care at the White House (Evan Vucci/Associated Press)

Once again, the hair is way wrong and his message upon return was he was a changed man, he's seen the light, he's got his mind right, he's been educated, and his three-day stint proves we have great medicines that have been developed and we will have vaccines momentarily. 

All good, right, so get out there and take whatever they got, America!?

Whether it is him or not really becomes immaterial in the grand scheme of things as he plays his part in the spectacle that is COVID on its way to the Great Re$et.

Incredibly, the Globe's full-page, above-the-fold banner, says "Trump stages dramatic return" and if you dig deep enough in the trenches you can probably find the conclusion that Trump is lying about becoming infected given that he is out after the weekend. The fact that the Globe is devoting its entire front page and significant amounts of space to this story increases its chance of being more illusionary imagery and fiction. That's what is the job of pre$$, providing agenda-pushing narratives.

"Trump leaves hospital, minimizing virus and urging Americans ‘not to let it dominate your life’" by Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman New York Times, October 6, 2020

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump returned to the White House on Monday night, staging a defiant, made-for-television moment in which he ripped off his face mask and then urged the nation to put aside the risks of the deadly coronavirus that has swept through his own staff and sent him to the hospital for three days.

Just hours after his press secretary and two more aides tested positive, making the White House the leading coronavirus hot spot in the nation’s capital, Trump again dismissed the pandemic that has killed 210,000 people in the United States, telling Americans “don’t be afraid of it” and saying that he felt “better than 20 years ago.”

I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so for it was only hours after I commented that the press secretary would test positive she allegedly did. I didn't update because I was done for the day.

The words and visuals were only the latest ways Trump has undermined public health experts trying to persuade Americans to take the pandemic seriously. 

Trump emerged from Walter Reed around 6:30 p.m. wearing a dark suit, a blue tie and a white face mask and boarded Marine One for the short flight back to the White House. After landing on the South Lawn, the president climbed the steps to the balcony over the Diplomatic Entrance, where four American flags had been placed, took off his mask, flashed two thumbs-up and saluted twice for the benefit of television cameras on the ground below. 

The face mask was blue, and if they can't get that right..... they must be colorblind (pun intended. They literally see only red).

Beyond that, the entire stagecraft of the event is ringing the BS meter with me.

He then entered the building without immediately putting his mask back on even though staff members were nearby and he could still be contagious, according to medical studies of the virus timeline. At that point, he recorded the video, which was quickly uploaded to Twitter. A separate video, set to triumphal music, showed Marine One’s return and his saluting pose, and was posted online within an hour of his landing.

The president looked stronger than he did Friday when he was first taken to the hospital, but he did appear to breathe heavily once reaching the top of the White House stairs. He has been taking steroids that are known to produce a feeling of energy, even exhilaration, while suppressing pain or discomfort.

After largely laying off Twitter, his favorite form of communication, for three days, Trump woke up Monday morning and began blasting out a string of messages in all capital letters in machine-gun fashion shortly after 6 a.m.

With the election 29 days away and polls showing him trailing former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, Trump appeared eager to be back at the White House to dispel any questions about his capacity. 

It's just raised more.

“We’re going back to work. We’re going to be out front,” Trump said in a video shot immediately after his return and then posted online. “As your leader, I had to do that. I knew there’s danger to it, but I had to do it. I stood out front. I led. Nobody that’s a leader would not do what I did, and I know there’s a risk, there’s a danger, but that’s OK, and now I’m better and maybe I’m immune, I don’t know, but don’t let it dominate your lives.”

It reads like a goodbye, doesn't it? 

He knows he is done, if it was even him. I suspect the video was made before he died.

The president’s dismissal of a virus that in recent weeks has been killing another 700 people each day in the United States set off alarm bells among health specialists who worried that it would send the wrong message to the public.

That is where I stopped reading print. 

It's all "messaging," and the scary seven hundred a day number needs to be downgraded by 94% for a true and accurate number, if the amazing and mythical COVID even exists.

At the White House, which was emptier than usual as staff members stayed away, some aides fretted that Trump was being allowed to leave too soon, and by late Monday afternoon they had not been given guidance about what to expect when he returned. 

There will be some related material at then of this article to provide guidance.

A preliminary plan called for confining Trump to the White House residence until he is no longer contagious and keep him away from the West Wing, but advisers said Trump wanted to demonstrate from the Oval Office that he was back and healthy, and they were unsure if they could prevent that. Trump is eager to show that he is a viable candidate for reelection, and advisers said he still planned to go ahead with the second debate with Biden scheduled for Oct. 15.

Okay, it's the first inkling from the New York Times of being UNFIT for OFFICE! 

The President, whoever he is, fell into the trap with such ease!

Now he is NO LONGER VIABLE before the election.

Trump’s upbeat mood could be a product of his medication. Medical experts said patients on steroids like dexamethasone can experience a sense of well-being and euphoria, in which aches and pains disappear for a time. The steroids can also disrupt sleep and, in some cases, may cause psychiatric effects, leading to feelings of grandiosity and mania.

The 25th Amendment beckons!

The effect of combining several drugs is not well-understood, especially because two of the treatments administered to Trump — remdesivir and a monoclonal antibody cocktail — are still experimental. Giving patients multiple treatments at once can increase the chance of harmful interactions or reduce their effectiveness, doctors said.

Then WHY was it performed on the PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES of all people?

If the reporting is correct, the doctor's violated their oaths and are criminals!

Trump’s risk factors — he is 74, male and overweight — mean that he should be closely watched for at least the first week of his infection because some patients quickly deteriorate several days into their illness.

He's done, as was the print.

Even afflicted by the disease himself, the president who has wrongly predicted that it would simply disappear appeared unchastened as he pressed America to reopen and made no effort to promote precautions. 

He was fool then.

Trump’s statement was meant to cast his illness as an act of courage rather than the predictable outcome of recklessness. He took no responsibility for repeatedly ignoring public health guidelines by holding campaign rallies and White House events without masks or social distancing, like the Supreme Court announcement at the White House last month that may have infected a wide array of his aides and allies. 

