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COVID-19 coronavirus

Sunday 7th of December 2025

COVID-19 coronavirus All I want them to do — very simple — I want them to be appreciative. Donald Trump, making it clear that governors who praise his administration's response to the COVID-19 coronavirus will receive what they ask for and those who don't, won't © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus … almost three hundred thousand Americans had died by Election Day as a direct result of Donald's willfully malicious inaction. But for him, we would not have become  so divided. But for him, a simple lifesaving maneuver like wearing a mask would not have become politicized. But for him, we would not have suffered a mass casualty event in this country every day, for month after month after month. Mary Trump, The Reckoning  © 2021 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus America's abdication of leadership is an act of self harm, which threatens to make it an object of mockery. There are no do-overs on pandemics. Mr Trump's response to the coronavirus is worse than a crime. It is a mistake. Edward Luce, Financial Times, March 26, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus An internet joke proposed that the only way to find out whether you had the virus was to sneeze in a rich person’s face. George Packer, The Atlantic, June 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus Are you fucking kidding me?? Abigail Disney, 12:11 AM - Mar 16, 2020, granddaughter of Walt Disney, responding to a Twitter post including a picture of a huge crowd awating a fireworks show in Florida's Magic Kingdom theme park during the coronavirus pandemic © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus As you are aware, the Federal Government is merely a back-up for state government. Donald Trump, self-proclaimed “wartime president,” in an April 2, 2020, letter to Senator Chuck Schumer, a critic of Trump's response to the COVID-19 coronavirus © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus Because you know why, I'm on a stage, it's very far away, so I'm not at all concerned. Donald Trump, explaining why he's not afraid of catching coronavirus at his indoor superspreader rallies [He wasn't asked why people in crowds packed like sardines shouldn't be afraid of catching it] © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus But maybe the truth is that life will never fully return to normal until a vaccine becomes available — and perhaps not even then. A vaccine is not a ‘magig bullet’. It is unlikely to be completely effective, and is unlikely to be taken up by every citizen. Perhaps COVID-19 represents an impermeable boundary between one moment in out lives and another. We can never go back. Richard Horton, The COVID-19 Catastrophe  © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus By attacking and weakening WHO while the agency was doing all it could to protect peoples in some of the most vulnerable countries in the world, President Trump has in my view met the criteria for the act of violence the international community calls a crime against humanity. Richard Horton, The COVID-19 Catastrophe  © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus The cost of Covid can also be measured in damage to global psychology, including a form of diplomatic long Covid. The world's superpower and its rising great power are both now working from home and nourishing paranoia about each other. When we look back on Covid that may be its biggest cost. Edward Luce, Financial Times, March 1, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus The country, it turned out, was experiencing wildly different pandemics. For every ten thousand Americans, there were thirty-eight coronavirus cases. But, for whites, the number was twenty-three; for Blacks, it was sixty-two; for Hispanics, it was seventy-three. Lawrence Wright, The New Yorker, January 4 & 11, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus COVID, turns out, not good. Donald Trump © 2022 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus COVID-19 wasn't even just another flu-like illness. By January 29, it was clear that COVID-19 caused severe primary pneumonia in its victims, unlike the flu, which tends to leave patients susceptible to opportunistic, secondary pneumonia. That's like the difference between a disease that drops you in the dangerous part of town late at night and one that does the mugging itself. Zeynep Tufekci, The Atlantic, March 24, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus Every day when I walk into work as a public-school teacher, I am prepared to take a bullet to save a child. In the age of school shootings, that's what the job requires. But asking me to return to the classroom amid a pandemic and epose myself and my family to Covid-19 is like askiing me to take that bullet home to my own family. I won't do it, and you shouldn't want me to. From an op-ed piece in the New York Times, July 18, 2920, by a high school teacher in Mount Vernon, WA © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus Everything passes and this will pass. Our country  has gone through many serious challenges.  When tormented by the Pechenegs and the Polovtsians Russia has handled them all. We will defeat this coronavirus contagion. Vladimir Putin, exhorting fellow Russians to overcome the latest scourge to afflict their lands [Because most Russians know as much about Pechenegs and Polovtsians as most Americans know about the Great Disappointment of 1844, a meme depicting two Pechenegs went viral. One asks, “So, are we trending on Google yet?” The other responds, “No. It's the Polovtsians.”] © 2023 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus The federal government will end up shouldering the cost of unemployment insurance for these contract [gig economy] labourers because companies such as Uber have successfully avoided having to admit that they are, indeed, real employees who should receive real benefits during normal times. If I were a chief executive in a company that has to shoulder those burdens directly, I would be furious … it's ridiculous that a com- pany with a valuation of $46bn has managed to push that burden onto taxpayers by lever- aging the free-market fantasy that there is an equal power dynamic between America's gig workers and its biggest corporations. Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, Mar. 30, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus The fiscal cost of this pandemic so far has been $10tn of public debt, which is 700 times the annual cost of creating a modest global fund to prepare for such a disaster. They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In this case that would come to 43.8 pounds. Edward Luce, Financial Times, August 5, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus The global death toll from Covid-19 has passed 4m confirmed cases, as the virus continues to ravage countries with low vaccination coverage. The number of people killed by the virus has increased at a quickening pace over the course of the pandemic, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. One million Covid deaths were recorded in the past two and a half months alone, yet it took nine months to reach the 1m death mark. Financial Times, July 9, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus Gov. Tate Reeves signed an executive order early this evening superseding a patchwork of local bans on public gatherings in Missis- sippi and other heightened restrictions that several municipalities across the state have ordered or considered in the wake of COVID-19's spread inside Mississippi. … One of the immediate consequences of Reeves' order is the formal declaration that most of Mississippi's businesses qualify under it as “essential,” and thus are exempt from restrictions on public gatherings. Jackson Free Press, March 24, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus Having the worlds best labortories will come to naught if Americans refuse to fight side-by-side in the same war. Edward Luce, Financial Times, June 11, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus  I haven't actually been to the White House since August the sixth because my impression was their approach to how to handle this thing was different from mine and what I insisted we do in the Senate, which is to wear a mask and practice social distancing. Mitch McConnell, October 8, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus I think I made a mistake. I thought this was a hoax, but it's not. Last words of a 30-year-old who died at Methodist Hospital in San Antonio after attending a “COVID party” © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic. Donald Trum, quoted in Bob Woodward's book, Rage, explaining why he lies to the American public about its ease of transmission and deadliness, which he's known about and understood since January , 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus  Ignoring common sense never used to be an anglophone stereotype. What separates the US and the UK from other democracies is extravagant self-belief. Half a millennium of potted history tells Anglo-Americans they are destined always to be on the winning side.  It blinds both to how the rest of the world increasingly views them, which is with sadness and growing mockery.  Edward Luce, Financial Times, July 9, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus In several phone calls last weekend from the presidential suite at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Mr. Trump shared an idea he was considering: When he left the hospital, he wanted to appear frail at first when people saw him, according to people with knowledge of the conversations. But underneath his button-down dress shirt, he would wear a Superman T-shirt, which he would reveal as a symbol of srength when he ripped open the top layer. New York Times, October 12, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus  In the case of COVID-19, China's scientists and physicians acted decisively and respon- sibly to protect the health of the Chinese people within this historical context. They warned their government, their government warned WHO, and WHO warned the world. Western democracies failed to listen to those warnings. There are questions for both the Chinese government and WHO to answer. But to blame both China and WHO for this global pandemic is to rewrite the history of COVID-19 and to marginalise the failings the of Western nations. Richard Horton, The COVID-19 Catastrophe  © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus In the context of this pandemic, we need a new form of social insurance, one that di- rectly targets and works through businesses. The most direct way to provide this insurance is to have the government act as a buyer of last resort. If the government fully replaces the demand that evaporates, each business can keep paying and maintain its capital stock, as if it was operating under business as usual. … take the case of the airline industry. If demand drops by 80%, the government would compensate this missing demand, in effect buying 80% of plane tickets and maintaining sales constant. Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus It looks like the virus is not as deadly as the mainstream media first made it out to be. Tweet authored by Herman Cain, published on his Twitter account by The Cain Gang, "his team and family," on August 30, 2020, a month after he died following a Trump rally he attended in Tulsa in June without wearing a mask © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus It turns out that liberalism does not by definition breed egoism and irresolution. A lot of the easy calumnies against it (“We could never fight a war now”) appear less certain. And if the “horizontal” bond among citizens is a bit stronger than assumed, so is their “vertical” cord with government. Anti-elitism – the spirit of the age, we thought – is broad but it can also be shallow, or at least selective. The speed with which people deferred to the medical and bureaucratic establishment was telling. The crisis has found nothing more wanting than our cynicism. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, May 13, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus Just between June and November [2021], 163,000 Covid-19 deaths in the US alone could have been prevented by vaccination, estimates the Kaiser Family Foundation.  That’s nearly double all the American deaths in war in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq combined — and the unvaccinated continue to die, pointlessly. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, January 13, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus [A] kind of pandemic caste system is rapidly developing: the rich holed up in vacation properties; the middle class marooned at home with restless children; the working class on the front lines of the economy, stretched to the limit by the demands of work and parenting, if there is even work to be had. New York Times, March 27, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus Letting people put others at risk by refusing to wear masks, practice social distancing, or get vaccinated is qualitatively the same as letting individuals use the threat of violence to get what they want; in both cases, government has a crucial role — it constrains destructive individual behavior. Paul Krugman, New York Review of Books, March 10, 2022 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus Look, I fully support banning travel from Europe to prevent the spread of infectious disease. I just think it's 528 years too late.  