Negatory

Maybe it was removed because it was bogus? That student article, produced by an undergrad with literally less qualifications than anyone on this forum, has no basis in real statistics. The TRUTH is that we’ve had over 300k excess deaths just until October, and probably tens of thousands since then. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e2.htm This is a bullshit quote from that article: ”All of this points to no evidence that COVID-19 created any excess deaths. Total death numbers are not above normal death numbers. We found no evidence to the contrary,” Briand concluded.” Wtf are you guys posting? Heres another dumbass quote: ”Briand also noted that 50,000 to 70,000 deaths are seen both before and after COVID-19, indicating that this number of deaths was normal long before COVID-19 emerged. Therefore, according to Briand, not only has COVID-19 had no effect on the percentage of deaths of older people, but it has also not increased the total number of deaths.“ What? This article makes literally no sense. You guys really want to believe in the Illuminati and superhero’s and finding the “real truth.” Get it together. The truth is, excess deaths are calculated without any respect to cause of death. And every analysis of excess deaths - by the way, in dozens of countries - shows that there have been hundreds of thousands more deaths this year than there should have been, with a large portion being from folks 60+.

Totally possible for the EX, the C-model is kind of a lost cause for AGCAS.

This is the crux of the problem in current politics. We’re made to think we have significantly different views, but that’s because we basically have to choose one of two sides: 1) Dems: We aren’t doing enough and we need to lock everything down needlessly without considering one side 2) Repubs: We are doing too much and we need to remove everything we have done without considering one side In reality I think we probably look at the problem very similarly. We need more compromises. Honestly, this is where the president should “make his money,” by setting a national game plan and pushing down a path that hits both. Trump certainly didn’t do that well, and it doesn’t look like Biden’s going to, either. And when Biden encourages needless lock downs in cities with almost no one at risk, the cycle will continue.

First source I found said there were ~90k ventilators. Looked into it a bit more and it should likely be revised to 2-3 ventilators, as there are probably in the ballpark of 250k ventilators in America after the government bought some this year, although the exact number is unknown. https://journal.chestnet.org/article/S0012-3692(20)34505-0/pdf

I don't actually understand your line of reasoning, although I tried. I'm definitely wrong on some other parts, but on this one (total hospitalizations and units) I'm pretty sure I've got it. To highlight the absurdity of 74,573 total hospitalizations over the course of COVID, there are 89,954 people hospitalized literally today, bro: https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/us-currently-hospitalized Also, the 228.7/100k is not the "will be hospitalized" figure. That is the current proportion of the total US population that has been hospitalized to this point. That number can and will only increase. For example, on August 22, it was 156.8/100k. On April 25 it was 40.4/100k. Source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/past-reports/05012020.html Agree. It's not 2.2M unless literally every person got it and they won't. That's a more fair way to look at it that doesn't include either bias, as you have to consider that the majority of the population won't get it. Although I will say that if we had gone with the "herd immunity" strategy that was initially touted as maximizing liberty, it probably would have been closer to 50-60%. And if we go with an open everything up now strategy, it will be a significant chunk, which I think 12% is maybe in the ballpark. I'm skeptical about your state info for the death rates for older folks being that low, as well. Hawaii has the absolute lowest overall death to covid ratio out of any state in America, and theirs is at 1.32%. Maybe you meant 4% and 9%? Source: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_casesper100klast7days

I like your way of looking at the problem and making it into a comparable scenario for a small city. It definitely highlights some of the absurdities, especially of how terrible stimulus bills are when it comes to actually helping out the people it's supposed to help: the American people. Other things that would be important, though, in that analysis would be that out of the 3300 people, 195 of them would be hospitalized at some point. 39 of them would need an ICU bed. There is only 1 ICU bed total in the town. 10 of them need a ventilator. There is only 1 ventilator. From this analysis, you can now see that there is a timing problem. And, for a slightly different opinion, I honestly think that we all should have to pay some money to get through this. Probably a couple grand. It sucks, but that's a small price to pay to ease the burdens of mother nature on society, in my opinion.