They fact that the pre$$ flogs that event while ignoring the debate pretty confirms it happened in Cleveland. It's a tool and tactic of diversion for which the pre$$ is well known.

The regret-nothing approach demonstrated that the president intended no pivot in his handling of the pandemic despite his own medical crisis. The message, in effect, was that Americans should live their lives and not worry about catching the virus because “we have the best medicines in the world,” never mind that he has had access to experimental treatment an d high-quality health care not available to most people.

But a vaccine soon will be!

Trump has long preferred to project strength regardless of the circumstances — what his disaffected niece, Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist, has called “toxic positivity” — and may fear that any concession to the virus would validate widespread criticism of his handling of the pandemic, which could be the defining issue of the election Nov. 3.

Throughout the weekend, the president told the small group of aides with him as well as other advisers and allies he spoke with by telephone that he wanted to leave Walter Reed. He felt trapped in the hospital, the type of setting he typically hates, and pushed to be released Sunday, only to meet resistance from his doctors, according to people familiar with the discussions. Instead, the medical team cleared him to take a brief ride in his armored SUV to wave at the crowd of supporters outside the building.

The culture of the White House under Trump is not to talk about the coronavirus tests. When he received his own initial positive result on a rapid test last Thursday shortly after returning from Bedminster, New Jersey, he wanted it kept quiet, according to people close to him..... 

Like they would talk to the New York Times or tell them that. 

If so, it's Deep State Swamp all around him or NYT FICTION and FAKE NEWS!

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Related:

"Two weeks after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took down a statement about airborne transmission of the coronavirus, the agency on Monday replaced it with language citing new evidence that the virus can spread beyond six feet indoors. “These transmissions occurred within enclosed spaces that had inadequate ventilation,” the new guidance said. “Sometimes the infected person was breathing heavily, for example while singing or exercising.” The incident was only the latest in a series of slow and often puzzling scientific judgments by the C.D.C. and by the World Health Organization since the start of the pandemic. Regarding aerosols — tiny airborne particles — the C.D.C. lagged behind even the W.H.O. In July, 239 experts who study aerosols called on the W.H.O. to acknowledge that the coronavirus can be transmitted by air in any indoor setting and not just after certain medical procedures, as the organization had claimed. Notably, the C.D.C.’s new guidance softens a previous statement referring to the coronavirus as “an airborne virus,” a term that may have required hospitals to treat infected patients in specialized rooms and health care workers to wear N95 masks anywhere in a hospital. The new advice instead says the virus can “sometimes be spread by airborne transmission” and can be spread by both larger droplets and smaller aerosols released when people “cough, sneeze, sing, talk, or breathe,” but while the virus can be airborne under some circumstances, it is not the primary way the virus spreads, the C.D.C. said....."

The criminal CDC and its fear porn never ends, while the WHO is no doubt underestimating the herd immunity that has been gained during this SIMULATED EXERCISE!

Trump, or whoever, is simply playing is role as good cop.

Of course, one must be crazy to think such things:

"Nearly a third of hospitalized Covid-19 patients experienced some type of altered mental function — ranging from confusion to delirium to unresponsiveness — in the largest study to date of neurological symptoms among coronavirus patients in an American hospital system, and patients with altered mental function had significantly worse medical outcomes, according to the study, published on Monday in Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology. The study looked at the records of the first 509 coronavirus patients hospitalized, from March 5 to April 6, at 10 hospitals in the Northwestern Medicine health system in the Chicago area. These patients stayed three times as long in the hospital as patients without altered mental function. After they were discharged, only 32 percent of the patients with altered mental function were able to handle routine daily activities like cooking and paying bills, said Dr. Igor Koralnik, the senior author of the study and chief of neuro-infectious disease and global neurology at Northwestern Medicine. Patients with altered mental function — the medical term is encephalopathy — were also nearly seven times as likely to die as those who did not have that type of problem....."


He has no one to blame but himself:

"More Americans blame the U.S. government instead of foreign nations for the coronavirus crisis in the United States, a rebuke to the Trump administration’s contention that China or other countries are most at fault, a new poll shows. The poll by The University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research was conducted before President Donald Trump tested positive for the virus Friday and was hospitalized. Trump has downplayed the severity and impact of the pandemic in recent months. Although many see plenty of blame to go around and there’s a wide bipartisan divide over who is responsible, 56% of Americans say the U.S. government has substantial responsibility for the situation. That compares with 47% who place that much blame on the governments of other countries and only 39% who say the same about the World Health Organization....."

He foolishly thought he was untouchable because he was president, and he can kiss that Nobel prize goodbye.

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Freyer's above-the-fold front-page feature:

"Trump’s recovery looks likely but not guaranteed, local doctors say" by Felice J. Freyer Globe Staff October 5, 2020

President Trump appears likely to make a full recovery, based on the information provided so far, but COVID-19 has proved unpredictable and the president could still face serious illness, according to local physicians who have reviewed accounts of Trump’s condition.

Their fingers are crossed!

Trump was discharged from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center Monday evening, a few hours after his doctors said he had improved significantly, hadn’t had a fever in 72 hours, and had maintained a high blood-oxygen level. Based on the timing of his positive test, he was probably still infectious as he removed his mask before entering the White House.

“I expect they would only be discharging him if they were certain he was doing OK,” said Dr. Nicholas A. Smyrnios, medical director of the medical intensive care units at UMass Memorial Medical Center, but some patients who seem to be recovering will suddenly deteriorate a week or 10 days after infection, Smyrnios said. “There is a wide range for this disease, even for someone who is doing pretty well. It’s still early.”

In addition to getting better or getting sicker, doctors noted, there’s a third possibility: Some COVID-19 patients have lingering symptoms, including fatigue and brain fog.

They have him cornered. The Trump presidency is over.

