Trump’s Visit to Arizona: COVID Ionization and Irresponsibility

Here we are in the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic and Donald Trump is going to have another indoor rally, this time in a church. If you get sick, you can’t blame anybody but yourself. In fact, as with the rally in Tulsa, you have to sign a waiver to get in.

The rally is being held in The Dream Center (a mega church), and is put on by Turning Point USA’s Students for Trump. I wonder if parents have to sign for the minors who attend.

In any case, no one is responsible. Another way of saying it is that many people are irresponsible.

Dream City Church must not be too confident that their new ionization technology to kill all the COVID-19 in the place. Hat tip to the Friendly Atheist for this item. Although the church has since taken down the video, this Twitter user has it:

Earlier today, I wrote the company, CleanAirEXP, and asked for the research backing. I haven’t heard anything yet. The company has tried the technology on a surrogate virus, not COVID-19. Other companies have studied this approach and some use it on airplanes. Limited work has been done on COVID-19 in small spaces. According to a presentation posted just today on YouTube, small spaces can be neutralized, but they did not say if a large church space has been tested with people singing and yelling. The salesman for the technology suggested sneezing or coughing next to a person would allow COVID-19 to spread to people in close proximity.

Whatever the capability in this church, none of the people hosting or running the event want to be responsible for any sickness and death that come from it. I hope it obvious that no one should attend this event, even if you support Trump.

54 thoughts on “Trump’s Visit to Arizona: COVID Ionization and Irresponsibility”

  1. Leave it a couple of frauds take something that may work in confined spaces and extrapolate to a yuge arena to make a quick buck off a bunch of suckers.

    Ionization is also used in Semiconductor Clean Rooms in conjunction with laminar air-flow, HEPA and ULPA filters (the ULPA filters themselves can filter out the coronavirus particle), and coupled with strict microcontamination and gowning/PPE protocols. Something like this:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVLGKq9An28

    1. However, to be clear, the PPE used in clean rooms isn’t to protect the people, it is to protect the equipment (and whatever is being fabricated).

      1. I understand that. Still the safest place to work during COVID is probably a semiconductor clean room. The ULPA units filter to 100 nanometers or so (0.1 micron) which the size of the coronavirus particle.

        1. that would depend on whether each employee has his/her own personal suit or if they are shared. If shared, it depends on how well the INSIDE of the suit is cleaned out before the next use.

          1. In most fabs, the people have their own personal suits with their names on the hangars. Visiters like vendor FSEs typically use the suit 1 time and then it is laundered or they have their own hanger as well (depending if they are onsite support or not). The disposable face mask, hairnet, gloves, shoe covers are 1 time use. The hood, suit and boots are regularly laundered.

  2. Biden said 150 million Americans have been killed by guns and 120 million Americans have died from Covid-19 so if you are an American and you’re reading this consider yourself lucky.

    1. and how many people are likely to die by guns because they attended Trump’s rally vs. how many are likely to die from Covid-19 because they attended Trump’s rally?

    2. If (as we all – including you – suspect) he meant “thousand”, not million, then I fear he is probably underestimating … (on the COVID-19 at least; on the guns, it is probably around 150,000 since the start of the Trump regime)

  3. Daily new Covid-19 cases in the USA are now hitting a new high (thankfully, the expertise gained by medical professionals will lead to a lower daily body count) … Even the hapless Brits have got their infection rate down. (Sorry, Trumpy, but there’s much more testing now in the UK as well, so we don’t buy the “it’s because there’s more testing” line.)

    As for Brazil … (tragic, but not too surprising given that Bolsonar***o** is in charge …)

  4. I ended up protesting at Dream City Church before their 11 am service on Sunday. I had dithered around about protesting, but when I saw that Luke Barnett was talking about his “integrity” and that’s why he didn’t cancel the contract with Turning Point USA during the 9 am service, that lit a fire underneath me. I made a quickie sign (“Welcome to Trump Temple”), hopped into my car and drove 33 miles to the church, just to stand about 30 minutes in front of their Cave Creek Rd. turnoff. *Yes* I will be the first person to say that it was a crazy thing to do, but “integrity” is the last thing I think of when I see a church signing a contract with a decidedly political organization masquerading behind “Students for Trump.”