I found it, finally. But you have to calculate it yourself. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographics That has total cases by demographics and total deaths so you can get death rate by dividing the two. 0-4: 0.03% death rate 5-17: 0.01% death rate 18-29: 0.05% death rate 30-39: 0.16% death rate 40-49: 0.41% death rate 50-64: 1.50% death rate 65-74: 5.59% death rate 75-84: 13.15% death rate 85+: 24.26% death rate So for your first statistic, that those under 70 had a 99.86% survival rate, I technically can't evaluate based on the ages. But we can look at 0-64 and 0-74 and see if you're somewhere in between. Turns out that there is a 0.47% death rate for the whole population 0-64 (or a 99.53% survival rate). 99.53% may look the same/insignificant, but it's actually a 230% higher death rate than your stat you threw out. If you go 0-74, then it's a 0.89% death rate for that population, which is a 530% higher death rate than your stat. It matters, because people throw out flu morbidity all the time, which is closer to 0.1%. Add in all the cases for the whole population of every age (as the flu's 0.1% does, by the way), and COVID, right now, today, has a 2.03% mortality rate, which is approximately 20 times higher than the flu. I totally understand that in the future they will say that this doesn't include all asymptomatic cases, so I expect this to go down, but there's the current "truth data" to go off of.

Nope, there are nutters for every perspective. In fact, one side had folks that thought this would all be over by April when it "warmed up." Back in April, the President said that a mere 50-60k in total would die from Coronavirus. Seems a little incorrect now, doesn't it? And here's a hypothetical for you to wrap your mind around. How do you know we wouldn't have had 3 million US deaths if we hadn't all worn masks and done these draconic lockdown measures? Unfortunately, this is a real catch-22, as you can't rerun the simulation. "Does a 12% positive test rate and a 99.86% survival rate warrant all of the current things going on?" - That's the one that I took issue with. Not the one where you actually included the whole picture. We're in semantics at this point. You're right that you said it multiple times beforehand, and I just don't like it when things that don't include all the information are said. In regards to the CDC data, I still don't think you will find age mortality data. It's not there. I think this because I've spent dozens of hours looking at the CDC data. I'm sure you have as well, so let's not stoop to saying that we don't care. I believe you're well informed, and I think that you have interesting opinions. Of course I actually care about the data, but the more important thing in this discussion is to get on the same page. I respect your opinion, but I still disagree. The point made by you and Brabus was that this virus isn't that big of a deal in the big scheme of things because it kills older people that are already close to their expected end of life. A lot of viruses do that, including Cancer, heart disease, alzheimers, actually... almost all of them. Why do we care about them then? The comparison actually works fine, I believe. The rest of your rant is about how the government is trying to take liberty away from you in draconian ways that make no sense and don't actually help. I agree with you. I never said anything opposite of that. In fact, we should definitely be balancing liberty with our COVID response, but it's a balance of the two. I simply said that you don't get to twist a narrative by asking "Does a 12% positive test rate and a 99.86% survival rate warrant all of the current things going on?" That's not the whole story. The actual question is "Does a 12% positive test rate and a 99.86% survival rate for those under 70 and a 10% mortality for those over 70 warrant all of the current things going on?" I do believe it's selfish and flippant to want to just continue on with life without having a plan for how those actions will kill hundreds of thousands of people. Because the liberty crowd by large doesn't have a gameplan, they just want to open up. The general talking point is "old people and at risk people should figure it out and self-isolate, I demand my freedom and I want to go to Cancun." Give me a plan to take care of your fellow Americans' welfare while balancing this and I would love to discuss. Finally, I don't see how others like me can ever take you seriously based on what you said (just kidding, that is a super dramatic thing that you wrote though lol).

Alright homie, let's do the math. (I always used the population value not the number of covid cases) 228.7 per 100k equals 2287 per 1M equals 22870 per 10M equals 228700 per 100M We have 330M population in the US, that's 3.3 times the 228700, or 745710 hospitalizations in the US of A. 745710 hospitalizations divided by 12.7M = 5.9%

The fact that you either have to vote for her or Trump is exactly what is wrong with the two party system in America. Dems and republicans include too many groups that totally make no sense pairing up.

