2019 NCOV a.k.a. Wuhan's Diseases

SpaceNut · 2020-07-17 16:14:25

US not so good...Task force report says 18 states in coronavirus 'red zone' should roll back…

An unpublished document prepared for the White House coronavirus task force and obtained by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit newsroom, recommends that 18 states in the coronavirus "red zone" for cases should roll back reopening measures amid surging cases.

total US cases 3,677,453 +143,548
Active cases 2,459,742
Recovered cases 1,076,823 +50,007
Fatal cases 140,888 +2,530

And when schools do start I would with he upward climb even faster.

Calliban · 2020-07-17 17:42:05

Sweden is one of the nations that opted for voluntary Coronavirus precautions. Now it seems, all states that adopted a more centrally planned approach are in a hurry to rubbish their attempts.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/why … ork-failed

tahanson43206 · 2020-07-18 06:34:56

For Calliban re #527

That was an interesting article. Something the author of the article seemed (to me at least) to have missed was two factors that are relevant ...

How much information is available to individuals, and how responsible the individuals are. The fact that the virus cannot be detected makes the entire exercise one of trust in science, and in the United States, trust in science is remarkably low.

Many years ago, before science began to take hold, the presence of microbes (bacteria, amoeba and virus) was as mysterious to the population as this virus is to our current population. Even in the modern age, there are many folks (at least in the United States) who do not possess even the most rudimentary understanding of the principles of hygiene.

(th)

GW Johnson · 2020-07-18 08:28:38

It's not just the measures taken, it's the timing of when those measures start relative to the viral "invasion". Sweden was aware of the problem, and started its measures early in the viral invasion process. That has a tremendous effect at "flattening the curve". The not-so-strict nature of Sweden's measures show up in the slightly-higher infection and death curves relative to its neighbors who took stricter measures but also started early.

Not very hard to understand.

New York on the other hand got started later in the process with its very strict measures. The lateness of the start is why their measures were just barely effective, and the curves for infections and deaths very nearly swamped their capabilities to handle it. So why did New York get started so late? Because at that time, the federal government as embodied by the Trump administration was decrying this as a Democrat hoax, and claiming it was no worse than any other flu. The lies (not just "mixed signals", but out-and-out lies) coming from the White House meant that New York, California, and Washington state got started too late in the confusion.

Eventually, the CDC experts got heard, and after too long a delay, the Trumpsters in the White House finally admitted this was a real problem. Yet the far-right component of their political base is still circulating lies and conspiracy theories about this virus, including stirring up erroneous claims of "my right not to wear a mask is absolute". And it is the misbehavior in public by deliberately not preventing disease transmission, of that third to a half of the population that still likes Trump, which has caused the disastrous resurgence of the disease across the south and southwest of the US.

There is no reason most businesses and other activities cannot reopen, if disease transmission can be prevented. It usually requires changes in HOW they do whatever it is they do, to accomplish that. The only tools we have to employ are masks, the 6-foot rule, gloves, disinfection, and for extreme cases PPE like face shields. There are some businesses or activities that cannot effectively limit disease transmission: those must remain closed. There's no way around that ugly little fact of life.

Schools as we have known them may be one such. It's not the classrooms, those can be "fixed" by limiting class sizes to about a third of what we have traditionally used, in order to have the room to space everybody out 6 to 8 feet in all directions. The school boards are going to balk at doing this because of the money: 3 times the teachers and a lot of portable buildings needing HVAC will cost a lot.

Up to about 6th grade, if you can get them inside their classrooms instead of congregating in the schoolyard before school starts (and after it ends), you can stop disease transmission between kids. School buses are another bad problem, though, and very expensive to solve. To space out where the kids sit on the bus, you will need a whole lot more buses and drivers.

But the lunchroom will be the most difficult to change.

From about 7th grade on up, they don't stay in the same classroom all day anymore. The halls are crowded shoulder-to-shoulder every 45 minutes or so, as they change from class to class. That cannot be allowed if disease transmission is to be prevented.

I don't have the answer, but it is very clear indeed we need a whole new way of conducting our junior high and high schools classes. That change-classes crowded-hallway picture cannot be allowed.

With the start of school only a few weeks away, I do not see how all this can be adequately addressed. Yet it must be, as soon as possible. Because distance learning is a poor substitute for interactive in-classroom learning, and no substitute at all for folks with poor access to the internet, which is way too widespread in this country.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2020-07-18 08:35:37)

SpaceNut · 2020-07-18 18:43:47

https://www.yahoo.com/news/steroids-cov … 17632.html

kbd512 · 2020-07-18 22:55:29

GW,

When President Trump attempted to prevent Chinese people from entering the US to slow the spread of COVID-19 to Americans, as a result of the viral outbreak there, he was a RACIST! That's the favorite go-to argument of all ideologically-enabled but intellectually-disabled regressives that have no substantive argument to make. So yeah, America had a "slow start" because Democrat politicians are a "little slow" when it comes to acknowledging actual threats, especially when they're too busy causing the very problems that they'll later claim they're actually solving. After the "threat was real", then the Democrats had the gall to blame President Trump to distract everyone else from the problem that they and their fellow communists in China helped create by interfering with our President's efforts to slow the problem before it started killing Americans in significant numbers. That seems to be the only game they know how to play. Meanwhile, Americans had to suffer so that they could revel in their equally impotent and baseless impeachment gambit, another complete failure on their part.

Your Post #529 in this thread just did an infinitely better job of absolutely crucifying the arguments that Democrats make than I ever could. First, you claimed that President Trump is lying all or most of the time, but then you claim that the reason New Yorkers died in such numbers was because New York got a "late start" as a result of President Trump lying to them. Ask any Democrat and they'll immediately tell you President Trump is lying all the time. So, if President Trump is lying all the time, then why in the world would ANY Democrat EVER listen to a word he says, never mind respond to any life-and-death situation based upon what he said? You can't claim someone is stupid and criminal and lying all the time and then mindlessly follow their advice during a life-and-death situation.