    Plus, I pay more property taxes than that $25,000,000 full cash value parcel. Yeah, I’m just a teensy bit irritated. I predict future visits. There are a number of locations that need visits. 🙂

  5. I wonder if any of the attendees tore down monuments, looted stores, set fires, or did any other criminal protest behavior.

    1. No. And neither did the protesters. You need to get a life. Signed, a protester of that church, but not on Tuesday!

      1. I’m guessing you meant that as an insult while at the same time building yourself up. Since you know me so well do you have any ideas what I could do to improve?

        1. I’m pretty sure anyone who regularly reads your posts would have some suggestions.

    2. There’re many ways to be a criminal. Destroying property isn’t at all as bad as destroying people.

    3. I think “but looting!” has become the 2020 version of “but her emails!”.
      A convenient/lazy way to divert attention from more important issues and from the colossal unfitness for office of the Orange Narcissist.

      1. No matter what the “Whatabout”, it always ends wtih “TRUMP IS LORD! HAIL TRUMP!”

    4. if you are talking about attendees to BLM rallies, then your comment is probably something of an ‘own goal’: trouble at such events (which are usually very peaceful) have often been caused by far-right agitators.

      Incidentally, some of those monuments have been the subject of serious controversy for a long time. It could be argued that the failure of political leaders to make proper decisions about what to do with them meant that another method of dealing with the problem needed to be found. And, in any case, taking down certain monuments is an excellent idea, both politically and aesthetically.

  6. Why not let people make their own choice about whether they go or not?

    And why aren’t protests held to the same standard? In Michigan where I live, the governor condemned small protests against COVID regulations and extended the shutdown in response to them but participated shoulder to shoulder (actually shoulder to shoulder, not metaphorically) in racial protests. What’s the difference?

    1. Why not let people make their own choice about whether they go or not?
      That’s a viable argument if the people going to the event are only jeopardizing their own health, but not so much when it jeopardizes the health of others, like the grocery clerks and nurses and grandmothers that the attendees may encounter after they get infected, and the additional people that get infected by whoever they infect, etc.

    2. Why not let people make their own choice about whether they go or not?

      The reason is because sometimes what you think are your personal decisions affects more than just yourself. This is what is means to live in a society. For example, if you get COVID, how many people who didn’t choose to go will end up getting it from you? If you end up in the hospital, how much more strain does that put on our emergency medical systems? How much is it going to affect medical insurance premiums that many people have to pay? And, so on.

      And why aren’t protests held to the same standard?

      In fact, I think many people were torn. Many more people probably wanted to go or otherwise would have gone, but stayed home because of COVID. Even then, from what I have seen, I would say the vast majority of people protesting tried to be responsible by wearing masks. Also, the protests are mostly outside and they are not centrally organized by a political party. Plus, apparently, the police don’t stop killing people because of the COVID either.

      1. That’s a pretty unworkable standard, though isn’t? If the government stopped everything that might hurt someone else, we wouldn’t do much at all. The protests seem to show that there might have been more to this than some people are willing to acknowledge. For a long time, we have known that the virus is not nearly so dangerous as we were originally told. So again, we should be asking, Why does this continue?

        Perhaps Trump just should call his rallies protests. Then the governors would be supportive I am sure, right? Or perhaps it is about politics.

        The protests killed a lot more people than the police did. And during the time of the protests, over 100 people have died from violence that have nothing to do with the police. Why doesn’t anyone care about them?

        1. You know, LT, I can’t begin to comprehend why people think that the “other people died of violence” argument has any comparison to a person being killed by the police?

          On the one hand we have a person killed by those who are paid and trusted by the public to serve and protect us.

          On the other hand we have, for example, gang members going about their usual (un)lawful business of killing both rivals and innocent people.

