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COVID-19 coronavirus

Wednesday 21st of January 2026

1%ers say I had this nightmare that somehow in Davos, all of us who went there got it [COVID-19]. And then we all left and spread it. The only good news from that is that it might just have killed the elite. Jaime Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorganChase, on postponing the 2021 Davos meeting of the world's leaders © 2020 Kwiple.com
Academic achievement In 2019, the typical student in the poorest 10 percent of districts scored one and a half years behind the national average for his or her year — and almost four years behind students in the richest 10 percent of districts – in both math and reading. By 2022, the typical student in the poorest districts had lost three-quarters of a year in math, more than double the decline of students in the richest districts. The declines in reading scores were half as large as in math and were similarly much larger in poor districts than rich districts. The pandemic left students in low-income and predominantly minority communities even further behind their peers in richer, whiter districts than they were. Tom Kane and Sean Reardon, NYT, 2022/05/11 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Asslickers  With millions of lives at stake, he [Trump] takes accusations about the federal government's failure to provide ventila- tors personally, threatening to withhold funding and lifesaving equipment from states whose governors don't pay sufficient homage to him. That doesn't surprise me. The deafening silence in response to such a display of sociopathic disregard for human life or the consequences for one's actions, on the other hand, fills me with despair and reminds me that Donald isn't really the problem at all. Mary Trump, Too Much and Never Enough  © 2020 Kwiple.com
Bad news The bad news isn't just bad. The bad news is terrible. citation Gov. Andrew Cuomo, April 8, 2020, on COVID-19 coronavirus in New York State © 2020 Kwiple.com
Bankruptcy I would certainly be in favor of allowing states to use the bankruptcy route. … We’re not interested in solving their pension problems for them. Mitch McConnell, on bailing out state and local governments in addition to bailing out big businesses overwhelmed by COVID-19 coronavirus © 2020 Kwiple.com
Bullshitters say In the pandemic, it was C.E.O.s in many, many cases all over the world who were the heroes. They’re the ones who stepped forward with their financial resources, their corporate resources, their employees, their factories, and pivoted rapidly — not for profit, but to save the world. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce © 2022 Kwiple.com
Change This life-and-death situation that we've now all been thrust into has opened up possibilities. Working people want real change, and that I think makes me more optimistic than ever that the change isn't going to be incremental, and that gives me incredible hope. Mary Kay Henry, International President of the Service Employees International Union, May 22, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic © 2020 Kwiple.com
Cocks of the walk say Did you know I was number one on Facebook? I just found out I'm number one on Facebook. I thought that was very nice. For whatever it means, it represents something. Donald Trump, to an April 1, 2020, conference about COVID-19 coronavirus © 2020 Kwiple.com
Cocks of the walk say Look, if I wasn't elected, you would right now – maybe the world – would be over. Donald Trump, at a COVID-19 coronavirus press briefing © 2020 Kwiple.com
Cocks of the walk say A lot of people love Trump, right. A lot of people love me. You see them all the time, right? I guess I'm here for a reason, you know? To the best of my knowledge, I won and I think we're going to win again. I think we're going to win in a landslide. Donald Trump, responding to a reporter's question at a COVID-19 coronavirus press briefing about people who got sick because he was perceived as having downplayed it © 2020 Kwiple.com
Cocks of the walk say You should say, “Congratulations, great job,” instead of being so horrid in the way you ask a question. Donald Trump. responding to a Fox News reporter who asked about the delay in getting COVID-19 tests at hospitals nationwide © 2018 Kwiple.com
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
Dead-in-the-heads say Claiming COVID-19 coronavirus “affects virtually nobody" on the very day America surpassed 200,000 deaths Donald Trump, the claimant © 2020 Kwiple.com
Dead-in-the-heads say Every single year more than 600,000 people in the US die from cancer. The country has never once shut down. Not a single school has closed. And every year, over 600,000 people, of all ages and all races will continue to die from cancer. Marjorie Taylor Greene, 9:27 AM – Dec 4, 2021, who believes cancer is contagious like COVID-19, whooping cough or sexually transmitted infections © 2021 Kwiple.com
Dead-in-the-heads say I haven't heard about testing in weeks. Donald Trump, March 30, 2020, during a conference call with governors, responding to Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana, who had just finished explaining how impossible it is to get test kits to track down people who had contacts with people who tested positive for COVID-19 coronavirus © 2020 Kwiple.com
