Politics

SpaceNut · 2020-04-02 08:50:36

Since we will not get to test the other we will never know which would have been the worst for america....

We will be seeing in months when we do go back to a sort of normal whether or not the plans still in the works to revive america will work or not. The money being put into the bucket for future use for that end goal will need to be monitored to prevent miss use as it was before by many corporations.

kbd512 · 2020-04-02 12:13:01

GW,

I can't seem to recall any war or pandemic that the US was ever adequately prepared for. We were ill-prepared for both world wars, Spanish Flu, Polio, H1N1, and every other war or pandemic we've ever suffered through. Since no other President has been "held to account" over their responses to wars or pandemics, I fail to see why this one would. If President Trump had truly "done nothing" to counter COVID-19, then my opinion about his response would've changed. Thankfully, that hasn't been the case. The executive's response hasn't been stellar, but it's been adequate and it's having the intended effect. It's most definitely very concerning to me, but thus far our health care system is holding up to the incredible strain it's being placed under. That was honest criticism of President Trump's response to COVID-19, in case you missed it.

Similarly, I think President Obama's response to H1N1 was adequate, even though it could've been better. I sincerely doubt that either President wasn't fully aware of the gravity of the situation. There was scant criticism of former President Obama over his handling of H1N1 from the media, if any at all, so I fail to see the purpose behind the tirade against President Trump over his handling of COVID-19. H1N1 was news for a split second and then vanished, even as Americans were still dying from it. Since more Americans died of H1N1 than COVID-19, thus far, I fail to see how former President Obama's H1N1 response escaped criticism. I expect someone who truly is an independent to point out the faults of both political parties, but historically the media has failed to do that pretty convincingly. If they only point out the faults of one political party, it's pretty difficult for me to view them as being independent- which is why I turned the TV off during the last term of former President Obama's administration and have no intention of going back to watching the media cheerleading for either party.

The truth is that the US has never been prepared to respond to a public health crisis of this scale and it's only happenstance that it occurred now. The belief that the response would've been substantially different if someone else was in office is quaint, but history paints a starkly different picture.

SpaceNut,

Some of us who voted for the other guy wonder if Hillary Clinton would just start cackling at Americans dying or start telling the families of the dead that their family members died over a Chinese YouTube video that nobody had ever heard of. It's really quite astonishing how we went from nobody being allowed to criticize the President for anything to 24/7/365 non-stop criticism of the President over absolutely everything. Actually, I think it's ideology and the wrong-headed belief (just my opinion) so many hold that they can do no wrong.

Criticism looses much of its power when absolutely everything is criticized. Thereafter pretending we're not partisan is the biggest sham of all, but that's also why I stopped watching TV news during former President Obama's administration and TV period shortly thereafter. The Democrats had total control over the Executive and Congress for awhile during former President Obama's first term in office and pursued none of what people like you say they wanted from our government, which tells me your side has no better idea about who to elect to get the things they claim to want than my side does.

All,

Have we finally learned our lesson about disaster preparedness and can we commit to maintaining the stockpile of resources required to combat future pandemics and natural disasters?

If not, then how painful do these disasters have to become for learning to take place?

Does our government's spending habits reflect prioritization of what will absolutely bring our way of life to a screeching halt?

SpaceNut · 2020-04-02 13:26:25

The stock piling of defense for the virus should be whoms responsibility; since much like an election we only have the 2 choices?
We now know that the federal failed to even keep up a simple repair contract....
As for the past look at all the blocked votes when you think some one is in control and then ask if those bills should have been passed....

Everything comes back to money and happened on this article with numbers Which States Pay the Most Federal Taxes?

who pays the most federal taxes, it depends on how you look at it.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday invoked the Defense Production Act to aid companies building ventilators for coronavirus patients, Trump directed the U.S. Health and Human Services secretary to use his authority to help facilitate the supply of ventilator materials for six companies - General Electric Co, Hill-Rom Holdings Inc , Medtronic Plc, Resmed Inc, Royal Philips N.V. and Vyaire Medical Inc.

kbd512 · 2020-04-02 18:03:51

SpaceNut,

Why must the federal government decide every last detail of how we prepare for something?