What you're really saying is that Democrat "leadership" are really a bunch of mindless lemmings who regurgitate whatever information they've been fed, upon command, whilst utterly ignoring any event that doesn't comport with their brain-dead ideology, to the point that they'll kill off the very people who elected them through their utter incompetence. If there's ever a problem that requires real leadership, they'll blame everyone else for their own bad decisions, they'll claim racism / sexism / xenophobia, and they'll get a bunch of their own people killed, but you can take it to the bank that they'll never actually lead, nor take any responsibility for their own mistakes. Thanks for clarifying that point for everyone.

The real reason so many New Yorkers died, the objective truth that doesn't care one little bit about your ideology, my ideology, nor anyone else's ideology, is that the clown running New York, that his fellow clowns in the Democrat-run media were all saying should be our next President, sent New York's elderly people who were infected with COVID-19 right back to the nursing homes they came from, where they very predictably went on to infect and kill the other elderly people living in those nursing homes. In simple terms, the morons you carry water for were actually responsible for killing more of their own people, through their own incompetence, or naivety if they were actually listening to someone (President Trump) that virtually all of them said was lying all the time in front of TV cameras, than anything our President ever did or didn't do.

I take my medical advice exclusively from people with the letters "MD" or "RN" behind their names. Anyone who merely has the letter "R" or "D" behind their name may get some praise if they actually understand what they're talking about and don't state anything factually incorrect, but that's the extent of it. All of our fear-mongering media cretins are occasionally worth a few laughs, but that's about it. President Trump doesn't have those letters behind his name, New York's Governor Cuomo doesn't have those letters behind his name, just as nearly all other politicians also lack those requisite letters behind their name. Therefore, all of their "advice" is only worth whatever the people feeding them their talking points actually knows. Anyone dumb enough to take medical advice from someone who is not a doctor deserves exactly what they get.

So long as you're busy stating that the experts from our CDC need to be heard, please bear in mind that those same CDC experts said the kids should go back to school because COVID-19 isn't a significant threat to our children. To a person, all of them said they're sending their kids back to school. For people who understand virology better than you or I ever will, unless they're all intent on killing themselves and their own children, then maybe it's not as much of a threat as our media cretins have portrayed it as. On that note, do any of our Democrats or Democrats pretending to be Independents have any solutions that don't involve spending massive amounts of money that we don't have to solve problems that the people they're telling us to listen to have repeatedly said don't actually exist?

1. Trump is lying all or most of the time, he's a criminal, and/or the dumbest person to have ever lived, according to most Democrats.
2. Therefore, people in Democrat-run cities died en-masse because their own Democrat leaders listened to President Trump (the biggest liar / criminal / idiot of all time, according to Democrats), rather than picking up the phone and calling the CDC or WHO.
3. Democrats don't know how to actually lead without someone else telling them what to do. Proof? If "literal Hitler" told them to kill their people with bad medical advice, then they'd follow it without another thought given to the matter- because appearing to "do something" with "good intentions", virtue signaling to everyone else that they have no virtues, is better than doing something based upon sound medical advice. That's precisely what they did, according to you.

That's your logic in a nutshell, and seems to aptly describe our Democrats' rationalization process as well. I couldn't make up a story like the one you just wrote if I tried. If it was me, I think that I'd eventually have to question the tortuous mental gymnastics required to support such a rationalization process.

RobertDyck · 2020-07-19 00:23:55

You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here: Pub bars some out-of-towners over COVID-19 concerns

Bars are open in Winnipeg, and that generally includes travellers from out of province at this point — but there's a catch at one pub.
The King's Head Pub staff aren't just checking patron's licences to confirm they're old enough to imbibe. Now, they're also checking every customer's identification to see where people are from.
"We were getting a lot of people that were coming in to the King's Head that had not been quarantining from different areas of the country, as well as from the U.S." said owner Chris Graves.
...
"We're allowing those people to come in. The problem is, is that we cannot guarantee or we can't actually know who has truly quarantined or not," said Graves.
"People are slipping through it already, so we can't trust the province anymore to protect my staff and my patrons, so we need to do it on our own now," said Graves.
...
Most recently a couple from North Dakota attempted to come in and did not quarantine, said Graves.
...
Last week, a couple from New Brunswick tried to come in for a pint.
Before that, four men who flew from Quebec to Winnipeg stopped by. When asked by staff, the men said they were in the city visiting because they were bored.
"They came to the King's Head and did not quarantine," said Graves.

Terraformer · 2020-07-19 06:58:04

GW,

Your Trump Derangement Syndrome is truly depressing. I don't know how you got this ridiculous idea in your head that Trump forced Cuomo to handle the situation in New York in an extremely incompetent way. Can you point to the executive order restricting his powers as Governor?

SpaceNut · 2020-07-19 09:45:08

You can only respond to the truth and the word is that china had leaks of the virus as early as September of 2019 while more news of china locking down areas in October and November with the initial admittance that they have it in December to others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_ … ted_States

On December 31, 2019, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) became aware of cases in China and began developing reports for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on January 1, 2020.
On January 18, HHS Secretary Azar discussed the coronavirus outbreak with President Donald Trump, who criticized Azar for being "alarmist

Which is when Trump labels the risk of a virus a hoax....
https://wgntv.com/news/coronavirus/fact … ronavirus/
Its not until the first case is in Washington before any effort is stepped up....February 26- 28 the task force is started but by march its already to late and we lost all of the months not getting ppe, hospital beds surge areas set up and ventilators for the hospitals on US soil to fight the pandemic.
Its not until late march before the terms social distancing was introduced calling “hysteria” over the outbreak a Democratic hoax, to announcing a national emergency and urging all Americans to work from home and avoid public spaces, US president Donald Trump’s rhetoric on the coronavirus pandemic has shifted significantly in the space of a few weeks.