          The families and friends of the deceased in both cases undoubtedly “care about them”. However, to suggest that the public reaction should be expected to be the same is ridiculous.

          It’s not a poor comparison, it’s a completely non-sensical concept. It is so absurd that in all honesty I have given up on considering the validity of other points raised by those who try to use this “what about”ism.

          1. Whenever you see someone complain about “what aboutism,” brace yourself for a massive demonstration of hypocrisy. And here we see it on full display.

            Your inability to comprehend this says more about you than it does about anything else, and it is not flattering. It says that you don’t value life equally. Some lives are more important to you than others. You are just virtue signaling there, without any apparent virtue. If you are not willing to speak up about the death of dozens, then don’t speak up.

            If black lives matter, then we as a society should be livid that far more died from mob violence than by the police. Not to mention black businesses destroyed, and the lives of the living that were destroyed along with them. All the while police brutality against blacks is very rare. Police against whites is far more frequent, but no one seems to care much about that.

            What’s the comparison? Dead people are dead. You are no less dead being killed by an unlawful mob than by a cop.

            The fact that the public reaction is different is evidence that black lives (and other lives) don’t matter. What matters is certain kinds of deaths. Other deaths are acceptable to society.

            Perhaps the difference is that I think black lives matter all the time and you really don’t in any meaningful way.

            Your mentality is what got us here–that certain people are exempt from laws, that it’s okay to do certain things in certain situation because the circumstances demand it. I reject that when Derek Chauvin kneels on a neck and I reject it when mobs violently riot and kill people. You only reject it sometimes. You think people are exempt from certain laws sometimes. I don’t think they are. That you can’t comprehend it seems an indication that you have some thinking to do.

            This type of thinly veiled racism–that lawlessness is acceptable by some and we can expect no more from them–is part of the problem of our society. It’s what has been called in another context “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” We can do better. We must expect better. The racism and bigotry has to stop. And so does the hypocrisy. If you think black lives matter, then stand up for them all, not just the politically convenient ones.

          2. Well that sure cleared things up on two fronts:
            1. You exposed and explained so many things about my mentality, morality, and hypocrisy that I truly could hardly recognize myself. I am indebted to you for the insights into my true self.
            2. You wrote a lengthy post that confirmed my original point far more convincingly than I could ever have done. I appreciate your effort since I would never have had the ability to illustrate my point so eloquently.

            P.S. I do have to admit that I am somewhat puzzled by your continual reference to people as black and white, in view of the fact that my original “massive demonstration of hypocrisy” had nothing to do with race. A semi-related question – in today’s world of 2nd and 3rd generations of inter marriage of all races & ethnicities, how do you keep your blacks & whites properly classified?

            P.P.S. “Your mentality is what got us here–that certain people are exempt from laws, that it’s okay to do certain things in certain situation because the circumstances demand it”.
            I think I can say with complete accuracy (being such a hypocrite I presume forbids me from using the phrase “say in all honesty”) that anyone who knows me, ranging from my friends (I do have some, despite being such a hypocrite) to my enemies (whom I can’t identify at the moment, but there must be some), would be ROFL at your description of the most anti-situational ethics person they know.

          3. I think we all have blind spots that others can see better than ourselves. I can’t speak to anything but what you say here. You quite clearly articulated a position that certain people are exempt, to some degree, from laws and that deaths from certain acts are not as important as deaths from other acts. There’s no need to be indebted to me. I would simply start giving serious thought to the significant issues of our world and our culture. How is David Dorn’s death less significant or meaningful that George Floyd?

