Current Events > Scared CDC director warns of 'impending doom' as COVID cases rise in US

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https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/29/cdc-chief-warns-us-headed-for-impending-doom-as-covid-cases-rise-again-right-now-im-scared-.html

The U.S. is facing impending doom as daily Covid-19 cases begin to rebound once again, threatening to send more people to the hospital even as vaccinations accelerate nationwide, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday. When I first started at CDC about two months ago I made a promise to you: I would tell you the truth even if it was not the news we wanted to hear. Now is one of those times when I have to share the truth, and I have to hope and trust you will listen, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during a press briefing. Im going to pause here, Im going to lose the script, and Im going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom, Walensky said. We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are and so much reason for hope, but right now Im scared.

The U.S. is recording a weekly average of 63,239 new Covid-19 cases per day, a 16% increase compared with a week ago, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Daily cases are now growing by at least 5% in 30 states and the District of Columbia. Coronavirus hospitalizations are also climbing. The U.S. is reporting a seven-day average of 4,816 Covid-19 hospital admissions as of Friday, a 4.2% increase compared with the week prior, according to CDC data. Walensky urged Americans to just hold on a little longer and to get vaccinated against the virus once its their turn. When cases rise as they have over the last week or so, Walensky said, they often surge and surge big shortly thereafter. Im speaking today not necessarily as your CDC director and not only as your CDC director, but as a wife, as a mother, as a daughter, to ask you to just please hold on a little while longer, Walensky said. Leading public health experts have warned since late February that infections could pick back up again amid the rise of virus variants threatening to sweep across the U.S. much like they did in Europe.



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Thanks, Morbo
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Its called being a fear monger

EricDraven59 posted...

Its called being a fear monger

Just wondering how many times armchair badasses have to be wrong before they admit they're not experts?

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tag

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DarkRoast posted...

Just wondering how many times armchair badasses have to be wrong before they admit they're not experts?

As a doctor do you believe the right approach here is for the CDC director to go on national television and describe the current covid conditions as an "impending doom"?

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But the vaccines?

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s0nicfan posted...

As a doctor do you believe the right approach here is for the CDC director to go on national television and describe the current covid conditions as an "impending doom"?

Considering how bad it is in countries where these variants have taken over...

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Fucking Spring Breakers!

AtelierRyza3462 posted...

But the vaccines?

What are you saying, 462?
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DarkRoast posted...

Considering how bad it is in countries where these variants have taken over...

Which I'll also note - Queensland and Western Australia (states in Australia) had perfect records in keeping the virus out post-first-wave, until these variants showed up. They aren't much different when it comes to managing individual cases, but much worse when it comes to the bigger picture.

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AtelierRyza3462 posted...

But the vaccines?

Walensky urged Americans to just hold on a little longer and to get vaccinated against the virus once its their turn.

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Good reason to be scared considering everyone is acting like the pandemic is over before the global south even begins to get vaccinated

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It doesn't help that we aren't exactly sure how protective the various vaccines are for these variants.

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tote_all posted...

They become the same when there's no ICU beds to manage "individual cases" anymore.

Don't worry, there's always plenty of trump supporters with cameras ready to claim that hospitals aren't full.

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DarkRoast posted...

Considering how bad it is in countries where these variants have taken over...

You don't think "impending doom" is a bit hyperbolic? When I hear impending doom, I think of people hoarding canned goods, buying weapons, quitting their jobs, and fortifying themselves against the collapse of society.

Like, should the entire nation respond to the current conditions as they would nuclear fallout or an asteroid heading straight for the middle of the country? Is your professional opinion that if things don't change are we legitimately heading down that route?


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Lebronwon posted...

Walensky urged Americans to just hold on a little longer

with what cash aid provided to households? two measly rounds while people starve and face unemployment?

CDC director should shut up tbh, either we have enough vaccines to go around or we dont, and its still the case that we dont

its time to stop stunting our young people with this ravaging of the economy and households which can not endure another fucking year of this garbage

masks + social distancing work. Open up responsibly like Illinois has done for months now.

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Machete posted...

What are you saying, 462?

They were supposed to save us from

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s0nicfan posted...

You don't think "impending doom" is a bit hyperbolic? When I hear impending doom, I think of people hoarding canned goods, buying weapons, quitting their jobs, and fortifying themselves against the collapse of society.

Like, should the entire nation respond to the current conditions as they would nuclear fallout or an asteroid heading straight for the middle of the country? Is your professional opinion that if things don't change are we legitimately heading down that route?

What the hell do you want them to do? The CDC gets criticized for downplaying things, then they get criticized for overplaying things. Personally, it's not the words I would use as someone who does have a degree in public health. That said, for the past year the president literally silenced the CDC from the cabinet level in order to downplay the threat of covid-19, so he would look better in the election. I frankly can't blame them for wanting to speak out now.