Dead-in-the-heads say Nobody has done the job that we've done. And it's lucky that you have this group here, right now, for this problem, or you wouldn't even have a country left. Donald Trump, acclaiming his administration's response to the COVID-19 coronavirus © 2020 Kwiple.com
Dead-in-the-heads say Now think about it. Before COVID did anyone go out and seek testing to determine if they were sick? It's usually you feel like you're sick and you get tested to determine what you maybe have come down with. Ron DeSantis, who either never heard of preventive healthcare or doesn't believe in it © 2022 Kwiple.com
Dead-in-the-heads say Over 70% of Americans who died with COVID, died on Medicare, and some people want #MedicareForAll ? Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), 1:00 AM – Feb 9, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Dead-in-the-heads say We've achieved all the different milestones that are needed. The federal government rose to the challenge and this is a great success story and I think that that's really what needs to be told. Jared Kushner, on the Trump administration's response to the COVID-19 coronusvirus pandemic  © 2020 Kwiple.com
Dead-in-the-heads say Why do you think this is COVID-19? This is the 19th coronavirus. They're not uncommon. Rush Limbaugh, March 11, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Dead-in-the-heads say Your response when you see children wearing masks as they play should be no different from your response to seeing someone beat a kid at Walmart. Call the police immediately. Contact child protective services. Keep calling until someone arrives. What you're looking at is abuse. It's child abuse. Tucker Carlson © 2021 Kwiple.com
Farmers … the administration doled out $8.5bn and $14.3bn to farmers and ranchers in 2018 and 2019 respectively, to compen- sate them for the hit from the trade war. Another $30bn of aid has followed this year to fight the slump  caused by Covid-19. These are striking numbers. But doubly so, given how unevenly this aid has been spread: farmers in Democrat- dominated California were largely excluded, but those in Trump-leaning areas such as North Dakota and Iowa received much more. Gillian Tett, Financial Times, Oct. 21, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Government The atmosphere is ripe for a party of big government to sweep elections in post-pandemic America. But then so it has been before. Looking back at the past century or so, two political facts seem to hold across several rich democracies. One is the ideo- logical supremacy of the left. The other is its electoral underperformance. … We are left with one of the oddest quirks in politics. Voters often choose the party that is less keen on government to oversee its expansion. … Voters trust that parties who enlarge the state reluctantly are likely to do it sensibly. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, April 8, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Lame-ass excuse As vice president of the United States, I'm tested for the coronavirus on a regular basis, and everyone who is around me is tested for the coronavirus. Since I don't have the coronavirus, I thought it'd be a good opportunity for me to be here, to be able to speak to these researchers, these incredible health-care personnel, and look them in the eye and say thank you. Mike Pence, justifyinng sauntering through the Mayo Clinic talking to others about COVID-19 coronavirus without wearing a mask, in violation of CDC guidelines and the clinic's explicit instructions that everyone in the building must wear one © 2020 Kwiple.com
Leadership I just don't want to be doing – somehow sitting in the Oval Office behind that beautiful Resolute Desk, the great Resolute Desk, I think wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens, I don't know, somehow I don't see it for myself. I just don't. Donald Trump, defying advice from the CDC to wear a protective mask during a pandemic © 2020 Kwiple.com
Liars say I'm okay with masks. I tell people to wear masks. CDC comes out with a statement that 85% of the people wearing masks catch it. Donald Trump  answering a question about COVID-19 during his televised October 15, 2020, town hall meeting © 2020 Kwiple.com
Liars say People don't die of this disease anymore. Rudy Giuliani, October 13, 2020, talking about COVID-19 on a day in which 4,089 died worldwide, 826 died in the United States, which was 20% of the world's deaths but only 4.3% of its population © 2020 Kwiple.com
Lies It's now clear that just because Trump is lying to us, that doesn't mean he's lying to himself. Michelle Goldberg, New York Times, September 13, 2020, on tapes revealing that Trump knew COVID-19 was "deadly stuff" in January, 2020, but continued telling Americans it wasn't © 2020 Kwiple.com