Its now July and we are back to where we were in March with the pandemic raging again because of actions not with the guidance that was given which slowed the virus in other areas of the country.

Governors take leadership from the top down as its not independent countries for states. Its the lack of leadership which put the US in this straight....

GW Johnson · 2020-07-19 09:53:58

Once again, things get attributed to me that I did NOT say, just because I do NOT share the right-wing politics of some on these forums.

What I said was that the confusion and bad information coming from the White House delayed effective early efforts to contain the disease here in the US. And THAT is a documented, incontrovertible fact, whether you like it or not. I don't care.

What I said was that efforts even less stringent than ours succeeded in Sweden, PRECISELY BECAUSE they got started way earlier. And THAT documents the effect of coordinated rather than confused national leadership. Also incontrovertible fact. And I certainly don't care whether you like that fact or not. Fact it is.

What I said was that some lies about this disease are still coming from the White House, even after all that has happened, and that seems to have really riled our right-wing correspondents on these forums. Too bad. Sometimes truth hurts.

The latest egregious lie from the White House came from the latest press secretary, McEnany, when she said (and I quote) "the science should not stand in the way of schools opening". She said THAT piece of political CRAP on behalf of our President! And THAT is also documented, incontrovertible fact.

As to the politics, I have great contempt for a Republican party that let itself be taken over by extremists who then forced an incompetent buffoon down their (and our) throats as a candidate for president.

I have great contempt for a Republican party that insists on near-unanimous support for a now-exposed incompetent buffoon-as-president who is (and has been throughout his term in office) dividing and damaging the country.

I have great contempt for the Democratic party for running the one candidate with so much baggage that the majority of the country disliked, or even hated, her, and who was the only candidate they had, who could possibly lose to an incompetent buffoon as her opponent.

Even so it was close. The buffoon lost in the popular vote, while the hated-baggage-bitch lost in the electoral college. It was that close. Taken all together, those events tell me both primaries were rigged by the big-dollar donors.

I also have great contempt for the Democrats who let that same buffoon off the hook for his documented misdeeds in the Mueller report, without even trying to call him to account for those things.

I have contempt for the Dems for attempting impeachment over that idiotic Ukrainian thing, instead of the documented misdeeds in the Mueller report, and for the treason or near-treason of being Putin's obvious stooge, something witnessed (and therefore documented) on TV many times.

And I have contempt for the Dems for letting that buffoon successfully dismiss-with-his-propaganda the Mueller report as a hoax, when it was so very obviously not. Hearing "hoax" very often does NOT make it so. That's just the political opportunism of using Goebbels' propaganda theory.

So, no, there is NO SUCH THING as Trump Derangement Syndrome, which I therefore do NOT have. I do not like Trump as president BECAUSE he is a dangerously-incompetent buffoon who damages the country by dividing it. That's no syndrome. That's just what the facts lead me to.

And no, I am no Democrat. That should be obvious to the casual observer, if they but open their eyes and put aside their prejudices.

There are some of us who see a dangerously-incompetent buffoon for what he truly is. Some very few of us saw that before he ever ran. We tried to warn the rest of you, but were never heard.

I suggest you (plural) go read the Mueller report again. Or maybe for the first time. The way some of you talk, I must tentatively conclude you never ever, read the damned thing at all.

Because if you had, you would not defend that dangerous buffoon the way you do.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2020-07-19 10:01:39)

kbd512 · 2020-07-19 14:10:39

Terraformer,

GW finally used his ideology to paint himself into an intellectual corner. GW claims to be independent, but while former President Obama was still President, he didn't waste one word to criticize the obvious criminal activities committed by the members of that administration. He actively looks for justification to believe what he wants to believe and ignores any evidence that doesn't support his beliefs. It's a crystal clear case of confirmation bias and personal animosity for anyone with the most rudimentary understanding of human psychology. I just connected the dots to make that blatantly obvious for everyone else.

All of the endless angry name-calling and claims without evidence was the first clue. He's still talking about the Mueller Report as if his own personal beliefs about its content outweigh hundreds of Democrat lawyers who absolutely despise President Trump and are actively looking for ways to impeach him, as if his belief about that report has any bearing on why it was that no impeachment charges ever came from it- all from a Democrat-controlled Congress whose members have repeatedly stated that they're actively looking for ways to impeach President Trump. If he believes there's something usable in the Mueller Report that wasn't used by House Democrats, then the only remaining explanation is that the people he's most likely to vote for are utterly incompetent at performing a very important part of their jobs. By way of extension, the people voting for Democrats can't determine the difference between a competent and incompetent representative. He'll never accept that there's no there there, even though the people who participated in the witch hunt, despite their own obvious bias against President Trump, knew it was textbook McCarthyism from the word "go". In other words, that expensive multi-year "investigation" was a total fraud perpetrated upon the American people to satisfy the political ideology of the people who allowed it to continue and/or the people who voted them into office.

Some of us know that just because we really don't like someone, doesn't mean we're justified in endlessly attacking that person to satisfy our beliefs about them. GW is not one of those people. GW thinks that if he doesn't like you, then whatever he wants to do to you is justified. Incidentally, the nazis that he and most other Democrats are so fond of using as a political weapon thought that very same thing. He'll never see how in the past people who also believed they had a superior "thought process" to people they didn't like were likewise making similar statements of belief about other people that they didn't like, nor how frightening the parallels are between their beliefs and his own beliefs, and that they actually created the nazi party as a result of their beliefs. That's because he doesn't want to see it. And now you know precisely how it is that those evil nazi thugs came to power. Pre-WWII Germany wasn't jam-packed with complete idiots who were totally unaware of what the nazi party represented, yet they so desperately wanted something to be true that wasn't true that they were willing to overlook all of the blatantly obvious problems with their support of that ideology to satisfy the personal belief that they were correct in their thinking and doing something useful for their country.

