Negatory

It’s literally a conspiracy theory. Choosing not to trust multiple different independent methods of calculating deaths due to Covid - which all correlate - because you don’t want to/have second hand information that can’t be uniformly applied to a large statistical model isn’t smart - it’s akin to antivaxxer logic. If you feel so strongly that this is just a current misunderstanding that will be disproven, I’ll put down $5000 dollars right now (through an intermediary of your choice) that the 95% confidence interval for death numbers from Mar-August 2020 will contain 200k. We can even wait until 2023 and aggrandize all the studies, to “let the truth come out.” I highly doubt any of you are interested. This isn’t just one model, it’s numerous studies. Here’s the dumbed down summary of how they work. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sciencealert.com/2020-has-killed-up-to-200-000-extra-people-in-the-us-so-far/amp They use regressions, this accounts for the increasing number of deaths from year to year. From this, in July, multiple different studies showed at least 160-200k+ deaths over normal. You don’t think this correlates closely to what the CDC was tracking? YGBSM. And, in reality, for decision making it literally shouldn’t matter how people died when it comes to effects. Suicide, accident that wasn’t treated because of hospital availability, pneumonia at home, economic despair - they all are because of COVID and the second order effects of a global pandemic. Someone that died because they couldn’t get a CT scan because hospitals were full just as much died from the social effects of this disease. But, yes, let’s keep arguing semantics. In total, you guys have named sub-20 cases of this “fraud” happening. But this mindset has entirely skewed your perception of the situation and changed how America reacts and works together It’s literally exactly how you’re being brainwashed to believe that voting by mail will be entirely illegitimate when there are less than 100 cases of fraud in any election in recent history.

You keep repeating that the death numbers are skewed with nothing to back it up. What do you think has caused the >200k excess deaths in the US since Mar 2020?

The protesting has lost its purpose. If you want people to care, maybe don’t attack politicians. There’s no apparent strategy other than to be mad and break stuff. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8672681/BLM-protesters-gather-outside-White-House-Trumps-RNC-speech.html

Dude he named a bunch of things a leader could have done to LEAD more effectively. A pandemic is exacerbated by the population and how they perceive and enact guidance. Not making a strategy or backing up those that did (e.g. the CDC) is a large contributing factor to why we are here. How’d you get so blinded by bias?

Do you ever think that you are being propagandized? Because that’s what this is. It’s intentional divisive spoofer comm, to reduce your trust in the actually fairly accurate data we have to make decisions on. Im not saying the actual instances of fraud you or Brabus talked about didn’t happen. I’m sure they did. But you are subconsciously being told to apply these isolated instances - which are almost meaningless in the big picture - to literally the entire data set.

You’re right about infections, the scientific view now is COVID infections are probably on the order of magnitude 10 times higher than test results show. But deaths are probably much closer than you or a random second hand source you know give credit. You can’t dismiss deaths just because doing so fits your narrative, either. A relatively accurate way to determine COVID effect is to assume that, compared to previous years, any change in death rate is likely due to COVID. Just take the excess deaths over 2019, 2018, 2017, etc., compare it to 2020, and you have a pretty close estimate to its impact. Since March, ~200,000 more people than usual have died in the US. So that’s our best estimate at actual impact. So if we say 10 times the confirmed cases, or 60 million cases, that means 0.3% mortality for the population at large. Doesn’t sound that bad, only like 5-10 times worse than the flu based on similar analysis. Still doesn’t take into account the age based mortality, which really are where the hard questions lie. If 70+ year olds have an estimated 5-15% mortality rate that goes up the older you are, how does that change the calculus? People don’t like going down this path, because it’s easier to ignore that and focus on the fact that working age folks would probably be fine. But it should be the center of the moral question: Is the economy worth a large amount of deaths of older Americans? That’s what the reopen/herd immunity plan does. Is there a way to effectively isolate them from the rest of society (would require social assistance never before seen in the US)? How do we pay for it? Who accepts the risk? Where do you draw the line? The science is real and can accurately enough show death rates and infections to action on. Let’s stop arguing about CDC data for no reason and start arguing about the more important policy questions that must be answered.