Dr. Nicholas S. Hill, chief of the Pulmonary Critical Care and Sleep Division at Tufts Medical Center, said Trump might be well enough to resume campaigning in a week or so; still, Hill also cautioned, “I don’t think anyone can say definitively he’s out of the woods. The most likely possibility is that he will continue to improve and stay improved, but there is a chance that he could take a turn for the worse.”

Dr. Mitchell Levy, medical director of the medical intensive care unit at Rhode Island Hospital in Providence, said he was troubled by the sense that he doesn’t know the truth about the president’s condition. 

“Yes, it sounds good, and at the same time we know that people who are going to do worse can often take up to 10 to 14 days before they deteriorate. I don’t think anybody, including his physician, would be able to guarantee that he isn’t going to get sicker.”

Dr. David Hamer, an infectious diseases physician at Boston Medical Center and a professor of global health and medicine at Boston University School of Medicine, expressed surprise that “they’re letting him go that quickly. They must have a lot of comfort with his vital signs, or they’re forced to do this for political reasons.”

Trump’s doctors have been less than transparent, declining to say when he had his last negative test or what scans of his lungs revealed, and aspects of his treatment remain puzzling. Although the president is believed to be in the early stages of COVID-19, doctors have been providing treatments usually reserved for very sick people far advanced in their illness.

In particular, dexamethasone, a steroid, is typically given to people taking supplemental oxygen or on a ventilator, Smyrnios said. In studies, patients who didn’t need oxygen did not derive any benefit from the drug. And there’s concern that, if given too early the course of illness, dexamethasone could make matters worse by suppressing the body’s ability to fight off the virus.

He can't breathe?

The president is also taking remdesivir, an antiviral shown to reduce the duration of illness in hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

Additionally, before he was hospitalized, the president took a single dose of an experimental drug, a mixture of two cloned antibodies, whose effectiveness is unknown.

Trump’s doctor, Sean Conley, said the president hadn’t taken any fever-reducing medications like ibuprofen or Tylenol in the past 72 hours, but dexamethasone also has that effect, and could explain the absence of fever, Hill said.

Steroids also affect the mind, BU’s Hamer noted. Trump’s tweet asserting he feels better than he has in 20 years “may be basically a steroid effect, a feeling of grandiosity, a feeling of being super powerful, which is the last thing he needs.”

Wait until he starts RAGING!

Similarly, Hamer said, the decision to drive around waving to supporters on Sunday, which put Secret Service members in the car at risk of infection, raises the question whether he’s “having some sort of neuropsychological behavior effect” from the steroid.

“He’s basically endangering anyone that he’s close to,” Hamer said. Someone in Trump’s condition normally is isolated in the hospital room and approached only by people wearing gowns, double gloves, N95 masks, and eye protection, he said. 

The President of the United States has now been weaponized and must be kept completely isolated!

Dr. Peter B. Bach, a pulmonary and ICU physician based in New York, said in a tweet that steroids might be giving the president a false sense of his current health.

“I don’t know POTUS condition, but in light of him tweeting that he feels the best he has in 20 years, it is worth noting that when we give high dose corticosteroids like dexamethasone, we warn patients to not be misled about [where] they are in recovery,” tweeted Bach, who’s also a health outcomes researcher at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Dr. Joshua Barocas, an infectious disease physician at Boston Medical Center, raised concerns on Twitter about Trump’s failure to promise that he would isolate himself at the White House. 

What is with all the Jewi$h doctors?

Boston psychiatrist Nicole Christain-Brathwaite joined those who were disturbed by Trump’s advice not to fear COVID.

“Instead of saying Covid ‘isn’t that bad’ or not to be afraid, why not say how fortunate you were to have access to exceptional tx [treatment] that many Americans do not? Or express your sympathy for those who lost their lives or have lasting medical problems? Show some concern for others!,” she wrote.....

He did, saying vaccines will be available momentarily even though they are not needed!

I wonder what diagnosis the psychiatrist would have given FDR regarding fear.

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Below the Globe belt, 'er, fold

"President Trump paraded his ignorance Sunday" by Yvonne Abraham Globe Columnist, October 5, 2020

Behold, the deadly incompetence of the president.

Feast your eyes on his lethal ignorance, his fatal self-absorption, his terminal dishonesty, his life-threatening hunger for adoration.

There it was, in a victorious tweet Monday afternoon, claiming COVID is no big deal.

There it was, all of it, in that armored Chevy Suburban rolling by mostly unmasked MAGA cultists outside Walter Reed Medical Center on Sunday evening. In the back, strung out and in desperate need of a hit from his rabid fans to feel whole, was a president more sick than he would admit, with a disease he is loath to admit exists.

There he was masked, and unmasked, a living testament to his own lies, but pretending still: “Pay no attention to the oxygen treatments and steroids behind the curtain. See how strong I am, even now?”

In the car with him were Secret Service agents who, like so many Americans, had no choice but to be exposed to the coronavirus the president now carries. It’s their job to take a bullet for him. Must they also risk their lives when he’s the one who puts them in danger?

Why should he care about the Secret Service when he views Americans who died in war as suckers and losers? 

He never said that, but whatever.

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I'm a sucker for reading that far, and upon the turn-in one finds this:

President Trump left Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Monday.

President Trump left Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Monday (Evan Vucci/Associated Press) 

He walked out funny, tapping rail on each flight, and the clincher for me was the Evan Vucci photo from last Thursday of Trump coming off the plane in Bedminster that I found in the political notebook on page A8 :

President Donald Trump arrives at Morristown Municipal Airport to attend a fundraiser at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2020, in Morristown, N.J. Photo: Evan Vucci, AP / Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

Photo: Evan Vucci, AP

Unless they gave him a royal makeover at Walter Reed, that is not the same guy who came out and went into the White House, where he is now imprisoned.

Also of note:

Trump administration revokes the visa of a Ukrainian political fixer tied to Giuliani

Giuliani was on Bream's show last night hacking away like a mofo.

Chris Wallace slams Trump’s family for refusing masks at debate

Part of this ruse, and Trump has LOST FOX (except for Tucker, who nailed it last night, but he still buys into the narrative of COVID).

