agreed.

I would add that science/doctors have been pushed out by the administration from day one, to the point that they use it to attack biden ("he's going to listen to the scientists!")

also, the inconsistency he is referring to for example in restaurants and flights, is entirely driven by economics, not science. Those are two of the hardest hit industries worldwide, you have a president who has made it clear he prioritises business over public health, of course they made some theatrical protocol to make it seem safer when really, its not.
(same in my country, and having a bakery myself have had to do the same stupid dance).

Pointing at the survival of christie, trump or any other celebrity, no matter how overweight, old or whatever, is not analogous to the experience of normal people who cant afford that level of treatment, most wouldnt have access to it even if they could afford it. not to mention that we dont even really know long term effects for survivors, including importantly how long the immune response lasts.

That whole segment just came off as the typical selfish "i dont think this will kill me, lets get back to normal" BS. Weve known for a long time now that what makes coronavirus dangerous isnt its mortality rate, its the combination of a long asymptomatic incubation period and airbone transmission that make it highly contagious, when hospitals collapse the mortality rate spikes.

I actually agree that we have to learn to live with this because i dont think a vaccine is nowhere near close to ready for global deployment, but i thought his arguments were terrible and his focus selfish.

***finally anecdotal experience here in Chile, 3 friends have gotten covid-
44 year old, former national team field hockey, good shape
41 year old, former point guard national team basketball, good shape
38 year old, professional poker player, overweight bordering on obese.

the 44 year old was in the hospital for 12 days, no ventilator, felt aches and pains for a solid month after going home
the 41 year old was in the hospital for 28 days, ventilator (and the induced coma that comes with it), still feels physically drained
the 38 year old had a fever for 3 days and never went to the hospital, is feeling fine

Between different strains and different body/blood types, comparing one case to another doesnt seem to work

I think Bill's attack on the science/health experts is misguided.

Not that Bill's wrong, mind you. IF you have a good internal (immune) system you'll have a better chance of fighting it off, but

1) that's NOT a guarantee you won't get sick.
2) DOESN'T mean you won't help spread it by being all gun-ho about it, and
3) USA being what it is -- the number of over-weight, obese are just staggering -- what's the point for the health experts to say/shame people with, er, "their pre-conditions" are to blame NOW? How's that gonna help?

Besides, the health experts have been promoting healthy, active living for ages. They're not "cowards" because the people don't listen to them.

It's mind-bogging to me how narcissistic and self-centered American society is. If people just pay any attention outside of American media, they should know how to handle Covid-19.

Don't forget this Tim Scott police reform bill Pence attacked her for denouncing was the proverbial nothing burger.
It made no effort at all to regulate or remove immunity from criminal police, instead shielding them from criminal or civil prosecution even when they break the law, it didn't outlaw deadly choke holds, it didn't ban criminal police from just moving to the next precinct, it did nothing of substance. That's why Democrats didn't vote for it, it was red herring legislation pretending to address a problem but really making it worse and walking away shouting "job done, nothing else needed."

Kamala, as a prosecutor, saw through the ploy and walked away, as she should.

The video I agree....my calculations show his newest stated plan, herd mentality (immunity), "that's going to happen", leads to 7-8 million dead at a best case miraculously perfect execution, and in reality more likely >40->50 million due to an overburdened medical system. I don't have a clue where they get such a lowballed estimate as 3 million. I'm with you there....Shame.

The data for what I sent is at John Hopkins university, the NPR data source is listed, statistica requires a free account, but their data matches Hopkins.

You told me, don't you remember?! You don't support me so that can't be it, and no...no pedo....who do you support? That guy who hollas at 10 year olds in public, lusting hard. Who was that guy again? He raped a 13year old at least once....it's on the tip of my tongue...help me out...who is that?

So, if I were a pedophile, that would explain how I know you support them. No denial though. Hmmmm. That's a public admission Bobby, Duh.