I think you made a mistake here. 228.7/100k means with 330,000,000 people, you have had 755k hospitalizations. We've had ~13M cases in America, which means that 755k/13M = 5.8% of people with COVID have been hospitalized. Not 0.59%.

No, legit, I want to see where you found that. As far as I can tell the CDC only does pandemic planning estimates, and they haven't published any data on actual age related morbidity. It doesn't really matter, as I don't really care about the numbers that much, as long as everyone is on the same page: it doesn't kill young people under 60 basically at all, and it does kill old people at an unreasonably high rate. Hey bro, I'll give you credit for the majority of the times you did say it. But the last time you didn't when you said it was a 12% positive test rate for a disease that has a 99.86% survival rate. Saying a "99.86% survival rate" vs a "99.86% survival rate for the majority of the population" are two ENTIRELY different things. Standard "words matter," and you presented it in a way that makes the impact of COVID - the deaths of old people - not part of the discussion. Let's pretend we didn't do any decision making based on "10% of the population" (~30 million people). If you didn't do anything and let "herd immunity" make it's way around, about 70-80% of the country would get the virus. So ~22 million old people. Of them, 10%+ would die. 2,000,000+ deaths is incalculable. It's hard to imagine, I'm sure, without being personally affected, but that's almost 10 times the number of US soldiers that died in WW2. It's not "unsound" or "emotional" to consider this. It's a moral imperative to consider loss of life like that, especially when they are your American countrymen drowning to death on a ventilator. With that being said, I think that you're right that policy has to consider the 90% as well. There's multiple compromises that no one seems to talk about. I'm a proponent of a temporary monthly living allowance which would go to those over the age of 67 until a vaccine is created while lifting most restrictions for the rest of the 90%. The purpose would be to help those at risk to isolate and pay for services that would enable them to lower their risk of disease (delivery services, nurses, cleaners, grocery services, etc.) This would likely be on the order of ~$1.5k per month or $18k per year/person (adjusted by income), which would come out to $540b a year for approximately 30M people. This is an expense, obviously, but giving money to people that not only need it but would have to spend it would help the economy AND it would enable the other 90% of the population to continue working. If healthy older folks don't want to quarantine, have at it. They can make the risk call themselves. This is America, after all. This seems like an ethical compromise that would probably be cheaper in the long run than having tons of businesses fail while the economy grinds to a halt. And it's better than just choosing to do nothing at all and accepting needless deaths for the economy. In the meantime, distribute information about how you can protect yourself and allow people to make decisions. Some people will make good decisions, and others will do whatever they want, but that's America. Your infection rate will go up. When you get coronavirus - which you probably will - you should be mandated to quarantine until you aren't infectious. It's two weeks, then you are basically good to go. The vaccine will be produced and distributed in 6-12 months, and we're out of the woods. We helped the old people bunker down while still enabling the 90% to pay their rent. The cost would be increased taxes to pay for it, but it would still be cheaper than the economy grinding to a halt and tons of businesses closing. EDIT: Just looked and we've already spent almost $3T on this, with most of it going to where? You and I got $1200, but that only accounts for <10% of the total stimulus. Tax breaks for big companies and millionaires are ruining/diluting actions the government could take to help. Imagine if the government spent half of $3T on ventilators/medical training/medical supplies and gave the rest to individuals at risk to isolate using their own personal liberty and judgment. Here's a pretty good breakdown on how this spending plan unfairly benefits those that it shouldn't (millionaires and billionaires that don't need assistance) https://www.propublica.org/article/the-cares-act-sent-you-a-1-200-check-but-gave-millionaires-and-billionaires-far-more Classic tax cuts for the rich in a pandemic, thanks trickle down economics/Ronald Reagan.

