Issa Dismisses COVID-19 Dangers to Boost Reopening in TV Interview
Former Congressman Darrell Issa is a piece of work. His smile/smirk as he grinds truth into GOP-speak is a sight to behold.
The carpetbagging candidate for Duncan Hunter’s old seat appeared on KUSI-TV, questioning the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic. I’d give him credit for admitting that people are getting sick, except Issa’s been fundraising using the premise that the crisis has been manufactured by Democrats.
The concept of a fabricated emergency is central to the lawsuit being pursued --despite the legislative fix-- by Issa and others to shut down universal vote by mail in California. They will lose in court and know it, but the lawsuit still has value as a platform to make statements designed to mislead the public.
The name of the game now for Republican generally is the economy must reopen, based on the magical thinking that the numbers will look good enough by November to avert a crushing defeat.
Issa’s appearance on KUSI-TV was all about deceiving the audience about the veracity of statistics being used to justify health department guidance and orders designed to mitigate the spread of the virus.
He started early in the interview by saying “we have to reevaluate the numbers.” Then Issa gave the Swedish less-stringent approach to managing the disease a shout out.
It’s fact check time, via the New York Times:
...Sweden’s grim result — more death, and nearly equal economic damage — suggests that the supposed choice between lives and paychecks is a false one: A failure to impose social distancing can cost lives and jobs at the same time.
Sweden put stock in the sensibility of its people as it largely avoided imposing government prohibitions. The government allowed restaurants, gyms, shops, playgrounds and most schools to remain open. By contrast, Denmark and Norway opted for strict quarantines, banning large groups and locking down shops and restaurants.
More than three months later, the coronavirus is blamed for 5,420 deaths in Sweden, according to the World Health Organization. That might not sound especially horrendous compared with the more than 129,000 Americans who have died. But Sweden is a country of only 10 million people. Per million people, Sweden has suffered 40 percent more deaths than the United States, 12 times more than Norway, seven times more than Finland and six times more than Denmark.
Having touted a model universally proven to have failed, Issa went on to cast aspersions on the statistics being used by Gov. Newsom and local health agencies to regulate exposure to the virus.
The Governor's numbers, quite frankly, are flawed at best. Our numbers in San Diego include people coming in from Mexico -often US citizens but they’re still being transferred into our numbers… and it includes the CDC coming in and taking people who died from other things and repurposing them to say they died of COVID. So the numbers are elevated artificially and then there’s the real question of is this the disease we thought we were dealing with or is it much more similar to measles, which we used to work our way through even knowing that it could kill you.
The CDC is not, by the way, ginning up the numbers, a canard drummed up by Fox news and Facebook trolls taking advantage of differences in state reporting methods. The reality is that people dying in non-medical locations (like at home) are not being counted. It’s much more likely that the number of reported deaths of COVID-19 are being underestimated.
Meanwhile, the future looks bleak, unless you’re a coronavirus denier.
From Reuters:
The United States reported more than 60,000 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, the biggest increase ever reported by a country in a single day, according to a Reuters tally.
The United States faces a bleak summer with record-breaking infections and many states forced to close parts of the economy again, leaving some workers without a paycheck.
In addition to nearly 10,000 new cases in Florida, Texas reported over 9,500 cases and California reported more than 8,500 new infections. California and Texas also each reported a record one-day increase in deaths.
Issa tried to downplay the seriousness of COVID-19 by comparing it to measles. This is misleading at best, especially when the scientific literature on the history of measles is examined.
In the early 20th century there were an average of 5300 measles-related deaths yearly in the U.S. Better medical care lowered the death count to 450 cases annually in the late 1950’s just prior to the introduction of a vaccine.
The current average death toll for COVID-19 is roughly 900 people daily, with the total for this year over the 130,000 mark. Last time I checked, 130,000 was more than 5300 or 450. Maybe he’s using RepubliMath.(™)
I caught the measles virus as a young adult. I supposedly was immune because I’d had them as a child. Trust me, there’s nothing easy about living through that hell.
Darrell Issa’s attempts to downplay the seriousness of COVID-19 are part of a bigger scheme, one also being pushed by Republicans everywhere from Supervisor Jim Desmond to Donald J. Trump”: for them it’s all about “me,me,me.”
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https://twitter.com/ASlavitt/status/1281221160592715778?s=20
While I’m at it, let me debunk the “U.S. is reporting more cases because-we’re-testing-more myth being repeated daily by Dear Leader.
The US is testing slightly more than similar places (113 tests/1000 people, vs 99 in the UK, 92 in Italy, 73 in Germany.)
BUT it's finding a proportionately greater share of cases (U.S.: 9,250 cases/million, vs. 4,400 in UK, 3,900 in Italy and 2,500 Germany.)
And then there’s the we’ve-got-less-people-dying-as-a-percentage-of-total-cases lie.
According to Johns Hopkins University, nearly 40 Americans have died of COVID-19 per 100,000 people, second worst in the world behind only the United Kingdom. And of all confirmed COVID-19 cases, the United States’ case fatality ratio is 4.4%, ranking seventh worst out of the 20 countries most affected by the virus, the university’s analysis found.
It IS true that the rate of mortality is going down, and that’s certainly good news.
BUT we’re nowhere near where the president and his minions are claiming.
At least 29 countries recorded fewer deaths as a percentage of total cases over the last two weeks than the United States did.
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Remember “We’re all in this together?” Good times.
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Hee, hee.
https://twitter.com/MonicaLewinsky/status/1280663118771703809?s=20
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