Do you feel the need to consult Uncle Sam when figuring out what the cheapest way to keep your vehicle on the road happens to be?

Uncle Sam never told me to keep a little extra food, water, batteries, flashlights, clothes, first aid supplies, keep my gas tank full, talk to my neighbors to figure out what they do or don't plan for, save extra money for emergencies, or get training to learn how to use what I'd need to survive- so that none of those things became an immediate life threatening emergency. Nobody had to tell my grand parents, either, because they lived through the Great Depression.

I've been doing all those things for years without anyone else ever prompting me to do it. One bad experience with Hurricane Ike was enough for Mother Nature to get her point across. Life is unpredictable, so prepare for tough times. The "normalcy bias" is known as a "bias" for a reason. I look at people who fail to prepare for anything at all as the normative case, but there's nothing "normal" about their behavior, they're simply "biased" towards "good times".

Maybe we can get the job done without making a public spectacle of it or having politics become far too involved. Now is a good time to change policy on this, but the changes need to be on point, rather than trying to sneak through our wish lists of things we want vs what we really need. For example, airline emissions standards have nothing at all to do with preparing for global pandemics. Similarly, we don't need any handouts to big businesses without promises to repay or protections for their workers, either. That money was supposed to keep everyone from starving to death or dying from some other preventable cause. On that particular point, I think both Republican and Democrat politicians behaved badly when they simply needed to draft short and concise legislation to keep the lights on, so to speak, and nothing else.

GW Johnson · 2020-04-02 19:47:10

There are two keys to quarantining: (1) adequate interruption of disease transmission person-to-person, and (2) getting started as soon as you hear the epidemic is starting.

Trump screwed around denying there was a serious threat for 2 months, even with advisers telling him the truth. Which delay is why even with quarantining, we now have the most infections of any country in the world. THAT is what those 2 months have cost us.

Expect 100k-240k deaths per Dr. Faucci, which at the 1.5-2% death rate as we have seen so far says well over 10 million folks will have been infected (3%+ of our population). And that's with quarantining. It would be a lot higher toll without it, also per Faucci's curves.

But Kbd512 is right, Obama was slow to respond to H1N1. Fortunately that one was not as lethal as this one is. Covid-19 is about as infectious and as lethal as the infamous 1918 "Spanish" flu. Seems to be a once-a-century event to face one this dangerous.

The difference here is a modern economy that is far more productive and a much higher lifestyle than 100 years ago. That makes the economic crash from the closed businesses far worse. But it is still the same choice: quarantine and save lives but crash the economy, or not quarantine and lose a lot of lives in order to minimize economic damage.

It gets back to what I said: your mothers and your churches taught you to value lives over money, that valuing money over lives was evil. Look at your public officials and evaluate how they prioritize lives versus money, based on what they do, not what they say. Then stop re-electing those with the evil priorities.

And that applies to Democrats as well as Republicans, and any other third parties or independents, too.

By the way, the soon-coming edict for the public to wear improvised masks is not what you think. Wearing the mask is not to keep you from getting infected, because it cannot. But it can keep you from infecting someone else. They don't really want it stated like that, but that's the bald truth.

Paper porosity sizes vary from 2 to 25 micron. Cloth porosity is usually a bit larger still. The droplets you eject when you sneeze or cough (or even just talk) vary from 0.5 to 12 micron, with a peak nearer 10 micron. Even a bandana will stop most of that from getting away from you when you cough or sneeze.

Viruses themselves vary from about 0.02 to 0.4 micron in size. No mask will ever stop airborne virus particles. Those N-95 medical masks won't even do that, although they are really hard to breathe through, at about 2 micron porosity.

It's just physics, and centuries of experience with quarantines.