If that’s not a good metric, what is?

Texas and Florida both had 2 months of previous research and SA to make decisions to protect themselves, thanks to the outbreaks in NY and NJ. What did they do? Declared mission accomplished and did nothing. Currently they have literally 10 times the daily cases of NY/NJ who just happened to be the first place where the outbreak started. They didn’t have the luxury of knowing what was effective against the virus, but it’s easy with hindsight to say exactly what they messed up. Unfortunately, doesn’t make you smarter. And it’s not over yet. I’ll bet you Texas + Florida will have more deaths than any other state combo when this is over. They already have significantly more cases. Willful ignorance is the only way, really, to describe the states that spiked in June-August. Edit: And just to be clear, I tie all the idiots in California in just the same.

Also, you realize your whole argument boils down to “Trump didn’t have enough power over states/localities to be effective, so it’s not his fault?“ You wanna know what type of government doesn’t have the problem of dissident government leadership? Communism.

I agree man, the Texas and Florida governors really did mess up.

It’s easy to say that, and I won’t argue that he did. Anyone would say Nazis are bad when questioned directly, of course. “You had people -- and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists; they should be condemned totally -- you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists.“ But he also said numerous times that this group had fine people in it that werent neo-Nazis or white supremacists. The group doesn’t deserve such leniency just because they had Trump flags with them. It legitimizes a group, which included such people as David Duke, as a group that was more moderate than they really were. I, and much of America, disagree that there were “many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists.” Call a spade a spade.

I assume you also blame Trump for the slashing of the UPT syllabus and the perceived mishaps of the last year, as well. Why hasn’t Trump increased the pilot bonus? Does he want our Air Force to fail? Or maybe these decisions fall much more squarely on the SECAF/CSAF/Congress.

Just cause you want it to be a hoax doesn't make it a hoax. The "unite the right" movement, protesting the removal of Gen Lee's statues, was the entire impetus to the Charlottesville gatherings and conflicts. They organized a march down Charlottesville's streets holding torches and chanting "blood and soil," the English translation of a Nazi slogan. In the end, one of the neo-nazi white supremacists rammed his car into a group of counterprotestors, killing one and injuring 19. Your choice - just like it's the president's choice - to support them by saying that there are fine people on both sides, do what you want. But this was not just a small group of "state's rights" or "small government" protestors. And don't pretend like there were 10 different groups on either side - this was Unite the Right and counterprotestors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally Also, I'd like to point out the other hypocrisy in this example. Even on this thread, you guys say to not take Trump comments literally, and that you have to actually look for what his point is. But now you are saying to only take his comments literally, and ignore the underlying meaning. You can't have it both ways.

The majority of Trump supporters support him just because his name reads “Trump (R),” so I don’t see how that’s any different. If we point out the numerous criminal indictments, the “individual number 1” from Comeys arrest, the senate report from the last 2 weeks that says that Russia definitively colluded with a certain campaign to interfere with the 2016 election (read it), the tapes asking Ukraine to personally help the president with reelection, the president saying that the white supremacists at Charlottesville were “very fine people,” the inane policy in the Middle East (where I’m sure you all have been)... Youre right, it’s just that he says “the blacks love me,” I can “grab em by the pu$$y,” and his other idiosyncrasies that, at best, make him the same as Joe Biden. Remember, he’s very smart (but would sue his “Ivy League” colleges to stop his transcripts from getting out) and very successful in business (but has sued at every step to stop the “very damaging” tax returns from being released).

