All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[TheManInBlack]

Here is an interesting video for anyone who wants to learn what Canada is like - Myth vs Reality

This should be required watching for every progressive who references Canada as if it was some utopian progressive society. I'm so sick of Canada being misrepresented by non-Canadians.

[PaulBullion]

We the ...




... we the ...

[Wildling]

We the ...

Get a grip morans!

[PaulBullion]

So, the bottom dropped out of the oil market today.

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[Kirby101]

This should be required watching for every progressive who references Canada as if it was some utopian progressive society. I'm so sick of Canada being misrepresented by non-Canadians.

Usually progressives reference Canada's Universal Healthcare. Covering everyone better and at less cost than the US. That utopia stuff is a strawman.

[TheDarman]

So Kagan joined Alito and Roberts in one of the dumbest dissents I’ve ever seen

Usually, I’m sympathetic to realist arguments. But, yeah, the idea that a court’s decision will render retrials of more erroneous judgments in the name of real justice is a bad thing...Can’t concur.

Although, Kagan joined “in part”. So I wonder which parts of the dissent she didn’t agree with.

But how exactly did China make it more difficult for other countries to prepare? They shared the genetic sequence of the virus early on, and while everyone now loves to claim that they hid the true death toll without any real evidence for that, that's only because their reported infection rates look low to us now because we know how much worse it can get. The way that the outbreak was being reported at the onset, the official government tally was already being presented as a major disaster, although rather than taking it as a warning, most of pundits could barely contain their glee that this evil communist regime was finally getting what was coming to it and even entertain the possibility that the virus might spread here. Of course there are plenty of things you can criticize about how the Chinese government handled the outbreak, but it requires some major leaps of logic to believe that anything they did mattered more than our government twiddling their thumbs for nearly two months when all of this information was out in the open. This country already has a pretty long history of trying to scapegoat dirty foreigners for just about everything that goes wrong, what are the odds that this time our xenophobia just so happened to be justified?

The misinformation delivered about the severity of the virus was the problem. They kept insisting that everything was under control and there was no reason for international preoccupation with what they deemed to be a fairly local matter. That becomes crippling, especially when President Trump decides to parrot their talking points instead of listening to intelligence. It crippled our potential public policy responses because it becomes a political fight between Democrats and Republicans. Now, the fact Trump parroted their points is on Trump and him alone. This is indisputable. But it made it more difficult to act that they disseminated misinformation that was persuading public officials and the general public.

[PwrdOn]

The misinformation delivered about the severity of the virus was the problem. They kept insisting that everything was under control and there was no reason for international preoccupation with what they deemed to be a fairly local matter. That becomes crippling, especially when President Trump decides to parrot their talking points instead of listening to intelligence. It crippled our potential public policy responses because it becomes a political fight between Democrats and Republicans. Now, the fact Trump parroted their points is on Trump and him alone. This is indisputable. But it made it more difficult to act that they disseminated misinformation that was persuading public officials and the general public.

That was only in the first few days, when the local party officials were trying to keep their bosses from catching wind of what was going on, but once the central government got involved it sacked all of the local leaders and imposed a draconian lockdown in Wuhan which was of course roundly criticized in the world press for being authoritarian and trampling over individual freedoms and what not. The outbreak began in earnest in mid-January around Chinese New Year but it wasn't until March that significant number of cases started showing up outside of China, which largely could NOT be traced back to reckless Chinese travelers knowingly spreading the virus around. And honestly, you can't really blame Trump for our lack of preparation either, pretty much no one was taking the virus seriously because we kept deluding ourselves into thinking that the Chinese government was wholly responsible for the mess and that it would never be a problem in a free and democratic society like ours, it was only when cases started exploding in Italy that people really started to take notice, by which time it was far too late to do any real prevention.

[Gray Lensman]

Usually, I’m sympathetic to realist arguments. But, yeah, the idea that a court’s decision will render retrials of more erroneous judgments in the name of real justice is a bad thing...Can’t concur.

Although, Kagan joined “in part”. So I wonder which parts of the dissent she didn’t agree with.

I wonder if she's seeing the beginnings of Judge Kegger's long anticipated assault on Stare Decisis.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

... we the ...

By the way, Governor Wolf announced little over an hour ago that the shutdown in Pennslvania was extended until May 8th. Take that, dumies!