            I am not sure how a post refuting your point confirms it convincingly but perhaps that is indication of the problem, beginning with the fact that you apparently didn’t read closely. I didn’t make any continual reference to people as black and white. I mentioned white people one time when I pointed out that white people are killed more often by police than black people are despite of the fact that there are far fewer interactions. In other words, your chance of being killed by a police officer is higher if you are white than if you are black. I did mention black people a number of times because the conversation was about the fact that black lives matter and I was indicating that to many (yourself included apparently) black lives don’t really matter. What matters is the perception of police brutality. I say perception because the reality is that police brutality, while always bad, is far less frequent than people think. It’s called an epidemic. People say “Our young black men are in danger from the police.” Neither is true. It’s not an epidemic, nor are young black men in danger in any meaningful or consistent sense.

            But here’s the point: the black lives that matter aren’t the dozen or so killed on the streets of Chicago on a weekend or the victims of violence in almost any major city. It is only the ones killed by the police. And frequently, no consideration is given to what happened leading up to that. The reality is that most young black men have no problems with police because they don’t do anything wrong.

            You remind me of people who respond to “Black lives matter” with “All lives matter.” It is a deflection from the real issues that shows that people don’t really get the issue.

            As for race, I don’t “keep blacks and whites properly classified.” Having lived as a minority in a community for almost 20 years, those things are long gone to me. But most white people haven’t had my experience which is why I encourage people to listen carefully and think deeply about these matters.

          4. It is not about who is being killed. It is about who is doing the killing.

            If my community hires people, arms them, trains them, pays them, protects them from liability, and then they murder community members, that is a problem for me in a way that other crimes are not, because I am enabling the crime. I have to stop it or I am essentially a murderer myself.

            I am not culpable in the same way for gang crimes. A murder is a murder, but I am particularly responsible for stopping murders by people whom I am paying and equipping.

            This is not a difficult point, it was stated clearly by the original poster, and I don’t see why you can’t grasp it, other than that you don’t want to.

          5. It is not about who is being killed. It is about who is doing the killing.

            If my community hires people, arms them, trains them, pays them, protects them from liability, and then they murder community members, that is a problem for me in a way that other crimes are not, because I am enabling the crime. I have to stop it or I am essentially a murderer myself.

            I am not culpable in the same way for gang crimes. A murder is a murder, but I am particularly responsible for stopping murders by people whom I am paying and equipping.

            This is not a difficult point, it was stated clearly by the original poster, and I don’t see why you can’t grasp it, other than that you don’t want to.

          6. If it is not about who is being killed but who is doing the killing, then why aren’t there mass protests when white people are killed by police (because it happens more often than black people killed by police)? This is much more complex than a killing and in my mind that is what many people on both sides don’t get about the protests and riots.

            I think it is about both who is killed and who kills because I think black lives matter. I don’t value some lives more than others. I am not okay with it though some are. We do not have a culture of life and respect for life.

            I get the point you and the original poster are trying to make. I am pointing out that it is a bad point because it is insufficient to deal with reality.

            I think the idea that you are a murderer because of what someone else does is a feel good argument that has no basis in reality because there is no direct connection. First, the amount of taxes you pay probably won’t pay for more than a few minutes of a cop’s time over the course of a year. So it just doesn’t make much of a difference.

            But more to the point, you are not essentially a teacher because your taxes pay for teachers. You are not essentially a fireman because your taxes pay for firemen. You are not essentially a mayor or city councilman because your taxes pay for those. You are not a healthcare provider because your taxes pay for someone’s healthcare . And you are not a murderer because your taxes paid for the salary of someone who did. If your point were true, you would be essentially a good cop because the vast majority of cops are good. We certainly need better police training and better policies. We also need better citizens.

            The problems in our society and culture will not get better with superficial, feel-good responses that cost nothing.

          7. You’re denying the fundamental duty of a citizen in a democracy to take responsibility for her government’s actions. We’ve got nothing further to say to each other at that point: too great an ideological divide.

          8. I don’t know … a few hours of trying to nail jello to the wall may be therapeutic for some people … but I’m not one of them.

          9. I don’t know … a few hours of trying to nail jello to the wall may be therapeutic for some people … but I’m not one of them.
            Obviously my contributions above came because I forgot that!

