Positive Thinking for Pandemic Warriors
No question about it: we’re living through the most unsettling episode in recent American history. Yes, the assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King were more shocking, and 9/11 was even more horrific – but they were single-day events that receded into memory after a few weeks of grief and outrage. Most of us were able to get on with our lives as if nothing had happened – not to us, not personally.
The coronavirus pandemic is different. We’re all living in the thick of it – the exposed, the unexposed, the could-have-been exposed, and the might-soon-be-exposed. The daily rituals – the masks and gloves, the six-foot distancing, the wiping down of every outside item that enters the house – give rise to obsessive-compulsive disorder, as if the stress of living through a pandemic isn’t enough. Even if the coronavirus doesn’t kill us, it promises a three-week personal hell of coughing, fever, and lingering lung afflictions. And of course, we could spread the contagion to those around us.
Meanwhile, we’re being led by a proudly ignorant, grandiose goofball of a president whose mind darts around like a drunken housefly. (Facts? He makes them up as he goes along.) At the same time, we’re being fed the news by blatantly biased journalist-propagandists on both the left and right. (Is there anyone still the middle – any of them capable of maintaining a degree of objectivity, without pandering to their respective peanut galleries for applause?)
So here we are in mid-pandemic, doing our best to survive while our local businesses starve and our friends become distant memories, approachable only via social media. Yes, we might look forward to a summer lull – but experts are predicting a second wave that could be deadlier than the first.
This is war. I can almost imagine how the British civilians felt during World War II, when they never knew if their house would be the next target of a German buzz-bomb. Their suffering must have been excruciating, but at least their enemy wasn’t invisible – and they could huddle together for comfort.
As long as we’re engaged in this war, we’ll need to keep our spirits from sagging. Churchill and FDR were masters of morale-building. I’m not quite as eloquent as those two immortals, but I can suggest a few tips for staying positive while we’re surrounded by malevolent microbes.
First… be grateful that you’re still alive, and be defiant about it. (See my newly acquired T-shirt above.) If you have most of your original body parts, and they still function, you can take long walks, hear the birds carrying on their arboreal conversations, watch the trees bloom (if you live in the northern temperate zone) and have fun dodging careless, maskless fellow-pedestrians. Feel free to tell them off, too, because they probably can’t hear you through your mask.
Second… your heightened awareness of danger will heighten your awareness of everything else. If you had been growing numb scrolling past endless anti-Trump (or pro-Trump) memes on Facebook, you’ll now be tuned in to your surroundings like an Iroquois hunter, sensing the delights as well as the dangers of your wild realm. In a materialistic, hyper-organized, pleasure-deferring society, this can only be a good thing. Just remember not to inhale next to a stranger.
Third… you can liberate yourself from the rigid rules of social expectations. Skip that daily shower, stop shaving, let your hair express itself, leave your bed unmade, and fetch the mail in your pajamas. The neighbors will understand. If they don’t, simply challenge the cops to show you the rules governing acceptable mail-fetching attire.
Finally… who knows what wonders will await you when you emerge from COVID-induced hibernation? Sure, we might be reduced to a primitive barter economy for a while, but you might find there’s a market for your gardening tools and old Barry Manilow LPs. You might not be rehired at your former workplace, but the upside is that you’ll no longer feel obligated to work 50 or 60 hours a week. We’re already rediscovering the pleasures of leisure; let’s refuse to renounce them — and aspire to live more like the French! (I’d welcome those two-hour lunches and six-week vacations, wouldn’t you?)
Will the nation continue to be ruled by corporate potentates who make more in a day than the average worker does in a year? Will they continue to pull strings in Washington and keep tilting the great money machine toward their own overstuffed pockets? I can only hope that the post-pandemic economy resembles the post-World War II economy: an engine for growth and prosperity that rewards effort but reverses our current death-march toward a two-tier society of haves and have-nots. If unchecked, the result would be worse than feudalism; I don’t sense any noblesse oblige among today’s self-styled aristocrats.
Maybe we’ll be less obsessed by identity. Wouldn’t it be refreshing if we returned to defining our community as a physical place instead of a militant tribe based on ideological (or racial, or gender) homogeneity? Maybe progressives and conservatives will start bonding over their common humanity instead of continually pelting each other with spitballs. Mandatory political correctness… trigger warnings… thought police… collegiate indoctrination – away with all those humorless, inhuman barriers to independent expression! Such a welcome shift would tickle this embattled moderate’s heart.
In short, don’t despair. Even a monster pandemic can cleanse the air and propel us toward a more congenial society. The great influenza pandemic of 1918-19 gave way to the Roaring Twenties – just possibly the most exuberant decade in American history.
Can we hope for a similar burst of gaiety and gusto once the current pandemic blows over? Yes, we can always hope – but we’ll probably need to make some fundamental changes in the way we work, think and interact. We’ve grown angry over too many imagined or inconsequential slights – and not angry enough over the deeper flaws in our system. Above all, we need to regain our shared identity as Americans and stewards of a vulnerable planet.
Of course, there’s always a remote chance that we won’t be here to watch the new society unfold. But there’s roughly a 98 percent chance that we will. We need to keep thinking about those odds while we use our warrior skills and confidence to battle through the remainder of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, just keep repeating that immortal line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail – the line boldly emblazoned on my new T-shirt: “I’m not dead yet!” Neither is America.
Rick Bayan is founder-editor of The New Moderate. His three collections of dark-humored essays are available on Amazon in e-book form for just $2.99 each, and they make ideal pandemic reading.
All material in The New Moderate copyright 2007-2020 by Rick Bayan. (But feel free to share.)
Bravo Rick!
Thank you! (Takes a bow.)
Rick, following your paragraph that states
“Meanwhile, we’re being led by a proudly ignorant, grandiose goofball of a president whose mind darts around like a drunken housefly. (Facts? He makes them up as he goes along.) At the same time, we’re being fed the news by blatantly biased journalist-propagandists on both the left and right. (Is there anyone still the middle – any of them capable of maintaining a degree of objectivity, without pandering to their respective peanut galleries for applause?) ”
this should be added:
While being led by a president that throws ideas off the wall like spaghetti to see what sticks, our 1st amendment rights have been repealed illegally by overzealous governors seizing power the constitution never intended for them to have. There is a reason that the first amendment forbids congress ( and any state or local government) from abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble. Those were the fundamental rights that our founding fathers believed to be most important. That is why it is #1, We are now forbidden to assemble in public, we are forbidden to walk on public beaches, parks and in some cases streets. We are forbidden in some states from crossing a street to talk with neighbors, even if wearing mask and maintain more than 6 ft apart. We are forbidden from gathering at state houses and protesting the infringement of these rights. The Governor of New Jersey, when asked how he could repeal these rights guaranteed by the constitution said “that’s above my pay grade” even though he took an oath and swore to uphold and defend the constitution. We have seen police shoot a man in the subway station when trying to move from one subway to another. These rights will never be restored as everyone knows once government takes something, it is never returned. The states today have unlimited powers over citizens that our founding fathers went to war over to eliminate. One side thinks this all good. The other side recognizes what has happened, but many of those also have turned tail and ran since no court challenges have occurred to question these actions.. The ones left that are speaking out, although minor in numbers, are the believers of Ben Franklin when he said “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” These actions have done nothing to bring us together, when in fact we will find that to be just the opposite when these actions come home to roost.
Ron: Fair points. I intend to write about the lockdowns, the protests, the selective lifting of quarantines and the consequences in my next column. All these issues will probably be coming to a head over the next month. I didn’t want to get sidetracked by too many specifics in this column, which was intended as more of a personal opinion piece and morale-booster.
I would not rush. I expect alot will change quickly.
More and more states are relaxing the lockdown.
This will either work or not, and that will be clear in a week or so.
If it does not work, you can expect all states to lock down longer and protests to remain small.
Conversely if it does work, you can expect either rapidly increasing protests, or all states to end the lockdown.
There is however a separate issue – which really should have been addressed weeks ago.
Which Trump claimed to have been providing states assistance on but does not appear to have.
And that is the “lockdown” should have been much more fine grained.
Probably 90% of the US (by land area) was barely effected by this and it never made sense to do anything beyond voluntary measures in those areas.
Conversely half a dozen cities have been hit hard and required more severe measures.
And then there is New York City which is just its own unique problem.
Regardless what works for gettysburg is not what works for New York.
Dave “I would not rush. I expect alot will change quickly.
More and more states are relaxing the lockdown.
This will either work or not, and that will be clear in a week or so.”
I dont care if it changes overnight!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The lock downs in many instances are wrong!
“I dont care if it changes overnight!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The lock downs in many instances are wrong!”
I agree but I am of two minds.
First we need to restart the economy as fast as possible.
The damage increases exponentially with time.
At the same time, tolerance for the lockdowns ebbs quickly with time.
Today it is only a few cranks – they do not mostly appear to be libertarian. They mostly appear to be blue collar workers.
Regardless the longer this goes on the more we will chaffe and the stupider government will look.
I have no problems with governors engaging in “self punishing acts”
.
We are clearly NOT being led by a president …..
One of the lessons of this mess is that the scope of the power of the federal government is quite limited.
Outside of stopping this sucker at the borders and approving the drugs we are allowed to be given, and dumping money on this and lighting it on fire,
the federal government and the president really have very limited power.
Primary responsibility for the government response to this has been with our governors.
But we have numerous federal health agencies (DHS, CDC, NIH, etc.). What’s the point if the states have the authority?
Rick, add that question to another monthly article for debate. That one will generate 1500 comments by itself and dominate anything else.
By the way, good luck increasing morale. For some, the only way that happens is if everyone accepts “me, myself and my” positions. Otherwise, few seem to research others positions to determine the viability of that position to be able to debate. Its just left/right talking points, twitter tweets by twits, and TDS post/regurgitation.
Trump is increasing the morale of those who are not drowning in TDS.
But those who WANT to hate him will find something to hate no matter what.
“But we have numerous federal health agencies (DHS, CDC, NIH, etc.). What’s the point if the states have the authority?”
Libertarians have been asking that since those agencies were created.
With respect to public health, Federal agencies roles are almost entirely advisory.
They ARE responsible to keep things out of the country – which they failed at.
They ARE responsible for inter state issues. Like air travel.
They also have a limited amount of power because they have money and resources.
So they get to bribe states.
But there is no federal police power.
You have attack Trump. One of his mistakes which he doubled down on was the claim that he had the authority to get govenors to do as he asked.
He does not. That should be obvious by now.
Trump has done a fairly good job of appearing to be politically significant.
But in reality he has very little power.
Most of this is being dealt with by governors.
Which is why it is being dealt with differently from state to state.
Rick,
I honestly do not understand how you can single out Trump “Facts, he makes those up as he goes along”. ?
Please tell me what source has been credible on this ?
The WHO told us this was nothing to worry about, that it did not spread between humans.
Faucci’s switched from there is nothing here we have it all under control to panicing that the end of the world was nigh to something more reasonable now.
The press has been fanning angst for more than a month.
The experts told us masks do not work, now they tell us we will go to jail if we do not wear a mask.
Please tell my who this mythical expert is who we should trust ?
Absolutely Trump has been “full of shit” – but he is NOT an expert.
And yet despite your attack for all of his errors, and nonsense he is actually less full of shit than “the experts” you would have him defer to.
While they were saying – there is nothing to be concerned about
Trump closed the borders.
Too Little too late. Further he too was overly optomistic towards the start – just like the experts, But even if too late he responded agressively BEFORE the experts.
Conversely whe the experts were telling us all everything was going to go to hell and we were all going to die, Trump was telling us all there was reason for hope for optomism.
Trump has absolutely botched this completely from end to end.
So has everyone else.
EXPECIALLY the experts.
And overall Trump’s forkup’s have been smaller than “the experts”.
Now, and in the future, when confronted with problems like this.
I TRUST MYSELF – not “the experts”.
But if I had to pick between Faucci, Brix, WHO, and Trump as to who to give my medical power of attorney to. I would have to pick Trump. He has been the least disasterously wrong of all the “experts”. If we leave this to “the experts” we are all dead.
I know the experts have been veering back and forth, so I agree with you there. I was referencing Trump’s penchant for playing fast and loose with the facts (like his claim that we’ll be testing 5 million people a day, among thousands of others). I honestly don’t know if he’s even aware that he’s lying; he just might have a big enough ego to assume that if he says it, it’s so.
By the way, I was taken aback at how the left-leaning press distorted Trump’s comments about ultraviolet light and disinfectant. He was just speculating aloud, and they made it seem as if he was recommending that we inject ourselves.
Everyone fixates way too much on Trump’s speech.
From the moment this started to look serious, the media and the “experts” have been relentlessly depressing.
This is an incredibly bad and stupid thing.
First because the actual odds of the worst case outcome are near zero.
The planet is quite literally designed to make catastrophe very rare – or life would not exist.
But more so because optimism is of critical importance to get through this.
Look at Both Churchill and FDR during World War II.
They lied to their people Constantly. They were experts at spinning defeat into victory.
We are still celebrating Dunkirk as if it was a major victory.
The BEF got its ASS KICKED, and the “Victory” that Churchill celebreated was successfully evacuating about half the BEF without weapons or supplies or pretty much anything.
Had the Germans managed to cross the channel the BEF would have been fighting tanks with sticks.
But Churchill made it sound like a victory.
Well in his own ways Trump is channeling Churchill right now.
I have no idea what has actually happened with HCQ. It may have completely fizzled,
It may be routinely being used.
But today the bright news is remedsivir.
Though that is not the point.
The point is that Trump goes to a great deal of trouble to always have good news – even in a shitty situation.
More recently he is telling us there will be a vaccine by January. Frankly he needed to do that earlier. He needed to issue executive orders waiving many FDA regulations and allowing testing almost anything a doctor was prepared to try on a willing severly ill patient.
Sometimes it is lies or exagerations.
And the press attacks the slightest problems mercilessly.
It was really distrubing to me when PragerU interviewed new yorkers and they all wanted Trump gone more than they wanted Covid gone. One couple went so far as to say that it was worth seeing millions die to get rid of Trump.
That point of view is the way to hell in so many ways.
It is slowly starting to be evident that we have over reacted. And probably very badly over reacted.
We are likely to be fighting about that as a country through the election.
Because god forbid we should rely on facts.
I expect that by the end of Dec 2020 that the total US deaths from health related issues will have no statistically significant difference from prior years.
I specified health – because suicides will be up, highway deaths probably down, crime appears to be down, but domestic violence up. I think the net number of deaths from the “lockdowns” and the destruction fo the economy will dwarf the actual change in health related deaths by several orders of magnitude. When you are looking at the Covid19 death’s remember that in the US every day 8000 people die from something.
Regardless, right now Trump is our “cheerleader”.
Alot of people need that.
If you are not one – more power to you.
But do not deprive those who do of the little hope they have.
We have the left, the media, and the experts telling us everything is going to hell.
If Trump is inaccurate on lots of details. He has the most important thing right
Everything is NOT going to hell.
Trump is promising a sharp fast recovery.
The longer we are shutdown the slower the recovery will be. It actually gets exponentially harder each day.
Trump recently ordered meat packers to stay open. I do not know all the details.
Nor do I know whether I agree.
But I do know that once ranchers start slaughtering their cattle because they can not feed them, that the beef industry will not recover for a year.
Every day one business or industry or another crosses the threshold past which they must take draconian measures to survive at all. For each one that does that the recovery will take longer.
Further jobs will come back – but not as fast as people want.
And the least well off will be the hardest hit.
Those who were only recently hired, are not getting their jobs back quickly as recovery starts.
Those of you fixating on the JHU deaths per day numbers are missing what matters.
If every 1% increase in unemployment corresponds to 60K suicides per year – Covid19 is small potatoes compared to the impact of the harm to the economy.
I get really tire of those who keep pretending this is money vs. people.
It is killing and hurting people one way vs. another.
Way too many of the “experts” are both wrong in their own field, and blind to the impact of their recomendations on other areas.
Please listen to the whole actual clip by Trump that is the genesis of this injecting bleech nonsense.
While it is not clear what he meant. It is really clear that he was badly discussing something else. Some wierd distortion of something he and Brix had discussed privately.
But directly addressing the comments literally.
Should we inject bleach ? Probably not.
But we do need to think outside the box.
Chemo therapy is POISON.
As are arsenic and mercury which are still used when the modern treatments fails.
Looking for an antiviral is searching for something that kills the virus without killing us.
It would br preferable if it did not harm us at all. But that is not a requirement.
“This is war”
Is it ? Do we really know ?
From the beginning to the end this has been characterized by what we do not know.
Slowly we are begining to know more – but there is still an enormous amount we do not know.
Much of what we are being told right now is probably wrong.
Why do we think we are in the middle ?
You talk of a “2nd wave” – because ? You could be right – or wrong, Anyone saying there will be, or there wont be is just guessing. The experts are QUITE OBVIOUSLY just quessing.
First this died off with heat, humidity, sunlight, then it didn’t, now apparently it does again.
The fact is WE DO NOT KNOW!!!
Accross the world various nations have responded differently. But with a few variations the outcome has been much the same across the world.
Put simply the probability is very strong that we have had little or no effect on this.
That covid19 struck us like a storm from rolling across the world,
And exactly like a storm front most everything we have done has been futile.
I do not mean to piss on our leaders or “the experts” – I have no doubt that Brix, Faucci, Trump, Whitmer, Desantis, Abott and Cuomo are all doing what they think is right.
But it is pretty evident right now, they do not really know any more than you or I.
Gov. Newsome is ranting and threatening to arrest people – because on a nice sunny day they are leaving their homes and flocking to the beaches. Maybe he is right and they are making things worse. Or maybe a healthy dose of Vitamin D and some UVC from the sun is just what the doctor ordered.
I do not know, You do not know, Newsome does not know.
No one knows – and only time will tell.
So should we all follow the dictates of our political superiors when it is self evident they know no more than any one else ?
I know that we don’t know; I just trust the experts to know a little more than we do, without taking their word as gospel.
“I know that we don’t know; I just trust the experts to know a little more than we do, without taking their word as gospel.”
That is the difference between us.
I know that I do not know.
But I also know that they do not know.
Doctors etc are ADVISORS. I listen and decide for myself what I will do.
In this particular crisis, what I will chose to do based on my own research and the advice of experts is pretty close to what they recommend.
But I would make entirely different choices if I were 20.
My choices today are reasonable for a 60 year old.
But my choices and the experts recommendations are NOT reasonable for a 20 year old.
BTW total US deaths for March 2020 including Covid19 deaths are DOWN 15% from the average for march in the prior 4 years.
And as of May 1, 2020 the total yearly deaths todate is 97% of the expected total number of deaths. Further twice as many people died of Pnuemonia(without Covid19) from 2/1/2020 through 4/1/2020 as died from Covid19 including related complications. (CDC)
According to Wapo on April 8, 2020
There were 9 deaths under 20
90 deaths in their 20’s
191 deaths in their 30’s
and 413 deaths from Covid19 in their 40’s.
And 2/3 of these people had serious pre-existing conditions.
Put simply – if you are over 80 you should be scared shitless of getting this.
If you are under 50 and in good health this is much less likely to kill you than the flu.
For those of us between 50 and 80, we should be more concerned as we get older and more concerned if we have health conditions.
Robby keep saying “this is not a bad flu” – no it is not.
For most people who get this, a bad flu would be worse and more dangerous.
But of those who are older or have serious health issues or BOTH – this is much more serious than the flu.
But we should not forget that H1N1 killed 68K people in the US in 2009.
And the 1918 Flu killed 600K in the US. And worse it hit those with the strongest immune systems the hardest, with the largest number of deaths in 20 year olds.
I trust facts.
Rick,
I am as much an opponent of the blatant corporatism of the world than anyone.
But much of this is over the top and in defiance of the facts.
It is just appalling that over the period of history when both globally and nationally we have gotten the FARTHEST from the “have’s and have nots” as ever before you are fixated on it.
The distribution of weatlh – globally and in the US is the flatest it has ever been
The world is not divided between the rich and the poor as it was for almost all of human existance.
And we no longer have this large bubble of a middle class.
But we have not “hollowed” out the middle class – we have stretched them out.
Absolutely there is a spike at “the 1%” – but that spike is shifted far far far to the right
The “1%” are not merely rich they are fantasmagorically rich.
Why ? Because if you are well enough off to be in what was “the 1%” after WWII,
Today that makes you “middle class”.
Absolutely the rich got richer – so did everyone else.
We have spent a month listening to “experts” talk about Flattening the curve – stretching it out. Well that is precisely what we have done with wealth – in the US and everywhere.
My tenants who are lower working class, live better than my parents did in the 60’s and they thought they were “upper middle class”. My parents ultimately were more successful than I.
but I am inarguably better off than they.
My kids are facing the dilema of getting a college education – with little help from their parents who are trying to figure out how to save for retirement. Yet, they have jobs, own cars, and are talking about buying their first house SOON. And not the place on the edge of the “seventh ward” that was the only place I could afford when I was almost a decade older than they are. And then I go for a walk, through that “seventh ward” today – still the worst part of town. In 1970, there was garbage everywhere, cars up on cinder blocks and buildings falling apart, people looked miserable and angry. Today the same streets have no derelict cars,
the people there have cars that might be better than my own. they have gardens and grass, the porches are nice the houses are painted, This is STILL the poorest part of town. It is still where everything is the worst. But it is many many times better than in the 70’s.
While you are wrong about ‘the haves and the have nots” – even if you were right.
The have nots sure are pretty damn well off.
Rick,
For all my criticism there is much good in your remarks.
There is little that can give one as much sense of being truly alive as a real threat of not being alive.
Like you I hope that confronting the fact that Gaia work up one morning and decided on a lark to threaten to kill us all, might bring into perspective for us what actually matters.
And most of our strife does not matter.
Though I chafe at your nonsense that we are “stewards of a vulnerable planet”.
Really ? Are you paying no attention ? The democrats did not try to kill us all. The republicans did not try to kill us all, Trump did not try to kill us all.
NATURE DID! The message is NOT poor pitiful earth we might break it.
The message is that nature and the universe do not give a shit about our puny little existance. We have absolutely never been in any danger of killing the planet.
On rare occasions we are in small danger of killing ourselves.
But we are in constant danger of the planet killing us.
As we debate all the “important” issues of our times, we should remember this moment.
We can claim whatever we want as a right, and nature can kill us just the same.
Very nice ideas. I will buy that shirt immediately.
I was gonna say, “But what shall we bicker about Oh Lord?” Your piece was so nice, so full of big kind thoughts and ideas.
But then I read the previous comments. We are 63,000 down and adding 2000 a day to the toll WITH social distancing AND the partial shutdown of the economy and Libertarians (but not only them) are bitching about Governors infringing on their rights. I was not holding Libertarian philosophy in high regard prior to COVID, its ME, ME, ME, like a freakin 3 year old, all day long. COVID ought to put an end to the Libertarian nonsense. No sense of perspective, just I, me, me, mine, ad nauseum.
No, COVID is not just a bad flu.
Yes, this POTUS just makes shit up, I was thinking that trump and bernie were tied in the ignoramus department and then our genius leader out did himself and left bernie behind.
Yes, experts know more than the layman, especially the delusional know-it-all layman type, which appears to be a libertarian specialty, not that they are alone but they have raised the type to an art form. I am entirely tired of Libertarians, as I am of progressives, as I am of trumpies. All those groups seem to be made of miserable bitchy negative people, nothing is ever good enough for them, everything always sucks.
Give me rational people with a sense of perspective, the non-ideologically driven. I have been finding lots of them, starting with Vermont’s wonderful moderate Republican Governor Scott. I wrote him a letter the other day thanking him and he wrote back. I’d have been just as full of admiration if he hadn’t written back.
Had been cutting my own hair. Wife became critical and took over. Now I haven’t Any.
Roby, So you think shooting people in the subway is fine! You accept banning people from walking across the street to check on neighbors, but talking to the ones on your side of the street is fine. And you accept Governors like Cuomo ordering nursing home to admit covid-19 positive patients beginning March 25th when they may have been Covid free at the time, anyone with a brain of a fly knows nursing homes are understaffed, under trained to handle highly infectious diseases and under supplied, he was warned by the nursing home leadership professional organization this would be a death sentence and he did it anyway and it took off like gas on a fire after that directive occurred? Your fine with basically giving thousands in NY a fast-pass to Gods kingdom?
Just remember the majority of colonist did not support the revolution. The ones that did were the early Libertarians. You are benefiting from their thinking.
And if locking down America worked, why do we have 3,335 cases per million population, while Sweden, which did not lock down, did social distancing voluntarily, people took responsibility for their own safety and people, along with government, made sure the most vulnerable were protected, has 37% lower case rate at 2,131 cases per million?
Might it be worth your time to stop drinking government Cool-Aide and check out alternatives to government force?
Capitalism Sucks! We must get rid of it! Government sucks, we must get rid of it!
Stupid. You won’t get rid of either. I could spend all day collecting examples of what’s wrong with men, white people, government, capitalism, and ten thousand other subjects.
It’s obviously good want to improve things, but libertarians, Marxists, and radical feminists, just to take some examples, while all having some legitimate points, concentrate all the faults of their targets until they have created the impression of something so evil it has to be eliminated. Internal combustion is destroying the world, along with immigrants, rich people, and yada yada. I’m sick of all the extremist groups, among which I definitely include libertarians. The valid points get lost, only the caricature of whatever the target is remains.
Once again – libertarians are not anarchists.
Repeating such tropes is stupid.
Next, No marxists do not have any points.
The history of marxism is bloody and violent.
Anyone pretending there is any good there is actually delusional.
I guess we are on something like 5th wave feminism, so I do not know what a radical feminist is. Therefore it is a bit hard to express some view.
Life expectance correlates most strongly to standard of living. It has for centuries.
If you want peoples health to be better, if you want them to live longer and better lives, then rather that fixate specifically on healthcare – where there is not much data showing benefit from most large actions, instead look to what improves standard of living.
Capitalism BTW does not “suck”. Even the absolute worst forms of capitalism – government crony capitalism that we ALL universally rant about, out performs every other societal arrangement except true free markets. Even merchantilism is better than marxism.
The worst forms of Capitalism are ONLY inferior to truly free markets.
Your feelings about that do not change the actual data.
Smaller government strongly correlates to greater rise in standard of living.
Greater economic freedom strongly correlates to greater rise in standard of living.
Rise in standard of living correlates to pretty much everyone that everyone left or right advocates for – better healthcare, lower violence, less crime, less poverty, higher workng class standard of living, longer lives.
These are not the benefits of anarchy. They are the benefits of limited government.
How limited ? The fastest GDP rises in the world over the past 75 years have had governments of less than 20% of GDP.
The US economy in 2019 was 21T – 20% of that is 4.2T, That is enough for ALOT of govenrment. But it is only enough for about 50% of what we currently have.
It would easily cover law enforcement, courts, , the military – even at current bloated levels.
And that would still leave almost 3T for whatever other nonsense you think is critical.
So when you have cut total US government to 20% of GDP then we can talk about whether the actual optimum is 10% or 5%.
You say libertarains have some good ideas – but some government is necescary.
Libertarians fully agree.
Only in your head is libertarianism the same as anarchy.
Regardless your argument is a deliberate fallacy.
You are not looking to save us all from some faux libertarain extremist position of anarchy.
You do not wish to reduce government AT ALL.
You know that it is bloated, and inefficient. And you know we would be better with it smaller.
The facts are pretty clear.
Not doing what you wish.
Not agreeing with you is NOT destroying the world.
I am absolutely out to destroy waste. The waste and lost lives caused by unjustified infringements on liberty.
That makes the world better not worse.
BTW you are the one doing the caricaturing.
Quit blaming everyone else for your own faults.
You keep argument that experts are infalable and laymen are stupid.
That libertarians are anarchists, …
Ron, for those who generally support big government policies, such as Obamacare, for example, the idea of governors using a public health crisis to violate the Bill of Rights, is merely a temporary inconvenience, ordered for the public good, even if there is no evidence that the orders will actually promote the public good, or protect the public health. I would use as one example the case of the Michigan governor’s edicts against the buying of vegetable seeds.
(Ironically, if a president that they oppose gave the same orders, they would call him a tyrant. In the case of Trump whom they despise, they call him a tyrant even when he does not give those orders. It is truly ironic, some might say hypocritical.)
On the other hand, when libertarians object to the arbitrary suspension of civil rights, they are vilified as murderous scofflaws, despite their citing of the Constitution. So, while it is perfectly ok for a restaurant to bring a take out order curbside for pickup, it is not ok for a church to conduct a no-contact parking lot service, with windows rolled up, and sermons broadcast on designated radio frequencies.
While this may anger Roby (and I regret that) , I see two things going on here: 1) left v. right, Democrat v. Republican, standard philosophical opposition and 2) reflexive Trump hatred. If Trump says or does it, it is bad. If (fill in the Democrat name, Cuomo, for example) does it, it is good.
Priscilla, what you said is what is sad in this country today. Yes, I agree with Roby if you look at Libertarianism as just the half wits that the Libertarian party has running. Vermon Supreme who won a couple of their 25-30 person primaries wears a dunce hat, or a fancy KKK hat while others just have one off the wall issue they are running on.
But when you list specific examples of extreme over reach and your also held as a half wit, one can look to countries like Venezuela that accepted minor changes to rights and 25 years later they are living under a dictatorship. I dont believe that will happen here, but I do believe significant rights are being lost permantly.
When you provide documented data that is published by medical outlets and not politicians that prove what we have done is less effective than a country that maintained rights and no one listens, then they have buried their heads up their asses and deserve what they get. The problem happens to be that outcome also impacts people who dare question what governors have done.
And when people look up to those making life and death decisions that significantly increased the number of cases in nursing homes and 25% of those died, can we say we elect intelligent people? When NO ONE is concerned for the frail elderly other than the nursing home and the family and no one weeps for the dead created by asshole politicans other than the family, the moral compass of this country is pointed due south!
If Sweden has a lower # of deaths per million it is because they have their priorities straight.
Everyone is not at equal risk for this.
The Swedes did not lock down their economy.
They DID lock down their elder care facilities – far more rigorously than we have.
Robby says this is not a bad flu.
He is correct.
If you are under 20, and healthy, you may get this and not even know it.
If you are under 50 and healthy, the mortality rate – even using CFR data which we know is way wrong, is way lower than the Flu.
In your 50’s this is about as dangerous as the flu.
Above 60 the fatality rate increases with age and health issues radically.
Even the flu is worse for older people – but no so much worse as this.
Rather than shutdown the ecconomy we should have protected the elderly and gone about our lives.
Trump is not a libertarain. He is no friend of libertarians or libertarianism.
The only good thing that can be said for his handling of this crisis is that other republicans and democrats would have done far worse.
That is NOT a glowing endorsement.
I am quite unhappy with what Republicans and Trump have done.
But what am I supposed to do ? Vote democrat and get far worse ?
Ron, why did I unload on you guys? Well Rick posted a nice little essay on positivity and finding the good, and you and Dave came along and buried it immediately under libertarian complaints.
You are opposed to the ills of government and collect examples, many of those examples would make anyone sick including me.
I am opposed to the Carnage that occurs under the heading of gun rights. I can collect ten examples that would make any decent person sick for every example you provide of government abuse.
So, what are we gonna do about it?
Nothing. If liberals and others try to remove weapons from some people, libertarians and conservatives will oppose it. So, I don’t go gathering the examples of guns gone bad and posting them, you will, say, well that is very sad, but rights are rights and nothing can be done. So instead of collecting those examples and working myself up, I take a hike or play music.
I don’t like the horror stories of government abuse and stupidity, but what is your plan? And why do you expect my sympathy when your ideas on gun rights, as an example, frustratemy ideas on living with less gun Carnage?
Roby, the facts I use are based on the constitution. Nothing more. Nothing less. Your positions on guns is easily fixed by changing the constitution. And if you look back, where Dave may not have said this, I have been consistent from the start. If you want gun control, do it by amending the constitution because doing it any other way only leads to the door being opened for further government infringement on rights guaranteed by that document.If it is no longer a right, then make it so. Repeal the second amendment.
Likewise, I am critical of the actions taken by governors because they infringe on first amendment rights. If you want governors, mayors and others to have the right to quarantine people when they are not sick, arrest them when they are only walking on the street or on the beach, to gather to demonstrate or to attend a funeral of a loved one, amend the constitution to eliminate those rights. Do not allow governors and others to take those rights and throw them into your face when you object to their actions.