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DarkRoast posted...

Don't worry, there's always plenty of trump supporters with cameras ready to claim that hospitals aren't full.

Hopefully next time you complain about our "overwhelmed systems" we get to watch as dozens of taxpayer funded temporary facilities like the untouched hospital ships sent to LA and NYC go utterly unused. Again.

Fear monger.

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In for the brainworms melty

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ThePrinceFish posted...

Hopefully next time you complain about our "overwhelmed systems" we get to watch as dozens of taxpayer funded temporary facilities like the untouched hospital ships sent to LA and NYC go utterly unused. Again.

Fear monger.

Over half a million people have died in this country alone, the fuck is wrong with you?

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its time to stop stunting our young people with this ravaging of the the economy and households which can not endure another fucking year of this garbage

Protip: the very presence of an unchecked highly infectious disease stunts the willingness for people to go out and act as if nothing's wrong. That's the fundamental flaw in this "open up and go out" chicanery. Nearly every state is open, but you might have noticed people still aren't going to movie theaters or malls.

Until people stop acting like morons regarding vaccines and masks, this will be an ongoing problem. And you can thank an entire year of a delusional, batshit president who deliberately undermined Public Health authorities, deliberately spread misinformation resulting in distrust of Public Health when we needed unity.

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ThePrinceFish posted...

Hopefully next time you complain about our "overwhelmed systems" we get to watch as dozens of taxpayer funded temporary facilities like the untouched hospital ships sent to LA and NYC go utterly unused. Again.

Fear monger.

You haven't had to intubate these people. I have.

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King_Hutton posted...

Over half a million people have died in this country alone, the fuck is wrong with you?

None of them were dying in the streets due to packed ICUs, what the fuck is wrong with you?

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DarkRoast posted...

You haven't had to intubate these people. I have.

He doesnt know what intubate means. Stop confusing him with the scary words

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DarkRoast posted...

What the hell do you want them to do? The CDC gets criticized for downplaying things, then they get criticized for overplaying things. Personally, it's not the words I would use as someone who does have a degree in public health. That said, for the past year the president literally silenced the CDC from the cabinet level in order to downplay the threat of covid-19, so he would look better in the election. I frankly can't blame them for wanting to speak out now.

I don't want them to downplay the severity, but unfortunately at that level they do have to be very careful with the words they choose to use, especially if trust in that organization is to be maintained. If you go on national television and say that the country is facing impending doom, and if things aren't that much different than they are now in a month, people are going to start ignoring what the CDC is saying even if they were listening previously. Even worse would be if they took what the CDC was saying at face value and started planning for an impending doom.

What I want them to do is be honest without relying on hyperbole that will ultimately backfire. Or, if they're not being hyperbolic, I would expect to see every other branch of the government responding as if we are facing an immediate and existential threat.

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ThePrinceFish posted...

None of them were dying in the streets due to packed ICUs, what the fuck is wrong with you?

You dont think overcrowded ICUs have had any negative impact on healthcare during covid because Trump sent boats that didnt get used?

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DarkRoast posted...

You haven't had to intubate these people. I have.

How nice for you, any thoughts on the temporary hospitals that the government built in preparation for your warnings that never even had to be touched?

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https://youtu.be/5vSUV1nii5k

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ThePrinceFish posted...

How nice for you, any thoughts on the temporary hospitals that the government built in preparation for your warnings that never even had to be touched?

None of those were built in my state. When we reached 100%, we simply diverted patients to other states. When those other states also reached capacity, we had to risk stratify and discharge ones we thought either no longer benefited from high-level care or were likely to pass away anyway. It was brutal.

Now my turn, any thoughts as to why I couldn't get a test for any of my suspected covid-19 patients until the end of April, long after it clearly became endemic? You had a president on TV telling us we had unlimited tests, in fact claiming that we were testing too much. I only had one test completed in March, and it wasn't until the beginning of May that I could get tests reliably.

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ThePrinceFish posted...

How nice for you, any thoughts on the temporary hospitals that the government built in preparation for your warnings that never even had to be touched?

Physical space is not the only concern. Hospitals in NZ are nearly at breaking point (yes, we have basically no covid here - they're in a bad state even without it) these days, and while more space would be useful, the biggest problem is a lack of staffing.

Given how poorly the US healthcare system is run, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess the same was the case there - those temporary hospitals don't mean much without staff to run them.

