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Greenfield Makes Pierre Cesspool Worse with Trumpist Hogwash About Coronavirus

Public liar and drunk Senator Brock Greenfield (R-2/Clark) admits that Pierre during Session is a cesspool:

“The wintertime in Pierre, you know it’s a cesspool. You’re exposed to a lot of germs,” Greenfield said [Bob Mercer, “With Covid-19, South Dakota Capitol Likely Won’t Be Same for ’21 Legislative Session,” KELO-TV, 2020.09.01].

Senator Greenfield made this comment during an Executive Board discussion Tuesday about how public health safety during Session, particularly for the college interns they usually recruit to do their clerical work. Greenfield’s distractions during this serious discussion also reminded us that his own Republican brain is a cesspool of harmful Trumpist nonsense endangering public health:

Amanda Marsh, who coordinates internships for the Legislature, said the application deadline is October 9. She said the Legislature’s leadership would choose interns in November.

Senator Brock Greenfield, a Republican from Clark, is Senate president pro tem and serves as chairman of the Executive Board. Greenfield suggested inserting the word ‘flu’ for ‘COVID-19′ in the many questions Marsh brought.

“The wintertime in Pierre, you know it’s a cesspool. You’re exposed to a lot of germs,” Greenfield said. He noted that nationally 6 percent of COVID-19 deaths were people who didn’t have underlying health concerns. Greenfield said the same issues need to be considered for legislators and legislative staff.

Senate Democratic leader Troy Heinert of Mission said COVID-19 should be viewed as it is and should be taken seriously [Mercer, 2020.09.01].

No, Brock, inserting “flu” for “covid-19” is not a good idea. There’s no vaccine and no natural immunity for coronavirus. Covid-19 has killed three times more Americans in six months than the flu has killed in our worst recent year:

Dr. Mike Elliot of Avera wanted to make sure people understood the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic when he spoke during a city of Sioux Falls COVID-19 news conference Monday.

Elliot said he’s heard comments such as maybe COVID-19 isn’t all that bad or that it’s media hype. Neither of those two comments or anything similar are true, Elliot said.

So far, more than 170,000 people have died from COVID-19 this year in the U.S. and 5.5 million have had it, Elliot said.

The flu has killed on average 12,000 to 60,000 a year in the U.S. since 2010, Elliot said.

The mortality rate for the flu is about 0.1% while the mortality rate for COVID-19 is about 3% to 5%, according to the World Health Organization [Rae Yost, “Covid-19 Is Worse Than the Annual Flue, Doctor Says,” KELO-TV, 2020.08.18].

And that 6% figure? That’s Trump/QAnon horsehockey trying to mask the true risk posed by letting coronavirus run rampant in the name of Free-Dumb:

…Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, clarified what the CDC data mean.

He noted that the 6% figure includes cases where COVID-19 was listed as the only cause of death. “That does not mean that someone who has hypertension or diabetes who dies of Covid didn’t die of Covid-19. They did,” Fauci said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“So the numbers you’ve been hearing — the 180,000-plus deaths — are real deaths from Covid-19. Let [there] not be any confusion about that,” Fauci said.

…But the data on which all of this is based come from death certificates, which list any causes or conditions that contributed to a person’s death. In the case of COVID-19, the disease often causes other serious conditions, such as pneumonia or acute respiratory distress syndrome. Those two conditions are among the ailments with the highest counts in the CDC’s comorbidity chart. Some long-term conditions that increase the risk for severe COVID-19, such as diabetes or hypertension, were also listed.

The underlying cause of death, however, is the condition that started the chain of events that led to a person’s death. In 92% of all deaths that mention COVID-19, that disease is listed as the underlying cause of death, Jeff Lancashire, spokesman for the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, told FactCheck.org in an email.

As the epidemiologist and science writer Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz explained in a recent post, “it’s pretty rare that someone wouldn’t have at least one issue caused by coronavirus prior to their death, and all it means is that in 94% of cases people who had COVID-19 also developed other issues, or had other problems at the same time.”

Meyerowitz-Katz notes that influenza and pneumonia are listed as the most common concurrent diseases, which isn’t surprising. “Similarly,” he writes, “respiratory failure, something that the coronavirus directly causes, is listed here as a ‘comorbidity’ that 55,000 people had.”

So, it’s misleading to say that 94% of those who died with COVID-19 also had other ailments without explaining that the disease causes other serious illnesses. And it’s wrong to claim that only 6% of the recorded COVID-19 deaths were caused by the disease [Saranac Hale Spencer, “CDC Did Not ‘Admit Only 6%’ of Recorded Deaths from Covid-19,” FactCheck.org, updated 2020.09.02].

