All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[thwhtGuardian]

To be clear, your number is a thousand times larger than mine, and represents a thousand times as many people.

With difficult policies, there are tradeoffs. We don't insist that anyone endorsing one tradeoff go and tell people that they're going to have to make a sacrifice for the greater good.

By your rationale, anyone who thinks that there should be a high standard for guilt when convicting someone of a crime is obligated to go and tell the victims of violent crime that if someone is more likely than not to have committed the crime but there's still reasonable doubt, it's a good thing that the criminal is going to get away with it.

There was a point in an article about Herbert Hoover, admittedly a crappy President, that is relevant here.



Is your objection to white people painting other groups with a broad brush, or with the concept of anyone painting groups with broad brushes? If it's the latter, some white people are making the same mistake as anyone else lumping groups together.

Except the trade off here isn't some nebulous legal concept that won't actually effect many people it's something that will effect literally everyone...it's stay home and be inconvenienced and more people will be safer or open up business and lose your grandma/father/sister/wife/neighbor/co-worker. And I'm saying that if you're monstrous enough to think that second option is acceptable then you should be willing to say it aloud to those closest to you that it will effect...because it will effect you. I mean, if you do think it's acceptable then it shouldn't be hard for you to call up your grandmother and tell her that her life isn't as important as the economy to you, so why are you pushing back against doing that?

And if making that phone call seems distasteful and painful to you...how can you think the policy is sound? That's the disconnect I'm talking about here, because I don't think you're really monstrous enough that you could callously call your grandmother and tell her that you don't value her life more than the economy and yet you're supporting a policy that does just that.

[TheDarman]

yeah, I really don’t understand the fixation on China, all it’s doing is shifting blame and as a consequence ignoring all the problems with our own current administrations response and mishandling.

Personally, I think it emphasizes Trump’s mishandling of it. He took Xi Jinping’s word for the fact that China had it all under control and Trump refused to act to have anyone one the ground in China or to start making preparations for the inevitable outcome of having it arrive in the United States. It doesn’t minimize his failures to point out China’s government misled the international community—it emphasizes how inept Trump is as an actual leader.

like has already been said, obviously there’s plenty to criticize about the government of China, but there’s also plenty to criticize about about the US’s mishandling of the situation.

Absolutely. But I think they go hand-in-hand.

[Maine Starfish]

I largely agree that they go hand in hand. And I’m sure there was some attempts to downplay the seriousness from the leaders of China. But there also were plenty of other people, doctors, scientists, etc, who were warning that this could be serious, including people in China. Some took great personal risks to warn the rest of us. And for the most part the warnings were ignored around the world.

But that’s one thing, it’s another thing to go around spreading wild inaccurate accusations like suggesting this kind of thing never originates in the US, or the US doesn’t have live animal markets, or spreading harmful stereotypes. All that kind of thing does is to make it easier for Trump and his followers to point the finger at China and avoid taking blame themselves. Like I said the other day, it’s important to make the distinction and not let criticism of a government turn into generalizations about its people.

to be clear, I’m not saying you are doing this

[PwrdOn]

Personally, I think it emphasizes Trump’s mishandling of it. He took Xi Jinping’s word for the fact that China had it all under control and Trump refused to act to have anyone one the ground in China or to start making preparations for the inevitable outcome of having it arrive in the United States. It doesn’t minimize his failures to point out China’s government misled the international community—it emphasizes how inept Trump is as an actual leader.



Absolutely. But I think they go hand-in-hand.

When exactly did Xi come out and say that the situation was under control? For the first two months when the virus was mostly contained within China it was already common knowledge that it was a major disaster, and there was a lot of public debate over the proper response, only that nearly all of it centered around banning travel from China, because that's always the go to in times of crisis. Just about everyone across the political spectrum had convinced themselves that the only reason the virus had spread so much was because of the Chinese government's incompetence, and that there would be no way an open and free society like ours could possibly have it worse than them. I mean, where were Cuomo and Whitmer in January surely if it was all just Trump's fault for listening to Xi, then these heroic Democratic governors should have started stockpiling supplies early, right?

[TheDarman]

When exactly did Xi come out and say that the situation was under control? For the first two months when the virus was mostly contained within China it was already common knowledge that it was a major disaster, and there was a lot of public debate over the proper response, only that nearly all of it centered around banning travel from China, because that's always the go to in times of crisis. Just about everyone across the political spectrum had convinced themselves that the only reason the virus had spread so much was because of the Chinese government's incompetence, and that there would be no way an open and free society like ours could possibly have it worse than them. I mean, where were Cuomo and Whitmer in January surely if it was all just Trump's fault for listening to Xi, then these heroic Democratic governors should have started stockpiling supplies early, right?

Aside from Trump’s tweets directly addressing Xi expressing that everything was “under control”, here’s a deep dive into the plain bad reaction from December to February on the part of the Chinese government.

Needless to say, Democratic governors are not privy to the same intelligence reports that Trump was and it was unclear, at the time, whether or not governors would have to lead on the issue and take drastic action or if the federal government would step up and deal with the crisis head-on. They did not.

[PwrdOn]

Aside from Trump’s tweets directly addressing Xi expressing that everything was “under control”, here’s a deep dive into the plain bad reaction from December to February on the part of the Chinese government.

Needless to say, Democratic governors are not privy to the same intelligence reports that Trump was and it was unclear, at the time, whether or not governors would have to lead on the issue and take drastic action or if the federal government would step up and deal with the crisis head-on. They did not.

Except that entire article ignores that it would take until the end of March for the virus to start spreading globally, and that whatever information had been covered up initially was pretty widely known well before cases had become widespread outside of China. What does it matter if this information had been available a few days earlier, when the entire world basically ignored it for nearly two months?