I have been consistent from day one on each of those positions!
What comes next, government allowed to break into homes without a warrant if you are suspected of a crime or they think you own 5 AR-15’s and they are going to be used in the next few days? Who is going to stand up for you if they come into your home without a warrant because a neighbor gets pissed at you and says something suspicious is going on. Are you really doing something wrong? Remember no warrant, just suspicion
And don’t say that question will never happen. If the 1st and 2nd can be trampled on, so can the 4th.Just because the left supports some of the Bill of Rights does not mean the ones they do support can not be taken away in the future also.
Cut the horse shit, robby
I beleive every single one of those “libertarian complaints” is
Things are NOT as bad as you claim. You are being OVERLY pessimistic.
I would further note that – if you wish to presume I think Government forks it up pretty close to all the time – that is a good assumption.
But in fact the vast majority of my responses to Rick were NOT attacks on government.
I specifically attacked Rick for being overly hard on Trump.
I posted a LONG diatribe criticising Rick for understating how great we have things today.
I do not beleive government showed up once in that post.
I have also relentlessly attacked our ceding control of our lives to “experts”
In other posts I have defended “experts”. What I am attacking is SPECIFICALLY ceding control to them. Or more accurately YOUR demand that I cede control to them.
I actually thing the “experts” are doing the best they can. I just do not think that is very good.
Unlike you I do not presume they or anyone knows all the answers or can predict the future.
And I will tell you as a FACT, that those people who bear the risk and rewards of the decisions they make about the future are more likely to get the future right than anyone else – including “experts”
If we all got together and decided to each bet $1000 on our personal predictions for the future of Covid19 with the person most correct keeping the pool. MOST of us would do better at those predictions than the “experts”.
It is not expertise that enables us to improve the accuracy of our forecasts, it is having “skin in the game”.
Regardless, I did not so much piss over experts as YOUR willingness to give control of my life and others to “experts” – something you have no right to do.
Do you really want to jump from Covid19 to gun control ?
By race/ethnicity the rates of violence are nearly perfectly uniform accross the entire developed world without any variance for guns.
There are not and never have been any FACTS to support gun control.
It is a red herring.
There are virtually no guns in Scottland and yet the scotts commit murder at twice the rate of US whites. London has so much violence they are now banning knives.
Don’t you really hate those right wing nuts who do not understand that people do not kill people knives do!
In the real world FACT MATTER.
This is one of the reasons I am at odds with Ron over “Common Sense” – Common sense is the name people give to what they want to force on the rest of us when they do not have facts to support it – “well it is only common sense” – if the facts existed, they would not be falling back on common sense. they would use the facts.
Yes, people with brains are going to oppose people who use feelings to force their will on others when they have no facts to back up what they are trying to do.
If your definition of people with brians who rely on facts is “libertarian” that is fine with me.
I do not use the world liberal. Few of those still exist, and you are certainly not one of them.
Dave Rubin is a liberal. Alan Dershowitz is a liberal. Johnathan Turley is a liberal. Johnathan Haidt is a liberal.
Most people on the left are either progressives or just idiots.
Most of the actually liberal left is long gone.
“you will, say, well that is very sad, but rights are rights and nothing can be done.”
Beat the shit out of that straw man. Actually pretty amazingly, you seem to have lost to your own straw man.
There are myriads of arguments against gun control. You badly cited one of those.
It is actually true that rights often Trump political objectives.
Libertarians have supported Gay rights for decades.
Despite such true claims as “homosexuals” can not reproduce.
Still that fact does not over come their individual rights.
But I need not go there with respect to gun control.
Gun control DOES NOT WORK.
Obama tasked CDC top produce a public health report on the harm of guns in the US.
and CDC actually found that Guns on the whole SAVE LIVES AND REDUCE CRIME.
OOPS.
Do people get killed by guns ? Sure and you can come up with plenty of examples.
They also get killed by cars, and knives and swing sets and drinking bleach (or injecting it).
We have not banned cars or knives or swing sets or bleach.
No so much because of “rights”, but because their benefits outweigh their costs.
Libertarians are not blinded by emotion and are capable of actually doing cost benefit analysis.
“I don’t like the horror stories of government abuse and stupidity, but what is your plan?”
Less government.
The facts show that works.
“And why do you expect my sympathy when your ideas on gun rights, as an example, frustratemy ideas on living with less gun Carnage?”
I do not ask for your sympathy. we do not make choices about the use of force against others based on emotions. We do so based on facts. Or at the very least we MUST get past the threshold of proving our use of force will work before addressing OTHER requirements.
Thank you for more information on Sweden.
I would note that the swedish approach EXPECTS a higher number of deaths per day – over a shorter period of time. That is not only acceptable, but it is desirable, SO LONG as the healtcare system is not over burdened.
Robby completely ignores the fact that the purpose of lockdowns is to prevent the capacity of the healthcare system from being exceeded.
If the healthcare system is NOT overrun, there is no reduction in deaths, only an increase in the duration of the epidemic, further if the the healthcare system would not have been overwhelmed, then all the negative consequences of the lockdown are just added.
There are not positive and negative tradeoffs. It is just the Covid19 deaths that were happening anyway PLUS the deaths and other harms of the lockdown.
Robby, Like all good progressive confuses DOING SOMETHING, with doing good.
And, Roby, I’m definitely not saying that you are one of the people who says that the left is always good, or Democrats are always right, or any of that. I’m making the argument that Trump is not always wrong, and does not always make arbitrary decisions.
I need to include Rick in that beef as well. I think that Trump has bent over backwards to avoid making arbitrary decisions in the case of the coronavirus crisis, On the other hand, even well thought through decisions can turn out to be the wrong ones in retrospect. The governor of Michigan may have banned Home Depot from selling seeds, because she did not want to be called inconsistent for calling Home Depot an essential business, while smaller businesses that sell seeds were forcibly shut down. She may have thought that through, and we may even consider her prudent and thoughtful in her decision, but it strikes many, even non-libertarians, to be overreach on her part.
I understand that certain churches, synagogues and mosques have been offenders, because they believe that they have the right to assemble and practice their religion. I don’t blame governors who have been enraged by their actions, but I do blame those governors for then banning even responsible, socially distant services.
Believing that government can overreach is not the same as not believing in government.
There are billions of products, and there are often interdependent, it is not possible nor sane for some apartich to try to decide what is essential.
If it is necescary to develop rules, make those rules about distancing, not products.
Not where you can go or what you can do.
It is always possible to rationalize your own impositions of force on others.
But your right to make choices for others should ALWAYS be as narrow as possible with the broadest freedom as possible.
“I understand that certain churches, synagogues and mosques have been offenders, because they believe that they have the right to assemble and practice their religion. ”
Yes, both. One would be wise to remember that people sacrificed their lives to practice their religion. Wise people do not get between others and their god.
“I don’t blame governors ” – I do.
Even where infringement on a right is actually constitutionally permissible. Government must act in the least infringing way possible – even if that makes the life of government more difficult. Not the president, not the governor, not anyone is entitled to say my wishes prempt your beleifs. your rights.
As I said even where infringement is allowed, the public goal must be accomplished with the least damage to the private right.
Our Governir “Car Inspection” Cooper announced the past couple days that NASCAR teams are essential business.😂😂
Hobby Lobby is now considered essential business.
Just a thought (Amazing what those campaign donations can do)
Ron you missed my point. Gun rights was just an example of the issue of different groups with different problems that they focus on. Your group frustrates the hell out of my group and visa versa. I do not think you are indifferent to gun mayhem, but your Constitutinal philosophy puts in impossible roadblock to doing anything about it. Likewise, I am not indifferent to abuses by the government but I don’t believe that Libertarians have any believable answers to eliminating them and instead just become incredibly negative about the very idea of government. Your philosophy and mine are at odds, but its not that you and I are indifferent to human suffering. The issue that is the lens through which you see the public events is not the lens I see them through. Its a wonder we get along at all.
I try to minimize the news I expose myself to, but one story slipped through my defenses, about a beautiful young emergency room doctor in NYC who was so overwhelmed by the COVID horror of her work that she committed suicide. There was a picture of her from some better time, a beautiful young woman, a pretty smile. She killed herself because the COVID work, the deaths by the thousands day after day overwhelmed her. Now, I doubt you are indifferent to this. (Dave will say I am “emoting.” and the COVID is still just a bad flu). Meanwhile, Libertarians focus on their rights and get worked up about how stupid some restrictions are. To me it seems like the things that concern Libertarians are very, very different from the things that concern me, two different universes. I really do not give a flying F*** right now about whether I can shop in one part of walmart but not another part and other minutia of the restrictions. Last thing on my mind.
Our political philosophies place us in different universes and we are not gonna understand each other’s priorities. To be frank, to me, Libertarian priorities seem to lack all perspective of the ongoing human tragedy and seem to focus on selfish trivia. Likewise, Libertarians see people like me as drinking the Govt. Cool aid, having no concern about the Constitution, and emoting rather than thinking logically.
Robby,
You are the perfect example of my core objection to compromise as a principle rather than a tool.
Absolutely we disagree on Gun Control. Absolutely we each frustrate the other.
But in the end the FACTS dictate that your position has no merit.
Out of bazillions of studies few have shown real benefit to gun control, and those have been statistically miniscule and the studies have had serious problems.
If I take a gun and kill you – absent justification – such as self defense or defense of others.
That is a violation of your rights, it is immoral, and it is a crime.
None of this changes when YOU use force against me. None of this changes when you manipulate government to use force against me.
It is WRONG. It is not only WRONG, but the principle that force can not be used against others without justification and that government is there to punish that is the foundation of the social contract. It is the justification of government.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,–That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it”
These words are possibly the most important words humans have ever written.
We like to claim they are the foundation for self government. That is FALSE, they are the moral foundations for ALL government.
Ron wants to fixate on the second amendment – and he is right that if you want gun control the very least you must do is repeal it. But The constitution is not the word of God for me. It is little more than a poor speed bump against those like you who are willing to impose their will on others by force – why is it so hard for you to grasp that is IMMORAL ?
There is no amendment in the bill of rights that precludes government from barring prostitution, or prohibiting the use or sale of alcohol or drugs.
But government efforts to do so are no less immoral than those efforts to restrict guns.
To justify the use of force to infringe on the liberty of another, you must do more than prove your infringement will be beneficial, that it will work. But you MUST prove it will FIRST.
And “common sense” is not proof. For all your intelligence – and you are clearly intelligent,
you are not logical, you are driven by emotion, you feel compelled to act regardless of whether there is any evidence your actions would be effective. You your idea of “common sense” is neither common nor sense.
There is not some parity between our view points merely because we frustrate each other equally. The facts do not support your position, therefore your effort to use force is immoral – WRONG.
There is no scheme in which humans have free will where that it not true.
All viewpoints are not equal. If I tell you that gravity does not exist and we are all floating in space. That is false.
The use of force against others without justification is impermissible, It is immoral, it is wrong, it is criminal.
That is not an opinion. Our entire society rests on that. You are constantly accusing me of being an anarchist. The difference between anarchy an every other ideology is the necessity to justify the use of force. If you beleive that force can be used without first justifying it – then YOU are the one pushing anarchy.
“I am not indifferent to abuses by the government but I don’t believe that Libertarians have any believable answers to eliminating them”
They can not be eliminated.
As Lord Acton noted
Power Corrupts.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
Thomas Jefferson
While eliminating corruption/abuse is impossible.
Reducing it is trivial.
Reduce the size of government.
I have told you and you can confirm that there have been myriads of studies that have found that both greater individual liberty and smaller government correspond to higher standard of living.
Why ? Because government corruption, and abuse are inefficient. In fact government is inefficient. Because the use of force is inherently inefficient.
Therefore we should never use government to solve a problem that can be solved without government.
That BTW is another element of justification.
Not only MUST the use of force demonstrably accomplish the desired ends,
it also must be necescary to do so.
We permit the use of force in defense of ourselves and others.
But NOT against any possible threat. Only against threats against life and limb.
And then typically only when other alternatives are impossible.
If a man charges you intent on killing you. You are not typically permitted to kill them if you are able to retreat safely.
Necescity is ANOTHER element of justification.
Whatever acts you wish government to perform must NECESSITATE the use of force.
the defense of the nation is the legitimate role of government.
The punishment of crimes.
The enforcement of contracts,
and forcing those who have harmed others to make them whole.
These are all tasks that we know the use of force is effective.
And we know that it is necescary.
So no we can not eliminate government abuses, but we can reduce them.
Is that difficult ? Sure. Is that EXTREMELY difficult ? Sure.
But Carter deregulated freight transport, and deregulated the airlines.
As a consequence the US has the cheapest and best freight system in the world.
Bar none. Both are trucking system, our rail system and out air transport system are pretty much unequalled globally. There are other nations with better passenger rail – but the US does NOT have deregulated passenger rail – Amtrak is owned by the government, much like the post office.
The point is once in a while we actually succeed in disempowering, in shrinking government, and the consequences are always incredible.
Absolutely it is rare, and very hard work. But it is possible.
Unfortunately instead of trying to improve things by reducing government we waste enormous amounts of effort fighting those like you who keep looking for new excuses to expand it.
It is extremely disengenuous arguably deceiptful to claim that a problem can not be fixed when YOU are the obstacle to fixing it.
“Your philosophy and mine are at odds, but its not that you and I are indifferent to human suffering. The issue that is the lens through which you see the public events is not the lens I see them through. Its a wonder we get along at all.”
Philosophy is not something that you just make up. While we are individually responsible for our own, humanity has spend all of human existance seeking the true philosophy.
Free will is a fundimental philosophical question.
Does it exist ?
If it does logic drives you inherently to libertarian foundations. To the specific assertions I have made about force, to the social contract.
I am not going to examine the philosophies where free will does not exist – I doubt you would find any of them palletable.
Regardless you are AGAIN pushing this nonsense that “all viewpoints are equal”,
Clearly they are not. If I determined that my personal philosophy allowed me to murder you,
you would rightly reject that philosophy as wrong.
To the extent you actually have a philosophy which I do not beleive, you are obligated to present it and defend it, as I have.
You are not entitled to a presumption that your philosophy is valid.
“The issue that is the lens through which you see the public events is not the lens I see them through. Its a wonder we get along at all.”
Changing the frame work to “all lenses are equal” changes nothing.
They are not.
Among other reasons they are not, because we both inhabit the same world, the same society and we must coexist. Maybe you can view the world through whatever lens you wish in a cave in the woods far from everyone else. But if you must coexist in a world with others, you must use a lens that is both shared and works.
The left likes to say that if we are to coexist we must share the same values – that is actually true – and is another element of justification. Your use of force must not violate our shared values.
Regardless the left – and you get some things horribly wrong about shared values.
It is not enough that we share them – they must also work.
For many centuries humans had a shared value that they could own other humans as property. That shared value was not inherently legitimate merely because it was shared.
I am sorry about your doctor. But your claims about her are false.
I would suggest Vicktor Frankels “man’s search for meaning”.
Even in the most horrid of circumstances – such as nazi concentration camps.
Man still seeks out the meaning of life.
If your doctor committed suicide, it was not because of Covid19, it was because she was depressed and unanchored.
In 1994 in Rwanda the Hutu’s murdered 800,000 Tutsi, in a few months mostly using machette’s. That horror greatly exceeded anything your doctor saw in a Covid19 hospital in NYC.
In 1983 my wife was walking a few blocks from our home to church to play the organ, and she was abducted off the streets, drug into an abandon building and brutally assualted for 4 hours, before she was released. I doubt your NYC Doctor’s covid19 experiences compare.
Regardless, I understand depression and even why depressed people might take their own lives. But depression is a mental health problem NOT a problem of surroundings.
But then you do this all the time. You conflate your emotional view of the world with reality.
You blame Covid19 for the doctor’s suicide, rather than her own depression.
BTW there have been 65K US Covid 19 deaths (likely a small over estimate).
The largest number of deaths in a single day in NYC was 4000. I beleive that was Apr. 14.
The 2nd highest day was 1100, there have only been 2 days ever with a NYC death rate over 1000.
And yes you are “emoting”, it is not even in question.
Further you are perfectly free to do so.
What you are not free to do is use your emotions to justify the use of force against others.
You can not kill me because I will not agree with you over Covid19.
The use of force MUST be governed by logic and reason.
Emotions are for your personal life.
Bridges of Madison County had me sobbing all over the place through the last half of the movie.
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven”
Emotions have no place in decisons about the use of force.
Is Covid19 literally a bad flu ?
No. It is more contageous, it spreads much faster, it peaks faster and it fades faster.
Those are real differences.
But the net result is about the same – actually for most people it is substantially less.
BTW that result is actually predictable. Diseases that spread fast and far, are highly contageous, incredibly fatal and infect almost everyone are impossibly rare.
If they were not, life would not exist.
Covid19 is proving to be several orders of magnitude less disasterous than the 1918 flu.
Knowing almost nothing at the very start – that was predictable. The odds of it being as bad as the 1918 flu were small.
You keep telling me that facts and probability are somehow optomistic.
They are not. Malthus was wrong. Malthusian events are almost impossibly rare,
if they were not there would be no life.
We know as an example that another asteroid will strike the earth and wipe out all life on it.
We also know that the odds of that occuring tomorow are near zero.
Covid19 has defied SOME of the odds – though I would note that it did so in actually predicatable fashion. SARS and MERS which are related are far more fatal. But they are also harder to spread. Getting a combination that spreads far, fast and is highly fatal, is incredibly rare – or life would not exist.
It is that simple.
As a rule, the more fatal something is the harder it is to spread.
Ebola is far more fatal than Covid19, but far harder to spread.
Right now I/we do not know whether Covid19 is many orders of magnitude more contagous than we assumed (and less fatal) or more fatal but self limiting in some way we do not understand.
I do not know which is true. But one of those is. It does not matter which one.
You constantly challenge the data – as if there is some combination where Covid19 HAS actually spread to 20% of the population AND is going to kill 5% of those.
That ship has sailed. We already know that is not the case. The absence of certainty over the number of asymptomatic cases does not alter the fact that we are past the peak and 65K people have died. We are highly unlikely to get 65K more. And even that would be less than all but the last forecasts.
it is also highly improbable that should we end the lockdown we will see a second surge.
Why ? Because no nation has seen that thus far. Also because the “flattening the curve model” does not have infections and deaths dropping until the virus has come close to infecting the maximum possible number of people. The world has plateaued, many nations have declined to little or nothing. None has seen a 2nd wave.
I do not know exactly why there is no 2nd wave. What I do know is there isn’t one, and that as there has been none in any country, there must be a reason for that.
I can guess. My guess – just a guess, is that a significant portion of the population is for one reason or another immune to Covid19. It could be that antibodies to other Corona Virus colds are effective against Covid19. It could be that the vast majority of us are sufficiently healthy to beat it off before we actually develop the disease. It could be that despite the fact that it spreads like wildfire, that to actually get a real infection you have to be exposed to a very high viral load, or that is true of MOST people but not all.
It could be that as the sun is out longer it is just naturally killing it off.
Despite the fact that the Sun is clearly a factor, I doubt that one – the souther hemisphere is headed to winter and Covid19 is NOT increasing there. Further Sweden is further north and will not see the strong impact of the sun until much further into summer.
At the same time this has mostly not hit the southern states nearly as hard as populous northern ones. Florida has had problems, but it should have been much worse.
I do not have all the answers.
But one thing i get which you clearly do not.
Is that we have clear patterns of behavior.
If a pattern exists, there is a reason.
and the fact that I do not know the reason does not mean I can not trust the pattern.
That is not optimism. That is reality.
Gravity still worked long before Newton codified the rules.
Even today we understand its behavior, but we do not know HOW it works.
“To me it seems like the things that concern Libertarians are very, very different from the things that concern me, two different universes. I really do not give a flying F*** right now about whether I can shop in one part of walmart but not another part and other minutia of the restrictions. Last thing on my mind.”
The difference between us in this instance is that I do understand not merely that you and I are different, but that each and every human is different.
Humans are a social animal. But we are NOT Bees, or Ants.
We are each unique.
I could personally give a shit whether the gardening section is closed.
The only thing that makes this mess tolerable to my wife. They only thing that keeps her from the depression that killed your nurse. is the peace that she gets from gardening.
So she is absolutely apoplectic that the gardening sections of all the local stores are closed right smack in the middle of planting.
To the same extent she does not give a shit that she can not buy paint at home depot.
While I have apartments that need painted.
My wife and I are avid readers. We can entertain ourselves with books.
We are not physically active. The excercise we need to keep us healthy at 60+ is a chore, and not a pleasant one.
But for many people reading is boring, but sports or outdoor activities are a joy.
Myriads of laid off blue collar workers are looking to make the best of a forced and not well paid holiday. They want to take their boat to the lake, or go fishing at their cabin in the woods.
All things I find uninteresting.
The point is WE ARE ALL DIFFERENT.
It is NOT NECESCARY for you to understand or care that the garden section is closed.
It is not necescary for me to either.
Neither you nor I are free to structure the world BY FORCE, to reflect OUR preferences at the expense of others.
Absolutely I am concerned about different things than you,
And Ron different from us both,
and Priscilla different from us three,
and Jay different from us 4
and Rick different from us 5.
And none of us are free to use force to deprive the other of what is important to them.
Absent justifying that use of force.
It is not necescary for you to understand why someone would want in the garden section.
It IS necescary for you to JUSTIFY the use of force to prevent them from having what they want. Just as them must to prevent you from want you want.
“Our political philosophies place us in different universes and we are not gonna understand each other’s priorities. ”
Both of these have been addressed. You need not understand another person’s priorities.
You must justify the use of force to disrupt those priorities whether you understand them or not.
We need not share the same philosophy.
But We MUST share the same core principles regarding the use of force.
Why that is difficult for you to understand I can not grasp.
If we are each free to have our own philosophy, and to use that philosophy to justify the use of force, using criteria unique to ourselves.
We would have actual anarchy.
Our common shared principles are likely small.
Those are the only principles that justify the use of force.
Quite simple.
We also need not share or understand priorities.
My wife wants to garden, it keeps her sane.
My neighbor is chaffing to go to his cabin and fish with his family – that keeps them sane.
Neither you nor I get to say no to them because we do not share their priorities.
This is not hard.
You have completely inverted the world.
You are fully prepared to use force against others based on individual philosophy unique to yourself. But demand that others must conform to YOUR priorities.
Extremely odd.
“Libertarian priorities seem to lack all perspective of the ongoing human tragedy and seem to focus on selfish trivia.”
Nope, pretty much the opposite.
You are the selfish one perfectly happy to deprive others of what makes their life bearable in the face of tragedy. You are the narcisist, I am capable of understanding that other people do not share the same preferences as I, and that is OK, and that I am not free to interfere with their pursuit of their preference.
I would note further – to the extent this is a crisis – and the data is increasing suggesting it is not, your behavior is not really different. You have no more understanding or empathy for the different values and preferences of others, for what brings others joy or satisfaction – whether we are in crisis, or it is just a normal day.
The rationale for closing gardening centers and vacation homes is no greater in the current mess than it was 6 months ago. I would have taken very little 6 months ago for you to justify similar restrictions. You are constantly arguing the same thing – that you are free to use force to restrict the freedom of others.
And then you make this facile argument that resisting your use of force makes anyone else a narcisist.
Sorry, Robby, the lack or empathy, the self centeredness – that is yours.
Libertarians do not especially fight for THEIR rights. They fight for everyone’s.
They fight for the right of Nazi’s and the KKK members to march.
They fight for those whose preferences they do not understand or share.
Because freedom is not constrained by what others understand and share
And once upon a time actual liberals understood that.
First they came for the gardeners, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a gardener.
Then they came for the boaters, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a boater.
Then they came for the ball players, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a ball player.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
“Likewise, Libertarians see people like me as drinking the Govt. Cool aid, having no concern about the Constitution, and emoting rather than thinking logically.”
Yup, because that is self evidently true – and your post is a very long proof of exactly that.
If you do not want Personally called a narcist, do not call those you do not agree with narcists, because of your own personal tunnel vision.
Absolutely people are dying of Covid19 – though the evidence is that the “shutdown” is not changing the number of deaths. But even if it were, people are suffering and dying as a result of the shutdown. Your tunnel vision just keeps you oblivious to the unintended consequences of the conduct you condone.
Nial Furgesson – who is the panic monger who advised Boris Johnson that millions would die in the UK has noted that ATLEAST 2/3 of the deaths are people who were going to die in 6 months or less.
NYT made a big deal about the “other” deaths from Covid19 – these are very real – but they failed to grasp that the vast majority of those, and they ARE significant, are from the shutdown NOT Covid19.
You say that we are adding 2000 deaths per day.
The average human life is 29200 days.
There are 330M people in the US. about 60% of those are employed. About 40% of those have been unemployed or severely reduce.
That is roughly the equivalent of 2700 WASTED Lives every day because of the lockdown.
And that is really only counting lost employment.
That is not factoring in the lost quality of life of 330M people who are locked in their homes doing their best to suck a tiny bit of enjoyment out of life in a box
The “lockdown” is responsible for more real carnage then the virus.
BTW The US overall Death rate for 2020, is only marginally higher than the average for the past 3 years. If you factor out New York it is about the same. If you factor out 3 other states it is BELOW prior years. My state currently is experiencing 6% LESS deaths than a normal year.
The youtube video that was censored, by Doctors in California openly noted that they are being coerced to count what are highly likely Flu, Cold and Pnuemonia deaths as Covid19 deaths, Because state and local health officials believe that higher Covid19 numbers will get them more money, and because higher Covid19 death rates will justify the egregious government actions.
If you think Libertarian philosophy is ME, ME, ME you are not paying any attention.
YOU are Forking over other people. It is the non-Libertarians that are the narcissists.
“Damn everyone else – lock them all up if necessary to keep ME safe.”
Grow up – your not safe. If Covid19 does not kill you something else will.
You can be struck by a bus tomorow. About 1200 people are killed every day in automobile accidents. That is probably way down now.
But cancer deaths, heart disease deaths are all spiking or going to – because we have shut down our heathcare system for everything but Covid19.
My sister had a heart attack in the middle of this. She spent a few hours in the ER was given Nitro and sent home. Last year they would have kept her a few days and then sent her to a cardiologist. Now only Covid19 patients say in hospitals and Cardiologists are all at home.
Who knows whether the lack of care for a heart attack will have long term consequences for her ?
Those are just a FEW of the serious negative consequences of YOUR narcissistic idiocy.
Among the less serious are the people with cataracts, and glaucoma, or who need knee replacement or hip replacement or the myriads of other “elective” medical procedures that dramatically effect quality of life that are STOPPED.
These people may had to live in pain or other disability for months before they can get rescheduled.
Dentistry across the country is shutdown – and we know that modern dental care is possibly as important to health and life expectancy as medicine. So YOUR narcissism is harming and probably shortening the lives of millions of others.
Every 1% increase in unemployment in the US leads to 63,900 additional suicides per year according to a GoldMan Sachs Report based on DOL data.
If that holds we could be looking at 800K suicides as a consequence of the shutdown.
I suspect – just like the 2M deaths number that model is way high. But even at 1/10 that, suicides alone will be larger than Covid19. New Zealand has had a 50% increase in calls to its suicide hotline.
Regardless, Healthcare experts are expecting a massive increase in suicides and mental health problems.
New York is seeing a 30% spike in domestic violence. Similar increases are being documented ACROSS THE WORLD.
Drug and alcohol abuse are rising.
Education is stalled.
Finally Sweden which did not lock down its economy or impliment mandatory constraints on behavior is seeing the same trends as the US and the rest of the world.
Their healthcare system is not overrun, Daily new cases plateaued 3 weeks ago – just like the US, just like the world.
So all the negative consequences of the lockdown come without the positive benefits you claim justify them.
I would note. My behavior has changed little from before. I have worked primarily from home for decades. Si far my income has not been effected, I go shopping a bit less and I have missed a dental appointment and a physical.
Personally the harms of this lockdown are not effecticing ME.
I am also in atleast the medium risk catagory. So I am being extra careful. I would be careful regardless of the lockdown.
So my ranting about our govenrments response is most definitely NOT about “me”.
The lockdown is in MY personal best interests – atleast in the short run.
My concerns are for OTHERS. That is the core of libertarianism.
Actually free markets – both before and during Covid19 work. They work because individuals seeking what is best for themselves but precluded from fraud or violence MUST benefit others to benefit themselves. Libertarianism REQUIRES you to think about what others want as the means to improve you own life.
It is not libertarians that are narcisist – it is everyone else
So who exactly is the narcacist here ?
“No Covid19 is not a bad Flu”.
That is a premature and almost certainly false claim.
A new Miami-Dade antibody survey found 16 times as many people infected as reported.
That would result in a very flu like IFR.
BTW Florida mostly did not lock down and plateaued weeks ago like the rest of the country.
The results in FL are particularly interesting as FL has an enormous high risk population and has done extremely well.
Georgia has ended their lockdown and so far no spike.
Texas did not lock down as much as the rest of the country and again same pattern as the rest of the US.
In fact the few states that show no evidence of plateau – Illinois, Virginia, are ones with serious lockdowns.
Absolutely Trump just makes things up.
So does the WHO, CDC, NIH, IHME, pretty much any group of experts you wish to name.
You say experts know more than laymen ? That should be easy to prove then.
You ranted that Trump “makes things up” – true.
Yet, though he has been wrong alot – like all of us have, he has actually been LESS wrong from start to finish than the “experts”.
Pelosi who slammed him for travel restrictions as now slamming him for doing them too late.
Talk about hypocracy. Regardless, Trump defied the experts on that and Pelosi is right, he should have done it sooner. Regardless, Trump was right Experts wrong.
Is the death toll in the US going to be the 7M predicted by Los Almos ? or the 2M predicted by IHME ? Is it even going to be the 200K predicted later by IHME ?
If you are going to claim the experts are better than layment – then you should be able to prove it.
One of the obvious lessons of this is that the “experts” are in the dark just as much as the rest of us.
The experts told us this was not transmissible by humans.
The experts told us this was not sensitive to heat, humidity or sunlight.
The experts told us that this came from wet markets.
The experts told us 7m would die in the US.
The experts told us that China would have a 2nd wave when they released the lockdown in Wuhan.
What is it the experts have been right about ?
I am entirely tired of people who wax about experts who quite obviously know as little about predicting the future than my tenant whose job is a minimum wage dishwasher.
But the “experts” have a job now – and he does not.
If you wish to attack others – such as those not bowing before “Experts”. It would be wise to have a defensible argument first.
To be clear – I am glad we have “experts”. We should always hear what those who have devoted their lives to narrow fields of expertise have to say.
But in the end our lives are our own – or they are supposed to be.
And for all their studies, the “experts” are not espescially expert at modeling, forecasting, predicting. And in dealing with a crisis, that is by far the most critical skill.
This “laymen” is not at all delusional BY THE EVIDENCE.
You falsely criticised me early from being “overly optomistic” – for reciting FACTS, not projections. The facts are what they are.
You started by saying “this is not a bad flu”.
No it is not. The spanish flu of 1918 was a bad flu. That killed 600K people in the US out of a population of 120M. That was a bad flu.
H1N1 killed about 68K people in the US in 2009 – and we did not lock down the country.
At the current rate Covid19 will be worse – by a little. Not a lot.
Current Covid19 deaths have exceeded Flu deaths in the US over the 2019:2020 flu season – by a little.
US yearly deaths are 2.87M – that is 8000 deaths/day.
Total Covid19 deaths will likely be less than 8 days of deaths from other causes – and that is if there is no overlap.
If Furgesson is correct, then Covid19 will increase total US yearly deaths by 3 days.
Not counting all the other deaths that the lockdown has caused.
These are not delusions. They are FACTS.
Facts are not “overly optomistic” they are just facts.
Robby,
You do not want rational.
You want people who appear calm but respond in panic.
Please using any comparative data from anywhere in the world show me ANYTHING that demonstrates a positive benefit of these “lockdowns” ?
Where in the world do you get the idea that you can use FORCE, and if you doubt it is force, go look at the police tackling people for riding a bus or running on the beach, or … living their lives,
Where do you get the idea that force is justified purely by your FEAR ?
If you are going to put a gun to someone else’s head and demand they do as you wish.