Stop posting this unscientific propaganda, pedophilia supporter.

Notice not one reference on any of his "data" because he likely made it up like he usually does.

His data doesn't match any verified data either, and his graphs are intentionally confusing, including individual states and countries in a completely unscientific propaganda graph, some countries with populations in the 70-80000 range. My guess is it's improperly presented this way to hide how bad America has done, with well over half the slots being US states and many of the remaining countries having tiny populations and third world conditions. This is the superstition side of the argument, not science based or scientific at all.

We have >200000 deaths with just over 2% infected. Herd immunity takes 70-80% being infected and a stable virus that won't mutate enough to erase immunity. That's a minimum of 7-8 MILLION Americans dead and p to 21-24 million permanently disabled if we have 1.6 million ICU beds....hint, we don't, so multiply the deaths by 4-7 but lower the disabled numbers, they'll die instead. So far, there's no study that shows herd immunity is even possible, since this virus mutates every few months it's unlikely. I think sacrificing millions - 60 million or more to find out is outrageously insane.

Use real, verified data, we are at best 8th worst (only 7 countries have more deaths per 100000 and 8th highest death rate per infection too). Just look at India, with 4 times the US population, just over 1 million fewer cases than the US, and way less than half the deaths....IN FUCKING INDIA.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/08/05/899365887/charts-how-the-u-s-ranks-on-covid-19-deaths-per-capita-and-by-case-count

Because our population is so large, that puts us at number one in total deaths with 4% of the population but 25% of deaths....so > 6 times the global average per capita and the most reported deaths by far.

Fail Bobski. Only the most uneducated rubes fall for this ridiculous nonsense.

Nice of you to say, but Trumpublicans are immune to facts.

I've thought for years my discussions with Bobby aren't for him, they're to contradict his nonsense so other people don't get conned by liars. He's a total lost cause, proven when he said only stupid people tell the truth under oath if the truth might hurt them, defending Trump lying in his depositions. Anyone who supports perjury is lost.

Yes, sometimes kids who like fire need to be burned , badly, to gain respect for fire...I did. Sometimes even that doesn't teach them (my brother didn't stop making pipe bombs just because he almost blew himself up, for instance). The problem is, they usually burn down a house or two before getting burned enough themselves, maybe burning a few people to death for lack of a lesson. I say, if you see a kid playing with matches a second time, light their ass on fire in a dirt field, give them all the fire they'll ever want and then some. If they survive, they'll almost certainly quit lighting fires.

Bob is lighting fires at home with his other firebugs. None of them are concerned, none of them wants the fire out.

Sho Nuff Is.
Way better than Daughter Diddling Incest Don, who can't say a full sentence in English in the last 4+ years (like someone else I know) who's still looking for the oranges of one investigation into his illicit dealings...I get why you like him, he makes you feel smart.
https://youtu.be/MfOQBY5BrUA
https://youtu.be/UE9BXkQ-SRc
https://youtu.be/Cr4wosNO1oo
THIS is YOUR decrepit obese old man for 2020?!? Lol.

Again, comparing obese Donny who can't walk down a wheelchair ramp with svelte Biden riding bikes and jogging and you claim obese Trump is in perfect shape and Biden is on his death bed.

It's like taking Donny's 5+ decade history of blatant, illegal, prosecuted, vitriolic racism from red lining housing (denying it to non whites) to calling for the death penalty for black kids despite them being exonerated by DNA to Nazis and white supremacists being good people but protesters against police brutality are thugs and inhuman animals VS a few jokes with his black friends that mention race and calling Donny an anti racist and Biden a racist.

🤦‍♂️

The insane desperation is shining bright these days....the only light left in your darkening world of Trump.