New York City Only 12% of the roughly 1.1 million employee-based and nonemployer businesses in New York City received a PPP loan, according to the report set to be released Wednesday. By comparison, more than 20% of businesses in states that were less economically affected by the pandemic – like North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska – got federal aid, the report says, based on roughly three months of federal data on the program through June 30. Wall Street Journal, July 15, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Partisanship Apparently no one in Trump's circle reached out, before the news became public, to tell the Biden camp about the president's positive coronavirus test, even though Biden had shared a debate stage with the president for more than 90 minutes. No one directly informed Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House. This is also the state of America. And it’s not right. Frank Bruni, New York Times, October 2, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Public health The blighted prospects of the less educated are a public health crisis, and, as the number of victims [of COVID-19 coronavirus] mounts, it will be harder to ignore. Atul Gawande, New Yorker, March 16, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Public health Depriving patients of a drug that is of proven necessity in order to offer a long-shot bet to people with coronavirus is bad policy. Financial Times editorial, April 8, 2020, commenting on Trump's continual touting of hydroxychloroquine as a “game changer,” which has made it virtually unavailable to malaria, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis patients, who depend on it © 2020 Kwiple.com
Public health The Trump administration is overseeing a new type of CDC where meat plants with gigantic public health disasters unfolding within them don't actually get told what to do to keep their employees alive any more. They just get some handy hints that they're free to disregard. I expect anything from the Trump administration. I do not expect this from the CDC. CDC, are you OK? Would you let us know if you're not? Rachel Maddow, April 28, 2020, on the CDC's mealy mouthed report about the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak at Smithfield's Sioux Falls plant © 2020 Kwiple.com
Public health Two months before the novel coronavirus is thought to have begun its deadly ad- vance in Wuhan, China, the Trump admin- istration ended a $200-million pandemic early-warning program aimed at training scientists in China and other countries to detect and respond to such a threat. The project, launched by the U.S. Agency for International Development in 2009, identi- fied 1,200 different viruses that had the potential to erupt into pandemics, including more than 160 novel coronaviruses. The initiative, called PREDICT, also trained and supported staff in 60 foreign laboratories - including the Wuhan lab that identified SARS-COV-2 [which causes] COVID-19. Los Angeles Times, April 2, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Punt returners say A final safety note here: If your mask obstructs your vision, you're doing it wrong. Brian Williams, The 11th Hour, April 28, 2020, responding to vice president – and chairman of the White House Coronavirus Task Force – Mike Pence's claim that he sauntered around the Mayo Clinic talking to doctors and COVID-19 coronavirus patients without wearing a mask because he wanted to “look them in the eye and say thank you” © 2020 Kwiple.com
Punt returners say Yes, but he prefers to be called Ron Desantis. Stephen Colbert, responding to Gizmodo's January 14, 2022, headline, “Sadly, 'Covid Dick' Is Real” © 2022 Kwiple.com
Racism Imagine a group of black men in paramilitary gear with semiautomatic rifles moving towards a US state capitol building. Their chances of reaching the steps without a police stand-off – or worse – would be tiny. Yet every few days white protesters do just that. They often enter the building armed but unchallenged. Nothing brings into sharper relief America’s colour disparities than life and death in the great lockdown. Edward Luce, Financial Times, May 14, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Racists say The left is now rationing lifesaving therapeutics based on race, discriminating against and denigrating white people to determine who lives and who dies. If you’re white you don’t get the vaccine or if you’re white you don’t get therapeutics. … In New York state, if you're white, you have to go to the back of the line to get medical health. Donald Trump, January 15, 2022, at a rally in Florence, Arizona, a town which was 82.2% white in 2015 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Reich wingers Wearing a yellow star of David with the word “unvaccinated” on it to signify vaccine resisters are being treated like Jews in Nazi Germany Reorted in Financial Times, August 12, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Reich wingers say Biden pushing a vaccine that is NOT FDA approved shows covid is a political tool used to control people. People have a choice, they don't need your medical brown shirts showing up at their door ordering vaccinations. You can't force people to be part of the human experiment. Marjorie Taylor Greene, 4:54 PM – Jul 6, 2021, comparing going door-to-door to reach unvaccinated people at their homes to Nazis hunting Jews © 2021 Kwiple.com