Those of us who haven't been cognitively disabled by our own ideology already know that New York's Governor Cuomo did what he wanted to do, as it pertains to his state's COVID-19 response, that that governor did it at a time of his own choosing, and that the results had virtually nothing to do with President Trump.

If Governor Cuomo acted on medical advice from President Trump, someone who Governor Cuomo and virtually all other Democrats have repeatedly called a liar and a criminal on national television, then Governor Cuomo is so incompetent that he'll take advice from someone he says or believes is lying to him. Either way, the very worst casualty rates occurred in cities under near-exclusive Democrat control. The Democrats who have political strangleholds over those cities are either incompetents who can't determine who to take medical advice from (doctors rather than politicians) or profoundly evil people who will deliberately do things intended to increase casualty rates.

President Trump's executive orders followed the recommendations given to him by his public health advisors, to the letter and immediately following those recommendations, according to the very advisors who gave it to him. If Democrats wanted their own advisors to advise President Trump on his response to COVID-19, then they should've ceased their 24/7/365 personal attacks on anyone even tangentially associated with President Trump. Unfortunately for all of us, their arrogant ideology didn't permit that to happen. Initially, President Trump left nearly everyone in place from former President Obama's administration until they started behaving like political partisans and engaging in repeated personal attacks against him, rather than acting as public servants who serve at the pleasure of the President. In other words, attacking and undermining President Trump to satisfy Democrat Party ideology superseded doing what was in the best interest of the American people, and quite possibly what was in the interest of their own political party since they would've had insiders who had studied the President's policies and responses.

GW,

Whenever you start making statements of belief, those statements have implications when basic deductive reasoning is followed. Anyone who holds a PhD in an engineering or science field can't credibly assert that they don't understand what deductive reasoning is and how it's used.

"I believe in the theory of gravitation. I will fall into outer space if I jump off the Brooklyn Bridge."

Those two statements are clearly incompatible with each other, assuming the person making them actually understands and believes in what the theory of gravitation states.

That's precisely the same line of argumentation you're using to excuse the behavior of Democrat governors and mayors while attempting to pin the blame on President Trump for the Democrats' own actions or inactions. The implication that must logically follow your "blame it all on Trump" logic is that none of the Democrat politicians that people like you have elected are competent to handle a public health crisis. They will always require someone else to tell them what to do because they lack the ability to lead. If President Trump is the "dangerously-incompetent buffoon" that you and so many other Democrats claim he is, then there never should've been any reason at all for them to take medical advice from President Trump on what their states or cities should do to slow or prevent the spread of COVID-19. Your irrational anger towards President Trump has caused you to explain to everyone else exactly why it is that Democrats aren't competent to put in positions of power that require independent thinking.

If I was a governor or mayor, and an effective leader who cares about my own people, who also believed that the President was an incompetent liar and criminal, then I would ignore any medical advice he gave regarding how to handle an impending public health crisis. As someone with such wide latitude to handle disasters and emergencies as I see fit under the American system of governance, then I would, without prompting from anyone else, never mind someone I repeatedly said was lying to everyone on national television, begin preparing the medical services provided by my state or city to handle the impending public health crisis. That never happened in America's Democrat-run states and cities because Democrat politicians were far too busy playing their political games with our President to act like real leaders should. Since President Trump did nothing at all to prevent states or cities from preparing for COVID-19 and signed off on whatever funding Congress would provide to deal with COVID-19, that's what basic deductive reasoning that follows your own logic implies.

Using your own line of argumentation, which you doubled-down on in Post #535, says Democrats don't know how or when to respond to a public health crisis because they're either waiting for someone else to tell them what to do or too busy playing petty political games with their political opponents to waste any of their precious time considering the needs of the general public. I merely took your own reasoning to its logical conclusion using basic deductive reasoning. It wasn't very hard to do. Unlike you, I'm not infuriated with someone I detest for personal reasons to the point that I can't think through the implications of my own statements of belief.

Was Sweden trying to impeach their Prime Minister over something that you specifically said was "idiotic" at the time that COVID-19 was kicking off?

Have you ever taken medical advice from a White House Press Secretary?

How do you know that our response was confused in any way? What if President Trump simply allowed Democrat governors and mayors to do what they wanted because whatever it is that he or his advisors proposed doing was summarily rejected out of hand for political reasons (and he's not the dictatorial tyrant that they so desperately wanted him to be)?

I already know you don't have answers to any of those questions, even though answers to those questions would be mandatory to begin to determine who was responsible for what.

I'll keep pointing out the logical fallacies using basic deductive reasoning. If the argumentation was even slightly more sophisticated or nuanced, then perhaps there'd be more interesting topics to explore. If you like your personal beliefs about people you don't like, then you can keep your beliefs.

You're, what, in your mid-70's already? Do you absolutely require a politician you have complete ideological agreement with to pat you on the head and say, "There, there now. Everything will be just fine. We see eye-to-eye on everything. We'll spend any amount of money to satisfy your ideology, no matter the effectiveness of the result."

Net net (your own arguments):

1. Impeachment over the Ukraine incident was stupid.
2. House Democrats failed to impeach President Trump over anything from the Mueller Report.
3. More people died than otherwise could have because, if we follow your argumentation, Democrats actually listened to someone they said was a liar and criminal.
4. Democrats put forth the worst possible candidates for President, someone who was despised by both Republicans and Democrats.
5. The US CDC, the government entity you said we should listen to when it comes to medical advice about COVID-19, says schools need to reopen this fall, which you seem to disagree with over current high school lunch room seating arrangements.