Edit: This entire year Donny has been so bad he ruined my Tshirt,
"Cthulhu 2020 - This time vote for the greater evil"
Now there's real confusion about who the greater evil is since he, and his sycophants are holding up recovery for more massive tax cuts for Trump, tax cuts he illegally gave himself by executive order anyway so now we're left wondering why Republicans are still refusing to move forward on recovery....maybe they're still waiting for full immunity for schools and businesses they know won't follow guidelines, causing deaths and disabilities. Republicans need immunity from the consequences of their decisions, because they know those decisions will cause American deaths and permanent disabilities they don't intend to help with or accept responsibility for.

Also worth noting, yesterday in his "pandemic briefing" (where he reads the exact same written statement he's been reading since mid July, then campaigns) he said he plans on eliminating social security....well, he said he plans on eliminating the funding for social security, the payroll tax (that costs him lots of money). He has no plan to replace that funding, so there's no other option, end social security. That's Trump's ONLY plan for next year so far, but expect a thousand more cuts when the budget numbers from 2020 are in....and America will die by those thousand cuts.

The Trump Virus and resulting Trump depression, paired with the GOP extortion plans to hold any further recovery packages hostage unless they get billions for the wall, billions more to rebuild the FBI building across the street from Trump's hotel instead of much better locations , and full immunity civil and criminal from any consequences from injuries and deaths caused by sending people back to work without precautions or safety measures, together these failures, these blackmail schemes, are poised to grow an already out of control homeless crisis exponentially in the next months.

Florida's governor just admitted his predecessor's administration, a current Republican senator, intentionally set up the unemployment system to fail, with as many useless roadblocks as they could imagine, the only purpose of which is to frustrate applicants so much they give up, making Florida's unemployment numbers better on paper. This system has failed Florida disasterously and absolutely caused hundreds of deaths from exposure while standing in lines for days just to apply, and must have caused thousands to become homeless.

It's not CNN, it's directly from Trump himself. Trump's tweets are fake news?! Wow, that's progress.

He's going to try to shit on the constitution, again. He has zero respect for it, guaranteed he's never once read it through. He's not tossing it out completely....yet.

Schools are safe?! Students and teachers in them aren't. It's insanity to claim they even might be.
Kids aren't immune, kids under 10 still get sick from covid they just rarely die but many are permanently disabled, and they bring it home to mom, dad, older sister, grandma, etc. Kids over 10 are the same as the rest of us Covid wise. Classrooms are Petri dishes, it would be hard to design a place more likely to spread diseases, dozens of kids in close proximity with no ability to social distance, no hygiene, eating together hip to hip, basically being irresponsible children with little supervision. Note, schools aren't safe enough for Trump to send his child back.

Trump's team can't tell the difference between peaceful protests and rioters, that's why time and time again they're filmed attacking peaceful protests, beating and macing seated calm protesters, using tear gass on peaceful protests including shooting canisters at people's faces from point blank range, trapping crowds in enclosed areas with one exit, blocking that exit and attacking en mass, intentionally targeting media using weapons, rubber bullets, pepper spray and capsaicin bullets, driving vehicles into crowds with intent to harm peaceful protesters, beating and mace bukakke-ing peaceful and calm veterans who just stand and take it without even defending themselves, cracking elderly skulls open not rendering aid and claiming the victim was faking, etc. Trump has tried to label BLM a terrorist organization, and directed his shock troops to treat them as such. Repeatedly they are on camera trying to spark violence by attacking peaceful protesters, and have been filmed supervising white people vandalizing in the name of BLM, even directing the vandalism.

Yes, fake news like OAN, Glen Beck, and Fox can't tell the difference and hope you can't either, that's why they fake photos, adding in armed antifa, using old out of state burning riot photos to pretend Portland is on fire, never mentioning that those caught starting fires, shooting cops, driving into crowds, shooting into crowds, etc have been far right wing boogaloo boys, not protesters. Never mentioning the protests are limited to about a 4 block area of Portland, not the entire city. They pretend that when peaceful crowds are shot at and gassed and a few toss back empty water bottles as they retreat, the crowds instigated it and forced "police" (not really police) to use excessive force (ignoring the fact that the agents shot first) by being violent....but oddly have no video of violent protesters to corroborate their unbelievable stories in dozens of cases. In the list of violent acts that drove the unwanted deployment of federal thugs, 9/10 were graffiti. Fake news can't seem to tell graffiti from firebombing.