Don’t you think you should be able to demonstrate that there will be a benefit from your actions ?
It should be self evident to everyone the NEGATIVE effects of what has been done.
The economic damage that was just part of a few weeks in March took GDP DOWN almost 5%. the 2nd Quarter will be MUCH worse.
But you can not even demonstrate that you have reduced the total number of deaths from Covid19 by locking things down.
You can not demonstrate it because you have not.
So not only do you have massive negative consequences both intended and not
but any benefit is just wishful thinking.
And you are smart enough to know this.
I would also like to point out the hypocrisy of governors . I use Gov ‘Car Inspection” Cooper from N.C. He locked down N.C. at the end of March due to growing cases. The schools closed sometime in March and he made stay-at-home mandatory beginning in April. He now says N.C. has bent the curve and we can begin reopening in May.
So here are some figures from the JHU midnight numbers. I used midnight (or close to it) because that was the way hospitals counted bed census each night and I am just getting ready for bed each night and can do it just before that. During the week beginning March 28th, N.C. reported on average for that 7 days, 224 new daily cases. The week of April 5, during that 7 days period, the new case numbers per day rose to 264. An 18% increase. During the week of April 12th, the average new cases per day rose to 287. An increase of 9%. During the week of Apr 19th, the new case rate per day rose to 343 new cases per day. An increase of 20%. And beginning this week through yesterday, the average new cases rose to 397. per day. An increase of 16%
So I am a numbers man. Black and white. Numbers don’t lie unless the numbers man tweeks the numbers to fit their narrative. I did not do that. Although finding those raw numbers from JHU might be difficult. they are probably someplace to be found. If N.C. is able top reopen in the coming couple of weeks, with these numbers ,how are we bending the curve? And if lock downs work, why has the new numbers increased from 224 to 397. new case average per day, an increase of 78%.Even using just the percentage increase and not the raw numbers, the percent increases have remained constant. There is no improvement in the percentage increase either.
I want Jay or Roby to address this because they are the ones supporting the actions taken and must know something I do not. I don’t see where anything is working that they support..
I will add that Gavin Newsom, whose state saw early outbreaks and stablized, after instituting strict lockdowns, has averaged 5 Covid deaths per 100,000 population.
Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis whose states never locked down completely and, in particular, FL, with a highly at-risk population have seen…6 per 100,00 in FL, 3 per 100,000 in TX
Does that provide evidence for lockdowns? Doesn’t seem to.
I think the closing of schools, the banning of large events, the social distancing and washing of hands were all appropriate actions to “slow the spread.” And we did.
I question now whether the shutting down of most businesses, the elimination of elective but often critical surgeries, and the quarantining of healthy people of all ages was the best idea. In the end analysis, those measures may turn out to have been more deadly than Covid. Of course, hindsight is easy.
We have data now….does it support continued lockdowns?
“I think the closing of schools, the banning of large events, the social distancing and washing of hands were all appropriate actions to “slow the spread.” And we did.”
The number of people under 20 who have died from this is just a handful. Again nearly all with serious conditions. Numerous “experts” – just ones that are not being well reported have said that closing schools was a huge mistake.
We actually want this to go through schools. Get the kids infected and get it over with. It is a quick step to herd immunity.
Further parents with kids, are younger – more at risk than they kids, but still among the lowest adult risk groups.
College students should STAY AT COLLEGE. Again infections running through colleges are NOT dangerous to students, they are dangerous to professors.
‘Again infections running through colleges are NOT dangerous to students, they are dangerous to professors.’
Well, yes. And support staff, maintenance people, dining hall staff, etc. So,in the short term, anyway we should keep residential colleges closed. It’s not necessary for young adults to live in dormitories, in order to be educated, and, in keeping with the spirit of Rick’s column, it might even be a good thing to dispense with this “it’s the best four years of your life!!” and focus on…well, actual education, as opposed to binge drinking, sports and promiscuous sex. ( not that any of those things are necessarily bad, and they perhaps teach life lessons of their own, but it’s hardly necessary to pay or borrow $50-70K p/year to experience them, while majoring in Transgender Studies.
Until there is a highly effective treatment, or vaccine (and wait til the anti-vaxxers start with the “Bill Gates is going to inject us with tracking chips”) I think that the opening of schools needs to be gradual, with an emphasis on hygiene and responsible behavior ~ by students and professors. The same goes for elementary and secondary education. I wouldn’t be shocked if home-schooling doesn’t increase exponentially after this.
I think that the phased-in, approach to reopening is the right idea, for now. It doesn’t have to take forever, and there is a role for the government to play in supporting those who have lost jobs and businesses. That’s the role that makes sense, not the nanny-stater role that some governors envison.
“I wouldn’t be shocked if home-schooling doesn’t increase exponentially after this.”
Ah, the double negative. Take one out and you have my meaning.
Priscilla, ya’all stil planning that move south this fall?
My daughter and son-in-law decided to move from Salt Lake City because the air is so polluted and they did not want the kids growing up in it and my daughter has exercise induced asthma, not bad, but uses an inhaler after running, etc. Montana, Wyoming were on the list, but the lure of 20+ acres of free land “mom” owns is bringing them back to the land she owns. They are both work from home techies so can work from anywhere. Anyway, they put there house up for sale I believe Wednesday, April 15 and they had 3 cash offers Saturday, April 18th so they are in the process of moving by the end of May. Will be sharing home with her brother that was their grandfathers home until they get one built.
Now for your education comment.
Sharing this because it is another of my “gov’t stupidity” rants. I agree 100% with the union leaders comment midway through the article about teachers and other education employees on the task force. Not having them represented is like having a task force on how to create a new brain surgery and not having neurosurgeons on the planning group. Only one teacher and he has not taught younger kids other than high schoolers for years.
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article242377921.html
(What would I do without government idiocy to rail about)?
My kids were cyber chartered. that is more like remote learning.
If we had the time to do so we would have done real home schooling – there are too many rules with cyber charters. Early on cyber charters were “work at your own pace” which was what my daughter needed – but the teachers unions interfered and now cybercharters are structured much the same as regular school – in otherwords it is not at your own pace.
Cyberschooling is alot of parental work for younger kids. But gets easier as the kids get into middle school and it is more like college by the time they are in high school.
As adults my kids do not procrastinate – particularly with learning. They had to learn to be self driven to manage cyber school.
Cyberschools are becoming a huge deal with minorities – because in areas where the public schools are shitty this is the only hope minority parents have of their kids avoiding gangs and getting ahead.
DeSantis won in FL because 300K single black mothers voted Republican SOLELY because Gillium was going to close cybercharters.
Hell yeah, we’re moving south!
I’ve never been a NJ basher (been very happy here most of my life), but it’s a small state with a lot of densely populated areas, and sits right between NYC and Philly… until recently, I saw that as a positive, along with the Jersey shore, but too much traffic, too high taxes, and, now, too much coronavirus, has changed my tune. The house is scheduled to be ready for closing by October1, and that’s none too soon for us!
I had no idea that Salt Lake City was that polluted. I guess my impression is that Utah is all fresh and clean! But that’s great for your family that your daughter will be back east.
I think that opening up schools will be a lot harder than people think. And that’s going to make it hard on parents who have to work.
My hope is that some big pharma (or little pharma, but that’ll be hard) outfit discovers a magic bullet drug that renders this thing much weaker and milder. If you can get tested at your doctor’s office, get a prescription for something that will lessen the symptoms and the duration of the disease, with relatively minimal side effects, we might be able to get out of this mess without massive damage to our economy and our liberty.
Even then, we’ll still be able to complain about big government! 😉
From destination360 “To give you some perspective, the city itself sits at an altitude of around 4,200 feet above sea level in the Salt Lake Valley. While the Wasatch Front Salt Lake City mountains are located on the eastern side of the valley, to the west are the Oquirrh Mountains”.
This was a beautiful area until people began escaping the high taxes from the western states from them, increasing the population singnificantly. In 1980, the population of the state was 1.4M, moslty in the SLC. area. Today its 3.5M, mostly in the SLC area. And since it sets in a valley with high mountains, there is no where for the junk in the air to go. She also said the traffic is attrcious and no one knows how to drive there. One group from California driving 80 bumper to bumper and others driving white knuckle 50 from less populated states. Many accidents on interstate.
Schools and other stuff. There are many different positions on this virus. But I am just looking at the Spanish flu and Hong Cong flu and neither one was a one year wonder. Spanish flu official dates were January 1918- December 1920. Hong Cong flu was July 1968 to early summer 1970. And those were with vaccines early. So if this one follows suit, its lasting February 2020 to spring 2022.
If that happens, do we close the businesses again?
What does Biden do next spring when cases begin spiking in NYC, LA, Frisco, Philly, D.C.?
Do governors shut down achools again?
How are inner city kids too poor to have high speed interent that cant access online learning addressed by schools. In N.C. over 10% of the kids have not signed onto school sites ether due to parents not having interent, kids not motivated tobsign on orbrural areas lacking access to adequate internet service.
Do governors then say “people take responsibility for your own health?
College sports…When football is cancelled, are all sports eliminated due to lack of funds?
Do universities cancel classes again?
And if nothing happens like it has now when cases increase again, why would lives be less important than those they think they saved today?
No dont try answering. Just listed for others to consider.
I am glad you will be here before the election. One vote for GOP to offset one vote from liberals escaping high taxes and then coming to N.C. expecting to elect democrats and increase govt spehding .
As more discussion of flu’s Covid19 and vaccines is occuring I am learning a few things.
Flu Vaccines have segmented RNA, This makes mutations more common and it makes developing a vaccine harder. But immunity appears to last longer – possibly much longer.
Current guestimates on Corona Viruses are 2-3 months up to 2-3 years.
But the unsegmented nature of the Corona virus increases the likelyhood that a vaccine will work even against mutations.
Reading between some of the lines, one of the factors that MIGHT be limiting the current Covid19 spread could be pre-existing immunity. It is entirely possible that if you have had a corona Virus cold in the past 2-3 years that your natural immunity to that Corona Virus is confering some or alot of immunity to Covid19.
I have not heard that stated yet, but it is consistent with what is being said about both Flu vaccines and possible Covid19 vaccines.
We prepare a flu vaccine every year. It is usually a combination of 3-5 vaccines against different flu strains – trying to guess which one will be the predominant flu of this year.
But aparently even when the vaccine is a MISS, it is still effective – just less so. Because even a vaccine against the wrong flu strain may provide SOME immunity against SOME other strains.
Vaccines do not target the virus as a whole. They kill the virus by interfering with specific proteins. A vaccine will work against any virus that makes use of the same proteins.
There is alot more complexity to this – you can not target just any protein in the virus.
It has to be a protein critical to the virus’s spread, and it has to be one not common in the person.
Amazing . Now I understand where my thinking may have been formed.
https://www.aier.org/article/woodstock-occurred-in-the-middle-of-a-pandemic/?fbclid=IwAR0bjOH9TDBct3wNCNFm78XsQVCCQUlPUf24H8hbgLLKStk0obEiS3I694Y
Robby;
Covid19 == “bad Flu”!!!!
Sad. We will never know the true numbers that die as a consequence of this virus.
https://www.10tv.com/article/ohio-state-alum-shares-story-childs-suicide-tells-parents-covid-19-isolation-real-2020-may
Actually we will.
So far in 2020 the US is running 3% BEHIND in total deaths as compared to the prior 4 years according to the CDC – as of May 1, 2020.
This strongly reinforces the claim that most of these people were going to die anyway.
Further we are doing a poor job of testing severely ill patients.
If you come to an ER presenting with serious flu like symptoms you are presumed to have Covid and treated.
If you die, you are probably not tested. Most people die of pneumonia.
That is what typically gets people – whether they have the flu or Covid19.
While I suspect MOST of covid19 deaths are covid19.
that is not the same as all.
https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/495366-something-seems-rotten-in-flynns-case-and-maybe-others-too
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/coronavirus-response-florida-new-york-results-compare-william-bennett-seth-leibsohn
https://jonathanturley.org/2020/05/01/new-documents-show-strzok-countermanded-closure-of-flynn-case-for-lack-of-crime/
Rick… I’m taking your suggested advice to enjoy life as it is, despite masks and 6-foot separations. Longer morning dog walks. More non-political streaming escapist TV (the “Lucifer” series on Netflix; “Bosch” on Prime; and dozens of YouTube vintage Pre Code films from the 1930s). I’ve noticed the more distance I keep from present day politics and punditry the better I feel.
This holds true in other ways as well, like eating. Our home dinner menu has reverted to pre-microwave-toaster-oven-air-fryer times. We’ve pulled old cookbooks from our literally dust collecting shelves to retrieve long forgotten recipes from chefs of yore, like James Beard and Julia Child – and yes, even Betty Crocker (I know, an invented person). But our most satisfying meals have come from old family recipes, passed down from grandparents (my grandmothers’ chicken & matzoh-ball soup) and from my father, who did most of the family cooking. Here’s his thrifty 1950s stick-to-your-ribs recipe for Hot-Dog Stew, a forgotten guilty pleasure resurrected:
Hot Dog Stew – original recipe:
* 1 Large Potato cut in 1/4-inch thick slices
* 1 Large Onion, diced
* 2 Large Carrots cut 1/2 inch thick
* 4 or 5 Mushrooms, sliced
* 1 6-package of Beef Franks, cut in 1/2 inch slices
* 1 CAN Baked Beans 16 OZ
* 1 CAN Crushed Tomatoes 14 OZ
* 1/2 CUP Red Wine
* 1 TEA Chili Powder
(Note: I didn’t have Chili Powder and substituted cumin )
* Salt & Pepper
Stir all ingredients into a large pot. Bring to slow boil, then Simmer for approx. 1/2 hour, or until potatoes are done.
One of the arguments for Limited government is that the less power the government has the less you have to care about whether those running it are arseholes.
I would further note that whether Republican or democrat, democratically elected leaders (as well as the media) are HIGHLY incentivized to make EVERYTHING appear life and death.
It isn’t.
Walk your dog, make your hot dog stew and tell the media and our leaders right and left to shut the fork up. And get out of your life. You can manage fine on your own.
Jay, I can’t decide whether I think your hot dog stew recipe sounds tasty or gross, but I’m going to go with tasty, and give it a try.
I’ve been watching “Outlander,” which is a fun time travel romantic drama. I’ve heard that “Bosch” is excellent.
Since I’m betting that masks will be de rigueur for the foreseeable future, I’ve been making cloth ones in pretty prints and colors, so that I can coordinate them with my outfits (how ridiculously girly is that?) I tried making my husband and sons more “manly” masks, but they laughed at me.
I have not watched the new season of Bosch.
But i have been through the previous ones and recomend them.
Some seasons are better than others, but they are all good.
There is alot we do not know.
But I am actually guessing that this is going to draw down to next to nothing fast.
How quickly we choose to return to normal behavior is a different question.
We have plateaued. Soon we should start to decline.
The drop should be as fast as the rise.
Exactly when the decline starts is unclear – though most countries have started to decline after they have plateaued for 3 weeks.
At the same time the more effective the lockdown the longer the plateau.
What keeps getting ignored by the meadia is lockdowns only reduce deaths if they prevent the healthcare system from being overwhelmed.
Otherwise they just buy time at great cost. The same total number of people get infected, the same number die, it just takes longer.
Anyway we are likely to wind down soon.
THEN the question becomes WHY ?
Is Covid19 fizzling because it has gone as far through the population as it can ?
Or is it fizzling because summer is arriving ?
If the former is true AND natural immunity lasts a few years rather than a few months and 2nd wave in the fall – if there is one at all will be small.
Conversely if Covid is declinging because summer is arriving – then Fall is going to be a near repeat.
It is hard to say.
But we can make guesses based on the data.
Wuhan is in central china. At about the same latitude as TX.
Did the chinese beat Covid19 in Wuhan by drastic measures ?
Because it went as far as it could go and they did effectively isolate the rest of the country ?
Or because they were headed in to spring with more sun and warmer temps ?
Italy and Spain spiked early and high and lots of people in inadequate healthcare died.
But the disease has subsequently tanked in those countries.
In the US the Sun Belt states have been hit far less hard.
While FL has been hit harder than most sunbelt states. It has not been hit nearly as hard as projected.
Either DeSantis has done incredibly well, or Florida’s sunshine actually matters.
Sweden continues to do well. Despite a very high latitude.
Nearly universally the northern hemisphere is plateaued or declining.
Near universally equitorial regions have been less badly hit.
Near universally the southern hemisphere appears to be rising right now.
My guess is this is seasons and a significant factor in its current decline in the northern hemisphere is “spring”.
But that is a guess and there are counter factuals. The northern nordic countries have not been hit unusually bad. That is not consistent with seasonal.
Further Asian nations that have beaten this like South Korea, China, and Taiwan did so before the seasonal effect.
Regardless my crystal ball says 3 weeks and the new US cases will be very small.
Then the “experts” have until Fall to figure out how to better deal with this.
In the meantime the country gets several months to recover
That will not make the fear go away. but the risk will be done substantially – for a while
Looks like Trump could be the next Hoover.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-blew-up-at-his-own-campaign-manager-over-polls-showing-him-losing-to-biden/ar-bb13qadl
This time it is your link that has been pulled.
Fake News ?
Try this one for the Hoover comparison. There is another by NY Times, but I refuse to go there with the paywall.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/30/trump-brad-parscale-campaign-manager
Could be, but Gallup has him matching his highest approval numbers, and the IBD tracking poll, which has had him losing to Biden, for months, now has them tied.
I’m thinking this may be a black swan event for everyone, not just Trump. Trump was doing well, until he dragged those coronavirus pressers out too long, made them into 2 hour death matches between him and the reporters, and then lost the upper hand, when he speculated about the use of ultraviolet light and blood disinfectants and the MSM was able to spin a crazy narrative for a few days.
Trump’s strength is in the Democrats’ weakness. To his base, he will always be, at worst, the lesser of the evils. At best, he is the savior of the country from the globalist/socialists/fake news. As long as the Democrats cannot separate him from his base, all his has to do, in almost any situation, is to have a good week or two, and his numbers bounce back, as the independents flirt with the latest Democrat star (Cuomo, most recently), find him/her not as great as they thought, and decide the devil they know (Trump) is better than the devils they don’t know.
This is a black swan event, and I have no clue how to predict the election based on it.
I am not following most of the horse race news. I am told that Biden purportedly is still beating Trump or has even increased his lead.
But I really do not know how to handicap this.
I have personal major problems with some of Trump’s actions.
But mist here and most in the country think he should have done MORE, not FAR LESS,
I suspect Trump would be in deep shit politically had he done what was RIGHT, and vetoed this idiotic stimulus etc. Instead he has been cheerleading it.
We never should have shutdown, and we should re-open as soon as possible.
I am also paying attention to what the governors are doing as well as the protests.
Generally the governors are ALL getting high scores from the public – even the most draconian ones. That surprises me.
But I do not think that lasts long. The protests are likely to grow. The pressure to reopen is going to rise fast. Especially if the states that are relaxing control now do not seek surges.
Further contra claims here – there protests ARE NOT cranky libertarains. Some portion of the protestors are politically motivated or at the very least were never voting democrat no matter what – such as the small business owners.
But blue collar workers looking to go fishing when they can not work, or californians looking to go surfing are Democratic constituencies.
Regardless, what is happening with govenors matters allot. It will effect every election in the state come november.
If the lockdown is broadly supported, and the poor choices are really perceived as unimportant fringe elements. Trump will lose, and there will be a blue sweep of the country.
Right now that appears to be what the polls are suggesting.
But personally I think the polls are wrong. I think there is a growing resistance and resentment. And worse for democrats it is growing in a PART of the democratic base.
At the same time I think Covid19 is going to further divide the country.
Decisions have been made state by state. But the FACT is that the impact of Covid19 varies by population density NOT state.
90% of this country – geographically should have done NOTHING beyond being asked to “be careful”. That is not 90 or even 50% of the population. As we move into the suburbs the need for actions rises, and becomes more relevant in cities. But we even have large differences between specific cities. NYC is the most population dense area in the US and was by far the hardest hit. Whit LA which is the 2nd largest population center was relatively unscathed because the population density is low. Because people there are not riding subways and elevators together.
Further we are still “in this” right now.
It is highly likely that new cases will drop to near zero very shortly.
THEN we start doing a post mortem,
AND start really recovering.
AND start preparing for next fall.
If this returns in the fall and we have to “lock down” again – Trump is toast.
If there are not strong signs of recovery by the election – Trump is toast.
I think there is an entirely independent mess going on with Biden.
The Tara Reade thing could be going worse for him – but it is not going well.
He had a long time to prepare for the Morning Joe interveiw. He could have done worse, but he still did very badly.
His public appearances are NOT going well.
This is NOT Joe being Joe.
He is not up to the job, and he is failing in front of our eyes slowly.
I do not think he is making it to the election.
I think there is a high probability that democrats replace him before the election.
A failure of that type is also a black swan event.
We separately have the Durham probe and the ongoing reveals.
I thing they are very significant.
At the same time, between Covid19 and Biden’s failing, they will be missed by many of us.
Regardless, I do not think anyone has a clue how to analyse this going forward.
Mostly I think the race is Trump’s to lose. I do not think Biden matters at all.
Right now Trump is running against the virus. Not Joe Biden.
I think he is winning. But we do not know if there is a 2nd act coming.
For those of you who think those protesting Lockdowns are kooky libertarians.
I do not hink there are this many libertarians in all of California.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/huntington-beach-protesters-assail-california-gov-newsoms-order-closing-beaches
Andrew MacCarthy excellent as always.
There are myriads of issues with the entire mess surrounding Flynn.
The personal animous of some members of the Obama administration towards Flynn is well known, and their involvment in the entire Flynn debacle is a very serious ethical breach.
McCabe specifically was ethically required to recuse himself from all matters involving Flynn, but he did not.
But there is still a problem. Many parties who played a role in the Flynn beheading do not make sense. It was clear from Election Day that the Obama administration did NOT want Flynn to be Trump’s NSA. President Obama PERSONALLY advised Trump against that.
An Unprecidented step.
An enormous amount of effort was expended to “get Flynn”. As MacCarthy notes from the recently released documents.
The FBI interview of Flynn did NOT start from his conversation with Kislyak.
As MacCarthy notes – CONTRA Sally Yates, DOJ and FBI do NOT investigate when assorted members of the administration are publicly misrepresenting something that the FBI knows differently. There was no FBI investigation into Rice and Powers and Obama’s false public statements regarding Benghazi.
This entire Faux claim that Flynn’s possible mischaracterization of his conversation with Kislyak and Pence’s subsequent simmilar remark was NEVER the business of the FBI.
There was no logan act violation, there was no credible russian blackmail threat there was no real crime.
Not merely the FBI, but the entire outgoing Obama administration knew that.
AND they knew that they were going to be required by law to read Flynn in on the Trump/Russia investigation, as well as their investigation of Him.
AND that he was going to find out PDQ what they already knew – “there was no there, there”.
The FBI had already pretty much “shot its wad” on both matters and was going to have to close them, and Flynn was damn sure going to assure that. further Flynn was ALSO likely to dig into how this had all happened in the first place.
How did the incumbent administration start an investigation into a political opponent, and continue it for months based on lubdicrously nonsensical deliberate russian disinformation.
So the FBI and the Obama administration more broadly needed Flynn out of the way.
both to hide their malfeasance, and to allow them to continue it.
As MacCarthy makes clear – the weekend discussions about Flynn are NOT primarily about interviewing him and setting him up for a perjury trap.
They are about how to get arround the fact that they are obligated to tell Flynn about their investigations, and they moment they do so they are all in deep shit.
The purpose of the interview and the perjury trap has nothing to do with investigating Flynn.
They are done that and they know it.
The purpose of the interview is to frame Flynn so they can get him fired and/or prosecuted so that they can keep their prior malfeasance secret.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/fbi-set-up-michael-flynn-to-preserve-trump-russia-probe/
I love the way media uses the “if” “then” theory.
This article addresses South Carolina opening beaches.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/as-people-flock-to-beaches-and-parks-sc-virus-cases-climb/ar-bb13wdq9
So they open the beaches on Friday and Saturday covid-19 cases rise.
Really? 24 hours later and they have tests results back? People became symp0tomatic in less than 24 hours.
“If” beaches open and cases increased, “then” opening the beach caused that incease case number.
The two actions here have no relationship, but in writing the article as it is written and making that the headline then the object of the article was to link the two in voters minds.
And Dave, VOTER ARE SO F’IN STUPID THEY BELIEVE THIS CRAP!!! If they didn’t, the media would find other ways to minipulate brains ( or lack of).
Just because the media beleives something does not mean voters do.
Or that all voters do.
The country is approximately divided in two over Covid19 – and in much the way it is divided politically.
To some of us Covid19 is very close to home. We are at risk, or we are just more prone to anxiety, or we are pessimsts – and we buy every negative story that comes out and put the darkest possible spin on everything. Often these are people who live in cities and know people who have died.
Then there are people who are not at risk, do not know anyone who had this, are optomists and can not figure out why what the read in the press does not match what the see in life.
OK, seconds after I posted the S.C. article, its not available. Might be something got cut off link. So here is another link free without pay wall.
https://www.michigansthumb.com/news/article/as-people-flock-to-beaches-and-parks-sc-virus-15242573.php
We lost 3000 Americans yesterday. Many states are still registering their highest numbers of new cases.
Ah, but its just a bad flu. Its killed more Americans in 3 months than died in Vietnam in 10 years. By Dave’s reasoning Vietnam must have been as deadly as a very mild flu.
And Sweden, oh Sweden, they are doing it right! They have nearly the highest per capita death toll of any country but they have the answer.
If it were a time for laughing this would be funny, A small socialist country has the answer say the libertarians and conservatives. Funny, they have always run screaming from the idea of running health in the Swedish manner and have always understood that Sweden is a small socialist country with a different population, culture, history, form of government, everything. Now suddenly Swedish health policy is big with the right, lets be Sweden! Tell you what I ‘ll make you a deal, we can do it the Swedish way when we do Everything healthcare the Swedish way. Any takers?
But hey, Dave will tell you that the best solution is to have the hospitals at 80-90% capacity with COVID patients, kill them fast then get on with it, that is the optimal solution. (Priscilla, before you tell me I am being terribly mean and unfair go back and read Every Dave comment and you will see I am not pulling this out of nowhere, this is his actual opinion.)
Thanks god this is just internet bulshitting and the bullshitters are not actually in charge of anything, the bullshiters ideas would kill tens of thousands or more.
Carry on with the perpetual Bullshit session.
Roby I am not going to debate your facts. Just check this website and then support your comment about Sweden. Pay attention to the last 3-4 columns.
https://virusncov.com
JHU captures this info also, but might vary slightly.
As for the states and the highest number of cases per day, I agree 100%. We have been locked up in N.C. just one step above the Japanese Americans in internment camps during WW2 for 5 weeks. That has resulted.in N.C. starting the week of Apr 25 of 242 new cases per day average. This past week, that average new case per day total has grown to just over 400, with most community spread, not residential/prison spread. This week, the increase over the prior week was the highest ever. Each week there has been a 10% to 20% increase in new cases per day or for this 5 week period, 78%. What has been done is not working, but we are now being told by our governor that we are bending the curve and businesses can begin reopening gradually. NASCAR teams were classified essential as was Hobby Lobby this weekend. I am recording data at midnight each night and graphing numbers. There is no bend, it is a straight line up.
Ron I went to a very similar site last week, I found it by followed a link from somewhere. That site had sortable stats according to category. So, I easily found that Sweden was in 5th place for per capita deaths on that site at that time, behind Spain and italy and a couple of tiny places. This site (your link) does not have sortable stats so I am estimating that Sweden is in about 10th place regarding per capita deaths. Did Belgium and Netherlands etc suddenly surpass Sweden in the last week? Or do different sites live in different data universes and count COVID deaths differently? I don’t know.
As to your state I am guessing that there are a few densely populated hot spots in localized areas where COVID is still out of control, all kinds of people are still somehow spreading it (asymptomatic carriers?) and most other areas are down to a much lower level. Vermont was down to zero cases a few days ago and then jumped up to 4, 13, 7, and 11 new cases in the days since. When our numbers of cases were increasing in a linear way we had about 30-40 new cases per day with a couple outliers.
The states are between a rock and a hard place in dealing with that situation. IIn Vermont we are opening things up in a guarded way. Believe me I understand that we can’t live long at 25% unemployment, with a tremendous number of small businesses shut down without revenue and only loans to hope to fall back on, as if they did not live on the edge in the first place. There are no good answers, we are trying to determine which are the best of the terrible answers.
N.C. cases. From reports, the rise seems to have been in more average sized counties, with many rural counties with just a handful. One has none, they are in the mountains.. The “blue counties” still have most of the cases, but it is spreading tontheb”redncounties now. But whatever the size, I dont understand the thinking that we were heading for a disaster with 240 new cases oer day and now with 400 new cases oer day we are headed in the right direction and we can begin reopening slowly.
Thats like scubba diving and you are very concerned because your oxygen is at 50% and a few minutes later you look and its at 10% and you say, no problem, nothing to worry about.
Most outdoor activities would be a very good thing for people right now.
So long as they do not form crowds.
Not only does sunlight kill this FAST, but it increases vitamin D which generally makes us healthier and builds a stronger immune system.
Beaches are closed, parks are closed, dog parks are closed, most hiking trails are closed, but guess what. Because the f’in politicians play golf, golf courses are open. So you can go play for green fees and walk (or ride) the course, but you cant hike a trail through the woods by yourself because few politicians hike trails!
Apparently there is atleast one published study that you are 19 times more likely to get infected indoors than outdoors.
The CA beaches issue is “heating up”.
Apparently ALL CA beaches are not closed.
Only those in Orange county
Over the objections of local mayors,
and despite the fact that OC has among the lowest infection rate in CA.
This is either:
Political – OC is NOTORIOUSLY republican
Or Newsomes response to a news photo of a single beach that appeared to be crowed.
There are numerous photos of the same and other OC beaches that show Social distancing being followed.
Regardless, it is likely that you are safer in a crowd out in the sun on the beach than at home social distancing.
We keep hearing that democrats are the party of science.
But they are riggorously opposed to all “science” that does not support more power for them or government.
By the way, forgot this. From many different reports, the loan program was created with the banks as the intermediary. Many small businesses went to their banks in rural N.C. which is a karge land portion in the state. Those small rural banks told businesses, we dont have a relationship with the SBA. You need to go to one of the bigger ganks that do. So they drive 50-75 miles to one of the bigger banks and were told we dont know when you will qualify, we have no info on you, we need to check you out and when thats done, we will let you know. A few got loans, more were told that they had higher lending requirements than the rural bank and they could not approve it and others told they qualified, but the money ran out while they were waiting. Even with the second round, the rural businesses are still having problems. So the yealth gyms with 50 employees inntown with a national bank got loans and the gyms in rural N.C. with 5 employees and a couple hundred members got zilth.
So dont believe that program did much for anyone outside a metro area.
Government is not designed to be able to assist small businesses.
That is actually a good thing.
It should not try.
And it should not assist big businesses either.
The per capita deaths should not be varying significantly. It has not even varried significantly over time.
There are however two different quasi official data sources for Sweden. And this has posed some problems. Over the long run they produce the same results.
One source reports deaths on the day they are reported to the health authorities.
The other lists them on the day the death occurred. When people die in hospitals these two bits are the same. But many people in sweden are dying at home, though a report is taken at the time of death it is often taking several days to get to authorities.
This has resulted in logs of hysterical claims that deaths in Sweden are spiking.
They are not. If you do a 3 day rolling average of the more volatile source it matches the other source.
Sweden did have a very early and unusal spike in deaths. Before any measures at all were taken Covid19 got into some nursing homes in sweden and sweden is different from other nordic countries in that its elder care fascilities are much larger.
This was really bad at the begining.
It is Falso to say Sweden is doing nothing. They have possibly the most stringent lockdown of elder care fascilities now in the world. It is nearly impossible to visit older people.
But on most everything else they have recommended rather than force.
Robby the damage for lockdowns increases exponentially with time.
I do not know all of the details related to Trump recent ordering of meat packers back to business.
I do know that if ranchers start slaughtering cattle because they can not bring them to market – that it will take a year to recover.
We are also having very odd effects accross the marketplace. Some of these would have occured regardless and there is nothing that can be done.