[Tami]

By the way, Governor Wolf announced little over an hour ago that the shutdown in Pennslvania was extended until May 8th. Take that, dumies!

Gov Murphy is holding a Press Conference. He was talking about Camden, and mentioned that Philadelphia might be the next hot spot. Is that how it looks on your end?

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Gov Murphy is holding a Press Conference. He was talking about Camden, and mentioned that Philadelphia might be the next hot spot. Is that how it looks on your end?

I haven’t heard anything about that, Philly has done a pretty good job with social distancing. But then, the situation remains fluid, so things could change. I hope we don’t become the next hot spot.

[InformationGeek]

For WBE, I think I got a guy to keep an eye for next year's Democrat of the Day. He is Barrington Martin II and he is running against John Lewis for the Democrat seat in Georgia District 5. Caught a few of his tweets here that jumped out at me.

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Big Bernie or Bust bro as well. Liked, retweeted, and supported quite a few DemExit hashtags and has lashed out a few people, like IIhan Omar, and seems to bring up a lot that you should vote for him in case Lewis dies. He's got that passion for the seat and there isn't anything too out there, but you never know.

[InformationGeek]

Meanwhile, the solo Republican challenging John Lewis is Stanton-King. Now I know she'll instantly jump onto your profile list WBE, because she is very special.

A former reality TV star who has likened LGBTQ identity to pedophilia is challenging civil rights icon John Lewis for his congressional seat.

“I’m very concerned about the whole LGBTQ movement and the way it sexualizes children,” Stanton-King told NBC News Tuesday. “The LGBTQ community refers to people’s sexual preferences — lesbians like women, gay people like men — and children shouldn’t be walking advertisements for sexuality when they are not old enough to make their own decisions.”

Stanton-King announced last week that she is running as a Republican for the U.S. House of Representatives in Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District, which Lewis, a Democrat, has represented since 1987. The Fifth District covers most of Atlanta and some of the surrounding area.

Stanton-King was featured in the BET reality show From the Bottom Up and is author of the book Life of a Real Housewife. She was convicted of conspiracy for her involvement in a car theft ring and served six months of home confinement in 2007; Donald Trump pardoned her in February. She is the goddaughter of Alveda King, who is a niece of Martin Luther King Jr. and also an anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion activist.

Stanton-King has said that ending abortion is her primary goal, along with criminal justice reform, but she has spewed much vitriol against LGBTQ people as well. She told NBC she supports marriage equality and has gay people in her family — a 19-year-old son and an aunt who raised her. But she called for legislation to assure that “children are not tied to the LGBTQ community.”

She has posted several anti-transgender messages on Twitter, often conflating gender identity and sexual orientation, as in a tweet about athlete Dwyane Wade’s transgender daughter, who has not been publicly identified as gay, straight, or bisexual.

[Mister Mets]

Isn’t it impossible to answer the cars and stoves question though? I mean, we only know how dangerous they are because they’ve been around for a hundred years and we know now the deaths they can cause? Some things aren’t predictable.

There were some deaths pretty quickly.

It gets messy, as the numbers increase when cars go faster and we start using cars more.

But there are ways to consider this. If someone invented a teleporter, how many casualties would you accept per billion miles traveled?

Sigh. Okay. Let’s have a few scenarios.

1. Strict Partial re-opening. Most retail, but not restaurants, bars, pubs and clubs. Cinemas and the like at 25% capacity. Still social distancing.

2 less strict partial re-opening. All shops allowed to trade, limits of 50 people inside. Still social distancing where appropriate. Cinemas at 50%.

3. Full reopening except for mass gatherings over 100. No fans at sports events.

4. Back to pre-Covid 19 days. Absolutely no restrictions.

What is the acceptable number of deaths for each of those scenarios?

Fair question.

This obviously assumes that we can correctly estimate the number of deaths.

One way that I'm thinking about this is to assume that the average person lives about 1,000 months (equivalent to 83 1/3 years.)

Under the current restrictions, we can guess that quality of life is about 50%. Two months in shelter in place can be seen as roughly equivalent to losing one month. There are some complicating factors. In some ways, the first month is easier than the second, as you can imagine going a month normally without doing the things you'd usually be doing but it gets weirder to go two months without seeing relatives who live close to you, and that kind of stuff. The effect on quality of life can vary. For some shut-ins, this isn't that much worse than normal. For extroverts or people who are very close to their friends and family, this is so much worse.