Where were they when crowds of armed thugs were taking over state capitals and calling for the mob execution of governors and officials over quarantining a few weeks back? What was different there? Hmmmm...

"This would take too long to explain?" Take a stab, you just spent 22 minutes beating about the bush.

Will bread be cheaper?

Governments and rich people will be able to break passwords. Three day weather forecasts will become four day weather forecasts. Pharma will make even more money. Duh.

Massive scientific improvements are fiction until they happen. Trickle down (anything) is fiction. We will never all own helicopters, while helicopters are awesome. This may be as useful to the public as large telescopes and particle colliders.

Not predicting a conspicuous failiure, but lets wait until the chicken hatch.

Living in a country that has trouble building and maintaining an elementary highway system gives you immunity to purely theoretical solutions to traffic problems.

You're almost right, some few unprofessional doctors say let >75% get it and build herd immunity. They're nuts, that's a guarantee of 10-12 million dead Americans at current reported death rates, and >triple that when you realize that without ICU care the death rate rises to 15%, near 45 million dead, and we are already at and over capacity.
Some doctors (likely many of the same irresponsible unprofessional morons) suggested taking Hydroxychloroquine was a good idea, until professionals proved them 100% wrong.

~4% REPORTED deaths, but we now know if someone gets it, recovers but with devastating lung and brain damage and dies a few weeks later of lung failure they don't count that as an official covid related death even when the death certificate does, so it's definitely higher than 4%, as if that's not high enough.
And what's the percentage that have lifelong debilitating effects like either permanently destroyed lungs or severe brain damage to name two?

Opening while cases are still rising, in direct contradiction to the CDC AND Whitehouse guidelines, guarantees another shutdown for longer, and the loss of far more mom and pop shops in the long run, so absolutely yes it's worth it.

Easy to say others should go back to work when you work from home.
Edit: in places where it CAN be done safely, including a minimum of guaranteed social distancing, masks, and sanitation at all times, I'm all for returning, but many if not most stores/shops can't, especially with the anti-maskers throwing fits. Our local stores limit customer numbers and some will act as personal shoppers for anti maskers and serve them curbside. We have had 200 cases county wide so far in the highest risk state, so it's working here so far.

Only kids under 10 are lower risk, kids over 10 are the same risk factor as everyone else, and under 10 can still bring it home to those more at risk. Restarting schools in states at high risk, nearly all states right now, is a guarantee of a longer, more deadly, more costly second wave.

It's worth pointing out, part of the stimulus package was granting immunity from responsibility, criminal and civil, when schools or businesses have the inevitable outbreaks and kids or workers are permanently disabled or die. For every 20 infected, one will die, but a few will have life ruining results without dying. The administration knows this, it's why they added immunity, because most places wouldn't reopen if they were responsible for the injuries and deaths that will cause, and those that did would be sued out of existence.
We are creating a new class of disabled, destroying both their health and finances, and most won't survive their first bought of homelessness.
________________________________________________________________
JiggaJonson says...
America is in for a serious wake up call when schools don't reopen

Cop logic: If you are near a march against abusive racist police you hate all police and we hate you....and since we have masks on and immunity for our actions, we're going to fuck up your life in every way we can and blame protesters....
....because we're the good guys.

Newt,

This is in response to your comment on my statement about Biden needing to lose in '20.

I recently wrote this as a reply to one of my readers (I write under a number of different names in other places).:

Dear <name>,

>I took some time to absorb what you wrote. It's a lot to juggle. The Atlantic has an article in the July-August issue on the worst and best case scenario in CLO defaults. I'll read more.