Our supply chain is highly bifurcated into commercial/institutional and residential.
We have a spike in demand for milk residentially – but with the closure of schools and resturaunts we have a near total collapse of demand commerically and institutionally.
These supply chains are completely separate and are unable to easily switch between then.
So we are having shortages of many items that framers in institutional supply chains are letting rot in the feilds or run down the drains.
The closure of garden centers was ludicrously stupid.
Whether essential or not, these are activities that are unlikely to spread Covid19.
Further in much of the country this is planting season.
My wife is an avid gardener. She fortunately and accidentally bough seeds this year – early.
But some of what she planted from seed has died and she can not replace those.
That means we will end up having to buy tomatoes and sugar peas and cucumbers and lettuce at the store and that will expose us much more than buy a few plants.
Lawn services are being destroyed. These are occupations that naturally have social distancing.
Construction does not actually involve working closely in proximate with large numbers of people.
There are very very few businesses that either do not naturally distance or can not.
It is not possible for govenrment to know what the unintended consequences of their choices are.
We had similar problems during the great depression – the majority of FDR (and Hoover’s) policies made things worse, not better.
No amount of money will change the fact that less is being produced.
Standard of living is based on what is produced. Not how much money there is.
The site you linked DOES NOT confirm Roby’s claim.
The data is exactly the same as that on RCP and Sweden BARELY has a higher number of deaths per million than the US. There are atleast 10 european countries with higher deaths/million.
Further that is the wrong metric.
The lockdown approach – if it works, will result in lower deaths per million until near the end.
Those countries that do not lockdown will go through the entire epidemic much faster,
they will have more infections and more deaths in a shorter period of time.
But they will had the same number of total deaths and total infections – at the end.
They will just reach the end faster.
That is not actually what is happening.
We are NOR seeing a spike in Sweden, were are not seeing a shortened duration.
That is significant. It does NOT mean Sweden is wrong – it means WE ARE.
It means the lockdowns are not even having the effect they were supposed to.
They are not “flattening the curve” they are just imposing needless pain and suffering.
JHU is showing NC as one of few states that has not plateued yet.
However NC appears to be close to plateauing.
There are some problems with direct comparisons.
Most of our data is on # of infections – and we know those numbers are WILDLY off.
That means that the error bars everywhere are large.
We can still draw conclusions from patterns and trends but they have to be larger patterns and trends. and we must assume some things that are likely true – that the error rate – though high is not itself highly variable.
This is one of the reasons that # of deaths is a more accurate number.
It has a 2-3 week lag to it, but the error is smaller.
The natural progression of Covid19 has been a doubling of new cases every 4-5 days.
If you are not seeing that you are either near of past the peak.
Despite all the things they do not know, there is a reason that the “experts” were able to fairly accurately place the peak at April 14th.
No matter what else they do not know, the geometric progression is very close to fixed.
If they can accurately enough measure the curve over the period that is supposed to be the doubling interval, they can know exactly where they are on the progression of the disease.
Dave, did you have a brainbfart these last two comments.
“If you are not seeing that you are either near of past the peak.”
We have not reached our peak. Maybe Saturday was the peak with.over 500 cases..
And remember I am using midnight to midnight JHU numbers, notbsome made up number by some government agency. How much more accurate a daily number can one get than last currnet midnight number less prior midnght number
“if you are not seeing that you are near or past your peak” was NOT specific to NC, it was a generalization.
NC is near its peak. It is clearly not past it. What is the difference between the new cases today and the new cases 5 days ago ? The closer those numbers are the closer to the peak you are. If the 5 day old number is half todays – then the curve has not started to bend.
Though it is usually wise to look at the new cases yesterday or they day before, and 5 days before that, because todays numbers are always noisy and they get adjusted as new cases are re-assigned to the correct date of probable infection.
I am not challenging your numbers.
But I would note that the JHU (and all numbers) have about a 5 day uncertainty window.
Daily new cases is supposed to be new infections today, not new detections today.
Therefore the initial reported number for each day that JHU tracks is always high, and over the course of several days it is properly shifted to the correct date of infection.
JHU is not showing NC with new cases doubling every 4-5 days.
Or even close to that.
It has taken NC almost a month to go from 400 new case per day to 600 new cases per day.
That is a rate far below the natural rate of increase of Covid19.
I can not tell you WHY NC is still rising – but doing so less fast than it should be.
But SOMETHING is causing that.
My Guess ? The approach of summer.
What the hell are youtalking about? N.C. had 242 average new cases per day in March. Itnis jow 400 new cases per day average. Tye highest has benn 530 or so. Never got to 600.
You give me your email and I will send you my excel spreadsheet and you can verify!
We are not in disagreement over the data – I do not think.
We are in disagreement over Where NC stands on the curve.
The number of new cases is NOT doubling every 4-5 days. NC has not doubled in weeks.
While that may mean NC is still on the rise, it also means that the curve is bending.
Why the curve is bending is a different and important question that is not unique to NC.
One we do not have a clear answer to.
One reason the curve could be bending is the lockdown.
If that is the case the curve should have a long plateau before dropping.
That appears to be the case in many places throughout the world – though not yet NC.
But that plateau pattern is common place and does NOT appear to correlate well with lockdowns. That means it is unlikely that the lock down is the cause of the plateau.
This is essentially in the process of being tested as states roll back the lockdown.
If there is an increase as the lockdown is released – then the lockdown is the cause of the plateau. That does NOT mean that we should not end the lockdown though.
The lockdown is most beneficial when the number of daily new cases are about 80% of the capacity of the medical system. Currently they are about 30%. To low a healthcare utilization means you are prolonging the outbreak and they economic harm for no benefit, You will have the same number of infections and the same death rate it will just take longer.
But all the above presumes the lockdown is actually causing the plateau.
The fact that most nations (and states and counties) have seen the same basic pattern regardless of whether they have locked down strongly indicates that the plateau is caused by something else.
Either the social distancing, or the change in sunlight or it is just the natural pattern of the virus.
Regardless the cause is unlikely to be the lockdown and therefor the lockdowns are ineffective and should be ended.
my email is jbsay at thebrokenwindow dot net
anyone who wants is free to email me if they wish.
But I have no need for your spreadsheet. I do not think we are disagreeing on the numbers.
Only what they mean.
Robby, almost every day 8,000 people die.
That has been true for decades.
So far according to CDC total deaths for 2020 are running 3% BELOW the average for the past 4 years.
H1N1 which occured in 2009 killed more people than Vietnam.
In fact more people die in the US in a week than died in the entire Vietnam war.
More people die in the US in a year than died in ALL US Wars ever.
There are ways to use statistics that are legitimate and ways that are intentional lies.
It is possible that if we have never “locked down” the country we would have had many more “deaths per day” – over FEWER DAYS.
Though I would note that the evidence that exists so far indicates the lockdowns have not even had that effect.
Frankly the argument that thus is just like the Flu – is both True and irrelevant.
Whatever this is like, the fact is we are nearly powerless over it.
The evidence is that MAYBE social distancing is slowing it down.
It is probably NOT however doing anything to change the total number of people who eventually get this, nor the total number of deaths.
Conversely the EVIDENCE on lockdowns is that they do nothing.
Any variation we are seeing in the behavior of Covid19 is either because a country gained control at or near its borders or because of demographic differences NOT differences in government response.
Countries with crappy healthcare have higher death rates.
Countries (and states) with large elderly populations have higher death rates.
Countries with populations with poorer health have higher death rates.
Dense populations have higher infection rates.
Those are the actual patterns that are shown by the data.
There is ZERO evidence that almost any public policy measure of any country has altered the trajectory of Covid19.
It does not matter whether this is “just the flu” – or it is going to infect 100% of people and kill 50%. Unless there is something that we can ACTUALLY does that is effective.
Running arround demanding more power and doing anything just to appear to do something is IRRATIONAL AND ILLOGICAL.
You keep making this stupid argument that if you can somehow make this appear worse, that draconian acts are justified.
THEY ARE NOT.
To use force against people you MUST prove that it is effective.
You have FAILED at that.
That should be the end of the debate.
Sweden’s current death per capita rate is just barely higher than the US.
Belgium, the UK, Spain, Italy, France, The Netherlands and Ireland are all higher.
Several of them are DOUBLE Sweden’s.
Please do not blow smoke at us.
Further it the models that YOU are relying on correct, Sweden will have an INITIALLY higher death rate. They will also get through this much faster, and the total deaths will be the same.
The fact is even that is not happening, which means that lockdowns are not working at all.
The fact that the death rate per capita in sweden is not 3-5 times that of the US means that lockdowns are a failed strategy. That they either protract this unnecescarily or WORSE still, they have crippled the economy FOR NOTHING.
You are not a stupid person. You have claimed to be familar with biology and research and statistics.
You know what the lockdowns are supposed to accomplish. We have more than enough global data right now to establish whether they are producing the effect they are supposed to.
And for all the things we do not know about Covid19, one of those we do, is that the lockdown’s have done NOTHING.
Even had they worked it is strongly arguable that Sweden took the right approach.
Swedens approach is supposed to be more deaths per day for fewer days. But the same total deaths. The lockdowns are not just supposed to produce fewer deaths per day, but fewer total deaths. There is no evidence that is the case.
Sweden is just the most prominent public example of a country taking a different approach.
We have many countries and many localities across the world and accross the US.
We have enough data to see what is working and what is not.
With very few exceptions there are no policy related variations between regions or countries.
Anyone rational looking at the data would properly conclude – policies like lockdowns do not work.
If you can not get facts correct, then who should beleive your conclusions ?
Again you are a smart person and you purported work in areas that require data analysis and an understanding of statistics. So it is not excusable for you to misrepresent data.
Sweden is not a “socialist country”. They had a very brief and disasterous flirtation with socialism in the 70’s and 80’s and the left somehow thinks that was permanent.
Frasier Institute Ranks Sweden as the 11th freest country in the world.
They rank the US 15th.
Sweden actually has a completely independent “free market” tradition that developed independently of the rest of the west.
The swedish government costs about 26% of GDP The US federal government ALONE costs that much.
Venezuela – actually socialist is 161.
Sweden is not a “socialist country”. They had a very brief and disasterous flirtation with socialism in the 70’s and 80’s and the left somehow thinks that was permanent.
Funny! Its the first time I have heard you use the term socialism correctly. Usually you rant about marxists with the smallest excuse. You have called single payer marxist many times here.
Actually your sentence above is more of less true and is also more of less true of much of Europe after WWII. They went true Marxist, it failed, they moved on with a large welfare state left as a residual and high taxes. The average Swede pays 50-60% of their income in taxes, that is the advanced welfare state with a vengeance. No I will not call them socialists but speaking your language, as I was, you (and so many on the right) have called any kind of huge welfare system or public health care Marxism over and over here. You have called the US democrats marxists (that is socialism Dave) you have called anything one molecule left of center marxist and now suddenly you have discovered that Sweden with its high taxes and single payer health care is not socialist because I slipped into your language and mind set and called them socialist instead of social democrat.
This is quite amusing.
Roby “The average Swede pays 50-60% of their income in taxes, that is the advanced welfare state with a vengeance.”
Again, please research. Average swede pays about 22%. Only the top few percent pay 56% on amounts over a large krona amount. But also, most all Swedes pay income taxes, unlike here where 40%+ dont pay income tax.
Sweden healtcare. Everyone is covered, but people have option to access private healtcare. About 20% of the population use private hospitals and private doctors. Not like PPACA forcing some action by tax payer.
The difference in Swedish healthcare system is something we will never accompkish in this country. Doctors, Nurses, lab Techs, all other hopsial and physician support staff and pharmacist are all paid by the national health system. 60%-70% of American healthcare physician and hospital cost is salaries and benefits. When the feds controls all salaries, you have overwhelming control if costs. In Sweden, as in the UK, on average healthcare workers make 60% of what they make in USA. We will never control costs until we do the same.
Do you think our healthcare workers would ever agree to become federal employees and yave income cut to match what Sweden does? Especially doctors?
People only know what the media and politicians feed them. When you get into the weeds, there is good in their system, but you cant do oart of what we do and part of what they do. A bastardized system will never work.
Average Swede pays 32% not 22%.
The swedes like much of Europe is slowly trying to further privatize their healthcare system.
The swedish standard of living is 20% lower than the US.
There is no “correct” use of socialism.
Yes, Single payer is ACTUALLY marxist.
The US has many marxist and socialist policies.
Generally we do not equate the US with Venezuela and Cuba – or any of the hundreds of countries with lower economic freedom scores.
Depending on the index Sweden scores slightly higher or lower than the US in economic freedom.
I beleive NZ is currently at the top of the FI economic freedom index – beating out Hong Kong and Singapore – despite having recently adopted a widely disobeyed gun control law.
Regardless, no one who is familiar with Sweden or MUCH of Europe would call most of them socialist.
Sweden is NOT Single Payer. They are a state run healthcare system like th British NHS – except that it is highly decentralized. Further Sweden has been slowly moving to a private healthcare system that has elements of single payer sort of – but that is only about 18% of Sweden.
Britian is doing something similar, and it is expected that NHS will eventually only be a backstop for the poor. But that takes decades.
Sweden’s healthcare costs 11% of GDP. Sweden also have an older population – like Italy, BUT they have an overall healthier population.
I really do not care what the definition of socialism is.
If you have paid the slightest attention to my posts – which clearly you have not.
My ire is for “big government” – the real world data shows that growth in standard of living is reduced by 1% for every additional 10% of GDP that the government consumes.
There is an additional 0.3% penalty for every 10% of GDP spent on social safetynet programs.
What you label “big government” does not matter. It is how big it is that matters.
The specific ways in which big government is harmful are slightly different based on the form.
It is possible that big socialism is more harmful than big autocracy. But the fact that it is big is more important than the label.
If have been consistent about that for years.
Further if this is the first time you have heard me say that SWEDEN IS NOT SOCIALIST
Again you are not paying attention.
US healthcare may be more screwed up that almost all of Europe.
That does NOT mean we should adopt the european models.
Going from one bad system to another is not an improvement.
Regardless, much of why Europe manages bad healthcare better, as that europeans are less diverse. Any european scheme implimented in the US would be worse than what we have now.
Regardless, I have linked clips of the Swedish prime minister repeatedly saying SWEDEN IS NOT SOCIALIST, that they are more free market than the US.
There is a movie on Amazon on the swedish economic system, as well as the completely independent Swedish free market intellectual tradition.
Reason does a “sweden is no socialist” video every couple of years, and I have linked those.
Sweden is a MONOCULTURE, and its social safetynet is holding it back, and it knows it, and has been slowly working to fix that for several decades.
Sweden dabbled with Socialism – and failed badly in the 70’s and 80’s.
Many US democrats are marxists – and yes that is socialism.
You confuse the label for the systems we have for the labels for the systems we want.
The US is neither marxist not socialist.
Yes Marxism is a particularly bloody form of socialism.
And yes the policies that pretty much all democratic candidates advocate are socialist or marxist.
I am sure there are socialist and marxists in Europe and Sweden too.
You are correct that Sweden’s taxes are higher than the US, their standard of living is lower, and worst of all the majority of the cost of swedish government is paid for by the average swede – just as you said. Sweden has a progressive income tax that is NOT very progressive, but it is very high.
I have noted that US healthcare might be more screwed up than Sweden.
At the same time american healthcare and other “social” services whether provided privately or by government are for the most part equal or better than swedens and on the whole less costly. The average american spends a far smaller portion of their income on the services that sweden taxes they crap out of their people for.
Further the swedes know this and have been slowly working to end this.
But it is very hard – short of failure to purge socialist schemes once they are put in place.
Sweden is NOT socialist.
But like the US, it has been afflicted by many socialist schemes that we all know are failures but can not get rid of.
You are not speaking my language.
You really do not pay any attention to much of what I write.
You long ago labeled me and decided you know what I am saying without paying much attention.
The fundimental problem with socialism is that it does not work.
The fundimental problem with big government is that it does not work.
I am not aware of any form of socialism that is not also big government.
But there are plenty of permutations of big government that are only partly socialist.
Anyway, like Jay you seem sterotype what I say – without actually listening.
Socialism is an ideology. It is also a failed economic system.
Social democrat is just the name of a political party. It does not stand for anything consistent over time.
I would remind you that the original US progressives were republicans.
Liberal and conservative do not mean the same thing in Europe as the US.
You are trying to apply ideological meaning to political labels.
I have said that the US democratic party has been coopted by socialists, marxists and progressives.
That does not mean it has always been that way or that all democrats even now are socialists, marxists or progressives.
The republican party is fast turning itself into the party of blue collar labor.
That is a NEW development.
In terms of ideology it is NOT a good development.
In terms of politics it was probably a necessity for political survival.
Conversely democrats are rapidly becoming the party of affluent white elites.
That is partly a consequence of their shift to more progressivism.
But it has cost them blue collar workers – probably permanently (or atleast for decades), and it is increasly damaging them among minorities.
“Swedes’ personal income tax can be as little as 29 per cent of their pay, but most people (anyone earning over £32,000) will pay between 49 and 60 per cent through a combination of local government and state income tax.”
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2008/nov/16/sweden-tax-burden-welfare
The actual swedish tax rates are online on wikipedia and the gov of sweden web pages.
Getting them from the guardian is like paying your taxes based on the Washington Post.
When you get into the weeds, there is good in their system, but you cant do oart of what we do and part of what they do. A bastardized system will never work.”
I totally agree. I was being facetious about taking their system, I don’t want it.
We can use examples other than Sweden if that makes you happy.
Within the US FL was supposed to have the worst risk regarding Covid19 except NY.
FL has 2M more people than NY, it has a larger elderly population than NY
Yet FL only ranks 8th in cases. and it has had 1/20th the deaths of NY.
The manditory measure FL has taken are among the least in the country.
Taiwan, and South Korea did not “lock down” Taiwan stopped Covid19 at the borders.
South korea had some leakage at the borders but isolated pockets.
I can go on.
“But hey, Dave will tell you that the best solution is to have the hospitals at 80-90% capacity with COVID patients, kill them fast then get on with it, that is the optimal solution. (Priscilla, before you tell me I am being terribly mean and unfair go back and read Every Dave comment and you will see I am not pulling this out of nowhere, this is his actual opinion.)”
You are not being unfair, you are just only telling part of the story.
And you are smart enough that YOU KNOW THAT.
ANY approach to Covid19 that does not:
Result in the collapse of the heathcare system
Or prevent the disease from reaching its natural limits in the population,
will result in the same number of deaths, and the same number of infections.
Even social distancing only slows the spread, It MIGHT cause it to die early in a sparsely populated area. But all it will do in a dense population is change the TIME.
The same is true of lockdowns.
Actual quarantines of SICK people do work – If and only if you can be 90% effective in quarantining. Anything less and the same number of people die, the same number of people are infected.
BTW the more infectuous the disease is the LESS effective any measures to contain it are.
Covid19 was supoosed to have an R0 of 2.4 – almost twice that of the flu. That is why it has spread much faster than the flu. That is also why people are dying faster.
It is increasingly evident that the R0 for Covid19 is an order of magnitude low.
That means it will spike faster and higher. But it has no effect on the overall number of infections or the number of deaths. Only the time.
Are you incapable of anything but emotions ?
If your arguments are valid, I could care less if they are “mean”.
Nature is being “mean” to us right now. It is killing us.
Railing about nature being “mean” is pointless.
It is still going to kill some of us.
to the extent you are misrepresenting my argument, that is only that you are ignoring the fact that a higher infection rate and therefore a quicker and higher spike in the number of deaths, also means a SHORTER duration. The result is the same total infections and the same total deaths. but less negative impacts on everything else – like jobs and the economy.
“Thanks god this is just internet bulshitting and the bullshitters are not actually in charge of anything, the bullshiters ideas would kill tens of thousands or more.”
That is false and you know it, or you are unqualified to be doing anything involving any scientific papers.
None of the models, none of YOUR experts claim that.
Flattening the curve does NOT reduce the total number of infections.
It only reduces the total number of deaths if the good medical care reduces the death rate AND the medical system is not overwhelmed.
You may actually be harder on everyone by drawing this out – that includes the doctors and nurses.
Flattening the curve, and slowing the spread, which has been the goal of the shutdown, was never intended to shorten the epidemic ~ just the opposite. Some places have already seen their peak, some not.
Plus, not all states have gathered data in the same way. I just read today, that Governor Northam of VA now says that they will count positive tests, not positive people. Meaning that, if one person is tested 3 times and all of those tests are positive, that will be counted as 3 cases not one.
Many believe that we will have a second wave in September. But I have also read that epidemiologists say that Sweden is highly unlikely to ever have a second wave, because they willhave achieved herd immunity.
So, is it a better idea to flatten the curve, and have the disease hang around longer, or is it better to let it spread and have a more intense, but likely shorter, epidemic. To me, every month that we keep people healthy, is a month closer to having a highly effective treatment. So, allowing uncontrolled spread will kill people who may have been saved, if they stayed healthy longer. We won’t know any of this for quite a while.
By the time we do, the disgusting politics of disease and death in the US will have played themselves out. People awaiting organ transplants will have died, without ever having having had their second shot at life. People who have had to skip chemo treatments will see their treatment plan fail. Heroin addicts in methadone treatment programs, who are being sent home with 5 months of methadone, will have OD’d. People who have taken their own lives, after losing their jobs and losing hope will be long gone, even as those people who insist that this economic shutdown must go on until no one gets a virus are collecting their own paychecks from working remotely.
Do I give a rat’s ass about who Joe Biden or Donald Trump groped twenty years ago?
I
I would like to add to your list of those dieing. Already showing up on Facebook.
The teens that are mentally fragile that isolation throws them the curve ball that strikes rhem out. The loneliness and isolation too much to take an they take their own lives.
But these you list will never be reported as Covid-19’associated deaths. No politician wants to be part of deaths that had clising not occurred, the deaths would not either.
Yes, I care about whether Biden or Trump groped people 30 years ago.
But I care even more about how big a hypocrits they are – and Biden wins that prize.
Two more people have come forward to confirm that Tara Reade told them about sexusal harrassment by Biden – one says they were told in the early 90’s the other in 2008.
Lucky for her she wasn’t facing him!
VP Warren?
I will agree with Warren. We should not direct federal funding on the basis of politics.
In fact the federal government should not provide ANY funding to states at all.
Each state is perfectly capable of deciding what benefits it wishes to provide its citizens and what taxes it needs to impose to do so.
The federal govenrment should not be part of that AT ALL.
I would carry that right down to the municipal level.
Rural residents should pay for those government activities in their own communities.
Their own roads, and schools and courts.
Of the top 10 states in per capita Federal receipts, 7 are blue states.
New National Anthem?
Go for it jay.
Insult people who have lost their jobs, just because they disagree with you.
Absolutely DOUBLE DOWN on calling those you disagree with politically stupid, racist, or now murderers.
Do so with zero actual evidence.
Do it aggressively – from now to election day.
PLEASE!!!!!
Since you’re so in sympathy with them I’ll expect to see you marching with them, shoulder to shoulder, without a mask, and carrying a suave anti Fauci sign.
I will be the one funding the ACLU or whatever organization is supporting there first amendment rights to protest and assemble.
Why do you presume that because I support someone else’s rights, that I agree with their choices ?
Beyond that why do you presume it is more risky to be OUTSIDE in the sun shoulder to shoulder, without a mask ?
I beleive even WHO found that the rate of transmission was 19 time higher indoors than out.
That means that merely being outside is MORE protective, that Gloves a an N95 mask and goggles.
And WHO did not take into account either the UV effects of the Sun or the vitamin D benefits of Sunlight.
No comment other than wonder when You ztube will remove this one.
https://m.youtube.com/watchv=e6lxkofn8_efbclid=iwar3xvmiqog4xwofjehqwa2obwtyrv0lbwirbtycgguvcxth79cr0ypdcgkcfeature=youtu.be
I cant get to it. So maybe now ?
OK think I have finally figured out why stuff from You Tube keeps coming back unavailable. Trying again from desk top computer. If it is posted with an “m” from a mobile device (Amazon Fire tablet) the link never works here.
So lets posts this and see.
OK does anyone question why so many want this asshole out of office and won’t vote for him after they voted for him in 2016. Let anyone appear to overshodow him and he has a shit hemmhorage.
Donald J Trump
@realDonaldTrump
“Oh bye the way, I appreciate the message from former President Bush, but where was he during Impeachment calling for putting partisanship aside.” @foxandfriends He was nowhere to be found in speaking up against the greatest Hoax in American history!
Well, he was nowhere to be found during the impeachment, was he? If I thought that Bush could get Republicans and Democrats to come together in some kind of serious bipartisan effort to get us out of this mess, I would support his statement to the hilt. But I have zero confidence that the Democrats, who called him a war criminal, are going to come around to that way of thinking. They are willing to keep this country in lockdown until November 3rd. Mail-in ballots will be the path to victory.
When Pelosi and Schumer call for us all to come together and support the safe reopening of the country, I’ll believe that things are going to be alright. Until then, I’ll support the President, who is fighting both the pandemic and the attempt to remove him by any means.
Sometimes, assholes speak difficult truths.
Well I hope you know that I am not and never have been a JAY, TDS’er, but when a former president post something apolitical to up morale in the country by posting a video that few could accuse him of being political and the current president makes it personal, that is verging on mental illness. He can not accept anyone taking the attention from him and if they do he throws a tantrum. Barron is probably more mature than his dad in this regard.
Every president that leaves office never steps back into political issues unless requested and that is why 43 never said anything about impeachment.
Heaven help this country when Trump is defeated. He will flood twitter with criticism of Biden from November 3 until the day Trump dies. Twitter will have to buy more servers just to handle the volume of crap he post.
There is LOTS of personal animosity between the Bush family and Trump.
It is NOT a good image for the Bush’s.
And I do want to know where Bush was a few months ago ?
It is increasingly evident Why Obama has not done much to bring about unity.
His administration did what no prior administration EVER did and sabotaged the incoming administration deliberately.
While the Flynn material getting out now is really really really bad for the FBI,
There is an undercurrent that demonstrates this all came from the whitehouse.
Do not be surprised if before we are done Biden or Obama or BOTH are tied to the effort to frame Flynn and investigate Trump.
We know that Yates and Rice and Comey and McCabe and Brennan and Clapper were involved. Do you really think it stopped there ?
Ron, I would never accuse you of having TDS. You defend Trump when his policies and actions deserve defending, and have made it clear that your problem with him is his character and behavior. You are a rarity in today’s world.
There are many people who claim to be like you, but, after you listen to them for a while, you find that they excuse other politicians for the same or worse behavior than Trump. The difference? The other politicians are politically on their “team.” I have read countless articles on what a great “political strategist” Nancy Pelosi is. Heh. She’s an elitist thug, and her only strategies are deception and obstruction. In her political world the end always justifies the means. Chuck Schumer is her lap dog.
And this is my problem with overpraising Bush’s decision to urge bipartisanship, as if both sides have worked and compromised equally so far. That is not remotely true.
Even if one believes that Trump has made serious mistakes ~ and I think that he has~ in handling this crisis, I think that he has shown leadership, the willingness to work with and support every governor, Republican or Democrat, in getting the states what they need, despite their criticism (and, yes, a few have done a lot of ass-kissing to get more money, but reverted back as soon as they could) an unprecendented ability to harness the private sector in getting things done faster and more efficiiently, and, a willingness to bear the responsiblity for his actions, even while he’s being condemned for every single one.
I have yet to see even one national Democrat leader step up and say, “this is not time for partisanship – we need to support and work with the President in this effort. The mudslinging and fightiing can wait for now.'”
That is what Bush said, and he is right. But, we all know that it won’t happen. And we all know why. That is the point that I was making.
Well I am going to have to view this video again to find the politics. What I viewed was something like Bush comments after 9-11 to offset depression and make peoplenfeel better, to recognize those in the mix of this directly or RR ” its morning in America.
So I watched it again. To someone not hell bent on defending Trump or someone hell bent on destroying Trump, there is nothing political in this video. It is simply a former President saying “Stay positive, we will get through this”.
He DID NOT break the unwritten former president code of conduct of criticizing or supporting current president actions like Jimmy Carter has done so often.
Trump just was not getting all the attention for 3-4 minutes and threw a temper tantrum.
The problem is not what Bush has said.
It is what he and his surogates have NOT said, in the past.
Not only were the Bushies not there in this impeachment nonsense.
There were mostly on the wrong side of Trump Russia.
Bush did not do to Obama anything like what Obama did to Trump.
In fact the vast majority if not all cross party transitions in the US have been cordial – despite often enormous ideological differences.
But the Obama administration is different. The modern left is different.
For them those who disagree are “the enemy” and this is total war, and their subjective feelings about their own righteousness and the error of their opponents justifies ANYTHING.
This is what happens when the ends justifies the means.
The Bushies ALL knew or should have known How wrong the actions of the Obama administration were. Yet, from the begining, they were defending the greatest abuse of power in US history and attacking Trump based on claims that only moron’s and duped true believers do not grasp were fraud.
That is the problem with Bush.
Has Trump made serious mistakes handling this ?
Yes.
Would others have done better ?
I am not aware of Bush having dealt with something like this.
But Bush does get credit for setting up the stockpile of PPE that Obama drained and neither Obama or Trump refilled.
We did get to see how Obama dealt with H1N1 and Ebola.
It is evident he would have done worse with this.
Obama was far to slow and deferential to the WHO.
The good news is that in those two instances he lucked out.
I have quasi defended “the experts” here repeatedly over this.
My issue is NOT that they make mistakes. It is that we empower them or politicians to make choices for us.
I do not expect perfection from “the experts”. I expect to be free to make the final decisions MYSELF. I get to choose whether and which experts I choose to rely on.
The first big mistake Trump made was not closing the border soon enough/
That was huge. But I do not think any president would have reacted quicker.
The 2nd big mistake was the “stimulus”. And again I doubt any other president would have done better. Obama foist ARRA on us.
Government Stimulus does not work.
Beyond that – this is an issue for the governors.
Who should have provided advise and stayed out of it.
Dave, “But Bush does get credit for setting up the stockpile of PPE that Obama drained and neither Obama or Trump refilled.”
We who comment on Ricks site are intelligent to not give a President credit for something they probably know nothing about and not criticize them for the same reason.
There is not one CEO for any company of any size that has any information concerning inventory management. There is not one CEO that ask about inventory items until a critical shortage occurs due to some unforseen occurance. Not one hospital CEO is going to get blamed for not having the amount of PPE in inventory for this crisis. Hospitals have maximum levels and reorder levels for normal operations and that is what their supply chain manager is paid for because he is the expert in supply chain management. If, however, they let levels fall below required levels and a crisis occurs, they get fired for incompetence, not the CEO. The boards just insure those responsible are held responsible.
So Bush just had supply chain managers who used up PPE during 9-11, inventory fell below minimum levels, once 9-11 was over, their systems reordered PPE to maximum levels and then the “Obama flu” hit. Supplies were used up and not reordered.
Was that Obama’s fault? Should he have known the levels of PPE required and ordered replenishment? Or is that the responsibility of the government supply chain manager that let this happen that should be fired for cause with lost benefits?
I harp about personal responsibility and expecting people protect themselves. The same is placed on government employees. If you are given a job to do and dont do it, your fired! But that does not happen with government. Just look to the VA health crisis. Leaders were jot fired, just transferred to different hospitals! And too many on the left also dont believe incompetence should be fired.
Ron, the reporting I have heard is that in about 2005, Bush was personally specifically concerned enough about a pandemic that he created a strategic reserve.
I beleive there was even legislation and budgeting – so even Congress gets some credit.
This was aparently NOT contentious so it did not make much news.
As to your assertion – Any CEO who is involved in the procurement of contingency supplies is micro managing.
Any CEO that has not demanded a contingency plan AND reviewed it is derelict.
There are a variety of complexities involved in dealing with contingency planning.
There is no way of knowing the specific contingency that is going to be faced.
As we have learned in this disaster – the Free Market can work miracles in short periods of time. But NOT in Zero time. The speed at which the market can react is dependent on the complexity of the product being delivered.
Alot is made of the fact that Obama used up all the masks in 2009 against H1N1 and did not replace them.
But he did spend the budget for the stockpile. The obama people decided that PPE was less important than things like Vaccines. So they spent the contingency fund on Vaccines.
But vaccines have a 18 month shelf life and must be continually thrown out.