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Back to the front page and the lower-left corner item:

"While receiving the best health care, Trump downplayed the risk of COVID-19" by David Abel Globe Staff, October 5, 2020

As president, Donald Trump has enjoyed access to the best taxpayer-funded health care has to offer.

The implication being he is a hypocrite, and I don't know anyone on this earth who "enjoys" sickness so f**k off, Globe.

With 210,000 Americans dead and nearly 7.5 million others infected by the virus — many of whom could hardly imagine the level of care the president has received — Trump’s latest decision to downplay the threat of the virus struck many as shameless and irresponsible, putting concerns for his political image above public health

They just indicted Obamacare without realizing it.

“Don’t be afraid of Covid,” Trump urged on Twitter as he announced he was leaving Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Monday. “Don’t let it dominate your life.”

Feels like a goodbye.

“We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge," he added. "I feel better than I did 20 years ago!”

Hmmm.

Arthur Caplan, director of medical ethics at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, called Trump’s defiant tweet “a horrendously terrible message.”

“This is not what the public needs to hear,” he said. “That might be what you say if you wanted to be reelected, and you were vulnerable because of mismanaging the pandemic.”

This whole $cam is about the MESSAGING! 

Same with Iraq in 2003, and it's the same with all the agenda-pushing garbage and propaganda I am reading every day!

He and others lambasted Trump for continuing to minimize the dangers of the virus and for contributing to those risks by holding large rallies with supporters packed together, many without masks. Few of those supporters would have the same level of care to combat the virus.

He and others have been completely discredited on that due to the obvious double standards.

“Trump remains indifferent to the huge gaps that the American people face in getting health care, while he’s getting premiere, boutique health care,” Caplan said.

It's government care so let's not make it better than it is, doc.

He noted the irony of a president — one who has decried socialism and paid next to no taxes for years — benefiting from government-provided health care.

“If this experience hasn’t taught him anything — after the virus not only infected him but his loved ones, workforce, and donors — he’s unteachable,” Caplan said. 

If this doesn't put his mind right, nothing will, and that is one hell of a bedside manner he has there.

Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and director of its Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, also took umbrage at Trump’s message.

“This tweet continues a pattern of statements and behaviors by the president and the political members of his administration that demonstrate and encourage irresponsibility in the midst of a public health emergency,” he said.

“No one wants COVID to dominate our lives, but the way to bring it under control is to take it seriously and work much harder than the president did to protect ourselves, and ensure that if we become infected, we avoid transmitting to others," he added.

Lipsitch blamed Trump for consistently encouraging behavior that “prolongs the epidemic, leads to more cases and deaths, and hobbles our economy and social lives even more as a result.”

He noted that Trump pressed his security detail on Sunday to take him on a short drive from the hospital to greet his supporters, putting them at risk. “He deliberately ignores public health advice," he said.

As if creeps like him want this to end.

William Hanage, an associate professor of epidemiology also at the T.H. Chan School, said that Trump has not fully recovered from the virus, despite his doctors' upbeat reports and his return to the White House. After abating, COVID-19 can return with a vengeance.

“This remains a virus capable of causing very serious disease,” he said.

Of course, the death rates are tumbling and hospitalizations nearly non-existent now as the whole thing has become about cases based on the flawed and useless PCR tests. 

How disingenuous of the "doctor."

Trump, presumably still contagious, returned to a White House where several aides have already contracted the virus, and others have been exposed.

Did it get Kushner?

Like other medical professionals, he offered a broader critique of the Trump administration’s often contradictory response to the virus: “A coherent national pandemic management plan would help stop it dominating our lives.”

These guys want it to dominate our lives; that is what has been their entire function these last eight months.

Dr. Nicholas S. Hill, chief of the Pulmonary Critical Care and Sleep Division at Tufts Medical Center, said Trump’s message undercut public health advice.

“We don’t want people to take this disease lightly,” he said. “It’s true we’ve made some advances. It’s not like we can turn everyone around, like he has apparently turned around. We still need to be wary.”

Stay afraid, stay very afraid, even though the survival rate is around 99.99%, with 95% of those Trump's age recovering. 

Don't let it dominate you, though, just do what we say!

At UMass Memorial Medical Center, where many COVID-19 patients have been treated, Dr. Nicholas A. Smyrnios said no one should doubt the dangers of the disease.

“Everybody should have respect for COVID,” said Smyrnios, medical director of the medical intensive care units. “We didn’t take it seriously at the beginning. That’s why we’re having such big problems.”

That's over-the-top, folks, and shit like that exposes the entirety of the fraud.

Gotta respect the virus!

Many of those who have lost loved ones to the virus were similarly outraged by what the president wrote.

Laurie Beaudette lost her father, Jim Mandeville, to the virus in April.

She was galled to see Trump downplaying the seriousness of the pandemic, calling his comments offensive to the thousands of families whose relatives have died.

“He’s not understanding the real suffering people have gone through,” she said.

Her father died in a devastating outbreak at the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home, a state-run facility where he lived for 16 years.

Then your beef is with Baker, and how many co-morbidities did he have?

“It was so awful, so horrific,” she said. “[Trump] has no clue how blessed he is … He’s trying to act tough, and he’s not thinking about the rest of the country.”

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Related (from page B1):

"He listened to Trump and didn’t wear a mask. He died just days before the president announced his COVID-19 diagnosis" by Janelle Nanos Globe Staff, October 5, 2020

Oh boy, her workload keeps getting worse.

Stephanie Landaverde did everything right. The 24-year-old bartender took all the precautions she could as the pandemic began its spread through Massachusetts. She wore a mask, kept to a small circle of family members, and after restaurants reopened, decided not to return to work in order to protect her vulnerable parents and grandparents, who were all immunocompromised, but her 81-year-old grandfather, Juan Ciprian, was less cautious. He was a Trump supporter and refused to wear a mask, parroting the president’s statements about the virus not being a concern.

He died last week of COVID-19. His family received his ashes the day after Trump announced his diagnosis.