I read the article you mentioned, and while it's certainly good, it also misses a very important point that explains the mess we're in: the collapse of Lehman and Bear-Stearns, while catastrophic in their own ways, were not the nightmare that caused the Fed to freak out in 2008 -- AIG was. Had AIG gone under and the counterparty default contracts triggered, we'd be on the barter system right now. We came within hours of not having an economy in the western world. The $700b ($.7t) the Fed coughed up to stop this from happening calmed the panic, but did nothing to resolve the underlying issues. These issues continued to compound during the 2011-2020 stock run-up and now we're at the point where the Fed is throwing trillions of dollars at every piece of bad debt they can find just to keep the whole thing from imploding into an economic black hole. It is important to note that in September '19, the credit markets started freezing because of the debt that was already on the books then, -before- CV-19 started rolling, and it took $3t just to get them unlocked again. Absolutely nothing has gotten better since then, and I would argue things have gotten dangerously worse.

In an odd coincidence, the NYT ran an article today about the looming bankruptcy crisis. They're calling for 30-60 days before things start imploding, but I'll stick to my estimate of ~90 days. There's some talk about extending the $600 benefits (we'll see) and chatter about another stimulus check, but that's kicking the can as well as telegraphing how bad things really are. When the Republicans are getting behind free money, you know we're in some uncharted territory. For all intents and purposes, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) -- the reason the Fed is backstopping debt and printing money like crazy -- is the hill the US economy will live or die on. Should the US dollar come unpegged as the world's de facto currency or should inflation begin (and there's already worrying signs this is happening), that's game over.

Please don't take anything I say as the Word of God; please do your own research and come to your own conclusions. Everything I've said is an opinion based on my education, experience and way of thinking. Your mileage may vary.

Here is the article I mentioned: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/business/corporate-bankruptcy-coronavirus.html -- might be paywalled, but clear your cookies for the NYT and you should be able to read it.


>Frankly, it's the physical danger in my area of the States that concerns me. There are the guns and bullying. During some BLM demonstrations in the Midwest, locals were standing around with semi-automatics. I drive a Prius for the fuel efficiency. Pick up trucks enjoy tailgating, trying to intimidate me. This behavior isn't going to change with a change of President but will get worse is we don't change. This ideological push to takeover the country instead of ruling by compromise started around the same time we came to the US in 1981, Reagan's first year. I was so shocked when I heard talk radio for the first time; this wasn't the country I had left in the 1970s.


And now we come to the giant pile of sweaty dynamite that's just waiting for the right shock to set it off. I could give you a prolonged lecture about how this all started in 1978 with California's Proposition 13, or how David Stockman's tragically prescient warnings were blatantly ignored, but Haynes Johnson does a far better job at this than I ever could in his 1991 book "Sleepwalking Through History", as does Kevin Phillips in 2006's "American Theocracy". Honestly, at this point, the prelude is academic. The reality of the situation is that a large swath of adult Americans are appalling ill-educated, innumerate and devoid of even the most basic critical-thinking skills. These people are now locked out of the Information Economy. They lack the most basic skills required to compete in the 21st century job market and thus will watch their standard of living sink into the abyss. These people are not blind to this fact because they're living with the reality of their situation every single day. They're totally without hope, cut off from all avenues of control over their own lives and they feel utterly abandoned by the very people who're supposed to be helping them. The reason you're seeing bullying and behavior like that is because these same people are totally removed from any avenues of recourse and the only people they can take their anger out on are people like you and me. Their anger is being stoked on a daily basis. FOX News and the GOP are experts at this and have a host of boogeymen to keep the anger from being pointed their way: ANTIFA, BLM (black Americans have always made a perfect target), "coastal elites" and, of course, Liberals.