Net net (my arguments)
1. Impeachment distracted everyone from responding to COVID-19 for partisan political reasons. President Trump was elected President by Americans. Russians weren't pulling the levers at the polls. No Americans colluded with Russians to influence election results, at least according to the Mueller Report and his own testimony before Congress. Whether you agree with their decision or not is irrelevant if you still believe in accepting the results of elections. I never claimed that President Obama "cheated" to win the election because I didn't like the result. That's what the Democrats did. That desperate gambit failed completely because it was an obvious fraud.
2. It's the job of the House to determine what offenses are impeachable, not GW or kbd512. If you don't accept their decisions, then you should probably vote both Democrats and Republicans out of office and make convincing arguments for others to do the same. Since that clearly didn't happen, I can only presume that the majority agrees with the decisions they made.
3. Your own assertions cut the legs out from under your line of argumentation by basically stating that Democrats don't know how to effectively respond to a public health crisis without someone else telling them what to do. If a Democrat President doesn't know how to respond or doesn't care, then we're just screwed. That's not a very good argument, in my opinion, and nothing you subsequently stated changes the premise of your argument because that would invalidate your personal belief that someone you voted for was better than someone you didn't vote for.
4. On this point we seem to mostly be in agreement with each other. However, what you refer to as "baggage", I call criminal activity that wasn't prosecuted because the person in question has a "D" behind their name.
5. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an unlimited pot of money, nor the required supply of teachers even if there was, to increase education spending by 6 to 8 times to satisfy your quarrel over the seating arrangements. As a result, we're forced to make the best of what we have because our children still require education.

SpaceNut · 2020-07-19 15:07:11

The President called it the flu that at the time we had 15 and it would go to 10 and so on until there was none. At that time the medical profession was being over ridden to be heard and not allowed the voice of truth to be heard. If you can not hear the truth then all you have to follow is the lyre….Taking it as the flu with no data is setting oneself up for failure....
Claiming that others are criminal without using the same metric means that you are looking through colored lenses....and only living in the past and doing nothing about the criminal in action now.

Even today he is claiming that its just going to go away...

Well then for measles, TB, polio ect have they just gone away?

Then its a lye.

Calliban · 2020-07-19 16:23:35

I feel that I should be paying more attention to all this political stuff, so that I have a better understanding of what is going on. But I generally just find it boring as hell.

SpaceNut · 2020-07-19 17:41:31

A closed in room packed with people will spread the virus due to proximity to droplet spray where as those outside in the open air will tend not to catch the virus from others even when not so social distanced or when not wearing masks.

Donald Trump denies coronavirus toll, calling Anthony Fauci 'alarmist' in Chris Wallace interview

kbd512 · 2020-07-19 20:37:27

SpaceNut,

You did not give two hoots about the crimes committed by the people appointed by former President Obama's administration because your ideology says, "whatever my team does is fine, whatever the other team does is a serious problem". There was not one single comment from you about any of the events I've repeatedly asked you about that occurred during the 8 years that former President Obama was in office. Whenever someone brings that simple fact up, you completely refuse to address it because you already know that you can't. That is the sum total of your entire thought process about whatever President Trump says or does. You're looking to find fault to confirm that your ideological bias towards him is correct. Instead, you're receiving pushback because that's clear confirmation bias and you can't even admit, even now, that the person you previously voted for had secretary level people work for him who were committing felonies that were never removed from their positions. It's very petty in nature and some of us actually noticed. You absolutely cannot stand the fact that someone you have an ideological disagreement with is permitted to be President.

Irrespective of what President Trump said or didn't say about COVID-19, I'm not looking to any politician for medical advice... EVER! If you are looking to politicians or politicians you agree with for your own ideological reasons, for sound medical advice, then that would be your own personal problem, not a problem with any politician. I don't look to politicians for movie critiques, either. I could care less about the President's opinion of a movie, for example, because I don't vote for politicians for their medical knowledge, nor their movie critiques.

Anyone with any common sense at all knows that TB, Measles, Influenza, etc have been with us for many years and will be with us for many more years to come. However, in my lifetime I've never seen a 24/7 media terror campaign over TB, Measles, Influenza, etc, despite the fact that all of those diseases have killed just as many if not more people than COVID-19, long before President Trump was in office and will still be killing people long after President Trump leaves office. You simply do not care about them and never did because it wasn't something your side of the ideological divide thought it could exploit as a political weapon to attack their political opponents. Until President Trump took office, you never exhibited any unhealthy fascination with the President, whatever he said or didn't say or was warped beyond all recognition by certain media outlets that President Trump made look incompetent after all their mindless blather about him never winning an election, irrespective of the truth of any of those statements.

Q: You wanna know why this never-ending stream of "arguments" from you are so easy to distill down to ideology and politics?
A: Ask yourself why you brought up COVID-19 spread from Trump rallies but never brought it up when it involved the blm / antifa riots. The Trump rallies were nearly all Republicans and the blm / antifa people that the Democrats support sure as hell don't support President Trump. Democrats may be dumb enough to kowtow to these loons, but Republicans put them in jail where they belong. In simple terms, you have a clear and biased ideology-based agenda to push. It's not an intellectual argument, it's "my side good, your side bad". I've been reading about what "your side" thinks for that past 4 years, and most of it is pretty ignorant and prejudiced. It's a never-ending politically motivated attack meant to make people look bad that you have political disagreements with. All the name-calling is not a form of argumentation, either, unless you're permanently stuck in grammar school. If you had actual arguments to make, then they'd apply exclusively to a distinction in behavior between one political party over the other and if it was a general critique of poor behavior, then it'd apply equally to both sides whenever they do it. Since it doesn't, the true objective is painfully obvious.