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I think the cdc and the White House need to get on the same page. This goes back to a year ago where trump took months to deliver a stimulus, finally got around to another 600 like 7 months later as the cdc was pleading for people to stay home and not go to work for the last year. These politicians just dont live in reality. Biden to his credit seems to realize were going to need a lot more stimulus money if you want people to quit work/stay home.

the US half measures all around are a complete failure going on a year now. While Im not on board with the vaccine I am on board for 3-4 weeks mandatory stay at home orders anyone on the street fined heavily with a healthy stimulus to balance the mandatory shut in. That would actually solve this

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After a whole year of working in the public and avoiding COVID, my wife caught it last week. She just had to go out to the bar with her coworkers for a birthday. Welp, 3 of the 5 people who went got it. Had a bit of a chuckle when she started showing symptoms. Jokes on me because Ive been sleeping on the couch

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lemondrop7 posted...

I think the cdc and the White House need to get on the same page. This goes back to a year ago where trump took months to deliver a stimulus, finally got around to another 600 like 7 months later as the cdc was pleading for people to stay home and not go to work for the last year. These politicians just dont live in reality. Biden to his credit seems to realize were going to need a lot more stimulus money if you want people to quit work/stay home.

the US half measures all around are a complete failure going on a year now. While Im not on board with the vaccine I am on board for 3-4 weeks mandatory stay at home orders anyone on the street fined heavily with a healthy stimulus to balance the mandatory shut in. That would actually solve this

The problem is that the CDC is technically a part of the president's cabinet, as they are a part of Health and Human Services. I literally have friends who work there, and they would not stop talking about how every time they had more concerning information to publish, Trump's cronies would request to analyze the data first, then not allow it to be published.

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s0nicfan posted...

I don't want them to downplay the severity, but unfortunately at that level they do have to be very careful with the words they choose to use, especially if trust in that organization is to be maintained. If you go on national television and say that the country is facing impending doom, and if things aren't that much different than they are now in a month, people are going to start ignoring what the CDC is saying even if they were listening previously. Even worse would be if they took what the CDC was saying at face value and started planning for an impending doom.

What I want them to do is be honest without relying on hyperbole that will ultimately backfire. Or, if they're not being hyperbolic, I would expect to see every other branch of the government responding as if we are facing an immediate and existential threat.

As always well put
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the US half measures all around are a complete failure going on a year now. While Im not on board with the vaccine I am on board for 3-4 weeks mandatory stay at home orders anyone on the street fined heavily with a healthy stimulus to balance the mandatory shut in. That would actually solve this

That kind of lockdown won't work anymore. We had our chance to do it right back in February and march, but because we didn't have tests we couldn't prove which cases were actually covid, and we couldn't do contact tracing.

The most infuriating thing about the lack of tests is that plenty of tests existed, but Trump wouldn't allow us to use tests made in other countries. And the test the CDC developed initially was flawed. So we lost 2 months of time when we needed it the most.

So here we are. And now you're not on board with the vaccine, so basically we're dealing with people stubbornly standing in the way of Public Health officials at every turn.

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lemondrop7 posted...

While Im not on board with the vaccine I am on board for 3-4 weeks mandatory stay at home orders anyone on the street fined heavily with a healthy stimulus to balance the mandatory shut in. That would actually solve this

Haha, 3 to 4 weeks is not going to solve it, with or without pay. New Zealand - at its peak, registering slightly short of 100 cases per day - needed a month of total lockdown then another few weeks of heavy restrictions to stamp the virus out. When Victoria (Australian state) had an outbreak that was reaching 800 cases per day, it took them about five months of lockdown to stamp it out.

And even Victoria's numbers at its peak are fucking tiny compared to the US's 70k+ per day.

The US has long since missed the boat on eliminating the virus via anything other than a vaccine, unless they're willing to basically hibernate the entire country for a year or two.

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Trumble posted...

Haha, 3 to 4 weeks is not going to solve it, with or without pay. New Zealand - at its peak, registering slightly short of 100 cases per day - needed a month of total lockdown then another few weeks of heavy restrictions to stamp the virus out. When Victoria (Australian state) had an outbreak that was reaching 800 cases per day, it took them about five months of lockdown to stamp it out.

And even Victoria's numbers at its peak are fucking tiny compared to the US's 70k+ per day.

The US has long since missed the boat on eliminating the virus via anything other than a vaccine, unless they're willing to basically hibernate the entire country for a year or two.

And now, the same people who said contact tracing was a big brother overreach, then said locking down was draconian, then refused to wear masks, then held giant-ass political rallies in the middle of cities with outbreak surges, then claimed COVID19 deaths weren't actually from COVID19, then spent Nov 2020 to Feb 2021 (when the massive case and death surge happened) believing aliens hacked fucking election machines to rig the election are telling us that we should just lock down, because they don't trust vaccines.

FUCK those people. Full stop.