For each month we get back to full function faster, it's probably worth losing an additional one hundred thousand people in a population of 315,000,000.

So to answer, I would say that each month quicker it takes to get the entire country back to pre-COVID 19 days is worth the loss of 100,000 American lives.

#3 with restrictions on mass gatherings isn't that much worse an outcome. I'd guess getting to that a month faster is worth 90,000 American lives.

#2 with further restrictions isn't that much worse. I'd guess getting to that a month faster is worth 75,000 American lives.

#1 represents a more significant decline in quality. I'm guessing that corresponds to schools still being closed. I would say getting to that a month faster is probably worth 30,000 American lives.

The same folks who declare "All Lives Matter" now would like to explain why we should resume normal behavior and 2-3% of the population should be willing to die so they're not inconvenienced. Repeat... inconvenienced.

This isn't a strawman. This is literally what the idiots in Operation Gridlock are suggesting.

And we're seeing some lemming behavior on your front, because you're unable to just say how absolutely messed up that is.

Wherever "acceptable risk" is, the lives of millions should decidedly not be acceptable.

Where did the 2-3% number come from?

To be clear the strawman argument was that no risk would be worthwhile.

This isn't a good analogy since we're discussing peoples lives, not widgets from a factory. This is about death, and everyone must be careful or they will be at risk for dying. I didn't bring up the Black Plague for no reason, all civilisation is in a stage of lock down at the moment because they don't want to die from a virus. Millions will likely die, and the numbers go up when more people choose to endanger their lives. To make matters worse this won't be solved quickly because of various governments, like Trump's, sabotaging the effort and being stupidly negligent. Which equals more people spreading the disease. So even when we get a cure, actions like Trump will do make it harder to knock it out for good since viruses evolve and create new strains. Your and your family's very lives is at stake. Personally, I wouldn't be willing to bet mine against Covid-19. This isn't a theory, this isn't about economics, this is about being alive when this is all over.



That's very cold, Mets. Peoples lives shouldn't be put in danger as though they were chips in a Poker game. And you have no way of knowing the consequences of those actions, whose to say the numbers wouldn't be reversed or worse? Do you understand that you may be among them if you're wrong? That's why it should be illegal for people to deliberately form large crowds - they become vectors for this virus and will pass it onto whoever they interact with. Death isn't to be bargained with.

Sometimes it's important to have cold policy discussions, as we have to weigh competing tradeoffs.

Yes, people aren't widgets, but more people will die if we're unable to consider some losses. For example, we need to determine what restrictions on medication are worth the cost. If we can't consider the question out of a desire to not bargain with death, more people are going to die well before their time.

[Jim Kelly]

Here is an interesting video for anyone who wants to learn what Canada is like - Myth vs Reality

This should be required watching for every progressive who references Canada as if it was some utopian progressive society. I'm so sick of Canada being misrepresented by non-Canadians.

I've watched both these youtubers. Of the two, I'd rather watch Simon Whistler--who is really just a guy delivering a script. The script itself is often written and researched by someone else. There are a lot of informational videos with people on camera or doing voiceover--I wouldn't single out Simon Whistler just because he has a good paying job doing that sort of thing in volume. And he's not that irritating.

The other guy, who professes to be the authority on all things Canadian, is just a horribly annoying idiot. And in his videos he seems to take pride in his stupidity and will often state things as fact even though they're only things he's pulled out of his butt. It really bugs me that people are watching his videos and thinking he knows Canada--just because he might have the passport. At least with Simon Whistler--from his accent and his look--you know not to trust him, because he's clearly not Canadian.

Personally, I like that Canada is a mystery to the rest of the world. The less people know about us and the more they leave us alone, the better.

None of those videos matter now. They were made long before we knew about COVID-19. I never voted for the Liberal party in my life--not federally and not provincially--and Justin Trudeau didn't win a majority this last time, because he screwed up on many levels. But that's also before COVID. The important thing now is for everyone in Canada to work together, to overcome our differences, because we need to be 100% all in.

I support Trudeau and all the Premiers and territorial leaders and all the health authorities and all the police forces and the military and the first responders and the doctors and the nurses and the waste disposal workers and the grocers. I want them all to succeed in their jobs. Because now is the time to pull together. It's not the time to pick fights.