“It was horrible,” she said. “We found out that Trump tested positive the day before my grandfather was cremated. It brought some anger into our hearts.”

Disgusting.

At the outset of the pandemic, Landaverde’s tight-knit Guatemalan family in Framingham came up with a plan to stay safe. Landaverde would not return to work so as to avoid close contact with others, and her brother and uncle, who worked in manufacturing and at UPS, respectively, would keep away from vulnerable family members while they continued their essential jobs.

“I chose not to work in order to keep them safe, the thought of losing any of them seemed — it just wasn’t an option for me. We’re very family-oriented, and are traditional Latinos in that sense. My parents and grandparents require a lot of care, and I wanted to be available to them at any moment in case they did need me,” she said. “Between my parents and my aunt and me, we were trying to stay in a bubble. We were all very rigorous about it.”

All I can say is don't let it dominate your life, even as it dominates my pre$$.

This is coming from the same biased quarters and sources that have proven to be unbelievable or  unreliable.

Her grandfather didn’t share their concerns. “He was the only one that wasn’t complying. He was hearing all these conspiracy theories, and saying Trump said this or that,” she said. "He didn’t believe it was a real thing.”

Like I just said, this is more agenda-pushing garbage if not outright fiction.

It's a distortion of the man's death with willing family members who hate Trump going along.

Bravo!

Ciprian was a strong man who played the tuba in a marching band in Guatemala, and was a music teacher for much of his life. He wrote music well into old age, took walks every day, and didn’t have any ailments, said his daughter Reina Jeter. “He had a lot to live for and he was healthy,” but he began showing symptoms of COVID-19 on Sept. 20, and was hospitalized on the 23rd. He died six days later. His wife also contracted the disease, and after being hospitalized was transferred to a rehabilitation home where she remains. 

Better get her out of there if past history is any indication.

Landaverde’s grandparents live with her parents, and soon they too were diagnosed with COVID-19. Landaverde was beside herself: Her father has cancer, and her mother is a diabetic, and both were admitted to Framingham Union Hospital as their symptoms progressed.

With her grandfather’s health deteriorating, Landaverde’s mother began to decline as well. After learning of her father’s death, and without being able to say goodbye, her vitals dropped, and she was admitted to the ICU. “They had to mourn him while fighting COVID,” she said.

Eventually, she said, both her parents began to improve. Her father was released from the hospital and her mother was upgraded from the ICU, though she remains hospitalized.

Landaverde sent a message to the Globe from her mother, Maria Landaverde, who said hospital workers are “putting their lives in danger to save us.”

“We, all the people who have been affected by COVID-19, lost their jobs, got sick, or even died from it, deserve to be heard,” Maria Landaverde said. “My heart is with President Trump and wish him the best but the country needs him to stop playing politics and remember we are people.”

This so blatant and disgusting it makes one want to vomit.

All told, seven of Stephanie Landaverde’s family members have contracted the virus in the past two weeks, including an aunt and her two children. They are now recovering at home. The family suspects that her grandfather introduced the virus into their midst, as he was the first to show symptoms.

So when Landaverde’s family learned of the president’s diagnosis soon after losing Ciprian, it only devastated them further. She said while the family is still mourning and still recovering, they’re also angry and feeling worried about how Trump will use his own diagnosis to suit his message.

Not worried about the pre$$ using all this to suit their message, though!

“We don’t wish this upon anyone, nobody deserves to go through this, to feel so helpless,” she said. She wished the president a speedy recovery, but said she hopes that contracting the virus will teach him how dangerous it is.

The $hit-shoveling agenda never stops.

“It only takes one little mistake right? And that’s all it took for my grandfather,” she said.

On Monday afternoon, Trump did little to show that he’d changed his mind: “Don’t be afraid of Covid,” he tweeted. “Don’t let it dominate your life.”

Landaverde’s grandfather wasn’t there to hear it.

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With all due respect, the item feels like a piece of Cullen.

The Globe laments that Trump’s recklessness with COVID has stalled government at a time of dire public need, but they are also ecstatic that Trump's Court Pick has now been delayed even if his risky behavior imperils others.

I'm told he doesn't deserve your prayers, folks. 

That's how hateful the Globe has become.

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Getting down to business:

Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, speaking in Wilmington, Del., in September. Some analysts see a Biden victory in November boosting certain segments of the stock market.

Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, speaking in Wilmington, Del., in September. Some analysts see a Biden victory in November boosting certain segments of the stock market (Michelle V. Agins/NYT).

"JPMorgan says a Biden victory could mark a stock market shift" by Ksenia Galouchko Bloomberg, October 5, 2020

A victory of Democratic nominee Joe Biden in the presidential election could herald the start of a rotation toward parts of the equity market that have been left behind by the rally, according to strategists at JPMorgan Chase & Co.

“We need to get through US elections event-risk first, but there could be a broadening in styles and in regional performances thereafter,” said JPMorgan strategists led by Mislav Matejka in a note on Monday. “A potential Biden victory should not be seen as a negative for markets, and could in fact lead to an internal rotation.”

So "internal rotation" is the Great Re$et, folks, and what the banker is saying is that Trump is an election risk after the Times implied he was unviable.

The FIX is IN, folks!

The analysts, who have for months preferred growth, defensives, and US stocks, say that they’re “warming” to a possible switch of market leadership after the vote, with Biden holding a comfortable lead in national polls over President Trump a month before Election Day. 

The strategists are weighing in on the dilemma that’s keeping many investors up at night after the Nasdaq 100 in September had its worst drop since March as mega-cap technology stocks sold off. The 50 percent rally in US equities over the past six months and frothy valuations in the leaders of the rebound and winners of lockdowns are pushing such investors as Eaton Vance and BlackRock Inc. to prefer European stocks instead, and JPMorgan isn’t alone in its view. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. strategists including Sharon Bell and Peter Oppenheimer on Friday said that a Democratic clean sweep would favor European cyclicals, value, China-exposed stocks and renewables.

Trump is correct then; a Biden win WILL destroy America!