Interns, I know that working in the Legislature is is an awesome opportunity and a great public service. But before you wade into the Capitol cesspool, for your own health and the health of your family, friends, and communities, you might want to consider the intelligence and character of the people you’ll be working with. Whatever Brock is drunk on, scotch or Fox News, he needs to put it down, pick up real science, and stop using his position to say things that undermine public understanding of a real and deadly pandemic and put his winter employees at risk.

27 Comments

  1. jerry 2020-09-03 08:18

    Get ready for human guinea pig tests for the trump virus…on November 1, 2020. Yep, in a macabre effort to win an election, trump will toss down the safety gates and put millions of us up against the wall for a vaccine that is not fully tested. How about that? Just like Putin’s Russia. I’m sure Brock will be first in line to see if his johnson may fall off after the injection of Clorox or whatever it is they’re gonna use. Me, I think I will wait this one out until I see what the EU and China bring forth.

  2. Nix 2020-09-03 09:25

    Just another GOP Turd floating next
    to Kristi, Ravnsborg, Bolin, and the rest of the turds floating in the GOP cesspool.

  3. Donald Pay 2020-09-03 11:18

    The Legislature is a cesspool in any number of ways. Most years I was lobbying there was some illness or another passed around. I wouldn’t blame interns. Infectious respiratory diseased spread easily in the packed committee rooms. If covid is still a thing in January, and it probably will be, they need to think about remote meetings.

  4. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2020-09-03 11:32

    Donald, Mercer reports that the Executive Board is considering ways to rearrange the Capitol to lessen the spread of cooties. They’ll move some seats in the House and Senate up to the galleries and maybe have legislators participate from other offices. They’ll also spread out seats in the committee rooms. Unfortunately, these changes will make it harder for people to watch and participate in person.

    On the good side for participation, the E-Board is also talking about training committee chairs in managing online testimony better. Maybe coronavirus precautions will lead to more participation by making it easier and more normal for folks to participate remotely.

    Heck, maybe we’ll even get to my pre-pandemic proposal of conducting the entire Legislative Session remotely, so legislators see their own constituents every day, while they are voting from the home office or the library or their favorite Main Street café… and so lobbyists don’t nearly the same influence in their closed-door meetings and special suppers in Pierre.

  5. John 2020-09-03 12:03

    Pierre will implode if the legislature does the smart thing holding the session remotely.
    Motels, restaurants, bars, even gas stations will shrivel without the legislators and lobbyists.
    Yet, a remote session may well provide the state with the best session in memory.
    On the other hand . . . if all those old republicans share the virus . . . could result in a legislative renewal of the type unseen in 40-50 years.

  6. Joe 2020-09-03 12:04

    States track the number of deaths by month, and have for many years.

    Let’s say the number of deaths in the US for the months of February-July has averaged “x” each year for the past decade. For the year 2020 the number of deaths in that time frame is about “x + 300,000”. That delta is a decent proxy for the actual number of deaths caused in the US by COVID-19, so far.

  7. John Dale 2020-09-03 13:26

    In late June, a paper titled, “5G Technology and Induction of Coronavirus in Skin Cells” was published, explaining the relationship between 5G technology and the coronavirus.

    “[5G millimeter waves, unlike previous technology, can penetrate the nucleus of the cell. The cell reacts to the 5G wave by creating an electromagnetic field. Like a shadow, the shape of the electromagnetic field reflects the hexagonal and pentagonal shapes of the DNA base pairs. This electromagnetic field produces holes in the cellular liquid. Hexagonal and pentagonal voids are created in the nucleoplasm. The cell produces extra bases to fill the voids. These bases then join together to produce coronavirus like structures within the cell. The PCR test will read this as a positive Covid-19 result.]”

  8. jerry 2020-09-03 15:25

    Pale Dale is worried about his tan or lack of it. Stay pale Dale. Just say NO to drugs dude.

  9. DaveFN 2020-09-03 16:42

    Whether such warped QAnon logic stems from ignorance of logic or is a direct attack on logic (Trump and Trumpism falls into both categories)—both constitute a direct threat to the foundations of civilized society and need be called out by any and all who know better.

    Logic 101 for people who erroneously think that pre-existing conditions are the cause of COVID deaths: A necessary condition is one which must be present in order for another condition to occur, while a sufficient condition is one which produces the said condition.

  10. jerry 2020-09-03 17:02

    So, you’re a young athlete playing Big 10 college football and now you have heart conditions from the trump virus.

    “Around one-third of Big Ten athletes who tested positive for COVID-19 appear to have myocarditis, according to Penn State’s director of athletic medicine.”