PPE lasts for many years. Vaccines are also only useful if you are lucky enough to get hit with a threat you already have a vaccine for.
At one point I would have said that there should not have been 100M masks, but there should have been 10,000 ventalators. But now it is appearing that Ventalors are nearly useless against Covid19.
Again you have to guess ahead of time what you are going to need in a disaster that you do not know what it will be. You can not afford to prepare for everything.
I think we have not only learned how fast the market can respond but we HAVE to be able to rely on that. It is not possible for govenrment to stock enough of everything to deal with even one crisis much less many possible ones.
The stockpile should have the supplies that will be in high demand and short supply AT THE START. It should be there just to buy time for the market to gear up.
I beleive Obama made a speech recently chastising Partisanship.
I have problems taking him seriously on the issue.
He could have had good deals on numerous issues working with Republicans as president.
There was definitely a deal to be made on immigration and he blew it.
Despite all the bitterly partisan rhetoric, and Pelosi’s ludicrous asks, Trump has actually managed to strike deals with democrats. Obama was never able to do so with Republicans.
Where was Bush during the Impeachment?
As a former president who knew first-hand Trump’s behavior deserved impeachment, his eloquent silence spoke loudly for Trump’s removal.
The Bush family despises Trump, like many other prominent Republican families, because he’s despicable. As do other anti-Trump republicans of note; Members of the Lincoln Club, and their weekly targeted ads, are among my favorites:
You are correct, Jay. Many Republicans despise Trump.
WOW getting to vote in America come November is like choosing between late stage congestive heart failure and cancer.
The Morality of your choices are not determined by the real or imagined immorality of others.
Actual morality is determined by CONDUCT.
While there are some exceptions, there is little doubt that Obama TALKED more presidential than Trump. But his CONDUCT and that of his administration are the worst of any prior administration. Whether it is Fast and Furious, IRS Gate, lying about Benghazi, spying on congress, spying on reporters, or spying on the Trump and possibly Cruz and Rubio campaigns (not NOT the Bush campaign) the Obama administration CONDUCT was immoral.
Please cite anything similar regarding Trump ? Trump’s Policies might offend you, but he has folled the law and the constitution in implimenting them.
Jay,
Pretty much every modern president has leveraged foreign aide for political purposes.
That includes Obama.
There was never anything there.
If you wish to create an actual crime – go ahead. We can prosecute future presidents for it.
That say NO other president besides Obama has ever opened a counter intelligence or criminal investigations against a potential successor EVER.
The most recent Flynn related documents are much more damning than just flynn was framed. They go Beyond Strzok and incorporate the entire upper tier of the FBI as well as DOJ AND most significantly they involve the whitehouse.
It has been CONFIRMED that Acting AG Yates received records of private communications between VP-Elect Pence and his staff. Do you understand how Big a deal that is ?
You would be completely Freaked right now if AG Barr was reading Transcripts of Sen. Harris or Klobuchar’s phone calls.
We further know that the effort to Frame Flynn was NOT driven by personal animus – though we know there was plenty of that, but the entire mess started because the FBI was about to close the investigation of Flynn – they had failed to find anything and they were required to close it. That would necescitate informing Flynn of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigations.
The FBI and DOJ and WH did not start the discussions of Flynn with “how do we frame him”.
They started with “Oh Shit, he is the NSA we are going to have to tell him what we are up to and that is going to blow up in our faces and cover us all with excrement – how do we deal with that”. Obama issued a directive and Rice memorialised it to limit discussions of Russia with incoming Trump administration personel. That bought time but after the inauguration, there was no constitutional means by which the FBI and DOJ could avoid sharing with the new administration what they were up to. And given that FBI was closing the Flynn investigation – because there was nothing there, Flynn was the person they were going to have to tell – the so called defensive briefing that was where the Flynn setup started. And Flynn was the one person in the Trump administration who would understand EXACTLY how wrong what they were doing was, Flynn was a member of the Obama Intelligence community and was already aware that the IC was being missused for political intelligence.
Further most of the incoming Trump administration was inexperienced in intelligence and law enforcement and could possibly be persuaded this was “normal” or atleast that it should not be made public. While Flynn would fully understand how egregious this was.
The direction to “get Flynn” did not come from Strzok, it went atleast as high as Comey and Yates and someone in the whitehouse.
If Trump did every single thing you claim regarding Ukraine and did so with the worst possible intent, he still does not hold a candle to what was done to Trump. \
I would further note that this did not stop with Flynn’s firing. There is zero possibility in the world that Rosenstein. Mueller, and his staff were not ALL fully aware of the criminally corrupt actions they were covering up. The Mueller investigation had three objectives:
The first was to cover up the mess that the Obama administration had started.
The secend was to make it appear legitmate
and the Third was if possible to “get Trump”
I would remind you that Rosenstein and the FBI fought house and senate subpeona’s of everything related to Crossfire Huricane. That they fought them even though Trump ordered the information provided.
I have said before that Mueller knew very early on there was no “there there”.
Remember Horowitz concluded that by Mid Jan’ 2017 there was insufficient basis to continue the investigation – AND that the FBI KNEW THAT. That is significant. Mueller was appointed after that – there is zero possibility in the world that Mueller did not start on nearly day one with the realization that there was no basis for his investigation.
Nothing changed from Mid January until March that created a justification to continue an investigation that had already essentially concluded.
The government does not get to decide – well we found nothing – lets do the whole thing over.
Mueller was not appointed because there was something to investigate.
He was appointed because the FBI and DOJ and lots of other former Obama people were in deep shit because there WAS NOT anything to investigate.
And by “many” Republicans, I mean other GOP politicians. He has wide approval among Republican voters.
Sorry Ron, I actually agree with Trump on this.
GWB calling for unity right now is troubling.
As Trump said – where was he when it mattered ?
Bush calling for unity is troubling?
Good grief. Pardon me while I emote but this is good an instance as any of why I don’t rate Dave’s posts as anything more than high volume nonsense.
No it is hypocritical.
Absolutely he should be calling for unity.
He should have been doing so MUCH earlier.
Trump’s response was appropriate.
Separately there is lots of bad blood between the Bush family and Trump.
Under the circumstances Trump was relatively civil.
NO, Bush should not be getting in the mud with congress and Trump during impeachment!
NO, Trump response was not apropriate. He was throwing a tantrum “BOOHOO, YOU TOOK MY ATTENTION WHA!WHA!WHA! WHA! (Foot stomp, Foot stomp)
I can.picture him rolling around the oval office floor kicking and screaming! ( I need a meme maker!😀)
No one asked him to get into the mud.
Mere calls for unity and sanity at the time would have been enough.
that is what we expect of former presidents.
The Russia nonsense I think demanded a stronger response from Bush.
Though it need not have been “partisan”
Something on the order of “the allegations if true are very serious, at the same time the FBI had better have strong evidence we have not seen to justify the investigation”
Or we must concurrently examine the truth of the allegations and the basis for the investitgation. We can neither have political candidates currying favor from foreign leaders, nor the FBI engaging in politics.
Dave, I agree if this was any other President. But to get to the level of Trump to defend him, you have to get in the mud and get dirty.
And once you do, you have entered the nest where the snake can turn on you in an instant.
If you have a reputation you cherish, you dont waste on defending a snake.
You do not defend Trump.
You defend the rule of law and the constitution.
Dave “You do not defend Trump.
You defend the rule of law and the constitution.”
That’s the problem. Any other president would accept the defense from a former president and keep his mouth shut, happy to have the help. This one would make a big deal of it, make it all about him and not the rule of law and drag Bush down into the mud with Trump.
Just best to stay quite when dealing with this man. Never get into a pissing contest with a skunk!
You cant defend someone when they will not accept the help without making you look bad doing it. Bush would come out with a comment about rule of law, the constitution based reasoning why it was wrong, Trump would make a big deal on a daily news briefing, on twitter how Bush thinks he is innocent, how he is getting screwed, blah blah blah, the news would start attacking Bush and then something a few days later would happen and Trump would give Bush some unflattering nick name and go ballistic on him. Happens regularly, just Trump can’t fire Bush.
none of that matters.
If you really beleive in the constitution, the rule of law, then it applies everywhere all the time.
It applies to democrats. It applies to republicans. It applies to nazi’s and the KKK. ‘
I have protested to allow Nazi’s and the KKK to march in my town.
Then when they did I was part of the protests against them – not against their right to march but against their values.
My wife was sexually assulated several decades ago. Today she is one of the best criminal apelate lawyers in my state and about 1/3 of her clients are sex offenders.
I think the impeachment was a farce. I think it never should have happened – there just was no there there.
REGARDLESS, if Democrats were intent on proceeding they should have done so with due process. From the start to the finish in the Senate the Democrats argument was
We get to make out case – Trump does not get to make his. We get all the witnesses we want – and if we do not get them – then you must presume they would say what we claim they might. Republicans, Trump they get no witnesses. We do not need to here from them.
If Democrats were going to proceed they needed to take what they were doing seriously.
Due process exists for a reason. It is a collection to rules and procedures and rights in the context of court procedings that are designed to improve the odds we reach the truth.
One of the most important things in a court proceding is cross examiniation. Much more important than direct testimony, it is critically important to see how a witness holds up under the most strenuous possible criticism. Nothing close to that took place.
There is no excuse for the mess democrats made of impeachment. Rapists are treated better in their trials.
The Senate never should have held a trial. It should have told the House managers to go back and do their job right. If they wanted more witnesses – they had their own chanmber of congress and their own subpeona power to do so.
Another of the huge fallacies in the impeachment was this constant nonsense about trying to horsetrade. NO! The prosecution is allowed any witness that they can demonstrate to the court will contribute evidence to their case. That is why Prosecutors convene grand juries or interview witnesses BEFORE trials. You do not go to a judge and say the prosecution calls Joe Doe. The judges asks what Will Joe Doe establish and the Prosecutor says I do not know but I hope he will say X. The judge is not going to allow that witness.
There is generally more latitude allowed the defense, But Trump would not have needed latitude to call Hunter and Joe Biden – the answer would be simple. I am going to call Joe Biden to show that he acted unethically and possibly criminally with respect to Ukraine, and I offer as evidence that there is a basis for that testimony Biden’s public remarks.
I am going to call Hunter Biden to testify about his involvement in the Ukraininan investigation against Burisma – and there is plenty of records available to support that investigation existed and that Hunter was involved.
It always was an absolute defense on Trump’s part that reasonable suspicion existed of criminal conduct on the part of the Biden’s.
We have the same issue with the Trump Russia nonsense. Horowitz found (sort of) that the FBI met the minimal standard necescary to open the Trump/Russia investigation.
He also found that each bit of evidence that justified opening that investigation when investigated ultimately fizzled and that absent NEW evidence, the investigation would have to be closed. From July through october new information arrived at the FBI as old claims were disproven. But by Mid January the FBI had disproven all the evidence they had and were required to close the investigation – and they did not.
We see the same thing with Flynn – By Jan 4. the FBI knew there was nothing to the Flynn investigation – yet they kept it open. Not as many of us thought – to “get Flynn” but as we now know because they knew that once they closed the Flynn investigation they had to Inform Flynn as the NSA of the investigation into Trump. The entire discussion that involved Comey and Yates and McCabe that lead to the interview of Flynn was NOT initially about how to “get Flynn’ it was about how to avoid telling Flynn about the Trump/Russia investigation.
Ultimately the decision to try to get him fired or catch him in a lie, had nothing to do with their investigation of him, but was to prevent him from looking at their investigation of Trump.
I would note that not only was the FBI required to close the Flynn investigation, but the evidence had been exhausted in the Trump investigation too.
This was not even about hiding from Flynn an ongoing investigation into Trump.
It was about hiding that this ill conceived weakly based investigation had ever occured in the first place.
I would further note that AG Barr thinks that Horowitz’s conclusion that the investigation started reasonably was in error. I stronhly suspect that is because there is alot of evidence the investigation started in December 2015 – not July 2016. That it started against 3 Republicans not one, and that it started without any basis. We know that Halper was run against the Papadoulus and Page Before July. Essentially the FBI and/or inteligence community was running an off the books without basis investigation BEFORE the FBI officially opened an investigation.
That is what Flynn was likely to discover and that the Obama administration was trying to protect.
The point is that following th rules matters.
“You cant defend someone when they will not accept the help without making you look bad doing it.”
Of course you can, defense attorneys do it thousands of times a day.
I would further note that Derschowitz has made it clear that He is not a Trump fan, did not vote for him and will not. And disagrees with Trump on lots of things.
But he still defended him – and Trump did not come up with some rude name or bash him.
Not that it would matter if he did.
Dave ““You cant defend someone when they will not accept the help without making you look bad doing it.”
Of course you can, defense attorneys do it thousands of times a day.”
Yeah right. And district attorneys are throwing tantrums and reporters are writings and TV news are reporting these thousands of times a day also.
You said that it was not possible.
It clearly is.
Not only that, but it is actually nobel.
We defend rights, and principles, not individuals. That is how the rule of law works.
Damn word parsing!
Sorry I am not as specific in my comments, but I seem to be in the large group of individuals that look at situations and not words.
If Bush says X, Trump reacts and makes it about him, media reacts and accuses Bush of defending Trump. most Americans are going to look at it as presented by the media.
If most Americans knew and cared anything about the constitution we would not have the idiots in congress, the over reach of government and the infringement on rights we have today. Defending the consitution is not big and understanding that defense when media makes everything political would never be understood.
“I don’t rate Dave’s posts as anything more than high volume nonsense.”
Robby, it is clear from your reaction to my remarks on Sweden that when your read posts – particularly mine, that you do so through a lense that misses what is actually there and sees what is not.
That is fine, you are free to read, or not read,
But when you criticise you do have an obligation to criticise my actual positions.
Not your straw men.
Because you can not do that.
Why should I care what you think of my posts ?
You have not read them.
To the extent you have, it is clear you read things that were not there, and missed what was.
In fact you generally seem to be unable to understand any post that is outside of your own values without presuming it fits some Rachel Maddow distorted version of Sean Hannity
“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion… Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them…he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”
John Stuart Mill
Here is a modern Translation of Mill’s classic “On Liberty”. It is only 25 pages, with lots of pictures. But it is possibly the most important 25 pages ever written on freedom – and specifically free speech.
Mill is generally regarded as on of the 20 most intelligent people who ever lived.
About 25 points higher than Einstein.
https://heterodoxacademy.org/library/all-minus-one/
Dave keeps discussing light, heat, location, etc.
Here is some additional info concerning cases. But the more interesting info is at the end under title 188 thoughts.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/05/03/who-is-at-risk-from-the-chinese-virus-some-hard-data-at-last-coronavirus/
The issue with vitamin D has support for what Dave has been talking about.
And if you have older friends, suggesting they discuss 5000iu dosage daily with their doctor may make a difference should they catch this virus.
There is a difference between proof and probability.
But Vitamin D is strongly linked to the immune system and it naturally declines with age.
And in addition to the fact that Sunlight has virus and germ killing UV, it ALSO a gives a huge boost to V-D.
Further we have have a clear north-south variation in Fatality in the US, and Florida is not called the Sunshine state for nothing.
Regardless there is little harm if you are in a risk group of dosing up on V-D.
It is good for you no matter what.
And while in theory V-D can be overdosed on, I have read studies that doses as high as 80,000 units a day are NOT too high.
But for the cautious – the recomended dose for older adults is 5000 units a day.
It also may make a difference in whether you catch the virus.
I keep trying to tell everyone – whatever the Infection rate is – whether it is less than 1%, 5% 20% or …, there is some natural limit.
Outside of models no virus ever infects 100% of the population.
Some portion of the population is either completely immune for unknown reasons or sufficiently resistant that they get at most mild infections.
That is not Covid19 specific that is just normal epidemeology.
Fromm the moment that Covid19 did NOT infect all of Wuhan. It has been likely that there is some natural limit to the portion of the population that can get it.
We do not need to know that the reason is V-D or prior corona virus infection to accept that 100% of us will not get this.
The fact that what we are seeing in Sweden and much of the rest of the world is very similar,
means that that limit is either the result of a common response – like social distancing,
or common natural limits – like some form of natural immunty from some unknown at this time cause.
One of my doctors told me to start taking 5000iu of D, 500-1000 mg of C and zinc. This was when I got sick. He also recommended a z-pac (which I already had from my promary), because he said that azithromycin has antiviral properties. He said that, if he could, he would prescribe hydroxychloroquine, but, like my primary had said, the recommendation right now is to reserve that for hospitalized patients only.
I’ve continued with the supplements. I may cut back soon on the D, to 2000-3000 ius instead of 5000, now that I’m well, and the sun is stronger.
Many docs believe that it is an overwhelming immune system response, causing what’s known as a “cytokine storm” that causes patients to die, not the actual virus. https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200417/cytokine-storms-may-be-fueling-some-covid-deaths They say that the respiratory problems they see are more like altitude sickness than pneumonia, in that blood oxygen levels drop, even if the patient is not initially short of breath. My doctor told me to use an oximeter every day, and call immediately if my blood oxygen reading went below 90%. It never went below 97.
Most of what I read and see on the news is fear-mongering. I’m starting to doubt the motives of some of these reporters…
I started taking 5000 D a week ago; now thinking of taking it ever other day. Pills are tiny, they don’t look at all menacing In dosage 😚
Zinc is generally good for the immune system. So is V-D. Az alone is purportedly as effective as Hcq alone. But together they are twice as effecitve. Remedsivir appears to be twice as effective again.
I am surprised that he was limiting Hcq this is a cheap abundant drug that is not in short supply.
Pretty much all the media/left objections to Hcq are medical bullshit.
In the doses and duration used for Covid19 Hcq has less than a 1:1000 chance of side effects. It is OTC in most of the world. A simple ekg can reduce the 1:1000 risk by another factor of 1000. WHO – you know those guys, list it as one of the 100 most important and most safe drugs in the world.
Hcq has nearly disappeared from US discussion – though 17% of US cases are being treated with Hcq – that is one of the lowest rates in the World. In Germany it is over 50% and they have a lower fatality rate. In some places it is 80%
Remedsivir is ridiculously expensive and there is pretty much zero possibility of its being broadly available.
I would do your own research on V-D. I am taking 5000iu. I will be looking into upping that.
V-D is fat soluable, which means you can theoretically OD on it. But it is hard for the body to absorb, and I have heard doses as high as 80000iu not being a problem.
The recomendations for V-D have jumped dramatically recently.
and it is particularly important as we get older.
The other choice is get lots of sun.
Reporting should have nothing to do with motives.
The fact that it does is exactly what is wrong with reporting today.
Facts are facts. Spin belongs in editorials.
Priscilla, been researching Vit-D. Found out that even at very high doses it tales 2+ months to actually build up in the blood stream where it actually has some defense against Covid-19.
So your beginning to take it did jot have time to work.
That is a good reason to use a high dose.
My Wife had a deficiency. It took her a long time to build up to normal levels.
She can not get to above normal levels.
Ron, I’ve been supplementing with D for a while, but only at 2,000 iu’s. I started years ago, because I use sunscreen every day, all year round (Irish- English skin, couldn’t tan if I wanted to!) . So I upped it recently, and will likely drop back.
Are you finding in your research that it’s a good idea to supplement with higher doses for immunity? Maybe I’ll stick with the 5000 iu’s…
Not good. New CDC forecast based in new modeling. JHU modeling even exceeds this.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/forecasting-us.html
135,000 deaths by Aug 4.
Good charts under the state charts pdf.
I think Models are incredibly important.
BUT we must know how and what to use them for. What they are good at and what they are not.
My attacks on the lockdown are based on three factors – the models. the real world data, the core thesis to flattening the curve.
I think it is stupid to assume the models will tell us how many will die.
But they can tell us the RELATIVE effect of different responses.
The 3B1B modeling on Youtube in almost all scenarious predicts near 100% infection.
That is clearly wrong. No epidemic has Ever done that but the 3B1B models produce 100% infection eventually for every disease with an R0 over 1.
Still 3B1B does prodict the approximate effects of different mitigations.
Lock downs do not work. They do not change the death rate, they do not change the infection extent.
All they do is buy time and reduce the level of infection at any given time.
And that is what the theory behind lockdowns assumes.
It uses lockdowns to reduce the number of severe cases that a hospital has to deal with so that IF there is effective intervention, more people will survive because they got better care.
The number of lives saved depends on the effectiveness of the intervention.
We are seeing that the US is doing better than Italy – so that means our level of care is saving lives.
Maybe 50% more than Italy – that is a big deal.
That presumes that the US and Italy are at nearly the same point on the curve.
And that is false. Italy’s new cases are 1/6 of its peak.
US New cases are maybe 20% less than the peak.
Until the new cases is a small fraction of the peak for a significant time, there is a 14-21 day lag between infection and death and the death rate will be artificially low.
Our death rates are WRONG, but they are wrong in what is likely to be a uniform global error.
That means that even if the US death rate is 1/10 the current number – so is italy’s so we can compare based on current data knowing it is wrong.
The error does not matter (for THIS comparison) so long as it is close to uniform.
Regardless, I think it is reasonable to assume that the US healthcare system is doing about 25% better than Italy.
But it is also reasonable to assume that it would do the same with 5 times as many cases per day.
And that is why the lockdown is not working.
It is highly unlikely that without the lockdown we would get 5 times as many cases per day and overwhelm the system.
Anyway this is an example of something the models are good at.
Predicting total numbers of deaths is NOT.
https://www.covid19insweden.com/en/
Their graphs appear to be going the right way and since their environment has not been restricted. I wonder since Sweden appears to be behind us in cases as percent of population if this is due to climate, people being more spread out in living and working conditions or the wzy they are handling the virus. Or all three.
If you look at the data from all over the world – while there are a few specific places that look unique, for the most part there are only a few patterns. Primarily those places that have an approximately bell shaped curve – which are typically those without a lockdown or that locked down late. and those with a long flattened curve – those with lockdowns.
Mostly those with bell(ish) curves also have inadequate medical systems and higher death rates.
flattened curves mean fewer new case per day, and fewer deaths per day – OVER MORE DAYS. The end result is still the same number of infections and the same number of deaths.
There are a bunch of anomalies that we much look into.
Germany has had a very low fatality rate – Why ?
As has Norway and Finland, while Belgium and Denmark have had high fatality rates.
Sweden is very comparable to the US. But does not look good compared to its neighbors.
But Norway and Sweden have significant differences in their elder care.
There is strong evidence that higher latitudes are getting hit harder, that the northern hemisphere is CURRENTLY getting hit harder.
And that more dense populations get hit harder.
But these trends are not perfect.
There is lots of information contained in comparing trends, but doing so more than coarsely will require each of the datasets to run to completion, and much better data on actual infection rates. At this time Case Fatality rates are meaningless. We do not know the infection rate. Deaths per Million are more useful – but only in comparing contries that have taken similar approaches.
It is entirely possible that the right strategy for a country or state or even locality is not the same.
As an example, it is probable that a short lockdown would be wise from low lattitude northern hemisphere countries – stalling COVID19 until the sun wiped it out might be an exceelent strategy. But Higher latitude countries might not have that luxury – it will take longer and the sun will never be as strong in Sweden as Florida.
But we will not know the optimal strategy for each country until after this is over.
I do not think cases as a percent of population is a useful metric AT THIS TIME.
Testing is so radically different accross the globe and we KNOW that we are radically under reporting total infections.
If a medical system is modern and not overwhelmed and the care is approximately the same, and there are no unique issues like large elderly population or high latitude, I think we can compare death rates per million population and those will tell us the comparative infection rate.
As an example Sweden has slightly more deaths per million than the US, that likely means they have slightly more cases as a percent of total population.
Absent differences in treatment or differences in demographics – older or less healthy populations, the death rate should be uniform. If it is not, that likely means a higher current percent of infections. in the GP.
Tyson Foods warns of massive meat shortages, because of the shutdown of meat processing plants.
(Ron, you should be able to read this ~ I did not hit a paywall. If you do, you can probably access through Reuters)
This, as we read more stories about farmers killing chicken and livestock because the meat cannot get to market. We are destroying our own food supply chain, and we are currently buying meat from other countries.
But, electoral politics demands that we inflate the infection and death rates of covid19, while ignoring the destruction of the American economy.
Smithfield Foods, by the way, is owned by China. The pork processing plant that Gove. Kristi Noem refused to close in South Dakota quickly faced the biggest cluster of coronavirus in the country. In a state that had virtually no cases. You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to wonder…..
We have just had a outbreak in a rural county 40 miles west at the base of the Blue Ridge moutains. Tyson foods has a chicken processing plant since Wilkes County (Home of Junior Johnson, Moonshine and birthplace if many NASCAR racers) is a large county with many chicken farms.
The issues with food packing plants are language barriers where workers are not getting complete info on safety, risk and other issues via news, large numbers of family members in multi family houses and close living conditions within communities. This outbreak has increased our county cases from 3-4 a day to 15-20 cases per day and most workers live in other counties.
The other issue is working conditions. And that is the problem and the idiot politicians who closed down states did not address where problems really existed. Nursing Homes. N.C. did not address N.H’s until after cases were introduced. Meat packing plants were not addressed
until after cases began showing up. Then the plastic barriers went up, lunch areas sectioned off, temps taken, etc. Residential living did not restrict visits until virus was gaining strength.
Politicians have killed the economy and done little to impact the virus. I have to apologize for my attack on Fauci when I criticized his comment about 200,000 deaths. Looks like that might happen because restricting people from parks and beaches made no difference and avoiding environments conducive to the spread was ignored until it was too late.
The indoor transmission rate is apparently 19 times higher than outdoors.
One of the problems with this from the beginning is that WE DO NOT KNOW ENOUGH.
And we can not until it is all over.
I think that the lockdowns are a very bad choice. That they will have little or no impact on the total number of deaths or the total number of people infected.
Outside of italy and spain no modern healthcare system has even come close to overwhelmed. Absent that there will be no difference over the long run in deaths.
Only in the short run.
But I could be wrong. One of the strong lessons that should be gleaned from this is HOW LITTLE WE KNOW.
That is NOT some failure of experts – they are doing their best.
But making decisions for EVERYONE by FORCE based on expert oppinions that for all their good faith and expertise are near certain to be wrong is a MISTAKE.
When you can not know that you are making the right choice – you can not make that choice for others by FORCE.
“WE” knowing is not the issue.
Trained individuals in infectious diseases, etc are the ones who should be making guidelines.
Conditions in other countries provided a roadmap to create guidelines early.
1. Seniors and people with medical conditions most vulnerable…Guidelines: restrict visitors, insure PPE available, test employees, screen employees for symptoms in residential living and Nursing Home settings.
2. Close community settings most infectious. Guidelines: Industries with close proximity of co-workers need partitions, limited close contact (6ft separation) in common areas like breakrooms, PPE ,employee daily screening of symptoms.
And anyone can look at a handful of other situations had they been addressed early in most states, many of the restrictions we have today would not have been required.
Yes,I do not live in your total libertarian world. Had industry addressed issues themselves when this started there would be much less problems in meat packing plants today. They did not, so more cases exist and its costing them more now because they are now required to do what they could have done voluntarily plus the lost revenues from closures and slowdowns.
So long as “guidelines” have no force behind them – then it is your Choice who makes the guidlines you follow.
There are some edge cases. Those who are incompetent to make their own decisions – to young, too senile, …. are more complex. I do not have perfect answers there.
Many parents and caregivers for incapacitated people are really bad. But government stepping in is not so hot either.
But you have to right to force decisions on competent adults.
You say something would not have been required – based on what ?
While I may not think the experts as incompetent and evil, There is no one at this point whom we can even in retrospect say “got this right”
I am not even sure that the evidence exists that social distancing did any good.
I would have chosen to do so myself. But I am not sure that the data supports it.
So when you say that But for X, restrictions would not have been required – what data supports you that any restriction has been beneficial ?
Just to be clear I am not telling you you CAN NOT follow some “common sense” guidelines.
I am telling you that you can not apply anything by force without proving it effective, and thus far very little has proven effective.
Dave “So when you say that But for X, restrictions would not have been required what data supports you that any restriction has been beneficial ?”
Really Dave, Haven’t you read my comments? Haven’t I said many times what was done has not worked? Why are you asking me “what data supports you that any restriction has been beneficial ?” Dave, Are you just assuming some fact that has not been offered in any discussion just to debate something that should not even be in the conversation?
So again I will repeat myself and please pay attention and write this down if you can’t remember this. Nothing that any governor has done in any state that has locked down the economy is going to be proven effective and the same outcome at the end of the day will be the same had we left open the economy with suggested guidelines for people to follow..
OK now for my less libertarian beliefs in “force”. You state force should not be used unless those who would be harmed are unable to make changes and protect themselves.
So I have addressed Nursing Homes, Residential Living Homes and meat packing plants.
We have three groups.
Sick elderly
Well or fragile elderly
Mostly illegal immigrants unable to read and speak english
How much more unable to protect yourself than to be laying in a bed, unable to provide for yourself than those in Nursing Homes? and don’t tell me all nursing home operators have the patients safety in mind with the hundreds of stories yearly about nursing home conditions and many being closed due to piss poor conditions.
Next, even though the Residential Living elderly might be mobile, can they really just up and leave where they are if they decide its unsafe. Do they revolt? How? Where would they go? How would they get there? Who would they get to fix food for them? Tell me if your 80+ years old and need assisted living you can tell the residential living people to piss off, your leaving.
Last, meat packing plants. Yes these people are mobile. They can decide to quit their jobs. But many do not even know the danger they are in. Remember they don’t speak english and many believe what their employer is telling them which may not always be true. And they are afraid to change jobs because they may not find another, they have multiple generations to support and uncle Sam is itching to send them back to their home country. Only when they recognize the danger do they walk off the job and that is not all of them that do it.
These, along with the MTA workers and those like them were the ones I was addressing with the need for government oversight to insure safety. That was not done because government wants to control the masses, not just the select few they could help. As for the MTA workers, they should have gone out on a wildcat strike and told their union leaders that were not listening to them to piss off. Maybe when essential workers had to find alternative way to work, De Blasio might have listened instead of playing politics with the issues.
The guidelines I suggested that were needed may or may not have mitigated the outbreaks, but it would have only impacted work safety and patient safety and nothing else in limited settings. Developing those guidelines with the expert advisors from healthcare, infectious control and residential living would have a much better chance of being effective than trying to address a need impacting 75% of our GDP that had little beneficial impact and huge negative impacts.
Doing what you suggest, doing nothing has led to thousands dying in nursing homes and residential living homes when just a few changes may have decreased that considerably. AND THE KEY WORD IS “MAY”
If what was done has not worked, then how is the use of force justified because according to you private actors did not fully succeed ?
Yes, I have read your comments. I am contesting the argument that because you might accidentally kill yourself, government is allowed to kill you.
“Nothing that any governor has done in any state that has locked down the economy is going to be proven effective and the same outcome at the end of the day will be the same had we left open the economy with suggested guidelines for people to follow..”‘
I think you are correct, I think the data we have already confirms that.
But my point it that you can not force even a single person to do what you want – using a “greater good justification” unless you can a priori prove the greater good.
You certainly can not when a posteriori you fail to deliver the greater good.
Meat packers.
AGAIN, I do not care if they know the danger they are in.
AGAIN, that is a sound basis for a TORT, where government is the ADJUDICATOR or more acuratorly the enforcer. A jury adjudicates.
I have major problems with our courts – especially the mess we have made of them over the past 100 years. But I far more trust the courts, than bureaucrats.
I would note. I am FOR open borders (though not uncontroled ones) I am just opposed to giving you the rights of citizenship simply because you crossed a line.
I would also note I am libertarian NOT conservative.
I think that Unions have been disasterous in this country.
But so long as the government plays no role except preventing violence and enforcing agreements. I have zero problems with workers organizing.
That would include MTA or the Meat packers.
I would note that Ceasar Chavez did so quite successfully 40 years ago.
There is one huge difference between what you suggest and what I offer.
Across the board, your approaches do not work unless people are close to perfect.
You care that Faucci has made mistakes. I do not. I expect that. I care that force is going to be use to impliment some versions of Faucci’s advice.
I am not proposing perfection, and what I propose does not require human perfection.
I do not expect perfect outcomes. I just expect that to the largest extent possible bad outcomes will directly impact those who made bad choices – and not everyone else.