Resisters say Trump lied 200,000 died  Placard, protests on and after September 21, 2020, when the 200,000th death from COVID-19 was recorded in the US © 2020 Kwiple.com
Robots US goods imports contracted 11 per cent in the first eight months of the year compared with the same period last year, but imports of industrial robots rose 5 per cent, according to data from the US International Trade Commission. … Digital interaction with customers has accelerated the equivalent of many years in just months, according to a recent survey of business executives by the consultancy McKinsey.  Changes in digital and technology adoption  are taking place about 25 times faster than before the pandemic, the survey found. Financial Times, October 20, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Rural America Over the past decades, 128 rural hospitals shut down as a result of financial pressure and 400 more were at risk of closing before the coronavirus pandemic, according to to the National Rural Health Association. Rural areas have 20% of the U.S. population and 9% of physicians, the group said. Wall Street Journal, April 1, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Selfie I would rather die of coronavirus a free person than live like a slave to government engulfed in fear, panic and with no liberty. Graham Ledger © 2019 Kwiple.com
Selfie So it sort of is curious. A man works for us, with us, very closely, Dr. [Anthony] Fauci and Dr. [Deborah] Birx also, very highly thought of — and yet, they're highly thought of, but nobody likes me? It can only be my personality, that's all. Donald Trump, July 28, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Small business And many vulnerable businesses cannot afford to wait weeks for a cash infusion [to help survive the coronavirus]. The median small company takes in $381 a day and spends $374, a 2016 analysis by the JPMorgan Chase Institute found. The typical business has enough savings to survive just 27 days. New York Times, March 23, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Small business A recent study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that black-owned businesses in the US have been dispropor-  tionately impacted by lockdowns and changes in consumer behaviour during the pandemic. The overall number of active business owners in the US fell 15 per cent between February and May 2020, but African-American business owners suffered a 26 per cent drop, while those controlled by Latinx owners fell 19 per cent, according to the report. After the 2008 financial crisis, fewer than 50 per cent of black-owned businesses sur- vived compared to 60 percent for white- owned businesses, according to a recent study from the Brookings Institute … Financial Times, August 27, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Snapshot Congressman Massie has tested positive for being an asshole. He must be quarantined to prevent the spread of his massive stupidity. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) portrayed by John Kerry after Massie forced hundreds of his fellow Representatives, many of whom are elederly, to return to Washington, DC, in the midst of the outbreak of the COVID-19 coronavirus, to participate in a roll-call vote instead of a simple voice vote on the $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief bill, which passed nearly unanimously, as was expected © 2016 Kwiple.com
Snapshot The characteristics of Trump's leadership, blazingly evident during the first three years of his presidency, had deadly ramifications in his final year. He displayed his ignorance, his rash temper, his pettiness and pique, his malice and cruelty, his utter absence of empathy, his narcissism, his transgressive personality, his disloyalty, his sense of victmhood, his addiction to television, his suspicion and silencing of experts, and his deception and lies. Each trait thwarted the response of the world's most powerful nation to a lethal threat. Donald Trump portrayed by Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker in I Alone Can Fix It © 2021 Kwiple.com
Social media The crusade against these apps is hardly groundless. But it has become a way of dodging the age and depth of civic rot, and not just in the US. Facebook is easier to confront than the prospect that mature democracies must live with a permanent mass of essentially unreachable citizens. To curse social media is to exonerate society. Janan Ganesh,, Financial Times, July 20, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union There are popular laws, beloved laws and President Joe Biden's American Rescue Plan … [which] entails $1.9tn of public spending amid a growing economy, under a president of wrongly but widely impugned legitimacy, after two lavish bills to the same end in 12 months. The debate over the wisdom of such largesse  is everywhere except in the general public. … The pandemic has crystallised a thought for which there was once only scattered evidence. But at some point in this century, the US became a mildly social democratic country, in its attitudes if not the reality of its welfare state. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, 2021/03/02 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court To state the obvious, judges do not know what scientists and public health experts do. So it is alarming that the Court second-guesses the judgments of expert officials, and displaces their conclusions with its own. In the worst public health crisis in a century, this foray into armchair epidemiology cannot end well. I fervently hope that the Court’s intervention will not worsen the Nation's COVID crisis. But if this decision causes suffering, we will not pay. Our marble halls are now closed to the public, and our life tenure forever insulates us from responsibility for our errors. That would seem good reason to avoid disrupting a State's pan- demic response. But the Court forges ahead regardless, insisting that science-based policy yield to judicial edict. Elena Kagan, dissent in South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom © 2022 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say Are we just going to sit by and watch $22 trillion – that's the value, that's the sum total of the G.D.P., that's the U.S. economy – are we just going to sit by here and watch it evaporate? Because that’s what we’re doing, under the guise of not losing any unnecessary life. Rush Limbaugh, March 31, 2020, on COVID-19 coronavirus stay-at-home orders © 2020 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say CASES!!!!! OMG CASES!!!!! THERE ARE CASES!!! MORE CASES!!!! CASES ARE GOING UP!!!!!!!! CASESESESESESES!!!! CASES WENT UP!!!!! OMG!!!!!! THERES MORE CASES!!!!!!!! CASES!!!!!!!!!!! CASES INCREASED!!! THERE ARE CASES!!!! CASES CASES CASES–WOW CASES WENT UP!!!!! SCARY CASES! WOW Anthony Sabatini, State Representative, Florida House District 32, University of Florida graduate, Captain, Army National Guuard, 9:40 PM   Dec 3, 2020 a day where there were 217,000 new cases and 2,857 deaths from COVID in the US © 2020 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say I’m going in with 20 strong men. I’m gonna speak in front of the school board and I’m gonna give them an option. They can leave or they can be removed. And then after that we're gonna replace them with nine parents and we're gonna vote down the mask mandates that evening. That evening. This is how you get stuff done. Forget writing your legislators. Forget it. They’re not listening. You gotta do something. It's us. It's we the people. Steve Lynch, August 29, 2021, Republican candidate for Northhampton County, PA, executive, on school boards that invoke anto-Covid mask mandates © 2021 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say I’m not going to add to the numbers. A Trump supporter who refused to go to the hospital after developing COVID-19 because he didn't want to add to the liberal's case against Trump, quoted by Robert Kagan, Washington Post, September 23, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
< Trumpists say I'm not trying to get political here. Markwayne Mullin, Republican House member from Oklahoma, refusing to wear a protective mask offered to him while confined for hours in a crowded room with fellow congressmen during the assault on the Capitol © 2021 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say Isn't this kind of like a dry run of the Green New Deal? Caller from Prescott, Arizona, to Rush Limbaugh, on April 17, 2020, who sees the shutdown of the economy to fight the COVID-19 coronavirus as an experiment in life after the Green New Deal © 2020 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say xx Keep in mind where the coronavirus came from. It came from a country that Bernie Sanders wants to turn the United States into a mirror image of: Communist China. Rush Limbaugh © 2020 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say Standard gargle, mouthwash, has been proven to kill the coronavirus. Ron Johnson [LISTERINE® denied Johnson's claim] © 2023 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here. Kayleigh McEnany, Trump's latest – fourth – press secretary, February 25, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say You remember the North Korean leader promised “a Christmas present for America” back in December? Could it be they got together with China and this is that present? Jerry Falwell, Jr., March 13, 2020, hypothesizing about the origins of COVID-19 coronavirus © 2020 Kwiple.com
Wannabe autocrats say I'll be the oversight. Donald Trump, volunteering to provide the oversight not called for in the proposed Republican stimulus package to combat coronavirus, which includes a $500 billion “corporate rescue fund” that his administration could dispense in secret to companies they deem worthy, like Trump International Hotels Management LLC in the hard-hit travel and leisure sector © 2020 Kwiple.com
 
Wealth inequality Since the beginning of the pandemic, the total net worth of America's billionaires, all 686 of them, has jumped close to a trillion dollars. In September, nearly 23 million Americans reported going without enough to eat, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Ben Ehrenreich, New York Times Magazine, Novenber 8, 2020 [That's close to $1,457,725,948 per billionaire] [~ $1,000,000,000,000 / 23,000,000 = ~ $43,478 per food insecure person] © 2020 Kwiple.com