Q: Why do I keep highlighting the obvious faults with your line of argumentation?
A: You keep choosing indefensible political positions to fight from and then ignore the response and move on to the next indefensible position in some kind of misguided attempt to hide the over-the-top hysteria masquerading as actually caring about what happens to people. Democrats may care about themselves, or maybe not given all their destructive behavior, but they for sure don't care about anyone who hasn't bought into their ideology hook, line, and sinker.

Q: Why do I keep highlighting the faults with the political party you've decided to align yourself with?
A: You finally chanced upon someone, namely me, who doesn't easily tire of pointing out the absurd lack of criticism when the same behavior is exhibited by someone in your own political party / ideology of choice and the double standards for behavior that will never pass for any sort of objective analysis. It's inexcusably intellectually lazy argumentation.

Tell your precious Democrats to stop trying to take things from me that don't belong to them and I could care less about who gets elected. You don't own me, I don't work for you, and I don't owe you anything. My family is not a social experiment for your political party to toy with to satiate your communist ideology. If you like your ideology, then you can keep your ideology, but I don't want any part of it. If you want the White House back, then try demonstrating why it is that you should have it by coming up with better and more realistic plans that don't involve taking more money from people who don't exist merely to satisfy all of your earthly desires. I'm tired of paying more money to support every sophomoric idea your party can concoct. I'm not a piggy bank for communists to raid when they can't figure out how to pay their own way through life. Thus far, Democrats have only demonstrated to me how absurdly petty and childish they become whenever they don't get their way.

kbd512 · 2020-07-19 23:20:21

GW,

You had to know that I was going to look up the rest of the quote from White House Press Secretary, Ms. Kayleigh McEnany, with respect to her commentary on re-opening American schools this fall. Ms. McEnany is citing peer-reviewed JAMA Pediatrics studies taken from dozens of hospitals (something you clearly didn't do when you made your own recommendations) around the US and quoting Stanford University's chief neurosurgeon, Dr. Scott Atlas (merely someone else who knows more about medicine than you or I ever will):

McEnany: Science shouldn't stop schools reopening

"The science should not stand in the way of this, and as Dr. Scott Atlas said, I thought this was a good quote- Of course we can do it. Everyone else in the western world, our peer nations, are doing it. We are the outlier here. The science is very clear on this. For instance, you look at the JAMA Pediatrics study of 46 pediatric hospitals in North America said the risk of critical illness from COVID is far less for children than that of seasonal flu. The science is on our side and we encourage, for localities and states, to just simply follow the science, open our schools; it's very damaging to our children. There's a lack of reporting of abuse, there's mental depressions that are not addressed, suicidal ideations that are not addressed when students are not in school. Our schools are extremely important. They're essential and they must reopen."

Context is everything, as someone with your level of education knows quite well. I can take nearly any statement completely out of context and make it sound benign or downright evil. I don't know who you choose to listen to, nor why, but that person or those people are either deliberately mis-representing what the White House Press Secretary, Ms. Kayleigh McEnany, actually said or they're outright lying to you to feed into your worst fears about someone you already dislike for your own personal reasons. I implore you not to retreat further within this media-perception-created ideological world you've constructed for yourself. Don't allow others to lie to you for political purposes and, for goodness sake, don't lie to yourself. If it was me, I would eventually have to question the validity of my beliefs. If you're looking to find fault in the speech or behavior of someone else, then you'll surely find it.

Calliban · 2020-07-20 04:49:55

kbd512 wrote:

GW,
You had to know that I was going to look up the rest of the quote from White House Press Secretary, Ms. Kayleigh McEnany, with respect to her commentary on re-opening American schools this fall. Ms. McEnany is citing peer-reviewed JAMA Pediatrics studies taken from dozens of hospitals (something you clearly didn't do when you made your own recommendations) around the US and quoting Stanford University's chief neurosurgeon, Dr. Scott Atlas (merely someone else who knows more about medicine than you or I ever will):
McEnany: Science shouldn't stop schools reopening
"The science should not stand in the way of this, and as Dr. Scott Atlas said, I thought this was a good quote- Of course we can do it. Everyone else in the western world, our peer nations, are doing it. We are the outlier here. The science is very clear on this. For instance, you look at the JAMA Pediatrics study of 46 pediatric hospitals in North America said the risk of critical illness from COVID is far less for children than that of seasonal flu. The science is on our side and we encourage, for localities and states, to just simply follow the science, open our schools; it's very damaging to our children. There's a lack of reporting of abuse, there's mental depressions that are not addressed, suicidal ideations that are not addressed when students are not in school. Our schools are extremely important. They're essential and they must reopen."
Context is everything, as someone with your level of education knows quite well. I can take nearly any statement completely out of context and make it sound benign or downright evil. I don't know who you choose to listen to, nor why, but that person or those people are either deliberately mis-representing what the White House Press Secretary, Ms. Kayleigh McEnany, actually said or they're outright lying to you to feed into your worst fears about someone you already dislike for your own personal reasons. I implore you not to retreat further within this media-perception-created ideological world you've constructed for yourself. Don't allow others to lie to you for political purposes and, for goodness sake, don't lie to yourself. If it was me, I would eventually have to question the validity of my beliefs. If you're looking to find fault in the speech or behavior of someone else, then you'll surely find it.

Do you suppose that you changed his mind?