Just FOLLOW the MONEY!

Related: "European stocks rose Monday on optimism over President Trump’s health amid a flurry of merger and acquisition activity. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index closed up 0.8 percent, completing a third day of gains. Telecoms rallied after Vodafone Group Plc said it received consent from its lenders concerning the merger of Indus Towers Ltd. and Bharti Infratel Ltd. Monday’s gain followed the Stoxx 600′s biggest weekly rise since early August, despite the uncertainty spurred by Trump’s diagnosis. Investors are waiting for good news on US virus relief, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi optimistic on Friday, and Trump tweeting from hospital at the weekend that a deal needs to get done. In individual stocks, Nexi SpA rose 3.1 percent after news that it’s acquiring SIA SpA in an all-share deal that will create one of Europe’s biggest payment providers. German fertilizer company K+S AG jumped 14 percent after a report saying it’s in advanced talks to sell its Morton Salt unit. Weir Group Plc surged 16 percent after agreeing to sell its oil & gas division to Caterpillar Inc. Meanwhile, Cineworld Group Plc slumped 36 percent after the group said it will suspend operations at all its US and UK theaters due to the pandemic."

The deal will be done after the election that Trump has lost, and 

In their Monday note, JPMorgan analysts made no comment on President Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis and its implications. 

As if he will ALREADY BE GONE!

Won't be long now, less than a month.

Matejka’s team has favored long positions in such defensive and growth sectors as healthcare, tech, staples and utilities at the expense of financials, consumer discretionary and energy, but is now considering a change after the election. In addition to increased political clarity after the Nov. 3 vote, the strategists cite such factors as an increasingly reflationary environment, possible additional stimulus and positive news on the COVID-19 front. 

Positive news on COVID? 

Where, because hit sure as hell isn't to be found in the Globe!

“If Biden wins, the dollar could be potentially lower and bond yields that have been stuck completely in a range for the last six months — and that was one big impediment to the rotation — the bond yields could start to grind higher,” Matejka said in a Bloomberg TV interview with Jonathan Ferro. “You’ll have some potential further fiscal stimulus, potentially also some trade uncertainty would be reduced, and that would be a good enough starting point for these extreme markets to start to broaden out.”

He added that a pick-up in bond yields can help banking stocks, in addition to the European market in light of its underperformance versus the United States.

OMFG!

While many market participants are fretting over uncertainty and volatility that could result from a contested election, JPMorgan said the chances of a clear election result are rising. Biden’s possible victory is often associated with concerns over higher corporate taxes, however, the strategists say that in light of the economic slowdown he’s likely to instead prioritize business recovery and jobs growth.

Related:

"When Joe Biden released economic recommendations two months ago, they included a few ideas that worried some powerful bankers: allowing banking at the post office, for example, and having the Federal Reserve guarantee all Americans a bank account, but in private calls with Wall Street leaders, the Biden campaign made it clear those proposals would not be central to Biden’s agenda. “They basically said, ‘Listen, this is just an exercise to keep the Warren people happy, and don’t read too much into it,’ ” said one investment banker, referring to liberal supporters of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). The banker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks, said that message was conveyed on multiple calls. This reluctance to be pinned down on policy details is central to Biden’s campaign, which has focused on a pledge to “restore the soul of the nation” rather than any particular legislative holy grail. While Biden has issued a raft of proposals, he’s often taken an all-things-to-all-people approach, sometimes making strong public declarations while relying on aides to soothe critics behind the scenes....."

I'll bet that applies to the "Squad," too, and the lefti$m is only for show and ONCE AGAIN TAKEN for GRANTED!

Biden's campaign is also saying police forces should be fixed, not abolished.

“A potential Biden victory is unlikely to deliver significant tax increases, with these likely to be watered down, and additionally there could be a greater stimulus focus and consumer support,” JPMorgan strategists, which also include Prabhav Bhadani and Nitya Saldanha.

Matejka added in the Bloomberg TV interview that Biden had made his tax-hike proposals “in a very different world without the virus” and will be careful not to hurt the nascent recovery.....

Looks like the election has already been decided!

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Related:

"Wall Street rallied Monday as hopes for economic aid from Washington helped it recover all its knee-jerk losses after learning President Donald Trump tested positive for the coronavirus. The S&P 500 gained 1.8%, with nine out of 10 stocks on the index. Energy producers and tech companies led the way. Oil reserves in the Treasury and abroad climbed after Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, both of whom noted the importance over the weekend of additional support for the economy. The market rally intensified after Trump tweeted in the afternoon that he would leave the hospital. A report on Monday said that growth for the country’s service industries was stronger than economists had expected last month. This is an encouraging piece of data, but it follows a string of mixed reports, which have slowed some areas of Congress as the final round of Congress is over. Regineron’s shares rose 7.1% after Trump received an experimental drug from the company that supplies antibodies to help the immune system fight the virus. Trump also began a five-day course of Remedisvir, a Gilead Sciences drug currently used for moderate and critically ill patients, on Friday. Drugs work in different ways – antibodies help the immune system rid the body of the virus, and remedisvir allows the virus’s ability to multiply....." 

Trump is somehow connected to those firms.

Meanwhile, the FDA proposed a ‘modest’ change to a controversial rule for policing off-label marketing, "although the change amounts to a tweak, the proposed rule should satisfy drug makers, according to Jeffrey Shapiro, a director at Hayman Phelps & McNamara, a law firm that specializes in FDA regulatory matters, that provides much needed clarity and avoids further litigation."

The pharmaceutical companies not only have a vise grip on the president, they have one over the whole country save for its people.

"The lift follows through on a comeback that helped markets cut their losses on Friday, after Trump’s condition became publicized. Stocks initially tumbled as the jolt of uncertainty raised concerns that a White House victory for Democrat Joe Biden would mean higher taxes and tighter regulations for companies, which could drag down their profits, but analysts said a Democratic sweep of the election could also raise the probability of a big government support plan for the economy, something that investors have been clamoring for since jobless benefits and other stimulus Congress approved in March expired. The market’s moves on Monday and late Friday suggest investors are anticipating either a large stimulus effort or the increased likelihood of a “blue wave,” said Yousef Abbasi, global market strategist at StoneX. \

It's a FAIT ACCOMPLI! 