GW

SpaceNut · 2020-04-03 10:13:31

I can see that we are going to start limiting exports or adding them to the ITAR lists of technology or products as a result of the President Trump after invoking the Defense Production Act. 3M was warned by the Trump administration to stop exporting respirator masks.
The matter of what the act and others really say is being tested for sure as its appears to be a difference of opinion as to whom and when for allies versus enemies for the order in which goods are moved to.
3M said Friday that an order President Donald Trump made under the Defense Production Act will allow the Maplewood-based company to import more of its N95 respirator masks from its overseas operations.

I think that Trump thought that a US factory would make them but the more important act is that we have them to dispense to the Hospitals and Doctors.

Something not in any of the boilouts or acts of law Guy Fieri helps launch relief fund for laid-off restaurant industry workers

kbd512 · 2020-04-03 14:33:30

SpaceNut,

A week or so ago 3M said they would triple domestic production in less than a month, from 35 million to around 100 million masks per month. If doctors and nurses were seeing around 1/3rd of the people in the country in a month, that level of production from that facility alone should be sufficient to meet to domestic demand. Since they did that before they were ordered to, I'm not sure why an order is even necessary at this point. The only key point that's changed is that they're now drop shipping supplies directly to hospitals rather than bothering with the byzantine network of domestic warehouses.

SpaceNut · 2020-04-04 09:16:20

For a president that believed it was a hoax the piling up of deaths is turning his head around to the reality as he now has done what he did not want to do which is stay at home and wait the virus out by isolating.
Trump Organization has laid off about 1,500 employees as pandemic hits business

Thats a small quantity but its not nothing either in the large skeem of things for business of simular size.

After Jared kushners tele conference saying that the nation stock pile is “The notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile,” Kushner said. “It’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use.” JARED KUSHNER: The federal stockpile is ours, not the states’.

kbd512 · 2020-04-04 10:26:04

SpaceNut,

Do you have any slight clue how laughable it is that COVID-19 is what people choose to bite their nails over?

10 times as many Americans died 2 years ago from the flu (80,000) as compared to COVID-19 deaths (at the time this was written), but there was no "stay at home" order, no shutting down the country, no invoking war powers, and no mass hysteria in the media. According to the CDC, 647,000 Americans die each year from heart disease, but there's no panic over that. Drug overdoses accounted for 70,000 deaths in 2017. Car accidents caused another 38,000, but no panic over that, either. Diabetes directly caused 1,600,000 deaths. Half of those who died from diabetes were under the age of 70. There's definitely a public health care crisis in America, but COVID-19 ain't it. If you die from a heart attack or diabetes versus a virus, you're still every bit as dead and we're going to put you in the ground just like the people who died from this new corona virus and the 57,000 who died from the normal influenza virus last year.

I have one last minor point for my fellow Americans to ponder. Even though most of you, as the stats show, are in no danger of starving to death in the immediate future, eventually everyone has to eat and most of our farmers are one paycheck away from being bankrupt. Even though very few of you would know anything about dying from starvation unless you have also lived through the Great Depression, about 9,000,000 people around the world die from starvation each year. We could be adding substantial numbers of Americans to that butcher's bill if we run out of food after our own farms quit producing. To this day, the combination of AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis still have nothing on good old fashioned starvation and I know how much most of you like to eat, so think about that while you're busy freaking out over this silly little virus.

So, my fellow Americans, keep freaking out over the minor number of deaths caused by COVID-19 while you pack on those pounds, drive like maniacs, and imbibe in your drugs of choice. We're counting on you to do your part to keep our funeral homes in business.

SpaceNut · 2020-04-04 10:53:44

The fact that the medical profession is still handing out bandaids and not getting cures to remove the ailment is the real issue.
We are still not testing when any flu comes running through our populations to prevent one from getting sick and dieing is the issue.
The deaths due to economics of starvation is a problem that needs fixing for sure.
The deaths are only minor until they hit your family or your self as we should not ignore it if you value life.

Should we have just killed people like steven hawkings because he was sickly?
Should we go back to those that can not read as having no value to society to terminate?

SpaceNut · 2020-04-04 12:04:04

All the money in the world will not stop starvation is there is nothing to buy on the shelves as the Food supply worries farmers in US as coronavirus disrupts their work
Of course infected worker put the entire nation at risk but where are the workers that we count on for this food...its a labor mismatch....

