Negatory

You’re right. Absolutely f*&k MSM that says it’s okay for protestors to be outside but it’s not okay for churchs to congregate. Seriously. I 100% agree that CNN and MSNBC have contributed just as much as FOX as to why our nation can’t have a unified approach to this natural disaster. I am personally not for any news organization; I am equally against everyone that is anti-science. Turns out that’s the majority of the government press and mainstream media. I believe that Dr. Fauci and the CDC are some of the last bastions of integrity and rational thought when it comes to public health, and it pisses me off to no end when news organizations cherry pick/misrepresent data from their reports to support political positions.

I regret presenting it this way as I said at the premise, but after seeing the 6% COVID CDC statistics presented so many times incorrectly (across this forum and many different social media sites), I am frustrated. Mainly, I am frustrated that the smartest people I know seem to embrace points without doing much critical thinking because it aligns with them from an identity standpoint. And to your second point, whether you like it or not, your choices and beliefs absolutely will be assessed with 20/20 hindsight. There often IS a right side of history. You don’t see too many textbooks now spouting the merits of the San Francisco antimasker alliance that existed during the Spanish Flu.

This post is unfortunately more condescending than I like, but I guess it is what it is. Your analysis is, at best, fallacious and, at worst, intentionally misleading. I'll trust in Hanlon's razor and just assume incompetence over malice. Also, you'll note that these graphs have websites at the bottom. It's a thing called a "source." You still are ignoring excess mortality and arguing that COVID has had marginal total effects, all with no actual data to back it up. Your stats for Flu/Chronic Respiratory Disease/Diabetes show... nothing? They don't compare apples to apples. You would need to have TOTAL deaths for FLU/Chronic Lower Respiratory Disease/Diabetes in 2020, including both COVID and non-COVID - and it would need to be extrapolated to December - to compare the two datasets. Tons of people, literally the vast majority of them (>99%), live with and through those diseases every year. The fact that there are cases where they died with COVID only really proves that COVID does what has been said: causes death in the population. Literally nothing more. It just shows that deaths happen. Now if you could extrapolate the data from everyone that got COVID, then you could possibly compare the outcomes of the population without COVID that died from those diseases to the population with COVID that did, but that's not even close to what you did. Your argument that they had a pre-existing condition and would have died "regardless" is also absurd. Do you know how many people have pre-existing conditions in America? 40% of the country is obese for god's sake. The fact that a huge percentage of society has pre-existing conditions should be ASSUMED in discussions like these. The population of America is at risk health-wise, no duh, but that doesn't mean they are going to keel over and die year-to-year. 1) What do you think caused the 200k excess deaths up to this point this year? And how exactly does it matter what is a CF or a RC? When it comes down to death statistics, there is a reason why they don't put CF/RC on the death certificate: it usually doesn't matter because it's a combination of health effects that causes mortality. And before you go there, of course people with COVID that died in a car accident did NOT die of COVID, I'm not arguing that. But what's the difference from this year to the last decade? These people died because of something different. What could it be? Spoilers: It's the coronavirus combined with a naturally vulnerable population that ALWAYS EXISTS based on how humans age. 2) Here's the one other logical fallacy I'll dig into a little more (feel free to have me address more later). Your argument that folks with pre-existing conditions would have died "regardless" is horseshit. I bet even you or someone in your family has a pre-existing condition, based on the statistics. Or at least your VA claim will show it here in a few years. I'll put down money on that one. The number of Americans that have a pre-existing condition is up to 86% by insurer's definitions for people age 55-64. 48% of them have a no-shit health high risk pre-existing condition. They don't even report on those older than that, because it's basically assumed that the majority of the aged population has something significantly wrong with their health. "Sorry grandma, I know you have diabetes and high blood pressure, which you could probably live with for another 10-15 years with simple treatment, but the economy must open up. Although COVID disproportionately kills those over the age of 70 - and if you get it you have a high chance of hospitalization and a 5-10% chance of death - that is a sacrifice I am willing to make. Ignore the fact that we likely will have a working vaccine in the next year which would stop all of this, my mutual funds need to go up NOW. FAKE NEWS. DON'T TREAD ON ME." Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02483-2 It's not that hard. Wear your stupid mask, stop hanging out with all your friends, put your travel plans on a temporary hold, get over the fact that national sports and colleges aren't gonna be on TV, and understand that society isn't actually powerless when it comes to battling infectious disease. For all the shit conservatives give liberals over being babies, they have a real problem toughening up and adjusting their lifestyle temporarily for a global catastrophe. Literally FOX News hosts in the height of the deaths in April ran a segment about how hard it is to not be able to get your hair done, while, at the same time, medical teams across the world from Italy to Spain to the UK to the US were delivering bodies to morgues at a weekly rate 5-15 times higher than normal. Want to know something? Those countries don't have the magnitude of problem we have now. They learned and their societies adapted. Numerous other countries and societies haven't F'd this GLOBAL DISEASE away like we have. BLAB (BOTTOM LINE AT THE BOTTOM): Stop arguing about whether or not COVID causes deaths. It does. If you want to argue that 100's of thousands of deaths aren't that bad in the big scheme of the population and we can accept a few 100 thousand more, then that's your prerogative. I disagree, but at least now we are arguing about opinions. Out.

They get counted in excess deaths, which is why I think it’s probably a better metric when it comes to total impact. And if the disease still got to you with restrictions (probably via asymptomatic transmission), how can we reasonably ask for those at risk to avoid infection? They still have to get food, go to the doctor, fix their homes, interact with those that care for them. Unfortunately, there is no such thing anymore as a self-sufficient man; everyone is very interconnected.

What would you recommend?

Okay, how about it's just a unproven theory that the government as a whole (or is it just the liberal portions, i'm not hip and read in) is conspiring to present skewed results? Does that work? Explain how in systems thinking - which asserts that one can't look at individual things like coronavirus specific death tolls and instead should look at the combination of effects in the whole system - discounts anything I said previously. I am not following your logic. COVID proves that isolation thinking - i.e. personal liberty over all else - is ineffective. https://www.thinknpc.org/blog/covid-19-means-systems-thinking-is-no-longer-optional/

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.