I get what you’re trying to say, but you could say this about almost every president. I bet you didn’t vote for Obama in 2012, but did your life get worse? Doubt you can argue it significantly affected any aspect of your life, but I bet it felt like it did. It’s the same, now. In my mind, our national debt has ballooned, healthcare options for my brothers and sisters that aren’t in the military have gotten more expensive and less available, and I don’t realistically believe that the economy has really gotten better. I enjoy that my 401k has done well, but I don’t enjoy the fact that, when I tried to help my 26 year old nephew (who unfortunately isn’t that smart) find a plan to move out of his parents house, there was no reasonable option other than to take on gig economy jobs and have 2 roommates. You make minimum wage in the majority of the US, your take home pay is on the realm of 1200 dollars a month. Show me how you budget that out in any average CoL area (healthcare+rent+car+food alone exceeds that). He looked into trades, which is probably what he’s going to go with, but that brings his pay to ~$15 an hour, or 1800 dollars a month, but no one would accept him without a personal connection to his family. It’s not as easy as people make it out to be. Finally, told him to join the military, but he’s not medically qualified. The fundamental disagreement I have with you, I think, is that I believe tax rates are probably too low. Mainly at the highest echelons of society, but even at our level. The bottom 50% of society has a horribly hard time due to exponentially increasing rent and education prices, all while wages stagnate. No real income improvement for lower middle class in decades. On top of this, we aren’t anywhere close to balancing budgets, as we are approaching $27T of debt. That comes out to over $200k a taxpayer, and it’s only going up. How are we going to deal with that? *crickets* I believe that this is an example of something that has become markedly worse over the last 4 years. Please look at the marginal tax rates (don’t worry about the article if you don’t want, just the graphs) over the last 70 years, and realize that what you think about “trickle down” or tax rates did not apply during the greatest periods of real economic expansion in the US. Bottom line, taxes MUST go up: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/06/opinion/income-tax-rate-wealthy.html I encourage you to read about “quantitative easing” and its effect on stock prices. Bottom line, the stock market is inflated, grossly. An additional $3-5T has been added to the money supply of the market (estimated at ~$30T) over the past 4 years by the federal reserve balance sheet. We should have tightened when we had a chance (2016-2019) but the first, and I think only, time that they tried to do that, the DOW dropped slightly. Now you and the rest of America are addicted to seeing the numbers go up, and even with the highest unemployment and lowest wage growth in recent history, we have ATHs in the stock market. And that’s why we’re gonna have $10T on the fed balance sheet. It’s akin to airlines doing stock buybacks then asking for handouts, when we should stop robbing Peter to pay Paul. Global warming is real, and its effects are real. The scientific community has a very strong consensus on this. Current admin: at best, no plans; at worst, open and push for coal and actively make the situation worse. We have to invest in future technology. And that’s gonna cost money. These posts are useless, because you’ll find one thing that you disagree with and then entirely disregard the rest, but a lot of people aren’t voting against trump just cause “Orange man bad.” And, I will say, Biden is a terrible choice. But he’s still better.

They’ve been saying this about the next generation since the beginning of time. “Children; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. They no longer rise when elders enter the room, they contradict their parents and tyrannize their teachers. Children are now tyrants.“ - Socrates

You’re saying that the president can say things that are anywhere from misleading to entirely incorrect then hand wave it as sarcasm or trolling? A large portion of the world typically listens to the US president as a source of credible information. Expecting all of society at all levels of intelligence to understand the presidents unclear rhetoric is inane. I don’t know how you can’t believe that lying about things can’t affect public opinion and following public policy. On the positive side, for you, when the president says things like he “deserves” a third term, you can say he was jk lol 😂 Trollin Da libs, and just not address anything you don’t feel like addressing. It turns most arguments into “you just didn’t understand what he meant.”

https://mobile.twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1256366878873792512 https://mobile.twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1265255835124539392?s=20 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.10tv.com/amp/article/news/nation-world/trump-november-election/507-ae05a9c5-99e0-48f1-b4d6-5da1e500ce10 The administration is basically setting up the ability to claim “fake news,” no matter what, when they lose. Which is good, because then they can get the eight more years he’s been floating. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-third-term-because-they-spied-on-him-1045743/amp/ If Obama said this stuff, it probably would’ve been cool, right?

Appreciate the actual responses. I disagree with some points, obviously, but at least we are talking about policy now. Ill respond later.