Rebecca Nagle, a Cherokee writer, 6:25 PM · Mar 12, 2020  © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus Maybe this COVID thing is a good thing. I don't like shaking hands with people. I don't have to shake hands with these disgusting people. Donald Trump [The “disgusting people” are people attending his rallies] © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus Mississippi's never going to be China. Mississippi's never going to be North Korea. Governor Tate Reeves, rejecting issuing a statewide shelter-in-place order © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus Missouri Gov. Mike Parson issued an executive order Thursday suspending late penalties for concealed carry license renewals, a measure he said would promote health and social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Kansas City Star, April 2, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus More people died in the US in three months than during the entire Vietnam War (there were 58,318 US soldiers killed in action in Vietnam between 1955 and 1975; deaths from COVID-19 exceeded that figure on 28 April 2020). Richard Horton, The COVID-19 Catastrophe  © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus No event better demonstrates why a quality administrative state, led by people able to differentiate experts from charlatans, is so vital to the public. Martin Wolf, Financial Times, March 17, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus No one ever reached out to me and said, as a senior citizen, “Are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?” And if that's the exchange, I all in. … I just think there's lots of grandparents out there in this country like me. Dan Patrick, lieutenant governor of Texas, volunteering to go back to work against the advice of public health officials in order to pump up the sagging economy © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus On March 8, 2020, well over two months after the first case of Covid-19 had been confirmed in the United States, Dan Scavino, assistant to the president and director of social media at the White House, tweeted a mocked-up picture of his boss Donald Trump playing a violin. The caption read: “My next piece is called Nothing Can Stop What's Coming.” Trump himself retweeted the image with the comment “Who knows what this means, but it sounds good to me!” Fintan O'Toole, New York Review of Books, May 14, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus One study found lower rates of infection amoing marchers than in their surrounding communities. Epidemiologists concluded that mask wearing and being outdoors protected the protesters. Moreover, demonstrators were on the move. [Michael] Osterholm [director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota] said that people in stationary crowds are more likely to become infected. In other words, joining a protest march is inherently less dangerous than attending a political rally. Lawrence Wright, New Yorker, Jan. 4 & 11, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus OUTSIDE WITH NO MASK? FUGGEDABOUTIT! Digital highway signs throughout New York City during the pandemic © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus “The president knows Florida is so important for his reelection so when [his supporter Gov. Ron] DeSantis says that [New Yorkers should be quarantined and prohibited from traveling to Florida], it means a lot,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be frank. “He pays close attention to what Florida wants.” NCRM, March 31, 2020, on how Trump is trying to harvest Electoral College votes in 2020 by sending Florida and other red states everything they request – or more – to fight coronavirus (while sending blue states like New York, where need is greater, less than requested) © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus Ronald Reagan, in a quote that has been making the rounds in recent weeks, once said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I’m here to help.” Covid-19 has proven him wrong. They are, in a time of real crisis, the nine sexiest. Robert Armstrong, Financial Times, April 14, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus Roses are red Violets are blue Risk is low for coronavirus But high for the flu Jerome Adams, U.S. Surgeon General, February 1, 2020, tweet, since deleted © 2021 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus The simple fact is that Donald is fundamentally incapable of acknowledging the suffering of others. Telling the stories of those we've lost would bore  him Mary Trump, Too Much and Never Enough  © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus The stakes are high. Sacrifices will have to be made. But war mataphors have their own dangers. They can create an atmosphere where dissent and criticism of government policy are discouraged, possibly even branded as a kind of betrayal. They emphasize treatment, not prevention. Turning the stragegy to tackle a disease into a battle- field could worsen the mental health of those caught in the ‘war zone’. And the idea of war also implies victory or defeat — where neither may be the likely outcome with a virus that is here to stay. Richard Horton, The COVID-19 Catastrophe  © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus A superpower — or its reputation at least — had been slain by a virus. Richard Horton, The COVID-19 Coronavirus  © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus Testing is a double-edged sword. We've tested now 25 million people. … When you do testing to that extent, you're going to find more cases, so I said to my people, “Slow the testing down, please.” Donald Trump, Tulsa rally, June 20, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus That's normally how things work. I'm not here to disrupt a supply chain. Rear Adm. John Polowczyk, explaining why Trump's coronavirus task force is sending PPE received from overseas to for-profit medical supply distributers for sale to the highest bidder, instead of sending it directly to hospitals that need it most  © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus There is an evident lesson from the pandemic: countries that restricted movement of people early, coupled with an effective and well-run tracing system, fared much better than others, irrespective of ideology. Medical or preventive strategies have nothing to do with political or economic systems. Presumably, Joe Biden, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin brush their teeth. The