    This trump virus is gonna break our already crappy healthcare system. What plans does Greenfield and the rest of the loafers have for this, besides calling it a cesspool?

  11. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2020-09-03 19:52

    DaveFN, in the most generous interpretation, Brock’s willingness to promulgate coronavirus conspiracy support results from fearful wishful thinking that the disaster is real, the disaster is sticking around, and the disaster is demanding that we all make sacrifices. Humans have an enormous capacity to believe what comforts them instead of what unnerves them, and they will cling desperately to any shred of evidence that they can manipulate into moral and intellectual cover for their failure to think beyond their wishes.

  12. El RayoX 2020-09-03 19:58

    John, I hate to piss on your theory of Pierre imploding without the legislature, but the motels, bars restaurants and gas stations operate year round. They don’t open for business in January and close six to eight weeks later. The fact is, most of the Legislators stay in private rental properties or homes while in session. Almost every Monday through Thursday, an association or lobbying group hosts a hospitality gathering with food and drink. The gas stations pick up a sale on their way out of town, BFD. Our elected officials on both sides know how to stretch their per diem. Pierre will not dry up and blow away or implode if the legistature worked remotely. Actually, a while back, a poster here (Pay?) proposed switching to a unicameral legislature and meeting every other year. That would probably work and Pierre and South Dakota would be better for it.

  13. Debbo 2020-09-03 20:28

    The Roger Cornelius Memorial Cartoon by Marty Two Bulls.

    is.gd/pEPBIS

  14. John Dale 2020-09-03 23:01

    “Substantial manipulation of peer review.”

    Where’s the evidence? We know neotards are going for broke .. suppression of a study is a very low bar.

    Did the authors retract?

    If we are doing science here (lol), we should be able to read and scrutinize the editor’s opinion.

  15. John Dale 2020-09-03 23:02

    Hey jerry – watch what I do next. :)

    If you could predict it, you could try to stop it.

  16. o 2020-09-04 16:00

    MFI: “Have you [John Dale] ever retracted any of your debunked BS?

    I can answer that: no. instead of retracting he just rePOSTS, and reposts, and reposts. The key to the big lie is repetition.

  17. John Dale 2020-09-04 16:22

    Thanks for the reference, mike.

    It seems a bit sociopathic (?) that you can’t have a normal conversation without attacking the person. Maybe we should have Ms. Bik look into the science of personal attacks? :D

    But seriously, folks .. at issue was a misstatement about the number of diseases that could stem from exposure to 5G.

    Let’s start with a little logic. If wireless wasn’t dangerous, why are there RF “safety meters”?

    Proximity matters since RF behaves like light in terms of diffision. The farther from the source, the less exposure.

    Therefore, we should only be worried about wireless exposure when we are close to emitters.

    So, what should we think about phones in back pockets, in bras, and next to craniums? The CDC recommends using hands-free devices.

    The reason is because we know RF is dangerous.

    Now, you’re asserting that we should trust the research findings of a multibillion dollar industry, and that 5G is safe.

    Now, back to the point.

    There was a factual mistatement inthe paper according to Bik. That said, RF’s effects on the genetic makeup of cells could be numerous, creating exponential increase in the potential for mutation and disease.

    The journal and authors have not made a comment in response to Bik’s claim about the extent of purmutation of disease. But the other substance of the paper was not in dispute.

    Furthermore, Bik’s expertise is in the malfeasant reuse of images in research papers, mostly from Chinese researchers (BRAVO). I’m not seeing any claims of that kind as it pertains to this paper.

    So to conclude based on this retraction depends on 1) your trust of a multibillion dollar industry extended from DOD war theater technology (I’ve read army patents on 5G for crowd control and manufacture of war theater assymetry) and 2) that the substance of the paper other than the statement about disease permutations (which could actually turn-out to be defensible pending comments from the authors) is erronious.

    If there are any spelling errors, I apologize. Lots going on today. If you want details, ask jerry.

  18. leslie 2020-09-04 17:21

    $$ per post. Troll.

  19. John Dale 2020-09-05 07:20

    So, to be clear, I get no money to post here.

    That is a lie, leslie. Stop it. Please stop telling lies.

    Additionally, the study has NOT been debunked, and 5G and other bands of RF are still not safe ON RECORD.

  20. Aaron 2020-09-05 12:16

    Just how dumb is Greenfield? Being as how not that long ago he went through open heart surgery while still in his early 40’s, he’s clearly one of those with significant underlying health issues

  21. Debbo 2020-09-05 13:59

    Aaron, apparently the answer is, “quite dumb.”

Comments are closed.