The "free time" of the homeless is spent trying to survive since they are not employeed or not employable in the current state of the person and they are doing the best that they can under the cards that they have. Its up to community and others to change the deck of cards that they hold such as to get them the education, aid them in housing that is more permanent than a cardboard box or tent, change the mind set of foraging to working for what they need ect...not rounding them up like an infestation to put out of there missery...

.

kbd512 · 2020-04-04 12:16:27

SpaceNut,

Stephen Hawking was worth saving. I'm not and neither are you. We're expendable. That's a concept you learn about after joining the military, whereupon they teach you to value the mission over your own miserable little existence. I know many of our liberals think they're the center of the universe, but despite whatever nonsense mommy or daddy may have told them, the vast majority of them just aren't that special in any other venue outside of their 3 pound universe.

Deaths are a part of life, boss. Adults must learn to accept that fact, even if they find it frightening. Children go hide behind mom's skirt, despite the fact that that's not a solution to their mortal state of being, no matter how much mom loves you. Facing your own mortality is something all of us have to do and sometimes that means making difficult decisions. The ability to make wise decisions, however difficult, is what separates the adults from the children, irrespective of what age group they fall into. I prefer to face my own death with dignity and class and that I not be an excessive burden on others. I can't see any point in feeling sorry for myself over what has always been and likely always will be. I much prefer to enjoy what little time I have here and to not worry too much about what tomorrow brings, beyond basic prudent action to ensure that the next generation can carry on.

You've spent at least the last 4 years of your life obsessing over every little detail of what one person has done because you so despise that person. That seems like a rather poor use of anyone's time. Please don't tell me there wasn't a better use for the time you had here, even if you couldn't figure out what that was. So, yeah, I'm not overly concerned about what happens to us. We're old men who are long past our prime. If there was something fantastic that we were going to do for the world, then we would've done it by now instead of talking about it. On that note, I would like to know what you plan on doing differently with whatever time you have after this hoopla ends, presuming you survive.

SpaceNut · 2020-04-04 12:29:13

The worlds, nation, country mission is then to kill off all life...that we all have no value and to the end all life is the mission...
A solder that dies in that mission means completion of that mission but thats not it either.

I am not old as I still function and can do what men half my age can not, so age is just a number....

Getting a nation that has been hit by the virus will take as In Italy, Going Back to Work May Depend on Having the Right Antibodies and its going to be true for others as well.

Scrambling to get production underway, the workers took apart a ventilator and 3-D scanned each of the roughly 300 parts, creating computer simulations of how the device could be assembled efficiently. Ford, which has partnered with a ventilator-maker and GE Healthcare, has been rushing to train workers and obtain the parts to have its first prototype ready early next week.
The effort is a test of American manufacturing might the likes of which hasn’t been seen in decades. Employees and executives at Ford and GM said they’re working around the clock, driven by a sense of patriotism similar to when the companies were recruited to build equipment and airplanes during World War II. Which only leaves the contract or means to pay for the output from there respective factory assembly lines.

kbd512 · 2020-04-04 13:25:00

SpaceNut,

In the greater context of what your job entails, the training of the young sailors you're providing mission-ready boats to involves locking them in a room that rapidly fills with ice cold sea water. It doesn't matter what they do, the room eventually floods as they slowly realize that no matter what they do, no matter how fast they work, they're going to drown. The Navy is not interested in actually drowning everyone who goes through their training, but they do want to see how their sailors react to situations where no matter what they do, there is no way out of that situation. When they get to the fleet, as their responses to the various terrorist attacks and collisions between warships and cargo container ships have proven, those sailors will lock themselves into a flooded compartment if they think that's the best way to save the ship and the rest of the crew. Completing a mission doesn't necessarily mean you're going to live to see what comes after.

The mission of every country is to continue to exist and to learn to live with acceptable losses. In WWII, the nations of the world were tagging and bagging more than 38,000 people per day at a minimum and perhaps more than 46,000 people by some estimates. Humanity didn't end there and it won't end over this virus, either. It may be impossible for you to exercise any perspective, but some of the rest of us know how bad things actually were, in our not-so-distant past, without any corona viruses involved.