one who is more thorough is likely to need a dentist less, irrespective of any ideological position. Letter to the editor of Financial Times, December 31 2020, by Guill Gil © 2021 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus They are dying, that's true. And you have – it is what it is. But that doesn't mean we aren't doing everything we can. It's under control as much as you can control it. Donald Trump, August 4, 2020, bullshitting about doing everything we can as the US averages about 65,000 new cases and a 1,000 deaths per day from COVID-19  © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus This brutal shock is attacking a body that was already vulnerable. In the event of a global depression, a postmortem might identify covid-19 as the cause of death, but, as with so many of the virus's victims, the economy had a preëxisting condition — debt, instead of pulmonary disease. Corporate debt, high-yield debt, distressed debt, student debt, consumer debt, mortgage debt, sovereign debt. Nick Paumgarten, The New Yorker, April 20, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus Top executives at U.S.-traded companies sold a total of roughly $9.2 billion in shares of their own companies between the start of February and the end of last week, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows. The selling saved the executives –including many in the financial industry– potential losses totaling $1.9 billion, according to the analysis, as the S&P 500 stock index plunged about 30% from its peak on Feb. 19 through the close of trading March 20. Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus Trump's now back in charge. It's not the doctors. Jared Kushner, bragging to Bob Woodward in April, 2020, about sidelining scientists to reopen the economy © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus The U.S. now has more cases and deaths every 5 minutes than Taiwan has had all year. Wall Street Journal, January 1, 2021 U.S.: 1 death per 990 people Taiwan: 1 per 3,366,140 [3400 × better] New Zealand: 1 per 204,360 [2,064 × better] South Korea: 1 per 63,290 [64 × better] Liberia: 1 per 55,040 [56 × better] © 2021 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus  We are not going to control the pandemic. Mark Meadows, Trump's White House chief of staff,  who also said it can't be controlled, as cases surge acroxs the country  © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD [March 31, 2020], WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO! Donald Trump, 11:50 PM - Mar 22, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus We're backing you a hundred per cent. Also, though,  respirators, ventilators, all the equipment, — try getting it yourelf. Donald Trump, during a March, 2020, conference call with governors © 2021 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus We're going to tackle the virus but tackle it like fucking men. Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's Trump  © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus We want them infected. Paul Elias Alexander, Trump's chosen science adviser, advocating inducing herd immunity by letting all non-high-risk groups catch COVID © 2021 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus Wearing a mask cleans nothing. At most it traps virus droplets. But it neither ‘sanitizes’ the person wearing the mask nor ‘sanitizes’ the conveyance. US District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, former law clerk for the ethically-challenged Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas,  who Trump appointed District Judge after losing  the 2020 election despite her never having been  a lead or co-counsel in a civil or criminal case and her having been rated “Not Qualified” by the  American Bar Association, and who cancelled oral arguments before writing her 59-page decision  that invalidates the government-imposed mask mandate on public transportation nationwide and invites suits to prohibit the CDC from ever again issuing public health mandates  © 2022 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus [W]hat I see in my own neighbourhood underscores how Mr Trump's fumbling response to coronavirus is part of a bigger national problem. Policy choices, made over decades, have relentlessly favoured the interests of the private sector in general, and large corporations in particular, over both the state and labour, in ways that are proving costly to our health and our economy. Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, March 30, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus Whatever happens, we're totally prepared.  Donald Trump, February 26, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus [W]hen all this is over, there is likely to be a new social contract. The mystery is whether it will be more Dickensian (in the best sense) or Orwellian (also in the best sense). That is, will it pressure the rich to give more to the commons or will it absolutely oblige them? Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, March 27, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills — a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public —  had gone untreated for years. We had learned to live, uncomfortably, with the symptoms. It took the scale and intimacy of a pandemic to expose their severity - to shock Americans with the recognition that we are in the high-risk category. George Packer, The Atlantic, June 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus Winning is important. We will deliver by the end of this year a vaccine, at scale, to treat the American people and our partners abroad. Mark Esper, Secretary of Defense, May 15, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus Woke nativism will prove a more durable pathogen than Covid-19. Edward Luce, Financial Times, August 13, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus You are your safest sex partner. Masturbation will not spread COVID-19, especially if you wash your hands (and any sex toys) with soap and water for at least 20 seconds before and after sex. New York City Health Department, memorandum to residents, 3.27.20  © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus You have fifty states competing to buy the same item. We all wind up bidding up each other. What sense does this make? The federal government — FEMA — should have been the purchasing agent. Gov. Andrew Coumo © 2021 Kwiple.com
 
COVID-19 coronavirus as of late October 2020 Population ————— United States 328,000,000 China 1,393,000,000 (4.5×) Deaths from COVID-19 ————— China 4,380 United States 223,000 (50.9×) COVID-19 deaths as a % of population ————— China 0.000 003 144  United States 0.000 679 878  (216×) © 2020 Kwiple.com