[WestPhillyPunisher]

A second wave of covid-19 hits northern Japan

They start reopening public places and businesses, and then get hot by a second wave.

No wonder the International Olympic Committee went ahead and postponed the Summer Games until next year. And what happened in Japan could easily happen here.

In some good news, human trails for COVID-19 vaccine candidates are set to begin in the U.K. and Germany shortly. One of which could arrive as early as this autumn.

Here's hoping those trials are successful.

[PaulBullion]

Milwaukee, Wisconsin's City Council has unanimously voted to mail every one of the city's 300,000 registered voters an absentee mail ballot application with prepaid return postage. The GOP blocked efforts to do so statewide for April's elections

Anyone else thinks this is a spectacularly bad move by the GOP? If the blue cities vote to do this but the more conservative rural areas don't... then the GOP can kiss the state wide and national offices good bye in November.

[InformationGeek]

Milwaukee, Wisconsin's City Council has unanimously voted to mail every one of the city's 300,000 registered voters an absentee mail ballot application with prepaid return postage. The GOP blocked efforts to do so statewide for April's elections

Anyone else thinks this is a spectacularly bad move by the GOP? If the blue cities vote to do this but the more conservative rural areas don't... then the GOP can kiss the state wide and national offices good bye in November.

It probably is so. It's gonna hurt them more than they think.

Also, the link is bugged. Could you fix that?

[TheDarman]

Except that entire article ignores that it would take until the end of March for the virus to start spreading globally, and that whatever information had been covered up initially was pretty widely known well before cases had become widespread outside of China. What does it matter if this information had been available a few days earlier, when the entire world basically ignored it for nearly two months?

Except that it started spreading before March. There are articles now saying that we had cases in California that resulted in death as early as early February, which would imply infection in January. These initial response problems contributed to the global mismanagement of the crisis. To be clear, this doesn’t absolve our government from responsibility—a quicker reaction would’ve certainly yielded better consequences. As it stands, though, the original sin was the local mismanagement of the crisis and the denial that ensued. But the rest of the world should’ve been more perceptive and applying pressure on China to react appropriately to the scientific consensus on the ground. Still, the primacy of responsibility falls on China for action in those critical early days.

[Starter Set]

Don't know you have heard about that but here in France they have noticed a curious thing, smokers seem to be less affected by the desease than other people. Like, only 5% of people infected are smokers. It could actually be related to nicotine.

Take it with a lot of salt but that's interesting.

[PaulBullion]

It probably is so. It's gonna hurt them more than they think.

Also, the link is bugged. Could you fix that?

The board seems to be mangling links lately...
How is this?

https://www.js***********/story/news...ns/2995101001/

If not, from this tweet:

https://twitter.com/PoliticsWolf/sta...13965739634689

[PaulBullion]

Don't know you have heard about that but here in France they have noticed a curious thing, smokers seem to be less affected by the desease than other people. Like, only 5% of people infected are smokers. It could actually be related to nicotine.

Take it with a lot of salt but that's interesting.

Well, smokers stink, so I usually stand farther away from them than form non-smokers.

[Maine Starfish]

Milwaukee, Wisconsin's City Council has unanimously voted to mail every one of the city's 300,000 registered voters an absentee mail ballot application with prepaid return postage. The GOP blocked efforts to do so statewide for April's elections

Anyone else thinks this is a spectacularly bad move by the GOP? If the blue cities vote to do this but the more conservative rural areas don't... then the GOP can kiss the state wide and national offices good bye in November.

It’s a good move by Milwaukee, hopefully more places follow and do the same thing. It’s increasingly looking like we’ll need to vote by mail in November.

I’d like to think that it will have negative consequences for the GOP, but somehow they always seem to get away with the various ways they work to make it more difficult to vote and suppress voter turnout.

[PwrdOn]

Except that it started spreading before March. There are articles now saying that we had cases in California that resulted in death as early as early February, which would imply infection in January. These initial response problems contributed to the global mismanagement of the crisis. To be clear, this doesn’t absolve our government from responsibility—a quicker reaction would’ve certainly yielded better consequences. As it stands, though, the original sin was the local mismanagement of the crisis and the denial that ensued. But the rest of the world should’ve been more perceptive and applying pressure on China to react appropriately to the scientific consensus on the ground. Still, the primacy of responsibility falls on China for action in those critical early days.

This is just deflection though, isn't it? It's pretty clear that many of the people clamoring to hold China accountable for the virus already had this narrative in place well before the outbreak even started, including the author of that article you linked and his wonderfully titled book about "Han Centrism." And given the public's willingness to believe just about everything bad about China, it's a pretty easy sell, such as the conspiracy theories about how the virus was started in a bio-weapons lab or that the whistleblower doctor was thrown in a prison camp and murdered, which have long been refuted but continue to pop up in the news anyway. It's pretty evident now that the scope of the outbreak over here is far worse than it ever was in China, and that this isn't due to some fiendish foreign deception but rather the unwillingness of leaders at every level to implement what would obviously be unpopular and economically damaging quarantine policies until it was too late, a pattern we've seen repeated across the "free world."

And besides, haven't the last few decades of geopolitical missteps taught people that trying to apply pressure and sanctions to countries we don't like only ever creates more problems? There isn't a country on the face of the earth that's going to just prostrate itself before the rest of the world and accept whatever lopsided judgment is leveled against it, if these tactics haven't managed to bring Iran, Venezuela, or North Korea to heel, what are the chances that they will work against China? TR didn't say to bark loudly and swing a limp noodle, as our foreign policy has mostly been ever since Vietnam, and it has never and will never work.