SpaceNut · 2020-04-04 14:23:29

The stress test is to ensure command tasks are carried out in the task of a fight and its that same command that will direct you to another task which maybe to slow the waters in rush to allow more time for the first task to be completed and none of the tasks are lay down and die but to fight onward, that is the mssion.
Command sometime does not direct how to solve the task but gives the means to the end by assigning the task. While command looks at all other task that are still in the que needing of direction.

We have been lied to againa s Trump said our borders were close back in Januarary but thats not true as 430,000 People Have Traveled From China to U.S. Since Coronavirus Surfaced including nearly 40,000 in the two months after President Trump imposed restrictions on such travel, according to an analysis of data collected in both countries.

kbd512 · 2020-04-04 17:45:13

SpaceNut,

That stress test, as you call it, is to ensure that you don't stop acting in a team-oriented way simply because you won't live to see the end of the fight. Sometimes self-sacrifice is required to ensure that your team ultimately wins. The Japanese instinctively understood this, even though they ultimately lost the war under the false belief that anything beyond "the warrior spirit" was required to win. I have it on reasonably good authority that better technology, manufacturing capability, and logistics are fairly essential as well.

Command quite frequently does not direct "how to solve" a given task, since most commanders expect their subordinates to be competent thinking people who don't need infinitely detailed micro-management from on high to come up with reasonable solutions, not necessarily "the perfect solution", to complex real life problems, never mind the simple ones.

SpaceNut · 2020-04-04 19:49:29

Even in the face of the virus america is going to survive as the PPE is coming and jobs are being created even if only short term to deal with production levels required. GM turns gutted, shuttered Warren plant into face mask supplier with the makers wearing it as well.
GM is also working with medical device maker Ventec Life Systems to make lifesaving ventilators at GM's plant in Kokomo, Indiana.
“Medical Face Masks”, a package of 100 generic blue disposable masks, was going for $15, but thats not were we are now...Only 5 percent of the surgical face masks purchased in the US every year are made there, according to one estimate—the rest mostly come from China and Mexico.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/us/p … trump.html
the General Motors and Ventec Life Systems would allow for the production of as many as 80,000 desperately needed ventilators price tag was more than $1 billion, with several hundred million dollars to be paid upfront to General Motors to retool a car parts plant in Kokomo, Ind., where the ventilators would be made with Ventec’s technology.

These jobs however they are helping under the DPA as gone most likely once the crisis is over.

The popup jobs from exisitng business switching to PPE are not doing it for the sales of what is being made in some cases. A business that made candles is making face shield from donated plastics from a maine company and in turn they are sending the shields to the maine business area where the plastics were gotten from in like kind donation. The candle business has choosen to pay the 20 workers.

GW Johnson · 2020-04-05 10:49:24

My take on the Covid-19 pandemic is posted on "exrocketman" as "On the Covid-19 Pandemic", posted 4-4-2020. I added extrapolations from Dr. Fauci's estimates in an update dated today.

Net upshot: this thing is quite comparable to the 1918 flu. It is worse than anything we have seen since then. It looks to be comparable to the annual disease and drug death tolls.

GW

SpaceNut · 2020-04-05 12:16:35

Trump uses coronavirus crisis to push his broader agenda

Trump’s own tax law in 2017 sliced the tax rate for corporations from 35% to 21% and eliminated business-related expenses on meals and entertainment

Making a claim that it will help the restaraunt industry....

Trump argues that the virus has only spotlighted that his instincts on the border wall were right.

The virus does not even know that a wall is even there....

Of course we need facts and not cheerleading power of positivity

Coronavirus death toll: Americans are almost certainly dying of covid-19 but being left out of the official count
Thats as a result of testing and nothing else...

How Coronavirus Breaks Down Along Political Lines

Silly as we know that its killing both and that the effects have to do with population density ....

so whom for businesses are leading the American wave for this virus?
Businesses that have stepped up to battle the pandemic format is in 78 slides...