 Stocks got an immediate lift on Friday afternoon after Pelosi told airline officials to stop tens of thousands of workers’ furloughs because aid to the industry was “imminent”, either as a stand-alone effort or part of a broader rescue package. A stand-alone bill for the airlines failed to move into the House on Friday, but hopes remain for a major effort. Over the weekend, Trump tweeted to the hospital that the country wants more economic stimulus is needed. “Work together and get it done,” he said on Saturday. A day later, Pelosi said both sides were making progress, but they still had not reached a breakthrough. “It just depends on whether they understand what we need to do to crush the virus,” she said in an interview on CBS. The loser was DraftKings, which fell 5.1%. It and some of its current investors are selling 32 million shares of the company’s stock after it nearly closed in 2020......"

The "relief" bill that Wall Street craves will be passed AFTER the formality of "election," and look whose bets paid off as they just got out just in time:

"DraftKings, Patriots’ Kraft cash in on betting-fueled surge" by Bailey Lipschultz Bloomberg, October 5, 2020

DraftKings Inc. and some early investors, including New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, are taking advantage of the stock’s 264 percent surge from an April debut to sell a combined 32 million shares.

The $hort-$elling not only looks like insider trading, reminiscent of Bezos and the senators selling their stock before COVID hit, and why would they be bailing on what can only be a going concern -- unless they know something about the future of sports that we do not?

The offering, underwritten by Credit Suisse Securities LLC and Goldman Sachs Group, will include 16 million shares sold by DraftKings while the other half are being offered by some investors, the online gaming company said in a statement. Boston-based DraftKings said its proceeds from the offering will be used for general corporate purposes.

DraftKings shares closed at a record high $63.78 on Friday, up more than 260 percent since April and 56 percent above the price when 40 million shares were offered at $40 each in June. The stock fell 5.1 percent Monday to close at $60.55 after news of the latest planned share sales. 

Why would you sell?

Shalom Meckenzie, a billionaire Israeli executive who merged his company with DraftKings in April, led investors by registering to sell 8.5 million shares. Meckenzie will still be among DraftKings’s largest shareholders despite dumping more than $500 million in stock. Raine Capital LLC and Robert Kraft were among others who filed to sell. 

HOLY $HIT! 

Something wicked this way comes to the sports world, and not declining ratings due to the product.

There’s been no shortage of enthusiasm for DraftKings shares in the midst of bubbling excitement for the broader online sports betting industry in the United States as the pandemic depresses activity at traditional casinos. Evercore ISI estimated last month that DraftKings’ addressable market would quadruple by the start of the 2022 National Football League season.

So why would you sell?

The company’s offerings have prompted sell-side analysts to leapfrog one another, slapping on fresh price targets that are each higher than the one before. DraftKings has made waves by spending millions on partnerships with Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN network as well as with a range of professional sports teams, including the New York Giants and Chicago Cubs.

DraftKings and Flutter Entertainment PLC’s FanDuel dominate the US online sports gaming industry, but Penn National Gaming Inc.’s minority-owned Barstool Sports and its army of followers have been gunning to shake up the industry.

--more--"

Btw, I fell asleep during the football game. It's boring without a crowd, and what I noticed most were the $ponsors. The ads were mostly for Amazon and Microsoft, and when I clicked over to The Office for some relief Amazon was there, too, because Amazon Web Services are picking up the slack when it comes to “preferred cloud providers.”

Also see:

"Bristol-Myers Squibb will buy MyoKardia for $13.1 billion in cash in a deal to expand its offering of heart drugs. Bristol-Myers will pay $225 a share, according to a statement Monday from the companies, a premium of 61 percent over the stock’s Friday closing price. With the purchase, Bristol-Myers gets access to MyoKardia’s lead product mavacamten, an experimental drug that treats obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Expanding Bristol-Myers’s lineup of heart drugs would help the maker of Opdivo for cancer diversify beyond oncology, an area where much of the industry has focused in recent years. An application for approval of mavacamten is expected to be submitted in the first quarter of next year, according to the statement. Bristol-Myers plans to explore other uses for the drug and to develop additional experimental compounds from MyoKardia. Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is a chronic condition in which the heart muscle becomes abnormally thick, making it harder for the organ to pump blood. It’s estimated to affect about one in 500 people, according to the statement. Bristol-Myers said it plans to finance the acquisition with a combination of cash and debt."

Looks like they won their bet in a heart-$topper, 'eh?

"Walmart Inc. must disclose some internal files related to alleged mishandling of opioid painkillers sold through the company’s in-store pharmacies, after a judge ruled in favor of investors seeking to hold directors liable for the company’s lack of oversight. Two pension funds have shown they “quite clearly have a credible basis” to probe whether board members wrongfully turned a blind eye to excessively large sales of the highly addictive medicines, Delaware Chancery Judge Travis Laster ruled Monday. States and local governments suing companies over the US opioid epidemic named Bentonville, Ark.-based Walmart as a defendant in the cases. The world’s largest retailer faces a November trial in Cleveland in which the municipalities will seek billions in damages for the chain’s alleged failure to recognize “red flags” about heavily repeated sales of the painkillers."

Trust them on the vaccines, though, when all you need is sunlight:

"America’s residential-solar industry is on the verge of a record-breaking year after overcoming a bruising due to the coronavirus pandemic....."

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That returns us to the lower-right corner of the front page and the real candidates running for president:

"Vice presidential debates don’t tend to matter much. Then there’s Pence vs. Harris" by Jazmine Ulloa Globe Staff, October 5, 2020

WASHINGTON — Even before President Trump’s hospitalization, Vice President Mike Pence, 61, and California Senator Kamala Harris, 55, were headed into their showdown, tasked with providing a clearer picture of their ticket’s vision for leadership philosophy, governing approach, and policy stances after Trump’s aggressive interruptions turned last week’s first presidential debate chaotic. That cut into time for substantive discussion and left many viewers demoralized.