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DarkRoast posted...

its time to stop stunting our young people with this ravaging of the the economy and households which can not endure another fucking year of this garbage

Protip: the very presence of an unchecked highly infectious disease stunts the willingness for people to go out and act as if nothing's wrong. That's the fundamental flaw in this "open up and go out" chicanery. Nearly every state is open, but you might have noticed people still aren't going to movie theaters or malls.

Until people stop acting like morons regarding vaccines and masks, this will be an ongoing problem. And you can thank an entire year of a delusional, batshit president who deliberately undermined Public Health authorities, deliberately spread misinformation resulting in distrust of Public Health when we needed unity.

You didn't even address what I said. We cannot undergo another year of this. The stimulus amount was pathetic and we barely mustered a couple rounds. The Biden administration has shown itself to be unwilling to actually move at the appropriate speed or rate. We cannot demolish the economy for the people barely entering or graduating from college, because of the stupidity of our government.

Illinois has opened responsibly for months now, and we're almost back to normal. You can go to the theater here. I went to the mall yesterday and a month ago and at the end of January and they were full and so far masks and distancing work.

The Biden admin won't do shit and not everyone is an ER doctor making $250k or w/e, DarkRoast.

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pure_temper posted...

You didn't even address what I said. We cannot undergo another year of this. The stimulus amount was pathetic and we barely mustered a couple rounds. The Biden administration has shown itself to be unwilling to actually move at the appropriate speed or rate. We cannot demolish the economy for the people barely entering or graduating from college, because of the stupidity of our government.

Illinois has opened responsibly for months now, and we're almost back to normal. You can go to the theater here. I went to the mall yesterday and a month ago and at the end of January and they were full and so far masks and distancing work.

The Biden admin won't do shit and not everyone is an ER doctor making $250k or w/e, DarkRoast.

In case you didn't notice, most of the southern states are literally making a political point of repealing masking mandates.

So even if Responsible Adult World is back in business, RepubliClowns aren't having it.


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Trumble posted...

The US has long since missed the boat on eliminating the virus via anything other than a vaccine, unless they're willing to basically hibernate the entire country for a year or two.

And I'm sure China wishes this would happen so they can keep going full steam ahead assembling their navy and military and eventually trying to take Taiwan by force. We shouldn't even entertain such ideas.

That time for a proper shutdown with proper stimulus / UBI has come and gone without fanfare from either administration. The majority of our elected officials do not understand anything on this subject, or rather they do understand it but have been content to just give corporations more and more cash, while households are neglected.

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DarkRoast posted...

In case you didn't notice, most of the southern states are literally making a political point of repealing masking mandates.

So even if Responsible Adult World is back in business, RepubliClowns aren't having it.

I honestly can't blame them considering what the alternative has been - lockdowns with no real aid or stimulus except to giant corporations. They're throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and given the low amount of education in the Bible Belt (comparatively speaking) we should make sure we blame the powers that be first and foremost. Because it's their fault in the first place and in the end, for not facilitating a proper lockdown.

It's been months and I was hoping Biden would do better, but he hasn't been.

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DarkRoast posted...

are telling us that we should just lock down, because they don't trust vaccines.

FUCK those people. Full stop.

Which means they're making progress from when they didn't support the earlier ideas.

Some people really do just want to cause problems, but a lot just take a long time to come around. I was a bit in that boat myself, albeit the "couple of months" rather than "one year later" type.

I'd give a bit more benefit of doubt to the people who are slowly waking up to smart ideas rather than outright rejecting them.

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A responsible reopening is literally an equal pipe dream to UBI right now.

If you can't trust the government for aid, then you can't trust them reopening either.

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Trumble posted...

Which means they're making progress from when they didn't support the earlier ideas.

Some people really do just want to cause problems, but a lot just take a long time to come around. I was a bit in that boat myself, albeit the "couple of months" rather than "one year later" type.

I'd give a bit more benefit of doubt to the people who are slowly waking up to smart ideas rather than outright rejecting them.

They're not waking up to shit. They've been wrong about literally everything, and even when it seems like they're "changing their minds" they really aren't, because they're still deliberately saying "let's not do what public health officials recommend, let's do it our way"

These are malignant Dunning-Kruger-ites.

They undermined this from the very beginning. They have no business dictating terms now.


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pure_temper posted...

And I'm sure China wishes this would happen so they can keep going full steam ahead assembling their navy and military and eventually trying to take Taiwan by force. We shouldn't even entertain such ideas.

That time for a proper shutdown with proper stimulus / UBI has come and gone without fanfare from either administration. The majority of our elected officials do not understand anything on this subject, or rather they do understand it but have been content to just give corporations more and more cash, while households are neglected.

Yeah, that's my point. It's far too late for the US to use shutdowns, except maybe as an emergency handbrake if numbers get too high. It's what they needed to do a year ago.

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