BB121kxl.img?h=373&w=624&m=6&q=60&o=t&l=f&x=871&y=276

There a few partnerships to crank up the volume of production for the first few slides followed by many more from around the world.

We are in a worldy fight against this virus....

kbd512 · 2020-04-05 15:53:24

GW,

We haven't shut down the country over the fact that heart disease alone kills more Americans EVERY SINGLE YEAR, than WWI / WWII / Korean War / Viet Nam War / all Gulf Wars COMBINED (in point of fact, every war America fought in the 20th and 21st centuries). If that wasn't enough, the death toll from diabetes makes the butcher's bill associated with heart attacks look tame by way of comparison.

In your blog post you compared COVID-19 deaths to WWII, but every year we loose 1/3rd more people than WWII to heart disease and 3 TIMES MORE THAN THAT to blood sugar management than we ever lost in all wars fought from the beginning of America to the present day. The only war death toll figure that remotely compares to deaths from heart disease is the Civil War, but it's like loosing the same total number of people we lost in the Civil War, times 3 or 4 (heart disease and diabetes) EVERY SINGLE YEAR.

COVID-19's death rate is influenza death rate times two, maybe times three. Most of the people it kills are very advanced in age and/or already have one or more pre-existing medical conditions. By next year, we should have a vaccine. Even with the yearly death rate from influenza, most people don't bother with vaccines and even most doctors don't bother with testing. I can't fathom the reason for the freak out over COVID-19, given the death toll stats the CDC publishes over those other two preventable diseases.

GW Johnson · 2020-04-05 16:42:59

Kbd512:

You made my point that the Covid-19 expected death toll is comparable to a world war, as far as US casualties go.

You also apparently looked at my blog post, which quotes and uses published CDC numbers and other public data. The US Covid-19 death rate is near 2% of known infection cases, which is 20, not 2 or 3, times higher than the usual influenza. Sorry, you are just wrong.

If you don't like that ratio, take it up with Dr. Fauci, not me. Most of those are his figures, not mine. Just please don't trust the lies you hear from the likes of Faux News and the right-wing social media sources. Or left-wing MSNBC, although they don't diverge as far from fact as the right-wing crap does. Stay in the middle, and discount the inherent biases of reporters by looking a more than one source. CBS and PBS ain't bad.

As for the shutdown, the tradeoff of lives versus economic damage is inescapable. What you choose to do reflects your relative valuation of lives versus money. That, too, is inescapable.

All I said what what side of that tradeoff I think morality lies. Most mothers and churches agree with me.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2020-04-05 16:48:54)

SpaceNut · 2020-04-05 17:28:26

The economy did not go in the tank as the essential business have taken up the surge in the economy and are going strong while the remaining is not gone and in fact some have gone to a volunteering model to pay those that worked on the PPE and more that just happened to still be needed.
The unemployment insurance was already backed up with the federal governments money to pay the extra and even with the family act money no one except those that are off the grid electronically will see any pinch for what the federal government has done.

kbd512 · 2020-04-05 18:28:00

GW,

No, GW, I made the point that COVID-19 is in no way comparable to the last world war. A bare minimum of 70 million people lost their lives during WWII. The average death rate during WWII was 38,356 people PER DAY. COVID-19 has killed 69,000 AFTER 3 MONTHS of rampant spread. Doing some simple math there, WWII killed as many people every 2 days as COVID-19 has managed in 3 months. After 3 months, COVID-19 killed 69,000 people. After 3 months, WWII killed 3,420,000 people. Most non-PhD's and other people without god-complexes will admit that there's quite a bit of difference between those two death rates.