I have never once known a politically polarized person to change their mind on anything. The better your argument is and the more you demolish theirs, the more 'offended' they end up being. It doesn't matter how well you argue your case, or how ridiculous their beliefs are. People believe what they want to believe. Logic seldom comes into it. It is why democracies always fail and end up becoming oligarchies and dictatorships. People just aren't the intelligent, rational and detached creatures that they like to think they are. They tend to get stuck in one mode of thinking and emotionally attached to certain beliefs and prejudices that makes them impervious to rational argument. I have discovered that people with strong left wing views tend to have underlying emotional needs to believe in their particular brand of idealism, in much the same way that many people need religion. Trying to convince them that that their opinions are wrong is every bit as futile as trying to convince a devout Christian that Jesus was just an ordinary Jewish guy, trying to fight Roman oppression. The truth doesn't matter to either group. What matters is the emotional security that they get from the belief that they have. I strongly suspect that that is the case with many people here.

That is why I gave up on these political type discussions. You end up pouring your time and energy into a vacuum. Unless you enjoy it of course. That is the only real point of these sorts of political discussions. Personally, I find it tiresome. I became very much aware recently that my life is running out one second at a time, and whatever time I do invest in ventures such as this, I want it to be productive and actually mean something. It is why politically, I no longer campaign in the open sphere. I do not attempt to argue down opposing views in democratic forums, because I know it is futile. Instead, I work through a secret society. That way, I reach the people that are open to change and bypass the people that aren't. The aim is to infiltrate organisations and governments and enact change outside of the vision of the broader political establishment. You cannot change the opinions of far left nut jobs, so don't even try. Just bypass them and undermine them. It sounds profoundly ugly, but experience has shown that it is the only way you can deal with these people, because they aren't interested in playing by the rules. The violent antifa mobs that are sweeping across the US and Europe, vandalising, raping and murdering, should be proof enough of that. You cannot debate with those people. If you don't offer your unquestioning submission, they will end your career or simply murder you. That is who your adversaries are.

At least with open forum technical discussions you can make some headway. I believe that many of the topics on this board have been useful in narrowing down technological options in both getting to Mars and surviving when we do. They have I believe contributed to real plans with billions of dollars behind them. Those sorts of discussions are rarely a waste of time, because people are more often prepared to be open minded and treat them as a genuine exploration of the possible.

With politics, that doesn't happen. They end up defending an opinion to the death, no matter how stupid it ends up looking. It is why aliens and up abducting them and sticking probes up their arses. They know better than trying to have rational conversations.

Last edited by Calliban (2020-07-20 05:41:32)

GW Johnson · 2020-07-20 07:34:31

I actually see little point to continuing a conversation that is not really a conversation. I got "flamed" with a few thousand words for not liking Donald Trump as President. (And no, that opinion will NOT change.)

On the other hand, I saw NOT ONE WORD OF REPLY regarding my suggestions that the real-world data show that timing of quarantine measures is truly crucial, while the exact choice of quarantine measure is less so.

And, I saw NOT ONE WORD OF REPLY regarding my suggestion that there is no reason businesses and activities cannot be open, provided they implement whatever works in their context to prevent disease transmission. The corollary to this is that some activities simply cannot interrupt disease transmission, and must remain closed.

And, I saw NOT ONE WORD OF REPLY to my analysis of what it will take to reopen schools, and not accelerate disease transmission by doing so. Except for the crowded hallway problem, I had solution concepts for all the other issues. The only problem will be the cost, which school boards will not swallow, and cannot swallow, without considerable financial help.

What that tells me is that my "flamers" saw none of those things in what I wrote, they ONLY saw my dislike of Trump, and proceeded to attack me for it. Which makes participating in this particular conversation rather pointless, doesn't it?

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2020-07-20 07:35:08)

Calliban · 2020-07-20 08:57:05

Well, if it makes you feel better, I don't entirely 'like' Trump as a political leader either. It isn't that I have a problem with conservatism, far from it. It is simply that he has been so ineffective in delivering on what he promised.

There is a limit to what one man can be expected to do. But he has alienated many of those most loyal to him, failed to make use of the resources that were queuing up to assist him in the White House. As a leader, he simply lacks the education and understanding to really deliver on what he promised. Personally, I think he is too old and his mental health has suffered along with his physical health. I don't blame him for this, but it is deeply regrettable that he did not have the capability and understanding to deliver what he promised to.

I am going to avoid a detailed diatribe on issues around racial politics and corruption and focus on just two areas that were essential to any effort to Make America Great Again. To rebuild US power, Trump correctly identified the need to rebuild manufacturing dominance. But he has failed to:

1. Implement reforms in the education system that would have prioritised technical skills.
2. The economy is an energy system, a thermodynamic machine, plain and simple. Fossil fuel energy sources are now heavily depleted and the EROI of shale oil and shale gas is simply too low to deliver the sort of robust growth in prosperity that MAGA intended to deliver. The EROI and power density of RE is also much too low to substitute fossil fuels as an engine for growth. America needs a nuclear renaissance, based on advanced Gen 3 and Gen 4 technologies. But Trump does not understand enough about energy economics to understand why this was the only way forward. Any MAGA president needs to be a nuclear president.
3. Tariffs only work if you have a strong industrial growth dynamic that can develop the necessary scale economies to replace imported goods. Without a nuclear renaissance and a simultaneous renaissance in the technical skills of the US workforce, the US has no underlying advantage over China that allows it to produce these goods more cheaply.

Last edited by Calliban (2020-07-20 08:58:52)

kbd512 · 2020-07-20 13:07:58

Calliban,

Given GW's response, I think you have your answer. I'm still going to point out material misrepresentations of statements for partisan political purposes, specifically because it undermines provably false narratives, just as you suggested be done to more effectively counter such narratives. He's always sermonizing to me about getting news from various sources, so I did just that. I watched at least 4 different videos from different news sources that all documented the same response from White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany. He either deliberately misrepresented what Ms. McEnany said or he's not practicing what he's preaching and was called out for it. Either way, notice that he's smart enough not to continue to try to defend a provably false narrative to the point of silliness. That's why he immediately moved on to the "what about" argument that I actually did respond to, just not in the way he wanted me to.