          10. I think you (inadvertently probably) hit the nail on the head here: Conversing with folks here at Warren’s blog is like trying to nail jello to the wall. Very few people will come with actual facts, hard data, and well-reasoned arguments (or arguments at all for that matter). Conversing with people like you is nailing jello to a wall. You got pinned down on hypocrisy and bail out rather than making an argument in your defense. You, like Ken and some others, just turn to personal attacks.

          11. Yes, it is foolish to come without facts and without argument. You learned that long ago and learned to stay out of conversations that you couldn’t participate in with reason.

          12. So you are responsible for Trump’s actions? Or Mitch McConnell’s? Or Nancy Pelosi’s? You don’t really believe that, do you?

            Putting aside the fact that we are not a democracy, the fundamental duty of a citizen in a democracy is to be informed and thinking. On this, you are neither. The idea that you are responsible for something simply because you are a tax payer is completely untenable.

          13. Except of course if you normalize the police deaths to the black and white populations, you find that blacks are more likely to be killed by police. Mathematics 101.

          14. No, that is not true. Blacks have far more frequent interactions with police but far fewer cases of violence or brutality. Statistically, since blacks have far more interactions, you would expect far more deaths and violence. But it isn’t true.

            In almost every cast, the non-police party does something to antagonize the police by resisting, fighting back, refusal, etc.

            Catch up on the real statistics.

          15. Like a troll like you has any statistics background or any STEM background for that matter.

            If blacks make up 12% of the population, yet are more than 12% of the police deaths, then they are more likely to be killed on a per capita basis. I never said WHY that happens, merely that it does. Maybe you should read up on simple statistical concept of PER capita and get an effing clue.

          16. No. I am very familiar with per capita and I have a clue. There are a lot of nuances in the actual data, but the question is not about overall population. The question is about police interaction. The fact is that when you compare statistics in terms of police interactions, black civilians are less likely to be killed than white civilians, and black or hispanic officers are more likely than white officers to fatally shoot black and hispanic civilians. Or to put it simply, black people have far more interactions with police than whites, but whites are more often killed by police as a percentage of police interactions. So to use rough numbers, blacks commit about 40-45% of crimes but are only about 25% of police killings. Again, rough numbers, but the point is that the per capita of actual police interactions is the comparison, not the population as a whole. To put it differently, white people are less likely to be killed as a percentage of the total population because they are less likely to be in contact with the police in a dangerous situation.

            Here is a study for you if you can understand it: https://www.pnas.org/content/116/32/15877. It is, to my knowledge, the most comprehensive study to date. There is a lot of information here.

            Here are a few key quotes from it:
            ___________________________

            Controlling for predictors at the civilian, officer, and county levels, a person fatally shot by police was 6.67 times less likely (OR = 0.15 [0.09, 0.27]) to be Black than White and 3.33 times less likely (OR = 0.30 [0.21, 0.47]) to be Hispanic than White. Thus, in the typical shooting, we did not find evidence of anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparity.

            We did not find evidence for anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparity in police use of force across all shootings, and, if anything, found anti-White disparities when controlling for race-specific crime. While racial disparity did vary by type of shooting, no one type of shooting showed significant anti-Black or -Hispanic disparity.

            Similarly, Black and Hispanic officers (compared with White officers) were more likely to fatally shoot Black and Hispanic civilians.
            ___________________________

            You can see some responses to it at the same site. You can also Google it and get a lot of information to help you understand how to view the data.

          17. And why do you resort so easily to calling names? Why not interact on actual data and facts? Post a link or two to something that supports you and answers the objections about it.

          18. You really are just wasting your time trying to engage LT in a reasonable conversation. He’s not capable of it.

    3. They are treated the same in our state, WA. Inslee was asked why he allowed the protests and he answered that he treated them all the same. They all had the same rights.

  7. “I wonder if parents have to sign for the minors who attend.”

    Of course they will. Trump may be an idiot but I’m sure the lawyers working on his campaign aren’t. They would know perfectly well the liability they would face if a minor got sick at his rally.

Comments are closed.