Trump's election was a warning, not an outlier. Trump was the primal scream of these people and Liberals and the Democrats as a whole chose not to listen because they found the sound so abhorrent. The rage will only get worse and the number of people enveloped by this rage will only grow as economic conditions worsen. At this point, it no longer matters who wins in '20. Winning the election will be like winning the deed to the World Trade Center one second after the first jet hit. The damage has already been done and no steps are being taken to repair it; if anything, people are actively making it worse either through ideological blindness, deliberate malfeasance or outright stupidity. It took almost 50 years to get to this point and the endemic issues will not be undone in a single generation, much less a single election. Until the people who voted for Trump feel a sense of real hope, a sense of control over their lives and a genuine expectation of recourse for their grievances, they will keep right on voting for Trump, or people like him.

My unfortunate suspicion is that this country will rip itself to shreds long before those reforms are enacted.

Side note: the fundamental difference between the United States and Europe is that European history has forced the nations of Europe to live with the consequences of their actions. Not so the United States. Europe has suffered for her sins. Not so the United States. The two bloodiest wars in human history were fought on European soil. Not so the United States. The United States has never faced true suffering, nor has it ever had to live with the ramifications of its own actions. Both these facts are about to change and a nation whose character is built on a mythology of individual action and violence is going to have to face reality. The people of this nation are not prepared for this and they will not like it.

Second side note: many people are erroneously comparing the current situation to the Wiemar Republic. This is a lack of historical understanding. A more apt comparison would be to Spain in late 1935.


>As for re-opening, we could have gotten some control if the "leader" had simply donned a mask and used realistic thinking. People could go back to work more safely, wash hands, stay a certain distance. But his hubris led the way, so now we'll have a roller coaster for months and years that will affect the economy even more. France is a good comparison because they were unprepared also, having slashed the public healthcare budget for the last twenty years. But when they laid down the rules, troops patrolled the streets to be sure they were followed. So far, they've flattened the curve (for now), and used different economic incentives, such as paying part of employees' salaries to keep them employed.

At this point, the pace of re-opening is a difference between very bad and much worse. Had $3t been used to pay the yearly salary of every American, we could have saved lives and the economy, but we didn't. The history of 2020 will be littered with "what-ifs". However, the first thing you learn when studying history is that what-ifs are useless because things are what they are and you can't change that. It's already obvious we're going into a second wave. If previous pandemics are any indication of what's to come, this second wave will be many times worse than the first. The wait for a vaccine is indeterminate, but if we're going for herd immunity, ~70% of Americans will need to catch the virus. To date, ~1.5% have. If the US population is ~330 million, ~230 million will need to catch the virus. Call the mortality rate 2%, that means ~4.6 million Americans will die. That's a lot of dead Americans and grieving families.

Take care,

(my actual name)

You misread. Please don't speak for me, especially when you're so wrong.

I support both disband the police, which means require all police to go through the hiring process again with those with multiple or serious complaints on their record disqualified or at least forced into retraining and a long probationary period...and I also support defund the police...meaning remove mental health from their job (and fund a mental health department that is sent on mental health calls, normally without police escort), it means the SWAT team is only called after weapons are used, not pre-emptive for non-violent calls, so can be cut in half or less. It means ZERO dollars for military equipment.
It does not mean eradicating the police, it does not mean cut ALL police funding, it means remove the second, third, and fourth hats they wear, remove violent or abusive officers, and cut their funding accordingly.

Mostly I think people want enforceable responsibility, criminal and civil, not immunity. If police had no shield from their actions, they would act better instantly. That's a no brainer and doesn't cost a dime.

Edit: eradicating the police unions would go a long way towards fixing the culture.

I think the demands of the public are more homogeneous than you claim....I know so, since you mischaracterized my position to create an outlier. That said, people do have different ideas of how to fix a problem we seem to agree on....but stripping immunity seems to be nearly universal outside police and Republican senator circles.

The people running the country aren't our best and brightest, they are those narcissistic enough to think they alone can make a difference and those slimy enough to think they can take advantage of an elected position for their personal gain. Trump proves undeniably that they aren't necessarily better educated , smart, or professional.