I trust the number of ACTUAL DEATHS from COVID-19, not projections, not wild guesses from you or Dr. Fauci or anyone else peering into your crystal balls, trying to predict the future. The number of actual deaths here in America from COVID-19 is 9,602 at the time of this post. In point of fact, not point of extrapolation or political belief or other utter nonsense, the number of actual deaths from motor vehicles for 2018 was 36,560. Total global deaths from COVID-19 is 69,402, meaning around 2 years of motor vehicle deaths here in the US (after the virus had already spread around the world for over 3 months). In 2016, total global traffic deaths claimed 1.35 million lives, which equates to 112,500 deaths per month. COVID-19 deaths in that same period of time accounted for 23,000 deaths. Since many of those traffic deaths are no longer occurring now that global economic output has been wildly reduced, the effective death rate is below what it would've otherwise been without any COVID-19. When the global monthly COVID-19 death rate approaches 112,000, let's revisit this topic. The COVID-19 death rate is going to have to increase by more than four times from what it presently is for that to happen. Nobody was freaking out about the traffic deaths, despite the sheer numbers of people dying.

One final point of note. You keep talking to this atheist about god and churches and mothers. Is that supposed to change my beliefs about organized religion or Dr. Mom? I thought you were a man of math and science rather than religion. The basic math on death rates between COVID-19 and WWII refutes your WWII comparison all on its own, full stop, period, and end of story. Unless death rates change wildly, your comparison will never be valid. COVID-19 is comparable to global traffic deaths, not global wars. The fact that America didn't experience the wholesale slaughter during WWII that way so many other countries did should cause us to thank our planet's geography.

GW Johnson · 2020-04-05 19:58:40

Kbd512:

The nature of the infection and death curves is initially exponential upward. Later, it slows, levels off, and decreases, ultimately looking sort of like a bell curve. We in the US have yet to see the slowing and leveling. We are still exponential upward.

Which is EXACTLY WHY you look at predictions, even if they are guesswork (which these are). 10,000 deaths will be 100,000 deaths in a few to several days, under exponential growth. That's not me, that's accumulated science experience talking. You'd do well to listen.

I use the "mothers and churches" appeal because for most American citizens, that's where morality is taught to children in the US. They understand the reference. Morality is taught from one or the other, or both.

Doesn't matter what I believe or don't believe, or what you believe or don't believe. That's simply a social statistics fact in this country. While the reference may not mean much to you, for most folks it does mean something. The point I have been trying to make is not where morality gets taught, it is that there really are morality criteria.

And deliberately killing people for the sake of profit is immoral. Period. Doesn't matter whether the killing is done with a weapon or with a law or rule or a priority judgement. It is still immoral. And you bloody well know that, too!

GW

PS - I think what sets you off about what I wrote is that there is NOTHING in the 5 paragraphs I wrote just above, or in the posting 1621 above that seems to have upset you, which can be politicized into a way for you to claim all Democrats are evil. They are not, neither are all Republicans. But too many politicians of both parties (and other public figures) are. Use my morality criterion, and judge for yourself.

Last edited by GW Johnson (2020-04-05 20:08:37)

kbd512 · 2020-04-05 22:09:46

GW,

If America doesn't have another 100,000 COVID-19 deaths this week, then let's revisit the reliability of guessing at the magnitude of a problem. My uncle has been teaching statistics for about as long as I've been alive, yet he wouldn't hazard a guess as to how many people would die from COVID-19. Imagine that. Someone who makes predictions for a living wouldn't even guess at this.

You know what this reminds me of- the people who keep predicting the coming apocalypse. I suppose that with the passage of enough time, sooner or later one of them will guess correctly, but none of their guesses thus far have been reliable indicators of the future. My attitude, unlike the attitude of so many others here, is "wait and see".

PS- I think what I actually despise is people claiming to believe in science start making emotional appeals and guessing at what the future holds rather than using their math and science while they pontificate to the rest of us about how important believing in math and science are.

Speaking of the morality of political ideologues, or lack thereof, it's amazing how many of our pro-choice people are now so overly-worried about saving their own lives. Why can't we get any support for "mother nature's right to choose" from our pro-choice people?

Well, at least you were honest about making emotional appeals rather than logic appeals. That's more than I've ever had any Democrat admit to, despite the fact that they've been doing that very same thing.

In the end, I'm only pointing out your inconsistency. That's what I take issue with. These political people you support, or at least claim to support, don't care about morality at all. Their morality is "I'm saying and doing whatever wins me the most votes". That's the extent of their morality.

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