GW,

You can't start your usual diatribe against someone you don't like for your own personal reasons, especially when you sprinkle in blatant misrepresentations of what someone who works for him actually said (taking quotes completely out of context), and then expect some kind of altruistic response that only addresses the talking points you want addressed and ignores everything else that you don't want exposed for what it truly is- petty political partisanship masquerading as "proof" of some point that it's clearly not. You're constantly looking to find fault with anything and everything President Trump says or does, just like SpaceNut does, and it's painfully obvious at this point.

Real world data shows that you're not going to stop COVID-19, in much the same way that you're not going to stop Influenza. There was one chance to do that in a not-so-little city called Wuhan. That failed completely. Dragging out the pain and suffering for as long as possible is not an actual solution. I've already responded to that in so many different ways that I'm not sure what your point is, except that we disagree. You can't stop airborne viruses after they've already been widely distributed across the entire planet, unless all of us can afford to live in our own literal bubbles for an indefinite period of time, something that's clearly not a practical solution. Stop focusing on meaningless points of contention.

Your suggestion that we increase the number of classrooms and teachers by 6 to 8 times was impractically expensive and we can't source the resources we don't have- namely, 6 to 8 times as many certified teachers. If you can't figure out a way to do the same job without requiring more than half an order of magnitude more resources, especially ones we don't have, no matter how much money we throw at the problem, then your solution is not a viable solution. Go back to the drawing board and try again.

Incidentally, your "crowded hallways" conundrum has been solved by military schools across the planet. The students march to class, single file, which requires no additional money or equipment or construction to implement, provided their teachers have some minimal level of self-discipline. Marching also clears the halls faster than disorganized gaggles of students. Oddly enough, those children often march in straight lines better than professional soldiers since they have more practice doing it.

That last point is what an actual practical solution looks like. It doesn't require a multi-billion dollar government program to implement it, either. Ask a veteran if you really can't figure out how to march. I'm willing to volunteer my time to train the teachers at the schools my children attend. The teachers can train their students. If teachers and students can't figure out how to walk in straight lines, then we have bigger problems to address.

SpaceNut · 2020-07-20 16:57:19

Republicans Want To Shield Companies From Future Coronavirus Lawsuits. ... McConnell suggested this week that he wants the liability protections due to reopening. "McConnell wants to immunize companies from liability when they make their workers go back to work, and those workers inevitably get sick. McConnell also said Republicans were looking at a shield from lawsuits for businesses, hospitals and schools that would be retroactive back to December 2019 and run through 2024.
Taking no responsibility for not protecting the public...

kbd512 · 2020-07-20 17:47:55

SpaceNut,

On March 24th, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order limiting lawsuits against COVID-19 response health care workers to gross negligence lawsuits.
Taking no responsibility for not protecting the public...

I have a solution, though. Any business that doesn't want to be sued out of existence over something that likely can never be conclusively proven can require that their workers sign a waiver limiting legal liability on the part of the business if they wish to continue to work at that business.

Calliban · 2020-07-20 17:54:19

A 6-8 times increase in teachers and classrooms is clearly impractical. However, if the education system can be more focused on technical skills, it may not take so much to improve American technical education levels. Easier access to adult education is also worth pursuing. It was only after I had slaved away in a job I hated, that I really developed the motivation to succeed. Education, like youth, is often wasted on the young.

Last edited by Calliban (2020-07-20 17:55:03)

tahanson43206 · 2020-07-20 18:40:47

For Calliban re #548

There is the seed of what could become a lively separate topic, in your post.

I'll try to set it up for a connection to Mars .... If we look a bit past the early exploration phase, to a time when questions of safety of pregnancy for humans on Mars have been favorably resolved, the community would have the opportunity to think about how they might wish to develop the next generation.

It seems to me that it has been rare in human history for anyone to take a serious look at education as a foundation of the continuation of society. it seems to me that most educational practice has tended to just happen as immediate needs are recognized.

The very wealthy have always been able to invest in the education of their progeny. An outstanding example is Phillip hiring Aristotle to teach Alexander.

Did you mean: philip aristotle alexander the great
Search Results
Web results
Alexander the Great and his Mentor – Aristotle - MGBS Inc ...mgbs.com › alexander-the-great-and-his-mentor-aristotle
Alexander the Great, the Macedonian king that would conquer the known world in the third century B.C, was born in 356 BCE in Pella, Macedonia. Son of Philip ...

As AI advances, the potential for every child to enjoy the attention of an "Aristotle" will become more and more achievable.

In the mean time, a Martian society will have needs for very high skill levels on the part of every one reaching adulthood, due to the high level of complexity of the machines that will be constantly operating to sustain life, let alone improve it.

It seems to me that the American idea of ** every person for him or her self ** is likely to be less in evidence on Mars, for the early decades, and perhaps long after.

I'm hoping you will be inspired to develop your ideas a bit further, in a separate topic if SpaceNut can create one.

(th)

Last edited by tahanson43206 (2020-07-20 18:41:39)

RobertDyck · 2020-07-21 00:31:25

Oh crap! Monday update for Manitoba: 18 new cases, 29 active cases, 1 in hospital.

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#526 2020-07-17 16:14:25

Re: 2019 NCOV a.k.a. Wuhan's Diseases

#527 2020-07-17 17:42:05

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#547 2020-07-20 17:47:55

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#548 2020-07-20 17:54:19

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#549 2020-07-20 18:40:47

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#550 2020-07-21 00:31:25

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