I do not expect each of us to be equally wise and able to make good decisions for ourselves.
But I do expect – and the evidence demonstrates, that individual freedom does produce the best overal outcome.
“Doing what you suggest, doing nothing has led to thousands dying in nursing homes and residential living homes when just a few changes may have decreased that considerably. AND THE KEY WORD IS “MAY””
It did ? Thousands did die in Nursing homes – of the failures of government.
NY as an example sent “recovered” Covid patients back to the same nursing home they came from – with foreseable results.
Florida quarantined recovered seniors.
BTW I am not opposed to quarantining people who ARE SICK and a danger to others,
I do not care whether you live in a pure libertarian world.
You have no moral right to use force without justification.
That is not a difficult issue. If you actually disagree – you could easily make a good argument to refute that.
I do not know what problems you think went unaddressed.
I saw lots of different businesses all trying to find their way to something that worked, for them, their customers, and their employees.
Some did better than others. Or worked out answers faster – so what ?
Even to this moment government is not even close to anything that is actually better.
The disasters happening in the institutional foods industries are perfect examples.
Or the idiocy of not being able to by paint or gardening supplies.
With enough time government will improve the way it manages the “lockdown”
But exactly the same it true in reverse – With sufficient time individuals and businesses will coalexce arround solutions that work.
But there is a BIG difference. The voluntary solution:
Is sustainable, – because it is voluntary.
And will automatically adapt. If things get worse people will restrict themselves more.
If it improves they will relax standards automatically.
That does not happen in a government solution.
Mistakes get made either way. But outside of government mistakes are self correcting.
Inside government fixing them is slow and difficult.
“They did not, so more cases exist and its costing them more now because they are now required to do what they could have done voluntarily plus the lost revenues from closures and slowdowns.”
Of the assertions in your statement which ones can you demonstrate ?
More cases exist because of some action of private individuals or business ? Really ?
Prove that ?
ALL US Cases exist because our government allowed this into the country.
You say that there should be consequences – what are the consequences for that failure ?
If we are not to trust ourselves or businesses because of private failures – why should we trust government because of far larger public failures ?
In this case YOU are harder on the government experts than I am.
I think they have done the best they could. That does not mean they have been RIGHT – about much of anything.
Because I worked in healthcare finance and know reacting to a situation instead of proactive addressing an issue cost more money. Just the malpractice insurance increase will offset any savings of doing nothig.
“Because I worked in healthcare finance and know reacting to a situation instead of proactive addressing an issue cost more money.”
As a generalization that is false. It is SOMETIMES true. It is not always. We have already been through this before Insurance with few exceptions does not change health. it changes financial security.
“Just the malpractice insurance increase will offset any savings of doing nothig.”
So long as insurance is voluntary and private – I do not care what your insurance company demands Building code originated with insurance companies – I have no problem with that. They now are the domain of municipalities – that is wrong.
I can say the economy is incredibly complex and intertwined, but the fact is that all of modern life in a modern society is complex and intertwined.
It is not possible to run down a list of businesses and check which are “essential” and which are not. Each business is unique, and it interrelates to other businesses in unique ways.
Even such factors as how long can a given business be disrupted before it shifts from unprofitable to collapse is unique.
An actually free market can dynamically adjust to disruptions.
Force shutdowns are not a free market.
There is little that farmers and ranchers can do to address the near complete shutdown of meat packers.
And once they start slaughtering animals the recovery time grows exponentially.
We keep hearing this nonsense about we are shutting down the economy to keep people from dying.
That is a lie, we already know that we are unlikely to exceed the capacity of the healthcare system. And absent that the number of deaths will be the same, they will just occur more slowly.
But the economic damage is real and increases exponentially with time.
Soon we may be facing food shortages, with no short term prospects of correction.
The economy is our lifeblood.
To those of you demanding to continue the lockdown.
How do you think that will work when the store shelves are empty ?
The free market can work miracles, but a shutdown market is NOT a free market.
“certainly not intended.”
https://www.dailywire.com/news/dozens-dead-after-lockdown-measures-delayed-their-heart-surgeries-health-official-certainly-was-not-intended
Need modeling in USA for this and we need new cause of deatb classification.
” X due to delayed diagnostic medical procedures ” or something like this to distinguish any death resulting from delayed surgeries or diagnostic procedures like breats biopsy’s. How many women will die from breast cancer because their breadt surgery is delay a couple minths?
Just got home. Will be there in 5-10
Hahaha! That was a text to my daughter. Sent via wrong reply!
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
NYT is correct that the number of deaths will be far greater than the number of people dying from Covid19 infections.
But the vast majority of those other deaths will be from the LOCKDOWN, not the virus.
Dave “But the vast majority of those other deaths will be from the LOCKDOWN, not the virus.”
That is why I said we need a new classification for deaths so we can report deaths due to unrelated medical conditions due to Covid-19 so people see the impact and data is available when dimwit politicians want to do this in the future.
We will likely know all the things you want us all to be able to know – by the time we no longer care and miss the fact that little or nothing we did worked and that in all likelyhood we made things worse.
regardless the metrics you are after will exist in due time.
The problem with crisises is that the date we need in the quality we need does not and can not exist until after we need it.
The unintended consequences of this will increase exponentially with time.
The difficulty recovering will increase exponentially with time.
While Trump was correct in noting that the recession is not the consequence of a failure of the economy and therefore recovery should be rapid, that is only true so long as the damage to the economy is minimal during the shutdown.
And it should be obvious – you can not fix this with MONEY.
You can pay the unemployed all you want. If Doctors do not perform surgeries – people die or suffer.
If dairy farmers pour milk down the drain – we have no milk.
If meatpackers close and ranchers slaughter their cows – meat will be short for a long time.
We are going to get a huge lesson in the fact that MONEY IS NOT WEALTH, very very soon.
What is not produced DOES NOT EXIST.
These damn conservatives and republicans!!
We should absolutely beleive this man!!!!
Frightening and depressing to those of us who lived in NYC and rode those trains daily…
Gilda is clearly unhappy with her job. She has a long list of demands.
She should tell here Bosses – MTA btw is GOVERNMENT, that if she does not get what she wants she is quitting.
From the story, it appears her union is not backing her either.
She should probably threaten to quit that too.
Regardless the global and US death rates for those under 40 are the same as the Flu – or lower.
From 40-50 it is double the flu – but still very low.
From 50 to 60 it is 5 times the flu – and if Gilda is in the 50-60 range – probably she should stay home. If Gilda is over 60 – she should not get anywhere near a subway, not for work or anyother reason.
Trump in smuck-mode Once again:
Do you see anyone wearing a face mask ?
Do you see anyone withing 2m of anyone else ?
We are increasingly certain that Covid19 is not “aerosole” – like Measles.
I.e. you can not get it by walking through the air a person who has it has breathed out.
That it is transmitted through actual droplets – either the spray in a cough or the contact with infected moisture on a surface.
I would also guess that Secret service tested anyone who was going to get close to trump a few days before and took their temperature before he met with them.
It’s the message, dummy.
The WORKER at a FACE MASK MFG is wearing a mask. The execs are not. Trump is not. Message: if you’re ‘entitled’ (nurses taking your temperature) you’re exempt from safety rules everyone else is required to follow.
And if those executives had visited without Trump, do you think they would have been mask free? Trump surely demanded no masks or no visit.
And medical experts world-wide disagree about airborne transmission. If it’s only transmissible via spittle particles from coughs and sneezes why has the virus spread so easily between people?
I am glad it is obvious to you that the worker is wearing a mask.
It is not to me.
Regardless everyone is 2M apart.
BTW global data is now showing that the infection rate outside of the home is less than half of inside the home.
Yes, we all know you are fixated on “the message”.
I guess Cuomo sent a “message” to NY Nursing homes when he forced them to take infected patients. resulting in unusually high nursing home deaths in NY – a policy that continues.
Keep that “messaging” up.
BTW I will note this is something that WOULD NOT have happened but for the lockdown.
In this instance Cuomo, Government and the lockdown are LITTERALLY killing people – lots of them.
But Hey, Trump is not wearing a mask – lets impeach him again!!
“And if those executives had visited without Trump, do you think they would have been mask free? Trump surely demanded no masks or no visit.”
Because you beleive so ? Do you EVER have evidence for your assertions ?
“And medical experts world-wide disagree about airborne transmission. If it’s only transmissible via spittle particles from coughs and sneezes why has the virus spread so easily between people?”
Actually there is not that much disagreement on this. Truly airborne virus’s – like measles, have R0’s that are 10 times higher.
Covid 19 appears to be just about the most contageous droplet borne virus we have seen.
But it does not read the levels of contageon of a truly airborn virus.
And the virus DOES NOT spread that easily between people.
It just spreads more than the flu typically does.
If you have a random encounter with an actively infected person on the street, without a mask and no social distancing – but not prolonged exposure, your odds of being infected are 0.45%.
If you have a person living with you that is infected – your odds up to just under 20% of getting infected.
If you are working with an infected person your odds are less than half that of living with them.
Despite our complete terror of airtravel at the moment data on transmission on airlines is that you had to have had contact with the infected person. If you were merely seated nearby but not adjacent, you did not get infected.
This despite the fact that we know that airplanes are very effective disease transmitters.
I am sure if you work hard enough you can find an “expert” that disagrees.
We have LOTS of competing expert oppinions.
But contra your claim – though Covid 19 is very contageous, it is not near as contageous as actually airborne viruses.
Information like this is important as it impacts choices.
Masks while better than nothing are much less effective against airborne viruses.
But even crappy masks are very effective against droplet viruses.
This also means gloves and eye protection are more effective.
But beleive whatever you want.
“OK now for my less libertarian beliefs in “force”. You state force should not be used unless those who would be harmed are unable to make changes and protect themselves.”
Not exactly. But I suspect you grasp my meaning. I am talking about children, and and I am talking about cognitively impaired adults. And they are a really messy group.
If there is someone who is legally responsible for them – such as a parent, or guardian, absent a clear failure on their part, the state should NOT get involved. It is not the states responsibility to decide the “best interests” of the child or incapacitated person.
It is the states responsibility to determine if the care giver is abusing their charge, and if so whether that abuse is worse than state intervention.
The real world record of state intervention is horrid. But there are really evil parents and guardians.
“So I have addressed Nursing Homes, Residential Living Homes and meat packing plants.
We have three groups.
Sick elderly
Well or fragile elderly
Mostly illegal immigrants unable to read and speak english”
Just on the descriptions above – the state is not justified in interference with any of these.
I do not care about physical incapacity.
I have specifically focused on cognition.
And even where a persons cognitive abilities are insufficient – the State STILL can not intervene, where there is a legal guardian that is not seriously abusing them OR (with adults) that person has made clear their wishes when cognitively able and the responsible party is not following them.
Just so you are clear – there is a very narrow set of circumstances in which the state cane intervene EVEN for the impaired.
“How much more unable to protect yourself than to be laying in a bed, unable to provide for yourself than those in Nursing Homes?” – alot.
” and don’t tell me all nursing home operators have the patients safety in mind with the hundreds of stories yearly about nursing home conditions and many being closed due to piss poor conditions.” A dispute with a nursing home over a persons care is either a breach of contract, a tort or in rare instances a crime. Except the later the state does not initiate action.
One of the areas I am very NOT conservative – is I have zero problems with lawyers prowling the halls of nursing homes looking for clients to file suit for them.
BUT, either the person must be cognitively impaired, and NOT in the legal care of another, or they must consent to representation.
I do NOT want the state stepping in – aside from as the adjudicator, except in the instance of actual crimes.
This is exactly the type of vaccine that BioHackers told Reason 6 weeks ago they could have today – but fo the FDA
Based on data, we know that nursing homes , ALONE, account for an enormous percentage of the coronavirus deaths in many states. Connecticut, for example, last week, reported 90% of their covid19 deaths were in nursing homes. Pennsylvani reports 70% nursing homes and long term care facilities. Out of 3012 total deaths in PA, 2029 are from those facilities.
https://www.courant.com/coronavirus/hc-news-coronavirus-80percent-deaths-20200506-fuhlhtusajb7dd7p6sf5xekl54-story.html
This is generally true throughout the nation. We’ve also seen that the infection rate in prisons is sky high, often 80-90%- and several Democrat governors have used that percentage to release prisoners, often violent felons, into the population, I haven’t heard anything about Paul Manafort, but I do know that Michael Cohen, who never physically hurt anyone, had his release cancelled.
What the hell is going on, here, and why are we being manipulated like this? It seems to me that the effort to ratchet up the death rate, in order to justify crashing the economy beyond the point of salvation, is what we’re seeing. Coould there be another reason? If so, I’d like to know what it is.
Why jail people who go to church, open up their businesses, and sit on the beach, while murderers, child molesters, rapists and gang bangers are being let out on the street? Why use SWAT teams to get people from congregating large groups, even when it’s outdoors in the sun on a beautiful day? Why jail a hairdresser, who has been taking customers in her home, because she needs the money?
Inquiring minds want to know. Jay, I’ll grant you that the President of the US went somewhere without a mask. Now let’s discuss other things.
Recent data on infections globally is showing a very consistent story throughout the world
Children are 300% LESS likely to get infected that adults.
Additionally they are 300% LESS likely to spread this.
There is also a factor of 3 increase in spread rate for people in a household as opposed to all other contacts.
Both the infection rate and the spread rate increase linearly with age.
So this is more lethal to the elderly, more contagious to the elderly, and more easily spread by the elderly. This is why getting it in an old folks home is so bad.
Regardless, it is appearing to be quite stupid to have closed schools.
We should note that though 71K people in the US have died, the number under 40 is only a couple of hundred.
It is increasingly clear we have followed the WRONG strategy.
That we should have focused on “herd immunity” for those under 40, and severe self quarantine for those over 60.
These patterns also increase the likelyhood that V-D is a significant factor.
It also explains why this is not infecting everyone. The vast majority of younger people are naturally either immune or atleast highly resistant to infection.
Those in government are ALWAYS going to behave badly in situations like this.
Priscilla, would be nice if we could recruit some more active users of Rick’s site and have some debate on issues and not full out arguements and complete disagreements. You and I are closer in policies, but still have differences and sometimeswe shift thinking based on the others debate points. I can also, but rarely, accept Daves libertarian extreme positions. Jay is so targeted on anti-Trump tweets finding debate with reposted tweets is impossible. And Roby is reasonable in his positions and can offer reasonable arguements, but is only a part time user.
Your comments about nursing homes and other communal living( ie prisons, residential living) gives me relief from thinking I am out in center field all by myself. ( Avoiding “left/right)
Now we have a clear case of “blood on his hands”.
This should be the end of Cuomo – though unfortunately I doubt it.
Most everywhere is NOT returning Covid19 patients to highly at risk populations.
FL specifically prohibited it.
NY FORCED it.
Explains why so many deaths in NY
https://nypost.com/2020/05/05/this-nursing-home-disaster-is-on-you-gov-cuomo-goodwin/
Well at least we agree partially concerning Nursing Homes.
Yep, lest keep beating up on the Little Sisters of the Poor.
Vaguely sounds like the Flynn cause – political ideologues using the power of government to force the good people they hate into violating their morals DESPITE a SCOTUS ruling against them, and an executive Order against them.
Can we just fire these guys ? And lets make them pay LSOP’s legal bills.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/05/06/little_sisters_of_the_poor_are_fighting_on_two_fronts.html
another heaping pole of schiff.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/byron-yorks-daily-memo-exclusive-dni-to-schiff-the-transcripts-are-ready-to-release
Many on the left must be celebrating quitely with news like this.
https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/coronavirus/article_91b4dee4-8edf-11ea-86f1-4bd4bd6c6bfb.html
This is life withing the oil business.
Many shutdown or went bankrupt during the Saudi Oil War too.
They come, they go.
So long as Biden is not elected and shuts down fracking, this will work itself out.
“So long as Biden is not elected and shuts down fracking, this will work itself out.”
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Twitter double standard.
Thank God for Musk.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/05/05/elon_musk_and_twitter_a_censorship_double_standard_143113.html#2
My position provided by local news. Toward the end, quote from Tyson indicates alo the safety they are doing. What is missing is the fact these safety measures went into affect AFTER the virus began spreading, so their lack of safety is now impacting 250+ people and that is increasing in multiple counties. I call that harm to others due to ignoring a problem to increase profits.
https://www.journalnow.com/news/columnists/tyson-worker-at-wilkesboro-processing-plant-it-s-infested-now-we-re-between-a-rock/article_f7c92d1a-d5c7-549c-9b3f-ba1d0c5a7477.html
Do you want to eat ?
If “james” wants to quit – that is his choice.
I do not know his age – but both the risk and the spread rate are very lower for younger ages,
Yes, Tyson is slow to impliment safety. Wow! News at 11!
So workers can quit, strike or sue. I am comfortable with that.
I would also be OK with Tyson barring workers over 40 from the packing area.
But that is ilegal.
Supporters of state lockdowns can run their mouth all they want about how the policies in place have bent the curve. You can make figures say whatever you want.
Europe began reopening 2-3 weeks ago. According to Charles Schawb investment updates, Europe reopening appears to be working and reappearance of new case surge does not seem to be appearing.
However, they did something much different. They closed most all retail and now they are opening small operations, while keeping larger “big hox” stores closed. They are keeping more stores open to spread out customers and avoiding larger numbers and lines into bigger stores.
Might work, might not.
https://www.journalnow.com/ap/national/u-s-infection-rate-rising-outside-new-york-as-states-open-up/article_982f5114-18b9-5c2a-ba99-dd2a6c308690.html
We keep getting told that if we move too quickly there will be a spike in cases.
So long as that spike did not exceed the capacity of hospitals that would be fine.
But we are seeing no spike anywhere – even though this has been constantly predicted.
That REQUIRES that we do not understand something fundimental.
WorldWide there is not much difference in the progression of Covid19.
Those places where this has been mild, have either stopped it at the borders or shortly after.
Regardless the absence of a “spike” has meaning.
The most likely meaning is that the spread and then decline of Covid19 is uneffected by the measures we are taking. If lockdowns were “working” – whatever that means then absolutely we would see a spike as we relaxed.
but lets say they are working. So we should have 1000 deaths a day for 2 months rather than 10,000 deaths a day for a week ?
If the lockdown is doing littlemore than delaying how long it takes for the virus to reach its course – what are we accomplishing ?
But lets assume even that is not true – that the lockdown IS “working” and only half as many of us are getting infected.
The result of that is that we will remain PERMANENTLY vulnerable to Covid19’s return
Ron:
Biden’s position on fracking: He would issue no NEW fracking permits for federal lands or waters, but allow existing fracking operations to continue.
How’s that going to cost jobs?
And I guess you don’t like the recent LOW cost of gas at the pumps; prices we’ll never see again if they go back to gallon prices that make fracking profitable.
Yeah, and if you believed this you probably believed ” if you like your health plan you can keep your health plan and if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor”.
Jay, I know you are not stupid, but how in the hell can they pull the wool over your eyes with statements like that? I knew in 2016 Trump and Clinton were blowing smoke up the voters asses and knew the only one close to telling the truth was Johnson. And that is why I voted for him.
So its fine in Biden is lying, but you go ballistic when Trump does it?
Jay “And I guess you don’t like the recent LOW cost of gas at the pumps; prices we’ll never see again if they go back to gallon prices that make fracking profitable.”
The cost of gas in my state has been in the mid $2.00 for years usually $2.28. So the price we have is not much different at $1.48. On 12,000 miles per year at 25 MPG that 80 cents per gallon is only $384 saved. And then convert $2.48 to the value of money for. any prior decade and we are paying much less than we paid in 1980, 1990 or most other present value dollars when we did not have fracking. Take gas price then and inflate it for the cost of living and it come in between $4.00- $5.00.
I also dont want us in the same situation as the 70’s and 80’s with the middle east having us by the nuts. We have enough problems right now with China controlling most of our supply chain. We dont need the Arabs and Russia controlling energy also.
US energy independence completely alters the worldwide balance of power.
It is a major part of why Trump can do as he pleases with China, Iran, the mideast, Russia, Europe.
Jay keeps selling this Russian Collusion nonsense.
Trump did two things early on the Forked over Putin royally.
First he “unleashed the Frackers”,
Then he guaranteed European Gas using US NG.
Russia was blackmailing Europe over its gaslines.
Trump changed the negotiations with Russia by backstopping European Gas.
This reduced the price Russia could charge, screwed over the Russian economy and Putin and secured Europe and prevented them from being enthralled by Russia over energy.
States that are NOT declining
Illinois
California,
Texas
Maryland
Virginia
North Carolina
Arizona
Wisconsin
Minesota
Kentucky
Mist of these have democratic governors.
Further most do not have very many cases.
Also look at the increases in cases per day on a weekly average per day. VA has had average daily increases by week considerably higher each week. N.C. the same. Take New York out of any calculation and there is no improvement in daily new cases on a national level.
What governors have done is not working. But in August when this crap is still around, others might realize that.
They do not have until August.
One of the reasons the Swedes did not lock down is their own “Experts” recognized it was impossible long term. That even if everyone bought it upfront, that slowly people would get antsy and start banging their elbows.
In the US that started a few weeks ago.
It will grow slowly every day.
There will be a police, or mayor’s or sheriffs or govenors behaving stupid story every day.
Deblassio to a motorcade to a Gym to work out, and then took his family to a park.
This is the guy with a tip line for people to rat out their neighbors.
And yes some of the protestors are political, and gun nuts and ….
But there are protests at the California beaches by Hippies.
Daniels, Trump, and Cohen still in the news.
Only Cohen and Daniels are getting the pointy end of the stick.
Guess what Jay – NDA’s are LEGAL, and BINDING.
Don;t take the job or the money if you are not willing to follow the terms.
I had not heard that the sketch of the person Daniels claims attacked her looks alot like her former boyfreind.
But aparently ALOT is an understatement. It is a dead ringer.
https://jonathanturley.org/2020/05/06/the-harder-they-fall-trump-attorney-moves-against-stormy-daniels-and-michael-cohen/
Interview of KT McFarland regarding Flynn.
This is a fascinating article. At least, I think so. We’ve all read about the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1916 and the Hong Kong Flu one of 1968.
But, I had never read anything about the Asian Flu pandemic of 1957, which killed 116,000 Americans, at a time when the total population of the US was 172,000 million.
As the author says, ” Without a 24-hour news cycle with thousands of news agencies and a billion websites hungry for traffic, mostly people paid no attention other than to keep basic hygiene. It was covered in the press as a medical problem. The notion that there was a political solution never occurred to anyone. ”
https://www.aier.org/article/elvis-was-king-ike-was-president-and-116000-americans-died-in-a-pandemic/
Priscilla, I had that crud. Sicker than a dog. I think it was in 1968 that I got this along with my mother. I was 12, layed up for most of a week. Then mom got it and she was sick. At that time there may have been flu vaccines, but not as many people even considered them and doctors did not promote them like today.
The issues on peoples mind during that time period was polio. Vaccine came out by Salk that was being promoted. In 1961 another vaccine using weakened live polio virus was created.
Even with the polio going around, people took responsibility for their own actions and avoided situations that might have increased the spread.
Alot of expert information from Germany
Hope you can access this. Some good info on European and Asian country economic recoveries.
https://www.schwab.com/resource-center/insights/content/dashboards-measuring-recovery-real-time
Just want to give all those that think government is working the latest in the numbers in N.C. where we have been locked down tighter that dicks hat band. Other than take out dining, grocery stores, drug stores and big box stores, everything else has been closed including anything other than emergency medial treatment. Most hospitals have been at 50% to 60% occupancy with RN’s either off without pay or on their vacation time. My daughter is one of the luckier ones since NICU babies don’t know there is a pandemic and they come whenever they want. The others are considered “essential workers” so can’t qualify for unemployment becasue they are not unemployed .Hospitals have “call off schedules” when patient census does not warrant a full staffing.
And yes Dave they can choose to quit their jobs at the hospital, but the doctors offices are also closed as is most all health care facilities other than ER’s so that does them no good because quiting also does not qualify for unemployment.
So beginning the week of Mar 27th the following 7 days averaged 224 new cases.The next week was 264. Then 287. Then 342 then 402. The last 7 day average new cases is 410. I use the seven day total because is seems some counties don’t report over the weekends and Mondays are always higher. The total just for Tuesday and Wednesday of this week were 539 and 543.
So anyone out there that tells me government is protecting you and making things better, in N. C. that is total B.S. The numbers do not support the rhetoric from our dear Democrat governor and the damage done to the economy far exceeds what has been done to reduce covid-19 numbers.
you can get unemployment for reduced hours
Several reasons why the lockdowns will ultimately result in MORE deaths not less.
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/496155-the-us-should-follow-swedens-approach-to-combating-covid-19
Yep. And the interesting thing in N.C.with our governor “Car Inspection” is in March people, especially those older, who did not want to leave home who had cars with registrations coming due in the next 90 days had to get their cars inspected. In N.C. the laws are such that when going online to re-register a car, it is tied to a current inspection. If the inspection is not current, you cant register. And if you do not register by the end of the month the cars registration runs out, there are late fees, penalties, whatever they can charge. This created alot of complaints and “Car Inspection” said he could not do anything because that was law and laws had to be changed by the legislature, which was sitting safely at home.He could not tell the police nor DMV to ignore the law under these conditions so out you go for that service.
We also have a law on the books that says it is illegal to wear a mask in public that hides your identity if your over a certain age. Somewhere in the teens, so if you are an adult and lets say you go to costume party at Halloween, no mask, just face paint if in public.However, using good old Democrat logic of picking and choosing what laws to follow, Gov Car Inspection has told police to ignore enforcement of the face mask laws out of safety for the public.Even when entering a bank!
The state police are subordinate to the governor.
Though I am generally opposed to discretion with respect to enforcing laws.
And I would specifically note that it is situations like this that are one of the many reasons why. It is clear that right now there is a conflict between individual liberty and safety and the law regarding face coverings. But that conflict has always existed, it is just heightened now.
In Japan BEFORE covid19 about 13 of people wore masks.
My guess is it is 100% now. There has Always been a legitimate individual liberty and health justification for masks. Everyone does not choose the same. There has also always been a religious liberty issue with face coverings.
All that said the governor has the authority to order the state police to not enforce specific laws
Local police are more complex and depend on the state laws. It is possible that directing them to waive enforcement requires local government to act.
We are having a variant of that in the Dallas TX salon case.
Both the Governor and the AG have come out against jailing the Salon owner.
But I beleive the judge held her in contempt for refusing to say that she was “selfish”.
The Governor can commute sentences, but he can do nothing about contempt.
We are having lots of police and local government behaving like petty tyrants.
Many of these are going to catch the national news.
And this is going to get ugly fast.
Regardless, it is NOT acceptable for the NC governor to say “your screwed”.
This is a slightly less maligant version fo the Flynn nonsense of “manufacturing a crime”
Dave “All that said the governor has the authority to order the state police to not enforce specific laws”
Yep, thats what I said! But he chooses to enforce some while telling voters he cant change the law and cant order laws to be ignored. And some voters buy that crap!
Ron: So it’s illegal for religious Muslim women in N.C. to walk on the street with a face covering Veil?
And if the Governor lifted car inspection requirements and one of those un-inspected cars failed from faults that would have been detected, causing death or great bodily harm to others, would you be in favor of absolving the Gov of criticism and legal liability?
The car owner is ALWAYS responsible for the safety of their car.
No laws or regulations or inspections are necescary.
At a minimum if your failure to keep your failure to keep your car safe harms another – they have a tort claim against you.
If the failure is egregious enough and the harm large enough there is a criminal negilence claim.
I keep telling you over and over that between 200 year old criminal, contract and tort law, everything that actually matters is covered.
You are NEVER free to hurt others. You have not been since before Hamurabi.
The Gov. has ZERO legal liability.
“causing death or great bodily harm to others” is ALWAYS a tort, and possibly a crime.
There is no need for inspection laws.
Muslim women can wear it. Religious freedom guaranteed by constitution.
Car inspections in N.C. is basically horn, lights and pollution device. They do nothing to cut accidents, so dont go there because you dont live here and know what goes on.
Years ago the inspections required tire checks with gauges, removal of front rims to check brake linings, scopes on headlights to check angle of lighting, horns, turn signals, tail lights and pollution checks. Not now, they are really just plugging in computer and getting readings and thats it.
Horns are not a safety device.
I have never seen anyone ever get to a horn in time to actually warn someone.
Further they are a very nonspecific warning.
Whenever I hear a horn I know – someone thinks someone else WAS an idiot.
Our FBI
Can we now end the “bleach” nonsense ?
The FDA just approved the use of a “superoxide” – a “bleach” as a experimental treatment for Covid19.
SuperOxides have been used for other medical treatments.
This is apparently something that Dr. Brix breifed Trump on as he kept trying to refer back to her during the conference.
https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04312997
I dont see the connection
This “super oxidizer” just approved by the FDA to treat Covid19, was almost certainly discussed privately with Trump prior to the press briefing.
Trumps remarks were likely his “laymens” explanation of that treatment.
A “super oxidizer” is literally a bleach. In this case just not one for cleaning cloths.
The Texas salon owner who was jailed for 7 days for opening her salon a few days before Gov. Abbott’s order allowing it to reopen was fined 3500 and jailed for 7 days.
Abbot and the TX AG has asked the judge to reconsider as Abbot has issued directives that Jail was inappropriate for non-compliance – among other reasons because TX is trying to empty jails not fill them.
The judge was willing to let her go if she admitted she was selffish. She politely refused saying that she opened the sallon because her sylists needed to be able to feed their children, and she does not consider helping those who work for her to be able to feed their kids selfish.
She has a gofundme campaign.
It has $400,000 in it.
I believe the judge is losing this one.
The salon owner broke the law (actually an emergency order).
You can ask someone to admit to their actual actions.
Asking someone engaged in civil disobediance to kowtow and admit to moral failure is an abuse of power.
But abuse of power by judges is commonplace
texas Gov issued E.O. last few hours barring any jail time for violations to closure laws retroactive to before this conviction.
Hopefully that will work.
But there is still a problem.
I beleive the judge held her in contempt. If that is the Case Abbott may have no authority to intervene in contempt.
There was a case similar to this where a witness refused to testify and the judge held her in contempt, She spent 2 1/2 years in jail, the case was long otherwise resolved and congress actually had to change the law to get her out of jail
“I love New York”
Read carefully – Cuomo is saying that people who were still being paid in their home state while VOLUNTEERING in New York, must pay New York Taxes on that income.
Maybe people should just not volunteer to help new york.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/andrew-cuomo-healthcare-workers-who-volunteered-to-help-new-york-with-pandemic-must-pay-state-income-taxes
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EXW3v_UUwAAK2mw?format=jpg&name=900×900
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EXY2DKHXsAAAq0s?format=jpg&name=small
Kudo’s to Barr – what took him so long ?
And even more importantly Why was Mueller perusing this in the first place ?
The information we have recently learned – while new to us. has been no secret to Comey, McCabe Strzok, Rosenstein and the Mueller prosecutors.
By Jan. 4 2017 there was no basis for any investigation of Flynn.
The action of the DOJ here is because the interview itself was improper.
There was nothing to investigate.
DOJ is essentially saying that it is irrelevant whether Flynn lied or not.
There was no basis for an investigation – no basis for an interview.
BTW this is actually huge.
Horrowitz has already found that the foundation for Crossfire huricane ended jan. 19 2017.
DOJ has essentially found that the foundation for Crossfire Razor ended Jan. 4 2017.
This has potentially broad implications.
Comey KNEW this, McCabe KNEW this, Strzok KNEW this, Rosenstein KNEW this.
BTW the initial memo to Mueller from Rosenstein authorizing the Mueller investigation is now public and it is damning – to Mueller, and Rosenstein.
The justification for the investigation is entirely based on things the FBI had already debunked. That means the entire Mueller investigation is without legal foundation.
At this time DOJ could on exactly the same basis as they used here drop the prosecution of Stone, and drop oposition to any appeals such as Papadoulis and Manafort.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/drops-doj-case-against-michael-flynn-in-wake-of-internal-memo-release
So do a survey and determine how many people know or care.
You and maybe 100 others.
SCOTUS UNANIMOUSLY rules for narrowly construing the law.
The case is specific to Aides to former Gov. Christie. As Kagan notes – the evidence presented to the jury clearly demonstrated wrongdoing. But it did NOT demonstrate a crime.
