OT Coronavirus: America in chaos, News and Updates. One million Americans dead and counting

How can anyone think the US being an outlier is unusual? Look at our people and our (non)leadership. Nothing is less surprising than being in the position we are in. Look at our beaches weeks and weeks ago. Look at the bars. Look at our protests. Look at our leadership refusing to wear masks and making fun of people who do wear masks. This is exactly where we should be and the graphs depicting our situation seem completely on brand for America 2020.

 

I put stuff in quotes way too often because of string concatenation and I'm just used to doing it. Programming is really bad for proper grammar sometimes.
Well, I've already said some things I think it could be.
Bad data - Politicization of the virus in America there are those who want it to be high because it helps with an election, and on the flip side it could be lower in some places because it helps with an election.
Bad Tests - Faulty tests
Culture - I think we've spoke on that.
Large Protests - Huge gatherings of protestors literally right as many states were opening up.
Leadership - Local and national
It was caught way too late and in the US earlier than anyone knew - which I don't know if you can absolutely blame a political leader for, that seems like it could happen to politicians.
Genetics - It was a month ago or so I'd have to go find it - but I saw a researcher theorizing that genetics played a large role in how susceptible different people were to the virus.
Counting - how counting has been handled in the US and in other countries seems to vary greatly from the reading I've done it's not universal.

What do I personally think? probably a mix of all of those things, but I really don't have any strong feelings about what I'd weigh more than others. Except that in the early stages Feb / March I thought leadership not just Trump but on a state level was pretty universally unclear, unprepared, confusing, seemed to have no idea what they were talking about, they jumped to playing politics with it, literally within DAYS of it becoming a real issue in the US. I think how quickly it turned political has been a huge issue. You can't talk about COVID19 without a politician's name being thrown around, whether it's pelosi, trump, coumo, awesome, McConnell, etc., etc.
edit: I love the autocorrect made newsom awesome.

 

Yes, and again, it was a complete dodge to my "simple and direct question". Would you like me to re-pose the question?

If you don't want to answer just say so...I can certainly understand why you wouldn't want to.

 

It's no different than any other national issue - war, economy, food, health etc... When there is a need for a national response, elected government officials (politicians) are by definition the ones that are supposed to determined the way forward - they were elected to handle this and it is to be expected that they should be the center of attention about their decisions. I am not really sure why any of this is a surprise. It is what is expected will happen. The Doctor Fauci's of the world do not have authority over policy that goes out of their specific domain and in cases where it clearly goes out of the realm of their domain - it is up to government to deal with it and with power and authority comes discussion and oversight and being held responsible.

 

Sure, go ahead.

 

Did I say I was surprised? Still, the fact of the matter is our political landscape is extremely maybe more than just about any other country in the world 'split', and so turning this political so fast meant that everyone put there fences up and said well this is the side I'm on so I'm doing this. It's why it's so dangerous for a country to be split as much as ours is. Say Trump wanted the 'herd immunity' method (I'm not supporting that), but if only half the people decide to do it, it doesn't matter what method he comes up with it won't work. Similarly, if Obama or Biden are in office and something like this happens and only half the people do it, because they've chosen sides it will not work.

Even on the flipside if his response was a hard everything's shut down for the rest of the year no one can go outside. If only his base does that, it doesn't work then either.

 

Wow, this is some funny shit,,,not that I'll get a straight answer, but for the third time, here you go;

"...are you at a greater or lesser risk of spreading/acquiring the virus with a mask?"

 

I'm not sure where you could track death rate trends over the last 4-6 weeks internationally and compare to US

I do know I've been watching deaths/million in the US on the following chart. We are now 9th at 393 deaths per million, and three of the countries with a higher rate are Belgium, Andorra, and San Marino.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

there is also this:



that's not good, although I guess you can hang your hat on us not being as bad as Brazil

there's this:



now, that's simply cumulative deaths/million so obviously, every arc will climb until there are no more deaths

perhaps this one is most revealing, new deaths/million on a rolling one week average:



so then, we're in the class of Mexico and several South American countries. But hey, we're better that most except for Ecuador. maga baby!