You have to put a disclaimer with your “99.86%” every time you write it or else you are being intentionally deceptive. What you meant to say was a 99.86% survival rate for people up to the age of 40, I assume. Also, let’s see your sources. The problem with this talking point is that it entirely skews the whole problem. Literally everyone has known for months now that young people will be okay. But as soon as you hit 50-59 your case fatality rate hits 0.5-1.0%. 60-69 is 2-4%. The real problem, though, is that 70 year olds have a 5-10% mortality rate and 80 year olds have a 15%+ mortality rate. And you’re ignoring that? This is the actual issue, and you can’t just gloss over the portion of mortality that doesn’t fit your narrative because it’s convenient. Although I have noticed talk radio loves to try. It’s akin to saying “Cancer/heart disease/[insert literally 90% of diseases] isn’t important to study because it largely doesn’t affect young people.” Now if you want to say that you’ve accepted the risk of older people dying - that that is a sacrifice we should make as a society - then at least you’re being genuine. Realistically there obviously has to be balance, but saying this isn’t a disease that’s more fatal than the flu and trying to discredit it with misleading statistics adds nothing to the conversation. Heres an actual source with case fatality rates: https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid

Guys, isn’t it the libs’ job to be triggered?

Your videos focus primarily on the 1800s and a single quote from LBJ. Doesn't seem like a very rigorous argument. It's not important. The point is that neither party outwardly supports racism. Trying to argue that dems are the party of racists with these arguments is grasping at straws. And I agree that racial politics and identity politics are terrible. I don't support them. Many people who voted D don't. Your arguments are pedantic and churlish and, to that, I say good day. Good day, sir. I said good day! Anyways, how 'bout them Bears?

So now I would like to quote my good friend guardian who always says that EXACT WORDING is the only thing that matters. The guy who won't try to understand your message, just pick apart nitnoid arguments. You said there were zero riots. Guess your credibility is shot forever.

Along those lines, I don’t usually watch Bill Maher, but I did happen to see this clip of him calling out some of the delusions of the current Democratic Party and why they didn’t do as well as they thought they would in the elections. I thought this really hit the nail on the head when it came down to what is wrong with “woke” culture.

True, some portions of the narrative on the left are abhorrent. Basically everything you said, I agree with. You can’t defund the police, you can’t tell every 30 year old white dude he’s racist and sexist just for existing, and “cancel culture” is doing quite a bit of driving people to be even more partisan than before. I believe the far right’s attacks on science, the government (intelligence, HHS, etc), and media are more damaging to the country, though. Not far more - but more. This is literally becoming the party that is proud to see evidence and reject it just to reject it - not because there is logic or morality. A literal normalized saying right now is “fake news,” and I know people that are proud to say that to anything that doesn’t align with their current worldview. If you think about it, how can you ever reason with people like this?

Ooh, quotes! Let me do one for you: “In a way, the world−view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.” Heres one more: ”The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” This is fun.

What does that even mean?

Dude just address the point above or take a break. Not being able to back down, no matter what, isn’t winning over many people.

It is interesting how normalized it seems for a president to hypothetically impose unilateral military action. Wasn’t this sort of thing designed to go through Congress? I blame Bush and Obama.

Do they hear the >5M republicans?

I agree. Delaware, Vermont, Rhode Island, DC, Hawaii. All more examples of places that have more voting weight than they should.

That's fine, you guys are cleared to disagree. I still think you're wrong. There are more republican voters in California, whose votes don't matter at all, than those in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and West Virginia combined. If you look into it, you aren't really following the constitutional founding fathers' intentions. The number of electors was always intended to be the number of senators plus the number of representatives. As our society grew from about 35k people / representative to the 700k people / rep that we have now, the impact of the people should have increased proportionally because the number of representatives should have increased. George Washington argued that there should be a representative for every 30k people. But in 1913, # of representatives was capped arbitrarily to 435. This contributed, strongly, to the undue voter weight of extremely small portions of America and the disregard for vast sects of society. Now the tyranny of the minority has resulted in 2 of the last 3 presidents being elected by the minority of voters. Before, this had only happened 3 times. I'm doubtful this was the intent of the constitution or the founding fathers. Or maybe California should just split into 5-10 smaller states so that their voices are heard.