Our justice system prosecutes and convicts for actual crimes, not our individully different concepts of right and wrong. If NJ wishes to make the actions in the Christy case and can do so by narrowly crafted law, they can do so. But existing laws are not electic enough to make a specific crime fit every conceivable concept of wrong doing.
And Absolutely this applies to myriads of Trump cases and allegations.
SCOTUS concluded that “value” – had to mean REAL value, money, property, …
Not political advantage.
Though the Ukraine case was not infront of Scotus This ruling rejects any claim that there even could be a crime in Trump’s handling of Ukraine.
Speculative political advantage in a campaign against Biden is NOT “something of value”.
Trump’s attempts to get Biden investigated are not just legal they are legitimate so long as there is reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing.
The fact that Biden is a political opponent and Trump might benefit politically is irrelevant.
What is relevant is whether there is a basis for an investigation.
https://jonathanturley.org/2020/05/07/supreme-court-unanimously-throws-out-bridgegate-convictions-and-rejects-prior-legal-argument-against-trump/
Guess what ? No only do we now know that the models produce incorrect results.
We also now know that the models themselves are Garbage. The software is total crap.
There are several relevant rants toward the end.
The fact is MOST “scientists” know next to nothing about programming and if anything less about statistics.
The author of this article found that any paper based on this code should be retracted.
That should be true of every paper relying on computer software models or statistics where the code and statistical methods (and raw data) are not made available for review.
You can be a brilliant scientist and still produce total crap – because crappy computer models can not be trusted requardless of results,
https://lockdownsceptics.org/code-review-of-fergusons-model/
https://babylonbee.com/news/new-poll-finds-democrats-would-vote-for-ted-bundy-if-he-were-running-against-trump?utm_content=buffer1ae0b&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Well this now sucks Obama pretty deeply into the While Flynn and XFH fiasco.
At the very moment the FBI was looking to close the whole mess because there was no “there there”. Obama met with all the conspirators and urged them not to let go. To go deeper.
Again who is paying attention. Who cares?
Do people make rational decisions on their own ?
Do different people and different groups make decisons that are different – yet still rational within the group ?/
https://fee.org/articles/during-pandemics-do-individuals-react-more-rationally-and-efficiently-than-governments/?utm_source=Social&utm_medium=Twitter&utm_campaign=2020_FEEDotOrg
While this is a Washington Examiner article, the author is a CNN Legal analyst and former FBI agent.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/michael-flynn-was-railroaded-by-james-comeys-fbi
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EXcHAk-UEAAVWpF?format=jpg&name=small
I have been saying for sometime we have been targeting testing and other efforts to the wrong groups. America, Americans and politicians abandoned the elderly, ignoring the need for testing those close to them including employees and insuring their safety all while testing the young whose chances of death were slim to none.
This article says it all.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/our-patients-are-dropping-like-flies-16000-dead-from-covid-19-in-us-nursing-homes/ar-bb13u5sp
Ok they did it again. Try this
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2020/05/01/coronavirus-nursing-homes-more-states-pressured-name-facilities/3062537001/
Jay: “Flynn lied” – and what lie was that ?
Regardless, no matter what you might think of the documents recently released by US Attorney Jenson,
In 2019 Flynn Prosecutor Van Grack tolde the court
The government “has complied, and will continue to comply, with its discovery and disclosure obligations, including those imposed pursuant to Brady and the Court’s Standing Order,”
the government prosecutors had fulfilled their responsibility to turn over to defendants all exculpatory evidence.
The government has not “affirmatively suppressed evidence,” nor was it “aware of any information that would be favorable and material to [Flynn] at sentencing,”
Sidney Powell accused government prosecutors of “targeting” Flynn for “concocted and political purposes,” Van Grack rejected her charges as “conspiracy theories.”
I do not know whether Flynn lied to the FBI. The FBI agents that interviewed him did not seem to think he had until months later.
But what is crystal clear is that the Mueller prosecutors LIED to the court.
Maybe if you were on a jury weighing Flynn’s guilt or innocense, you would have found against Flynn anyway. But if the Mueller team had its way – you would not have heard the WHOLE Truth.
Further Flynn was a government witness against others. And the government withheld from the court and other defendants the fact that there was a side deal with Flynn to protect his son. Flynn is free to strike whatever deal he can with prosecutors. But the government is NOT free to hide witness inducements from other defendents.
You say “well Flynn plead guilty. And he did. We can argue about whether he was coerced,
But there is no argument that he was given all the evidence prior to pleading.
Guilty pleas do not releive prosecutors of the obligation to supply the defendant with exculpatory evidence BEFORE pleading.
Criminal prosecutions are NOT the same as civil cases where the lawyers are adversaries whose primary obligation is the best outcome for their side.
Prosecutors are obligated to pursue justice – not to win. The court is obligated to ensure justice. The goal is not to convict defendants and win cases. It is to convict ONLY the guilty.
When prosecutors hide evidence – that is not justice. That is a crime.
I do not know what lie you think Flynn told Strzok or how that is even significant.
But Van Grack told the court that it had turned over all the exculpatory evidence regarding Flynn. It told the court there was no evidence that Flynn was “setup” – that was just “a conspiracy theory”
Van Grack was right – it was “a conspiracy”, but it was not a “theory” it was a fact and Van Grack knew it.
Worse still some of the latest evidence actually implicates Obama.
Obama was present at the Jan. 5th meeting with Yates, Rice, Strzok, Comey McCabe, and Brennan. The idea of prosecuting Flynn for unconstitutional Logan act violations came from Obama initially, Not Yates are we had subsequently been told. And this information comes from Susan Rice’s notes. Not Alex Jones.
One of the reasons that Schiff is aparently so vigorously fighting the release of transcripts – that the House Intelligence committee has Unanimously voted to release, is because witnesses like Brian Rhoades have confirmed that the White House was actively involved in keeping Cross Fire Razor and Cross Fire Huricane alive AFTER the FBI had determined they had no substance.
Let me reiterate – Horowitz found – not as a conclusion, but based on the actual documentation by the FBI that there was no foundation for any of this Russia Trump nonsense by Mid January 2017 AND THE FBI KNEW IT, AND SAID SO.
We now have Rosensteins March Authorization for Mueller – which is from end to end allegations that Rosenstein, DOJ and FBI KNEW to be false 3 months earlier.
So we know that starting in early january AT THE LATEST, and at the direction of not just the WhiteHouse, but President Obama himself, the entire law enforcement and national security aparatus of the US government was directed to pursue allegations they KNEW were false against people they KNEW were innocent.
For those who are ludicrously trying to pretend there MIGHT be some substance in “Logan act” violations – aside from the fact that no one has ever been convicted, and not one has been prosecuted for 200 years and John Kerry is the worlds largest walking, talking Logan Act violation, The purported act of Flynn that violated the Logan Act was his conversation with Kisylak. This occured After Trump was elected, while Flynn was on the Trump transition team, after he was named Trump’s NSA, and while Flynn was on the federal government payroll. Even if the Logan act was somehow constitutional. Flynn did not violate it.
The 1968 Hong Kong Flu was more fatal and more widespread than Covid19.
Further its victims included far more children and young adults.
There was no vaccine at the time, there were no lockdowns or closures – even the stock market was unefected, And we got through it fine.
People died – LOTS of people died, Many More people than Covid19 with a population 50% less than today.
https://www.aier.org/article/woodstock-occurred-in-the-middle-of-a-pandemic/
Excellent peice by MacCarthy on the illegality of Mueller’s appointment,
But MacCarthy failed to address another huge issue.
MacCarthy noted that the memo was written in August because the Manafort Defense attorney’s challenged the appointment of Robert Mueller, and this memo was provided to the court, and on the basis of this memo the court accepted that Mueller’s appointment as Special prosecutor was legitimate.
The problem is that the Court was NOT told the truth. It was not told that at the Time Mueller was appointed, the DOJ and FBI already knew the allegations – particulary the few that necesitated a special prosecutor were false.
Special procescutors are NOT discretionary acts of the AG or deputy AG.
They must meet the tests of the authorizing law. There MUST be an allegation of a credible actual crime, that implicates a person that DOJ/FBI would be conflicted in investigating and Proescuting. There was No Special prosecutor for Clinton – even though she was a cabinet member. Despite the fact that it is self evident that DOJ/FBI was horribly conflicted in prosecuting her.
So where in Rosenstein’s scope memo is there a DOJ/FBI conflict ?
Manafort, Page, and Papadoilis were NEVER part of the government. Flynn had resigned 2 months prior to Mueller’s apointment.
Further the allegations against Page, Papadoulis, and Flynn were known by Rosenstein to be false at the time of Mueller’s apointment. You can not appoint an SC to investigate a non crime by someone who is not a member of Government, much less not one who has not conflict with DOJ/FBI. Even the Manafort allegations which have the most substance – still originate from the Steele Dossier which had been thoroughly discredited by Jan 2017.
While the scope in the Memo was know bullshit to Rosenstein and Mueller, That was NOT known to the court or to the public.
There is no difference between going to the FISA court with this known false garbage 4 times from Oct. 2016 through Oct. 2017 and presenting an SC authorizing memo that has no different substantive basis to a court as a justification for Mueller’s prosecution of Manafort (or anyone)
Put simply Mueller’s appointment was a FRAUD for exactly the same reasons that the FISA warrants were a FRAUD – because those involved in DOJ and FBI knew they were false at the time, but used them anyway.
I would further note that Mueller issued thousands of warrantes and subpeona’s, as well as convening a grand jury.
The 4th amendment to the constitution requires that no warrant or search or seizure can be issued without BOTH probable cause of a crime AND probable cause that evidence of that crime will be uncovered by the search.
If that standard was not met for the FISA warrant, it was not met by ANYTHING that Mueller did.
This has not merely been a witch hunt. It has been an illegal witch hunt that ALL those participating in KNEW from the start.
This also casts new light on Rosensteins extreme resistance to cooperating with Congress.
He and Mueller were in a race. They needed to find something sufficiently damning to justify what they were doing, before the rest of us found out that the entire premise for everything they were doing was not just a fraud – but a knowing fraud.
Last I will note that NOW we have tied this entire thing to President Obama.
Rice’s notes from the Jan 5, 2015 meeting are damning – as well as some of her subsequent notes. Obama directed the FBI/DOJ to pursue the Flynn Logan act nonsense that was the pretext for the interview. Obama directed the DOJ/FBI/CIA/… not to share information with the president of the united states on the basis of bogus russia nonsense they KNEW to be false at the time.
Essentially president Obama directed all those in that meeting to continue a fraudulent investigation of an incoming president to continue AFTER he left office, and to hide that fact from the actual elected leader of the country and his appointed staff.
The whole mess is often called a “coup”. We know know that it very nearly literally is that.
The outgoing president of the united states directed a cabal of holdovers to operate outside of their constitutional authority and hide that from the actual president.
If we had been at war, this actually would be treason.
This was an actual conspiracy. By those in power at that moment and for a few more days against those about to become the legitimate government of the country, and continuing hidden from them. Ans worse still it was predicated not just on lies – but on known lies.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/rosenstein-scope-memo-confirms-baselessness-of-trump-russia-probe/
https://www.mercedsunstar.com/news/nation-world/national/article242527331.html
There are purportedly 8 other women who have made allegations against Biden.
Though the Reade on is the most serious.
I do not know what to think about the Reade allegation.
I am inclinded to Give Biden the benefit of the doubt.
i.e. that something did happen – more on the lines of what we already know Biden does all the time, but it was not wanted – some of the women Biden has been touchy with have relationships with Biden where it is arguable that is acceptable.
Biden as an example was caught on Camera being overly physical with Ash Carter’s wife, but she responded that they are close friends and they do touch each other.
But other women have indicated that Biden’s contact was unwanted.
That is NOT sexual assault. But it is not acceptable either.
Jay posted the women running arround NYC hugging people – that is fine.
But she did not come up on them from behind and she SENT and RECEIVED a physical or verbal que of what she was done and they responded with acceptance.
She did not chase anyone down, she did not hug anyone without warning or who said or signaled no.
Biden comes from behind, without warning and without any signal of permission.
At this time I do not think the credible allegations against Biden are more serious than those against Trump – but they are not that much less serious.
And the stories from the secret service are REALLY BAD.
But there is a flip side to this. That is not about Biden specifically, but about the media and the left.
Put Simply if you though Blaisley Ford was credible – Reade is more credible.
If you did not beleive Ford, you probably are not going to beleive Reade.
Reade story has more corroboration that Ford’s, More details,
It is possible to beleive Reade and not Ford. But not the other way arround.
Mostly though they are both allegations decades old that are not verifiable.
And they have near the same credibility.
But that is not how the press and the left are dealing with them.
Dave “Put Simply if you though Blaisley Ford was credible – Reade is more credible.
If you did not believe Ford, you probably are not going to believe Reade.”
WRONG! Where have you been. The same women in politics that went nuclear against Cavanaugh are some of the first to step up and defend Biden.
The Christian conservatives sold their souls in defense of Trump when they voted and continue to this day. They were the first to defend C.
The liberals will sell their souls and ignore years of activist actions in defense of women, support for those sexually abused or worse and pushing for men to be held accountable for unwanted sexual contact and vote for Biden.
People say I waste my vote when I wont vote for the lessor of two evils ( and now sexual deviants) But how someone can spend years working to defeat or block election or appointments based on certain facts and then ignore those same type facts for their candidate is just being a hypocrite! And I can not be that person.
Blah blah blah.
No matter how skimpy or contrived the evidence against Biden for ANYTHING, you & Dave & Priscilla will find ways to use it to rationalize your anti-Dem DNA.
A 27 year old complaint that mysteriously changed recently from a shoulder squeeze to finger fucking will dominate Trump-word news, no matter how skimpy any of the accusations. And Ron – your bitching about lefty-females ‘victims’ defending Biden is pathetic. Casual male-female hugging in greeting and departure has been the US cultural norm for a century. The women telling you they weren’t offended WEREN’T we’re telling the truth. By the way, how many of the those women Trump Pussy-Groped came to his defense, saying they didn’t mind the grabs?
Just as the GOP ramped up every anti-HILLARY accusation they could manufacture, they’ll continue to propagate the hate Biden Campaign with the same cast of swamp-characters:
“WASHINGTON (AP) — Tara Reade, a former Senate staffer who alleged Joe Biden sexually assaulted her 27 years ago, is being represented by a prominent lawyer and political donor to President Donald Trump’s 2016 Republican campaign.
Attorney Douglas Wigdor told The Associated Press he was not currently being paid for his work with Reade. His firm also denied there was a political motivation for his decision to represent Reade in her accusations against Biden.”
THANK YOU JAY!
You made my point better than I could. A 25+ old complaint against C has merit, a 25+ old complaint against B does not.
Could not have presented a better arguement than you provided
Reade’s complaint is 10 years newer. Reade has told many people over the years. Reade can be placed with Biden even if we can not nail down a day. Ford could not even cooroborate that she and Kavanaugh were EVER in the same place at the same time. ‘
No one recalls Kavanaugh at a party with Ford.
I was just reiterating my original comment that generated Jays response. But since it appears to have been missed by everyone, here it is again.
“The Christian conservatives sold their souls in defense of Trump when they voted and continue to this day. They were the first to defend C.
The liberals will sell their souls and ignore years of activist actions in defense of women, support for those sexually abused or worse and pushing for men to be held accountable for unwanted sexual contact and vote for Biden.”
My point…..You can take situations closely associated in character and both groups of voters will find ways to ignore facts for their candidate, but use them to eviserate their opposition. And the circumstances can be just months apart and the arguments used in the each case can just be copied and used by opposite groups in each case.
Jay, you have blinders on.
I have said that in this instance I am inclined to beleive Biden.
Reade IS more credible than Ford – but not by alot.
As you noted it is an old allegation, her story has changed, and some of her behavior has been nutty. Every one of those can be explained.
My Guess is that Biden was agressive with her. That he thought she was receptive.
But that he did not “sexually assault” her. I would note that the Conduct Ford alleged, even if true does not read sexual assault either, Drunk teens at a small party falling on each other and possibly groping through clothes briefly is just not the stuff of sexual assault.
I have noted that this does harm Biden’s campaign. That is just my analysis – though some of it is from PROGRESSIVES Like Krystal Ball from the Rising. I follow her regularly. I disagree with alot of what she says. BUT what she says is HIGHLY representative of the under 35 vote. I may think her economics and policies are bunk. But I think she knows how sanders voters are reacting better than you or I.
I am not mostly attacking Biden on this.
I am mostly attacking the press and the left which told us we must beleive Ford and should not beleive Reade. That is horrible Hypocracy.
Your hypocracy.
This has nothing to do with Trump. It does not even have to do with Biden.
It has everything to do with judging hypocrits.
So Reade has a lawyer who has worked with Republicans. Just as Ford had a very high power democratic law firm. We can play this game forever
You don’t beleive Reade – I am OK with that – so long as you did not beleive Ford.
But if you bought Ford and are rejecting Reade – you are blinded by partisanship.
Every problem Reade has – and there are problems – Ford had too – usually worse.
Reade is more credible than Ford, but not credible enough for me.
I think something happened but I think Reade is exagerating it.
And Reade – like Ford will probably have a GoFundme page and gets lots of money for her legal team – regardless of thei politcs.
I do not care if you are a man. woman, conservative or progressive.
If you felt that Ford was credible – Reade is more so.
If you felt Ford was not credible – Reade is only a little better.
if your gender or politics are producing substantially different assessments of Ford than Reade, then you are drowning in political bias, and are not even close to objective.
It is possible to have a view of Ford that differs from others without that difference being political. It is not possible to find Ford credible and Reade not, or Reade Credible without accepting the possiblity that Ford is telling the truth.
There are differences between them. But not large differences. Not enough to justify substantially different evaluatiuons.
But yes, Ron you are correct many people see the Reade and Ford allegations as radically different. Those people – whether they are Fox, of MSNBC, left or right … are drowning in political bias and should not be taken as objective on anything.
The more important issue is how this effects the election.
This is NOT likely to get Trump Hordes of women voters.
But it is a major benefit to him.
Some enormous percentage of DEMOCRATS under 30 beleive Reade and beleive Biden should quit.
If only 1/10th of those do not vote – Biden is forked.
Separately Trump has a “women” problem. This does not fix that.
But even if a small percentage of women who moved away from trump either move back or do not vote – Biden is forked.
Lastly this makes it really really hard for Biden to make women a campaign issue. ‘
We all know he is pandering to women with promising to nominate a female VP.
But if that was so big a deal – McCain would have beat Obama.
I am currently watching “Mrs. Ameica” on Hulu – it is about the battle to ratify the ERA and Phylis Shlafly is the main character. It is a docudrama so they play somewhat losely with the facts. But one of the accurate and revealing facets is that Women are NOT a monolithic voting block. The ERA ultimately failed because NOW, NARAL, and feminists really did not represent most women. Male votes on the ERA were strongly determined by how they perceived it would effect their FEMALE constituents. and as Shlafly made perfectly clear,
Betty Freidan and Gloria Steinmen did not speak for most women.
The show is also interesting as Shlafly has many parallels to Trump.
Or more accurately Frminists made exactly the same mistakes that progressives make today.
They presumed that because everyone they know thinks like them, that EVERYONE – thinks like them. That anyone who does not is a moron, an aunt tom or — a hateful hating hater.
This strategy does not work. The show also shows early versions of the major problems with intersectionalism. Shlafly and her S.T.O.P. movement did a reasonable job of preventing internal differences from destroying them. Women in Illinois opposing the ERA did not share the Same values as Women in Missippi. S.T.O.P. MOSTLY avoided having these conflicts evolve into national issues – as an example the views of women in Missippi on Race in the 1970’s was quite different from those in Illinois.
While NYC feminists were constantly having serious problems over gay rights and racial issues. These constantly plagued the feminist movement and more importantly alienated women through the country who MIGHT have supported their positions on Womens issues but distanced themselves over other issues.
We have versions of this even today. It is left dogma that you MUST support the oppression of Muslims. But that requires hiding from the horrendous treatment by muslims of women and homosexuals. Weirder – The left is brutally anti-religion, and yet they are inextricably linked to the religious freedom of one of the most oprressive religions in the world.
While bitterly denouncing white evangelicals who aside from the color of their skin are less offensive to progressive values than muslims.
Regardless, Trump just like Shlafly exposed and capitalized on fault lines inside of those that opposed them.
The 21st century democratic party is in huge danger of becoming a party of mostly afluent white elites – what they have pretended was the problem with the GOP.
The future is going to be decided not only by whether the GOP can hold Blue color voters, but whether the expansion into other minorities that Trump has started continues.
Both trump specifically and republicans generally have been making inroads into blacks.
DeSantis won FL because 300K single black mothers who would lose their charter schools if Gilium was elected voted REPUBLICAN.
Further blacks have been taken for granted for 75 years by democrats – and gotten nothing for it. Republicans are NOT promising blacks the same thing democrats are. But republicans are doing a better job delivering on that promise.
Hispanics are also almost certainly going to flip red eventually – just as the Irish and other purportedly democratic minority groups did in the past.
A part of the fight over Immigration is a fight over the future of the hispanic vote.
Democrats already know that immigrants of every flavor slowly become republican as the generations roll and as their standard of living rises.
Trump’s immigrant posture cuts off the supply of new hispanic democratic voters.
And without that hispanics eventually flip red.
So the question is post Trump – do republicans continue to hold and grow this groups ?
Do democrats figure out how to keep their party from shrinking, and actually regain some of the voters they lost.
I think Biden is a shitty candidate, but he DOES represent an effort by those in the DNC to recapture the party from progressives who are on the cusp of taking over, but if they do, the democratic party will be more cohesive, have a stronger clearer message, will be very powerful in a few states, but will be unable to win a national election again.
Along with the women issues, the GOP need to actively attack democrat governors that shut down economies that created 20 million job losses with more than 60% hitting blacks and hispanics.
The democrats will try to blame Trump to win over independents, but they are not the ones overwhelmingly paying the economic price.
As opposed to Republican Governors in population states of largely rural compositio, where there was less likelihood of infection?
And why is it that only Republican Governors from the red states Trump carried four years ago didn’t opt for shutdowns? Those governors played politics with residents lives; Family and friends of those who suffered should repay that negligence with clenched fists.
Good grief Jay, dont you read what I write and only.pick and choose. I have said the efforts need to be Nursing homes, residential living, work environments like meat packing plants, and targeted shut downs based on numbers of cases. Why should counties in N.C. with 50,000 residents and less than 10 cases have business owners with businesses that have 2-3 customers per hour shut down the same as Charlotte with 2000+ cases?
Should rural Idaho follow the same rules as NYC? Should Redway CA suffer because LA has a virus?
What governors have done is total stupidity.
But your a snowflake that expects “MA MA” government to protect you. I am my parents and grandparents son raised with expectations one protects temselves, much.like those in 1957-59 and 1968-70 when people did not expect government to be their mama during a pandemic.
I expect government to be looking out for those unable to look out for themselves and have no family that cares. Nursing home residents! Totally ignored until it was too late! Top priority, not some 30 yr old that wants government protecting them from a cough.
Because it is a political and moral requirement of progressives that we all “feel their pain”
4 of the 10 most populous states have Republican governors.
2 of the 3 most populous states have republican governors.
All of the top 7 Covid19 states have democratic governors.
FL, TX, GA, and OH have ALL done better than Blue states with similar populations – WAY better.
NY which is BY FAR the worst in the country, is the epicenter in more ways than one. Tracing now indicates that 80% of US Covid19 cases came from New York
Yet NY is not the most populous state, it is not the 2nd, it is the 4th. 2 Republican and 1 democratic state have more people.
TX has twice the population of NY and 1/10th the number of cases.
FL has far more old people and 1/10 the number of cases.
You say that Trump governors made a poor choice – then why don’t the numbers bear that out ?
The data is demostrating that the Lockdowns had no effect.
To the extent anything might have had an effect voluntary social distancing which started weeks before the lockdowns is the primary driver of declines.
That or the nature progression of the epidemic.
Todate the only evidence that exists that the behavior of any governor had any effect is that of Cuomo.
New York BOTCHED this. Cuomo’s order requiring nursing homes to take Covid19 patients resulted in lots of deaths in homes in NY.
Did Trump governors play politics with peoples lives ? I do not know. But if they did, the WON.
Regardless, starting with your own original premis.
Why should a state with a very low population density lock down ?
Why should any COUNTY with low population density and few or no cases lockdown ?
Even if locking down NYC actually made any sense.
Locking down Lebanon, PA does not. They have few people and no cases.
I was not trying to give Trump advice.
If anything I was trying to give democrats advice. We are ill served by a democratic party that is getting smaller and more extreme.
Almost everyday there is an announcement of a new Vaccine candidate entering testing.
But there are several “vaccine” announcements that are extremely significant.
The first is the RNA based vaccines. These are radically different from existing vaccines.
I am not aware of an existing generally used vaccine of this type – they are relatively new.
Normal vaccines work by injecting you with either a weakened or a dead version of the virus.
With the expectation that your body will on its own develop antibodies to that virus and if you are later exposed those antibodies will kill the infection before it gains a foothold.
RNA vaccines work by injecting you with a gentically engineered version of the Virus RNA.
This is Live RNA, but it has been stripped of dangerous parts of the virus RNA.
This RNA will infect you, and it will coopt your cells into producing PART of the virus – as an example the Spike protein, But not the entire virus. Your body will then start making antibodies to that virus protein.
There are reasons this is potentially far safer and could get through testing much faster.
The last development which we Israel his just developed is directly producing human antibodies. This completely skips much of the way a vaccine works. Instead of teaching your body to produce antibodies, it directly injects you with those antibodies.
This is similar to giving the blood plasma of recovered patients to very sick patients – except that because the antibodies are produce rather than extracted they do not require a supply of recovered covid19 patients donating blood.
Plasma donations DO NOT require FDA approval as blood Donation is nearly a century old.
The expectation is that manufactured antibodies can be used as a treatment with very limited regulatory requirements. Fundimentally consisting of demonstrating that the manufactured antibody is exactly the same as an antibody extracted from a donors blood.
If the antibody is the same then injecting it is safer than providing plasma.
Manufactured antibodies are relatively new, but apparently they are already being used in AIDS cases.
Regardless, whenever you hear someone say it “ALWAYS” takes some amount of time to solve some problem. You should ALWAYS temper that with the understanding that alot od assumptions are wrapped in that claim. The largest is that the problem is being solved in exactly the same way as it ALWAYS has been.
There are numerous drugs in trial as potential antiviral treatment.
One of the reasons that has been possible so fast, is that many biolabs have completely inverted the process. Instead of looking for a new Drug to target the Virus, they are testing the over 200,000 drugs the FDA has already approved for efficacy.
Or more accurately a subset of those drugs. Because we far better understand DNA/RNA and proteins today that even a decade ago, we also now better understand how drugs effect RNA and proteins. So BioLabs do not have to test all of 200,000 existing drugs, they can search for drugs that target the critical proteins that this Virus requires.
If they find a match. Testing is done to determine efficacy NOT safety. Because the drug has already been through the approval process its safety profile is already known.
If the drug works in real world tests, then it needs no approvals.
It is quite interesting to see how biolabs are working rapidly AND circumventing regulations to find solutions.
There will be many simulataneous attempts at antivirals, and many of those will Fail.
But only one needs to succeed.
Went out to get two sockets for my wrench at the Advanced Auto store today. first time out since Mar 13 except for that one trip to costco gas station mid April. At that time the major shopping road reminded me years ago when stores were closed on Sundays. Not today, the level of traffic and store activity looked about normal. Few people wearing mask. Son came by with groceries for his mom later and we talked. He is a manager for 5 Guys Burgers and his home restaurant is here, but since he is single, he is also used to open new stores where he is away for 2-3 wks at a time. He said their last couple weeks sales are exceeding the same period last year even with just carryout and delivery. His customers have basically said they have been home too long, the number of cases are increasing with all the controls and if that isntbworking, then they are ready to take chances and get back to something more normal. He is back to full staffing, so it looks like people have decided to ignore our governor.
My daughter works at Target – they are busier than ever. But part of that is that all the smaller stores have been shutdown.
At the same time we are seeing lots of places came the “orders”.
The local garden center closed for several weeks. But they have just re-opened, They have just relabeled themselves agricultural supply – and the garden center it opened.
There is also now a fair amount of analysis coming out.
The conclusions of ALOT of statisticians is that voluntary social distancing has worked.
The lockdowns did not. The death and infections trend lines DO NOT correlate to lockdowns. But they do to the start of social distancing recomendations.
The curve in Sweden looks no different from the US.
But there is one BIG difference – what the swedes are doing is sustainable and self adjusting.
What we are doing is not.
A majority still support lockdowns, but that support is declining. That is practically baked in.
Further there is a related problem – this is not hitting everywhere the same.
Places that do not have any or few cases are chaffing. While populated areas that are still seeing lots of death are more supportive.
Ultimately one size does not fit all.
Kudos to Target.
Not only for the cautionary entrance requirements they initiated here Weeks ago (sanitizing carts, customer service reps keeping waiting line entry order with friendly banter) – but also for not price gouging. That’s true for on-line home delivery too: had sanitizing items Free-delivered the other day at normal costs.
Actually Target has been among the WORST of the big boxes and almost certainly did worse than small bussiness.
Costco implimented Social distancing, plexiglass screens, wider aisles, limited occupancy, and 2m separations even outside the store – long before the “lockdowns”
Target did nothing. Govenor ordered lockdown – but let big boxes stay open.
Target did nothing.
It was not until the Governor ordered that stores had to social distance, that PPE had to be used, and that plexiglass barriers had to be up, that Target started following any guidelines.
My daughter asked for voluntary layoff for a week because they would not allow her to hear a mask or gloves – and this was DURING the lockdown.
Myriads of employees begged Target to let them bring in their own masks and gloves and were told no.
While the lockdown orders were a mistake, and without them Target would still be doing nothing. There would be myriads of smaller stores opened and many of those would be responding to recomendations.
You should listen to the Measures that Salon owner Luther put in place on her own to “illegally” re-open her salon.
Many of her stylists were doing peoples hair from their homes – which was even less safe.
Luther queued people outside the store on chairs 6 ft apart. She brought customers in and out 1 at a time, everyone had to hand sanitize on the way in and out. Each station was disinfected between customers, and on and on.
You are far more likely to have the little guy give a damn about your safety than the big guy.
Jay, there is no such thing as “price gouging” – it is artificially concocted nonsense.
Prices are determined by the laws of supply and demand.
When you mess with that you end up with shortages. or black markets or both.
The Feds went insane over the Guy in Tennese with 17,000 hand sanitizers.
How is that any different from an Amazon Warehouse ?
The only thing that people speculating in products that might be in short supply do is shift the sale of product from the early part of the shortage to the late part and provide greater incentive to suppliers to boost production faster.
You say CostCo did not “price gouge” – that is correct – but many customer came in every single day and bought the limit of pretty much every product that was restricted.
Some of these were just odd people who think – possibly rightly – if those like you have their way, that lockdowns might last forever.
But many were people who were buying for a number of people – often elderly.
Wouldn’t it be wise for younger people to be going to the store to do all the buying for several older families ? woudn’t it be wise for groups of families – old or young to send one person to do the buying for all of them ?
And what if somebody did that for someone else as a service – and got paid extra for it – do you have a problem with it ?
Separately Stores almost never “price gouge” during a crisis. Why ? Because they will still be there when the crisis is over. Stores like Walmart, Denny’s Home Depot, or even local diners usually have disaster plan’s in place. The big chain stores usually prepare their inventories for absolutely any event that is foreseable, and for any event that is regional rather than global. In natural disasters one of the biggest obstacles is Government which slows down the movement of supplies into effected regions.
The “price gougers” you complain about are typically guys of are from outside the effected region who load up their pickups and trailors with water, gas, genorators – whatever they think will be in short supply and take back roads into the effected areas bringing in supplies that would not otherwise be available.
And these are the guys you want to stop and arrest ? I guess in your world they should just stay home and everyone should have to wait several more days for water or gas or electric ?
Do you understand that immediately after a disaster that cuts electricity, grocery stores have maybe 24hrs at most to get power back to their refridgerators of the food will spoil.
If you are not a giant store that can afford your own diesel backup power, that guy with a trailor full of generators that he has snuck past the roadblocks is the only hope that all your food will not rot ?