finally, there's the testing/million number that sure seems to dispute the more-tests = more-cases narrative, at least when it comes to testing rates vs case & death rates:

Monaco 412,834
Cayman Islands 354,246
Bahrain 325,928
UAE 317,098
Luxembourg 296,092
Iceland 218,101
Denmark 181,875
Lithuania 155,340
UK 138,862
Russia 134,050
Qatar 127,086
Singapore 116,981
Portugal 115,533
Spain 110,425
Israel 106,363
Belarus 105,911
Belgium 105,806
USA 101,475

about that: I read an article a couple of weeks ago that said that in "official" national stats, the US had by far the highest rate of sereological testing vs chemical testing, and those sereological are much less reliable and much poorer gauges of current infection rates

 

I just want to point out I think this may be where I differ from many people in here and irl too. When things hit the fan so to speak, I absolutely do not look for government officials to figure it out for me. If there is war, financial issues, health issues, I need food, my first and most prevalent thought is how am I going to figure it out. When COVID first was happening here, I was figuring out how I could handle it, and how my family could handle it. I really didn't care one iota what Fauci or Trump, or any of them had to say. Maybe Fauci a bit I guess, but when there was talk of a food shortage this fall I didn't think wow I hope the government figures it out, we started growing our own produce. We started freezing things and making sure we had food if we needed it saved away. I don't look to the government to fix really any of the issues of the day and in a war, well I'm not armed and I won't shoot anyone so if they shoot me or bomb me then I guess that's just the way it's going to go.

 

Lesser risk if you are wearing a mask.

Previous positions stated non-N95 masks were useless.

 

the only thing that makes the US an outlier in terms of Covid is that it has 50 different policies for 50 different states.

Oregon was doing extremely well for a state with 4.2 million people. Some of the credit for that goes to the state government; and the rest goes to the majority of Oregon's citizens who accepted the restrictive policies until reopening started. But reopening in this state, and the other states, IMO, were handled poorly. It should have been done much more incrementally and much more cautiously allowing time to gauge results. And I think all over the nation, when people heard we were 'reopening', way too many people operated under bad assumptions about the meaning, and worse assumptions about how they needed to behave

in other words, IMO, there's nothing wrong with the USA's Covid data and it actually is gauging reality. And that reality is we had stupid leadership out of the white house, stupid leadership in several states, and impatient leadership in many other states, including Oregon. And way too many people were way too dumb about a virus that is highly infectious and everywhere

 

Who said anything about figuring it out for myself. It is about figuring it out for everyone.

And, fortunately, or unfortunately - per one's point of view, since we do not live like monks in caves with no human interaction - government's actions certainly have an impact on each and every one of us, I certainly can not grow all the food I consume, perform the surgeries I might need or fight the Taliban (or whatever) by myself, so, government actions - if you like it or not, certainly are of interest to each and everyone - and the government's action certainly are prevalent to how you are going to figure it out.

The government's actions of encouraging irresponsible behavior during the pandemic has an effect on every one of us this side of the top 1% that can live like a sovereign state.

 

it's an election year with a global pandemic and a string of horrible abuses of authority against minority citizens...what did you expect? People are not going to calmly react to bad leadership or poor decision making by our govt or police, etc....Trump wants his name thrown around...he is responsible for misleading the country as to the state of the pandemic through denial...ordered tear gas outside a church for a photo op....etc.....America is reacting to or mirroring it's leadership and we are a polarized country...things HAVE changed. I'm very proud to see young people say enough is enough...it's time to stand our ground and turn our country back into one that is admired and respected all over the globe...now it's an embarrassment ..I say get political and take a stand today...I've seen more than enough to answer any doubts I've harbored

 

TAH DAH !!...well it's about fucking time. [bookmarked for future reference]

Now you can go back to here to see where this all started and how you made it totally unnecessary; http://www.sportstwo.com/posts/4968231/


And sorry, but your assertion that non-N95 masks being useless is a broad generalization and is factually not true.

(now scurry off and copy/paste some obscure link and I'll counter with even more to disprove your claim)

 

Rand Paul scolded Dr. Fauci at today's hearing for not being optimistic enough.

 

Rand Paul's an idiot!