Balance to the federal reserves balance sheet, does that make it more clear? Expected to hit upwards of $10T this year. https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttrends.htm

Predictable

I have quite a few. And I know that all it takes is for you to quote the one thing you disagree with for you to feel like I’m entirely wrong, but I encourage you to suppress that notion and respond in kind. It’s given my friends the courage to unabashedly post QAnon videos without a second thought. It’s allowed for people I once respected to just say “do your own research” and “fake news” about things that are scientifically proven, such as vaccines, global warming, or even eugenics. It’s allowed my friends that I grew up with in the South to feel comfortable saying “Why shouldn’t I be able to tell a black person I’m proud of the fact that I’m white?” The culture of discourse over the last 3 years has markedly worsened. People don’t feel like they have to back up anything. “The president doesn’t, why should I?“ A byproduct of the Trump presidency is that anti-intellectualism and racism has been allowed to grow significantly and unabashedly in the last few years. And these are people I know. As one comedian said, “not all Trump supporters are racist, but all racists are Trump supporters.” On top of that, he’s not doing anything to try to calm down tensions. I have a gay brother in law that was assaulted for the first time while out with his partner. It makes me feel like I live in a less unified country. On top of that, we have made no effort to improve our economy for the future, we have no significant effort to build infrastructure for me to live in in for the next 50 years, we’ve added more debt to the national debt and balance to the federal reserves than anyone, we’ve started an irrational trade war with China that we are going to lose based on poor planning - my family owns a soybean farm and have absolutely loved the last few years (sarcasm) - we pulled out support for the Kurds (after I spent 9 months of my life flying directly over them protecting them) in an irrational and unguided Middle East plan. Foreign policy is now just say “America First,” forget the “haters,” and disregard the last 30-40 years of geopolitics. America has slashed long term plans when it comes to Global Warming, which is a thing. In the last week we saw sea temps that were 10 degrees F above baseline near the poles. There is no plan to deal with rising wealth inequality in America - and that directly affects everyone. Tax cuts haven’t enabled me or my friends to create significant wealth, instead enabling us to earn pennies less when productivity has increased orders of magnitude. Our economy is almost entirely services based and only getting worse, and Trumps best publicized bet at fixing it is bring back coal mining. Ygbsm. Good luck with our airline jobs when they get automated. My nieces and nephews have no ability to actually earn money or move out of their house when they graduate college anymore due to lack of job prospects. I think I recently read a statistic that more people 18-34 are living with their parents than with a partner for the first time in history. America is trying isolationism in 2020, which sounds cool on paper - only care about yourself - but doesn’t work when China and Russia are laying seeds for productive alliances in Africa, Asia, and South America over the next 100 years. Our foreign policy vision is terrible, and it will affect the future of America if we try to maintain this course. We need fundamental national strategy change if we want to maintain our statuses as a superpower. In 2008-2016 we did make some progress as society and in the world, in my opinion. Only about 2 people here have actually talked about what they liked in this presidency, whereas everyone else (I’m pretty sure you included) just says that I’m wrong and won’t answer my initial question. I still don’t understand what policies the majority of Republicans push for that have been enacted in the last few years, and I’d love to hear them.

Agree wholeheartedly, but how do you quantify that? Most economic reports, when it comes to journalism, over the last few years have been that stock market going up = free market working well, when that's not necessarily true.

The S&P 500 is also nearly at all time highs, so i don’t get your point about the DJIA. Almost every index you look at domestically is doing well. With enough quantitative easing (expected to be up to $5T dollars this year, already at 2-3), you can prop up anything. Our balance sheet at the end of the year could be over $10T. YGBSM. Obama did it. Trump is doing it. But, the truth is, right now, we are in no place to do that. Our interest rates are almost 0. And most of that is due to not taking the chance to tighten when the economy was actually “doing well. There has been no meaningful QT at any point where it would have worked. Its analogous to the airlines doing massive stock buybacks to inflate their prices. You can’t take on debt forever to make it look like the economy is doing well. And, worse, QE disproportionately benefits stockholders over the rest of society. More meaningful improvement would be increasing median family wages adjusted for purchasing power. Something that no one has done in 40 years.