Now Trump’s battle with coronavirus has pushed the pandemic — which has killed more than 210,000 people — and the government’s response to contain the outbreak to the forefront of Americans' minds. It also creates new challenges for the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates after concerns have been raised that Trump might have been contagious at last Tuesday’s debate and members of his family violated rules by refusing to wear masks as they watched from the audience. 

Then he was infected at the debate and not in the Rose Garden!

Utah is one of the country’s coronavirus hot spots, with the three-day moving average of daily confirmed cases nearly tripling since early September to its highest level in the state since the pandemic began, according to Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Utah, where the debate will be held, is in the midst of what officials called a two-week “circuit breaker” of online-only classes to reduce case counts and accommodate the extra security for the event.

It's all over cases, cases, cases based on a FLAWED TEST!

Trump’s diagnosis put added pressure on both candidates to reassure the nation, as well as on organizers to ensure the safety of all of those involved. The commission had planned for Pence and Harris to be seated 7 feet apart at the debate but now will space them 12 feet, 3 inches apart. Trump and Biden stood more than 12 feet apart at their debate last week in Cleveland. There also will be plexiglas dividers added at the vice presidential debate.

What a COINCIDENCE, and what a mind-f**k!

“It’s kind of like opening school — there is is no completely right answer,” Tammy Vigil, an assistant professor of communications at Boston University, said of how to safely hold the debate during a pandemic. “There is no playbook for this one.”

PFFFFFT!

For Pence, who is often cast as a loyal Trump enabler, Wednesday night could provide the chance to separate and underscore his own role in federal government’s efforts to contain the outbreak and restore confidence in the response, political analysts said, though he will also be called upon to answer for the slow response that contributed to millions of cases.

For Harris, it will be a chance to provide a stark contrast in leadership and assure voters that she would be ready to do the job if necessary.

“People say, ‘The vice president is always one heartbeat away from the presidency,’ and certainly that is as on top of people’s minds this year as it has ever been,” said Lauren Baer, a Democratic strategist and former State Department official who worked on the early stages of the Ebola outbreak under the Obama administration. “You will see a real study in contrasts.”

Well, at least you know which side of the debate the Globe is on.

Vice presidential nominees have historically been considered campaign “attack dogs,” willing to unleash the most aggressive criticism of their opponents so the candidates at the top of the ticket can maintain decorum. Vice presidential debates, which only began in 1976, traditionally don’t draw nearly as many viewers as the presidential debates, but traditions have been upended this year with Trump in the White House, particularly after last week’s volatile presidential debate, experts said.

The ratings for the debate last week were down substantially from four years ago, and I suspect the same here. The people of this country are sick and tired of the entire ruling class and their pap spew.

“They’re might be more pressure on Pence and Harris to conduct themselves in a more presidential manner,” Dan Schnur, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communications who was communications director for Senator John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign. “The attacks might not be as harsh or as personal as they might have been otherwise.”

Why is every expert or analyst the Globe turns to a you-know-joo?

Historians could draw few, if any, historical precedent to the Pence-Harris matchup. Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt both faced major health crises during their tenures, but they mostly kept those out of the public eye, and they did not occur during an election year.

As just the third woman and the only Black woman to be a major party vice presidential nominee, Harris drew comparisons to one of the participants in the most closely watch vice presidential debate in history: the 2008 matchup between Biden, who was Barack Obama’s running mate, and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who McCain had surprisingly selected for his ticket. The 69.9 million TV viewers were more than any of the three of the presidential debates that year because Palin was not well-known and there were doubts she had the experience to do the job, historians said.

That is not the case with Harris, who has been vetted on the national stage as a presidential primary candidate. Some analysts see stronger parallels to the 2004 vice presidential debate between incumbent Dick Cheney and the younger North Carolina Senator John Edwards, but historians and political analysts warned against setting any expectations — especially in an election year as unconventional as 2020.

“Back then, there was talk that Edwards was going to mop the floor with Dick Cheney, and that just didn’t happen,” said Rebecca Katz, a Democratic strategist who worked for Edwards when he ran against eventual 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry in that year’s primary. “There is just always other factors.”

I would like to remind everyone that it was the National Enquirer that got the Edwards affair and love child story months before the ma$$ media, and how that reflects not only on the media but Kerry's judgement.

Still, both will be formidable opponents. Pence probably will try to put Harris on the defensive with attacks on her record as a prosecutor, analysts said.

“A former radio host, Pence has his cadence and his timing down,” Michigan Republican consultant Dennis Darnoi said. “He can be aggressive without being obnoxious.”

With the president largely sidelined by COVID-19, Pence also will likely have to address the Republican Party’s views on race after Trump’s refusal to outright disavow white supremacy during the last debate. 

Why does Pence have to say anything about that?

“Given what was seen as a widely poor performance by President Trump during the first presidential debate, this might be a chance for the Republican Party to hit reset and show a gentler face,” said Karthick Ramakrishnan, a professor of public policy at University of California Riverside, but Harris, who has gained national prominence as a senator for her grilling of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Trump officials, is likely to hold her own, analysts said. 

Like a GREAT RE$ET, huh?

She will likely have to continue to thread the needle between her appeals to progressive and moderate voters. Republicans at times have sought to paint her as too centrist and too radical, but LaTosha Brown, cofounder of the Black Lives Matter Fund, said Harris should pitch herself as a transformative leader who listens to voters and has evolved beyond some of her past policy positions.

“If she does that, it is game over,” she said.

Once they win, it will be game over for you, or have you not been paying attention?

--more--"

Looks like Pence is to be the patsy for the vote fraud before a long cold winter with power outages and food shortages turns America into a hellhole no matter who is president. 

The music has stopped and the party is literally over, and the FEMA extermination camps, 'er temporary shelters await us. The trains and buses are ready to go.