Many disasters completely disrupt the water supply or contaminate it. Again that guy with water in his trailer might be the only water you can get for a few days.
Should he fix the price at what he paid for it – and have one guy buy the entire trailer ?
Does the guy who skirted your idiot roadblocks to get water to people who need it deserve to profit from his labor ?
And BTW it is high prices that keep the horders from buying all their is.
The purpose of the price system – including price spikes is to balance supply and demand.
When supply is low and demand is high prices rise UNTIL demand matches supply.
The purpose of high prices is to reduce demand to what people actually need, not what they want.
There have been myriads of economic studies of “price gouging” – none have ever found it harmful. All have found it net beneficial.
All “price gouging” laws are is more stupid government efforts to drive people to black markets. Because of stupid laws like your nonsense – in the USSR most people were fed from the black market.
The reason that Target and other stores big and small are doing things like free delivery, online ordering etc. is to find anyway possible to stay open and to survive.
Big businesses do it.
Little businesses do it.
There is a popular asian resturant in my town whose owners we know. they say they are busier now – but it is all takeout or delivery. They have changed their menu to meals that work better for takeout.
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages”
Adam Smith
If by now you have not managed to figure out how to get or make hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes, etc. then you will likely manage a darwin award.
As WSJ noted – there is no real shortage. The problems with hand sanitizer are the result of things like FDA/CDC rules and Tarrifs.
All these things are trivially easy to make. There are probably 100+ videos on youtube concerning making your own hand sanitizer or disinfectant wipes.
But the FDA just published new rules that allow pharmacies to make their own and sell it.
Why was a rule change necescary ? Why does the government regulate hand sanitizer of disinfectant wipes AT ALL ?
You rant about price gouging, but I can guarantee you that – despite government stupidity like Tarrifs on the raw matrerials and regulators on the manufacture and sale of hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes, that if you allowed the price to float, that very quickly demand and supply would align and there would be no shortage, and after that prices would slowly decline as supply caught up to demand.
The fear of running afoul of stupid price gouging laws is causing the actual shortage.
Even the tarrifs and stupid laws – at worst just delay the point at which supply exceeds demand and prices return to normal.
Hording occurs when the price remains artificially low relative to demand.
Price gouging is the cure for hording. And rising production as a consequence of higher prices is the cure for both.
This is how free markets work.
BTW Hand Sanitizer and disinfectant wipe production are more than double normal – more than adequate to meet our needs. But because prices were not allowed to respond to demand there are still people who are hording, and that means in some places – mostlhy big cities these fly off the shelves faster than they can get on.
Dave “Places that do not have any or few cases are chaffing. While populated areas that are still seeing lots of death are more supportive.”
This is no different than anything else in this country. The areas with fewer cases are the rural areas, smaller towns and cities with more spread out housing and working conditions. They also are the areas more likely to be ” red” districts where people have been raised to take personal responsibility.
The more populated areas are more supportive and yes, seeing more deaths. They are also “blue” districts and have the belief in “Ma Ma” government expecting government to protect them. They dont take personal responsibility and blame others for anything bad.
I have made numerous comments about many government actions so wont say it again. But anyone can do just a little research to find huge idiotic mistakes government did to see stupidity rules. For instance, nursing home operators beg for testing and PPE, they are ignored while 20-40 year old healthy ( other than virus) individuals tested, thousands eventually get it in nursing homes. Cuomo orders positive covid patients into otherwise covid free nursing homes, those operators beg the state not to do it, he does it, thousands die in NY nursing homes. There are many more I have already listed and we have “debated”.
It is just not possible to make the kind of rules needed for this from the top.
It should be obvious by now that what is “essential” is a meaningless and arbitrary distinction.
The economy as a whole is incredibly intertwined. Things that are purportedly not essential are 2nd or 3rd order inputs for things that are.
And many things that are not essential are still things people want very badly.
If you lock people up in their homes – they need something to do besides think about the fact that they are locked in their homes and can not do what they want.
People going fishing, hunting, camping, gardening, boating, even on the beach may not be essential but there is ZERO reason to stop them so long as people do not interact much outside of family units.
There is nothing unsafe about travel. What is unsafe is what may happen when you get to your destination.
It was always stupid to say – these parts of the economy can continue – because they are critical and these are barred. The economy is far too complex to get that right.
And every poor decision you make – and you CAN NOT make such decisions without many many mistakes, will piss people off. Though not initially. On day one we want to feed safe.
As time passes and most of us start to grasp that we are more likely to be killed in an automobile accident or by cancer than Covid19 our risk tolerance will increase.
“It should be obvious by now that what is “essential” is a meaningless and arbitrary distinction.”
Yep, when NASCAR is declared “essential”, it makes a joke out of the meaning. But their are manybdrinking the Kool-aide.
There is only a single measure that succeeds in wiping out an epidemic without it running through the natural course and infecting whatever the natural limit of that virus is.
And that is a near perfect quarantine of those actually infected.
If you can get 95% of those infected quarantined before they spread it, you will reduce the total infections and death by 50%.
Lockdowns are a form of quarantine – but you quarantine everyone instead of only the sick.
But again that only works is you succeed in “quarantining” 95% of those infected.
If you do not reach that, it does not work.
Further Quarantines – whether in the form of lockdown or quarantining the sick only work if they are 95% effective and lost all the way until the epidemic ends. Relaxing at any point prior to that will rapidly result in everyone you protected quickly getting sick.
Quarantines are a very effective tool – towards the start. If you can catch the small numbers of infected people at the borders, quarantines work incredibly well. Even if you get small incursions into the general population, so long as they are small and you have the resources to trace contacts and isolate everyone who has come in contact with an infected person you can stop an epidemic in its tracks.
But once the number of infected people exceeds the capacity to track and isolate people your done.
We are not seeing increases in infections as lockdowns are easing.
That is good, but it also means lockdowns did not have any effect – they were gratuitous.
We are also not seeing significant differences between countries, states counties based on government actions.
Systems with weak healthcare had high death rates.
Places with large numbers of elderly had high death rates.
Places with unhealthy populations had high death rates.
Greater population density – high death rates.
Death rates seem to increase with latitude.
There are some government responses that appear to have increased the death rates
such as Cuomo forcing elder care facilities to take back Covid19 patients when they were discharged from hospitals.
We are starting to get information on the actual infection rates.
Again we are NOT seeing these vary based on government policies.
But primarily based on population denisty.
There is a study out recently that says that herd immunity is actually acheivable at much lower numbers of infections when the susceptibility and fatality vary based on factors like age. That “herd immunity” is theoretically acheivable at 10% infection rates, given the right Virus characteristics. That the “right” policy might be to do nothing at all to protect the least vulnerable, to try to get young people infected as much as possible as quickly as possible and to quarantine only the most vulnerable, that if you can get immunity in large portions of the younger population quickly, that you will protect the older and more vulnerable population.
Numerous people keep saying this is NOT the Flu or a cold.
They are correct. The fatality rate and infection rate for people under 30 is MUCH MUCH LOWER than the flu. There is an extremely large portion of the population that is either naturally immune to Covid19 or at worst will have symptoms that they may not notice at all.
The Flu is more deadly with age, but not in nearly so pronounced a way. Further the severity of the flu is far greater in younger people.
As we learn more we should also be learning the idiocy of top down solutions and the idiocy of the precautionary principle.
WE knew next to nothing about Covid19 at the start. And even today much of what we know is still far from certain. By the time we have defeated this – then we will likely know Covid19 very well.
This lack of knowledge is NOT a failure of government. It is just the reality of the world.
For many many things knowledge and understanding come after it is too late.
Some of the best people I am following right now are NOT the experts in medicine and disease, but the experts in solving problems with insufficient information.
And guess what ? That is a science too.
Fundimentally that is about logic and probability.
If you can not know the right answer, what can you do to increase the odds of making the best possible choice ?
The answer of most of those on the left – is the precautionary principle – assume the worst and respond to that.
But in reality that usually produces significantly WORSE outcomes than logical and probabilistic approaches.
One of the things I have said from the start – from before Covid19, is that the actual odds of cataclysm are miniscule – otherwise life would not exist.
We are nearly always better off assuming very nearly the best outcome, and only doing what is easy and inexpensive in terms of protection and preparedness.
If we do that we will be wrong occasionally. But the harm of being wrong is likely less than that of over reacting.
“Target did nothing. Govenor ordered lockdown – but let big boxes stay open.
Target did nothing.‘
No so here in Los Angeles. I described the precautionary measures I saw outside the Burbank Target, here on NewMod a month ago. And online comments on ‘Nextdoor” our neighborhood social media communication nexus, have been positive. Maybe they’re following different guidelines in your state?
Try reading. The targets in my area where a full 4 weeks behind costco.
Even when our governor ordered some things – it took over a week to come colse to following orders.
The only good news regarding Target is that it appears unlikely that almost any of this was any more than pandemic theater. I am not even certain that the evidence is going to support the argument that social distancing works. The models show social distancing buying Time NOT reducing the deaths or the total number of infections.
Even Iran which probably F’d this up by the numbers and did next to nothing right, still has a much lower death/pmp than the US – almost certainly because Iran has a demofraphically very young population.
So please explain why an awful lot os sTrump’s “shithole” countries have done much better than the US – or the EU ? Why is it that countries that do not even have much of a healthcare system did better ?
I can concede lots of things – Iran, Turkey, are probably lying about their deaths. So what ?
By a factor of 5 ? By a factor of 10 ?
You can have crappy testing. It is much harder to hide bodies.
As I keep saying – Freedom makes everything better.
And we are slowly getting more free.
https://humanprogress.org/article.php?p=777
https://wellbeingtrust.org/news/new-wbt-robert-graham-center-analysis-the-covid-pandemic-could-lead-to-75000-additional-deaths-from-alcohol-and-drug-misuse-and-suicide/
Trumpsters: the Truth Shall Set You To A Rationalizing Frenzy:
So says the president who had the WHO recomend to the world to restrict travels from the US during H1N1.
So says the president who burned through the Federal stockpile of PPE and did not replace it.
“ So says the president who burned through the Federal stockpile of PPE and did not replace it.”
Even Fox News knows you’re full of exaggerated crap about that criticism:
“ The Obama administration sought several cuts in funding for the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) of personal protective equipment (PPE) and other critical medical supplies — although some of the reductions were relatively small, and most came after Republicans implemented a new law to restrict federal discretionary spending, records reviewed by Fox News show.”
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/obama-administration-sought-to-cut-ppe-stockpile-biden-gop
Overall the cuts were minuscule, as funds were shifted from other revenue flows. But you’ll keep distorting facts to justify blubbering pontifications that prove inaccurate. Like the way your early virus prognostications turned out.
Trump’s been mismanaging stockpile shortages for four years, despite DOZENS of warnings of the seriousness of pandemic infection. Keep defending the inept moron. Boobs of a feather Flock together.
How about we stop arguing about who did not replenish the PPE.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/los-angeles-times-and-bloomberg-news-federal-stockpile-of-n95-masks-was-depleted-under-obama-and-never-restocked
So according to this, Obama was the first. Told, requested, no action
So now Trump. I searched on the same criteria as I did not obama. “When was trump warned of PPE shortages”. Since there is so damn much TDS articles, there was nothing showing about previous shortages, just the everyday BS that is for political posturing and nothing factual in 4 pages of results.
So Jay, I will accept Trump administration owning 50% of the shortage problem.
But what I really want to know is did lifer employees tell Trump administration the shortages still existed? Or since they warned multiple times from 2009-2014 there was shortages, did they give up and not say anything since then.
Jay, to defend your position, find this. Not msnbc, CNN, NBC, ABC, Huff Post, but a realiable more non political site that reports the truth. I used the one about Obama because it was from two sources, Bloomberg and LA times, hardly Trump news
Sorry Ron, Trump is president – the buck stops there.
He promised to fire the incompetents to drain the swamp.
If he left incompetent lifers – his fault.
I have been screaming that he should fire more people for 3+ years.
Absolutely Obama gets more blame – he had 7+ years to fix the problem. Trump had only 3.
Trump gets 30% of the blame.
I do not care who warned who. I do not care about lifers
Your president – it is your government – fix it.
Dave “He promised to fire the incompetents to drain the swamp.
If he left incompetent lifers – his fault.”
Come on Dave, you know full well its almost impossible to fire lifer civil service employees. Just look at the VA and what happened there.
My expectations of government are lower than yours.
While I have no problem holding Trump responsible for the actions of government lifers on his watch. At the same time, I did not expect government to get this or much of anything else right. So the failure is small.
It is more a reason to get government out of this nonsense than anything else.
Government can not keep us safe. Its failure to do so in most cases is a failure to do the impossible.
I do not blame government for failing at the impossible.
I blame government for trying to do the impossible.
Well those that have lower expectations accept incompetence.
I do not accept the Peter Principle. I never hired anyone who achieved their level of incompetence. They might have when they left my employment for advancement in their career. And in the medical field, incompetence can not be accepted as is so widespread in government.
“Well those that have lower expectations accept incompetence.”
In government – absolutely. I want incompetent government.
With the power government has competent government would be incredibly dangerous.
I also want to disempower government to the greatest extent possible.
“I do not accept the Peter Principle.”
Different discussion, further we are not talking about private employment, we are talking about government. The incentives for government employees are radically different.
I have never hired anyone who lived up to my expectations. But most of the people I have hired have ultimately been able to do what was necessary.
I do think that there are some applications of the peter principle privately – approximately 60% of middle managers in Big Business are on net negative – they do more harm to their company then benefit. This is partly why Groups like Baine Capital can buy up distressed businesses slash and burn and bring them back to life.
As soon as the doors start to re-open we are going to see “Vulture capitalists” swoop in.
As much sympathy I have for those whose businesses are being destroyed. We do not get the choice of no Covid19, nor the choice of no shutdown. Many businesses that were weak but would have survived – and might even have eventually grown strong are dead or dying and will not recover. Their owners and investors are screwed and no one can fix that.
The vultures will sweep in a buy up assets at discount. They will slash and burn and when they are done as horible as that might be, we will be better off. Businesses will either get a leaner meaner now chance or be hacked up and sold for the value of the parts.
Free markets are not emotional, they do not care about fairness or feelings. But they actually do care a great deal about the greatest good.
But this cleaning of deadwood almost NEVER happens in government
Your fox cite does not address the actual problem.
Obama used up 95m units of PPE fighting H1N1,
He did not replace them.
To the extent there is shared blame – neither did Trump.
But Trump had 3 years to do so.
Obama had almost 7.
The stockpile was NOT discretionary spending. Obama received the same amount of money as Bush originally allocated that allowed the stockpile to reach 100M units of PPE in the first place. Obama spent the money on other things. He mostly spent it on vaccines, which had a short shelf life and had to constantly be replaced. And the odds of a stored vaccine proving to be the right choice for the next epidemic was always small.
Esentially Obama gambled that the next epidemic would be something he could kill quickly with an existing vaccine. The downside risk being that if he was wrong – we would have a short term shortage of PPE – exactly as happened.
Republicans absolutely cut budgets – that mostly means they did not allow them to grow faster than 1% greater than inflation.
If you beleive that we should spend infinite money on everything – then the republicans are wrong.
If you beleive that the purpose of strategic stockpiles of PPE is to get you past the initial surge until the market can produce what you need – which is the design of the program, then the problem falls to the presidents NOT the congress.
Obama made the choice to use the stockpile to fight H1N1
and he made the choice to not replinish it but to gamble on money spent on stored vaccines instead.
Why do you think I care about bad analysis from Fox ?
Absolutely Fox is less screwed up than the rest of the media.
No one in their right mind thinks that is even close to the same as accurate and unbiased.
You are constantly attacking everyone who disagrees with you as some kind of Fox indoctrinated Troll.
I will confess that it is extremely disturbing to me that Fox talking heads and conspiracy theorist like Joe DiGenova, Victoria Toenig, and Sean Hannity have proven to be mostly correct. That should scare the crap out of all of us. That is nearly as bad as Alex Jones being right.
But I do not follow Fox, I loathe Hannity, and I am not found of Most fox talking heads.
But then I am not found of almost any talking heads.
I actually like Tucker Carlson, Sagar Enjeti, and Krystal Ball – but that does not mean I agree with them.
Yet you seem to think that everyone who does not think exactly like you can not think for themselves and is propogandized by Fox.
To have my view shaped by Fox – I would have to watch Fox.
I do not accuse you of being propogandized by MSNBC or CNN.
I assume that you have thought through your own oppinions, and that you are personally responsible for them – whether you get your information from Rachel Maddow or Rush Limbaugh.
And that if you are wrong – YOU are responsible for your error – not Anderson Cooper or Jake Tapper.
You are fixated on this budget nonsense – which is entirely irrelevant.
You are correct the “cuts” were miniscule. In fact there were no actual cuts.
The rate of increase was merely slower.
The issue is NOT the budget.
From 2005 when GWB created the reserve through 2009 when Obama drew it down, Bush had built up a supply of 100M units of PPE.
Obama used up 95M of those fighting H1N1,
From 2009 through 2020 – that is 7 years of Obama and 3 years of Trump, The PPE stockpile was brough back to about 10M units – or 10% of what Bush had built up.
That was clearly a mistake.
Both Obama and Trump share responsibility.
Though Obama has twice as long to rebuild the stores.
But the most important issue is that Obama complaining about Trump is ludicrously stupid.
Obama’s handling of H1N1 was horrendous. Covid19 is more infectuous, and possibly a bit more lethal – though not alot. But fundimentally the difference is just that H1N1 infected and killed people more slowly. It still killed 68K people and infected atleast 65M.
If anything Obama had More time.
But the press did not panic over H1N1 – because it was a form of influenza, and because they fawned over Obama.
The fact is by the same criteria as Trump is being held to – Obama blew it worse.
“Dozens of warnings” ???
Of course, there is always someone predicting the end of the world.
We just locked down the country to prevent 2M deaths – for what will likely be little more than a bad flu.
Now that this is fizzling – and you have wrecked the economy over it.
The same “experts” who earned us, are telling us all that next time will be worse.
Maybe. And maybe tomorow the earth will get hit by the mega asteroid that ends all life as we know it, or the Yellowstone Caldera will explode, or ….
But the actual fact is:
There are infinite numbers of rare events that could wipe out humanity.
But the odds of any of them are neglible in the next 10,000 years and yet ALL of them are certain in the next 4B years.
Amazing how probability works.
Did Trump botch this ? Absolutely, just as Obama botched H1N1.
What you fail to grasp is:
It is not possible to “get it right”,
and it is near certain that any reaction by government will be worse than doing nothing.
You say Trump botched this.
Okay.
What has been done – or not done by government that would have changed the outcome ?
We have enough data now to say that very very little that any nation has done has made any difference.
What is the difference between this and the H3N2 Flu in 1968 ?
100K dead – with a population 2/3 of that today.
H3N2 was not nearly so lopsided in killing nearly exclusively the already dying.
And we did pretty much nothing.
So why is this worse ?
What is it that Trump – or anyone else could have and should have done to make this better ?
I am not defending Trump – I am asking you to prove your argument.
You can’t.
To the extent there is a difference between red states and blue – the red states did better.
The rural assertion has merit – but it does not explain why Florida had less deaths than NY.
Why TX and CA are so similar.
Why there is little difference between Sweden and the US – except the choices of government.
What is increasingly obvious is Covid19 did what it was going to do, and does not really give a crap about our efforts to stop it.
Maybe it has slowed because we are getting more sun.
Maybe it has slowed because only a small portion of us are easily infected.
Maybe it has slowed because it has done its damnest to dense urban areas and it really can not thrive elsewhere.
Maybe it has slowed because with its specific infection curve we are approaching herd immunity.
I do not know exactly why it is slowing. Though I do know that the absence of an explanation does not alter the fact that it is, nor the odds that it would.
What I do know is that very little of what Trump or governors of government has done has in anway done any good. And the same is true across most of the world.
Little Richard – RIP at 87
Another Conservative Speaking Plainly
(Read the full thread)
Eric needs to chill out – as do you and your ilk.
This is all only going to get worse not better.
The choices that our elite political leaders have made in response to this crisis are near universally bad though some worse than others.
It should also be clear that those governors who were more restrained have done better than those who did not. If there are protests in Florida – I am not aware of them. In texas the conflict is over idiotic edicts of democratic mayors.
On occasion we see examples of individuals badly excercising their own liberty – for the most part these harm no one but themselves, but when that is not the case, I have no problem punishing them.
A rude obnoxious and probably high women in a Walmart refused to wear PPE or social distance – her right. Walmart refused her service – their right. When security asked her to leave she fought back. I think the guards body slam was unnescary, regardless she was tresspassing. To me that worked out fine.
But for every case like that there are dozens of idiotic acts like jailing a women for safely opening her salon. No one going to the salon was behaving irresponsibly, and no one was going their by force. She opened at the request of her employees and did so as safely as possible. Pretty much proving that the shutdown orders are idiocy. ‘
Sweden has no protests. there are few if any protests in red states. Overall the trackrecord of red states in dealing with this has been much better than Blue ones.
The 4th largest state in the country – NY, has something like 40% of all cases and 40% of all deaths, and is the source for 80% of the cases in the US. NY might have more total cases and deaths than every red state in the country. Despite the fact that FL is larger and has a more vulnerable population. And TX is TWICE as large and has a fraction of NY cases.
It should be pretty self evident accross the US right now that edicts, compulsion by government has not helped. It has arguably made things worse not better.
That the damage done by draconian and ill thought out one size fits all edicts, exceeds the small amount of harm caused by those few would will not behave responsibily.
Jay,
The protests have started small – which is to be expected, and mostly with people at the extremes. But they will grow exponentially the longer this continues.
Even the swedes explicitly decided that they could not lock down, because people would become restless and intolerant of the lockdown long before the lockdown would be released.
Sweden determined – and I do not know if they were right here, that it was going to take a long time to get through this, and that the only way to do so without civil unrest was to limit restrictions as much as possible. Sweden IS quarantining those who are infected, as well as their contacts. And they have severly limited access to elder care facilities. But beyond that they have issued recomendations – and people are following them. The epidemic coincided with a major swedish holiday period – many people did go on holiday – about 10% of normal.
Schools are not closed. few businesses have closed. everyone is looking for ways to change behavior so that they can still do as much as they want while remaining safe.
But Sweden has left people free to work those things our on their own – and it is working.
The statists, who seek every oportuntiy to exert control over others do not seem to understand how people chaffe at being told what they must do, but usually will do what they should do, as well as find safe ways to do the things they really want to do.
My wife who has been relatively supportive of the actions of our governor, whose anxiety levels have skyrocketed – as have many of us, who is an in moderately high risk group, even she is starting to chafe at this.
For weeks we have talked about not being able to go to the theater or out do dinner together for months – possibly years, and how somethings will change forever.
It has only been a bit more than month, and she REALLY misses going to diner and the theater, and probably will be ready to do so again soon.
There is no predicting how fast things will return to normal, and how permanent many of our changed attitudes will be. This event could shape us for decades, or we could be past it in a few months. That is not predictable.
Typical of those that run insurance companies.
https://www.law.com/njlawjournal/2020/05/06/class-action-lawsuits-fight-denial-of-business-interruption-coverage-over-covid-19/?slreturn=20200409221744
And the courts will decide – and that is precisely how something like this should be handled.
There are two fundimental questions here.
1). What coverage did insurance companies offer ? that should be decided based on the contract. It does not matter who “wins”. It just matters that the decision is based on the contract.
2). The next problem is that it is just not possible to insure against “the end of the world”.
If there had been nuclear winter in the 60’s – would the survivors be filing insurance claims ?
I do not think Covid19 reaches the level of “End of the World” – but as a practical matter, it is also not possible to insure against anything global or systemic.
You can be angry at insurers, but it does not change the fact that you just can not insure against global or systemic failures.
I hope he does. Maybe just enough to get center right independents off their asses to vote for Dan Forrest, the Lt Gov running for this office.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/08/roy-cooper-coronavirus-north-carolina-trump-245080?fbclid=IwAR3IGSU5NMmYzLMS8K0qwBFHE8tEcQKISQqnDxHYE7r01q8nHhREmaZetWc
Those who have acted more agressively will ALWAYS get the short term bump. People are ALWAYS scared by something new.
Polls mean almost nothing right now – though trends matter.
But mostly facts matter.
Ultimately if the deaths per million in red states or states with less restrictive responses are lower than those in blue states – Democrats are in deep schiff in November.
Conversely if less restrictive states end up with higher death rates – especially if there are large surges in death rates as we relax – republicans will get beat up in November.
Being happy with any governor right now is meaningless.
What matters is how well they did comparatively when the dust has settled.
Read the last part. Even the liberal left indicates personal responsibility plays a larger rold than ” your ma ma government”.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/shocking-two-thirds-patients-recently-hospitalized-ny-had-been-staying-n1201421
There is an argument being made that Covid19 is a “hospital acquired” disease.
Not only have too many people gotten this when doing the right thing,
There is a growing body of evidence that people are showing up at the hospital with a cold or the flu, and leaving dead of Covid19.
https://jonathanturley.org/2020/05/09/weekend-photos-the-tide-is-low-but-im-holding-on/
On Obama’s recent idiotic claims regarding Flynn and Barr.
Harvard needs to ask for their degree back. As is usually on all matters legal Obama is incorrect on the facts and the law.
Barr’s actions mirror those of Holder in a very similar but less high profile case ten years ago where the prosecutors had withheld exculpatory evidence from a defendant.
IN FRONT OF THE SAME JUDGE.
A prosecutors move to dismiss is far too rare, but there are still plenty of examples, there are even federal rules of procedure covering the process and federal ethics rules regardig when this is required – all were met.
Alan Derschowitz has pointed out that the most critical criteria for the request to dismiss was that the investigation was actually REQUIRED to be closed before Jan. 4th when Strzok requested that it be held open.
There are no hail mary provisions in the rules for when investigations are justified. Closing an investigation when there is no longer sufficient credible information to sustain it is NOT optional. Strzok’s text that the FBI’s incompetence had saved the day was very damning.
It is an adminission that he BLOCKED closing an investigation that no longer had foundation in order to take one more swing at Flynn. There is no “one last swing” provision in due process. When the evidence fails YOU ARE DONE, continuing to procede is a civil rights violation, and possibly a crime.
When Strzok should up in Flynn’s office he was no longer a government agent persuing a legitimate investigation.
18 USC 1001 is actually pretty clear.
While alot has been made of materiality – and that is relevant and damning.
There is a more important issue in 18 USC 1001 – it is NOT as representated, a statue barring lying to an FBI agent. FBI is Never mentioned in the statute. Lying to a HUD inspector violates 18 USC 1001 – SO LONG AS that Inspector is engaged in a legitimate investigation, and the lie is material.
Telling a HUD (or FBI) investigator, that you had a burger for lunch when you had a hot dog is not a crime. Nor are ordinary exchanges between private citizens and members of the government, nor are ordinary exchanges between members of government and each other.
If you doubt that – then consider this. At the time Flynn was the NSA. He was just as Strzok a “federal agent” – Comey lied to Flynn about the meeting, Strzok lied to Flynn about it.
If any lie to any federal agent is a violation of 18 USC 1001 then before Strzok came into Flynn’s office – Comey,. McCabe, and Strzok had all violated 18 USC 1001.
But that is not the case. The reason it is not the case is because at that time Flynn was not conducting a legitimate investigation. Neither were Strzok and the FBI.
A significant part of the notes that are being revealed right now is that Flynn was near certain to find out very shortly about the Crossfire Huricane investigations.
When he did he was going to start asking questions. When that turn happened Flynn would be the investigator, and Strzok, McCabe, Comey etc, would suddenly become the defendants. Not only were they obligated to inform Flynn as NSA, but lying to Flynn would become a crime one Flynn started a legitimate investigation.
https://jonathanturley.org/2020/05/09/president-obama-declares-there-is-no-precedent-that-anybody-can-find-for-the-flynn-motion-he-may-want-to-call-eric-holder/
So lets see, now that the Transcripts of the House hearings are out We have myriads of democrats who have told us that they have seen evidence of Russian Collusion.
Schiff, Warner, SwalWell, Nearly all the press,
We have various former Obama officials who when in front of TV cameras talked about evidence of Trump/Russia Collusion. We have this purportedly gold standard ICA Asssessment that the press has relied on about Trump/Russia collusion.
Under oath NO ONE testified that they had any direct evidence of collusion.
Under Oath NO ONE testified if they have indirect evidence of collusion.
Under Oath NO ONE was even will ing to admit to hearing gossip from an identified person of any of this.
Put simply Trump/Russia Collusion was a LIE from DAY ONE, every single person feeding that garbage to the media KNEW IT.
NEXT we learn that the FBI not only knew this was bunk BEFORE THE ELECTION,
But they beleived that the entire thing was deliberate Russian disinformation.
This is not Trump saying this – this is the very people in the FBI who have been lying to everyone for the past 3 years. So Comey, Clapper, and Brennan foist upon us all an Intelligence assessment that not only did they KNOW was wrong – but was 180 degrees wrong. Instead of investigating Trump/Russia collusion for the past 3 years – we SHOULD have been investigating Clinton/Russia collusion.
Next we have CONFIRMED that Obama AND Biden were involved in this.
A big deal has been made of the fact that Obama directed AG Yates to persue a Logan Act investigation against Flynn.
But actually more disturbing is that Obama KNEW that Flynn Talked to Kislyak and had read the transcript.
It has been a long time since we talked about unmasking. But it is important here.
We spy on other countries all the time. It should surprise no one that we were spying on Kislyak. In the process of spying on foreigners we often end up spying on americans.
And that is illegal without a warrant. It is for this reason that americans are NEVER identified in intelligence material that is circulated in government. Americans are identified as US person #1 and any identifying details are redacted.
It is difficult to get intelligence content that idenfifies americans because anything that does so is an infringement on their rights.
So how is it that Obama knew that Flynn talked to Kislyak and exactly what was said ?
AG Yates did not know. Several other people in the meeting learned it the first time in that meeting from Obama.
The point is not that Obama committed a crime – though it is likely he did.
The point is that contra what we have been told before Obama was involved – heavily involved in the entire Crossfire Huricane nonsense.
we have texts from Strzok that confirm that Obama was getting biweekly briefs in March of 2016 – that is Before there was an investigation.
We have Strzok confirming that multiple GOP candidates were targeted by Obama in late 2015.
Until Jan. 19, 2017 Barack Obama was up to his eyeballs in this.
FINALLY we know that by Ictober 2016 the FBI knew this entire mess was a pile of schiff.
By Jan 4th they knew there was not even a hint of a hint of credible evidence against Flynn, that investigation FAILED. They also knew that the Trump/Russia investigation wheels were all falling off.
Who Knew ? Strzok, Knew, Comey Knew, McCabe Knew, Rosenstein Knew,
On the day that Rosenstein appointed the Special Counsel he ALREADY KNEW there was nothing to find. His “evidence” used to support the SC appointment was ENTIRELY crap that had been debunked 6 months before and he KNEW IT. No new information was uncovered prior to March 2017, No new information was dsicovered in 22 months by Mueller.
From the start they all KNEW there was nothing to find.
There was real evidence of real misconduct involving Russian and the Clinton campaign right in Mueller’s face but Mueller chased things he knew were garbage.
In fact the entire point of the Mueller investigation was not to find something.
It was first and foremost to protect those who started this mess, and to hide the evidence against them.
Look at all the information that is now being made public. Please explain to me why that was not made public YEARS AGO ? Rosenstein fought the House and Senate inquiries tooth and nail for 2 years Why ? Mueller was NEVER going to turn up Trump/Russia collusion – not only did Rosenstein know that – but he knew it in 2016. The only purpose of Mueller’s investigation and the only purpose of Rosensteins resistance was to HIDE the truth.
And that was also the only purpose of prosecuting Flynn, and Papadoulis, and …..
And it was the only purpose for interviewing Flynn.
And an FBI interview for the purpose of preventing Flynn from finding out the Truth is not an investigation, it is a crime.
https://nypost.com/2020/05/08/adam-schiff-lied-about-the-trump-probe-and-the-media-let-him/
I have not been following details of this. And certainly not on any of the TV media talking head so called news.
Why? A few of reasons.
1. Who really cares?
2. What difference does it make?
3. Whose going to be fired?
4. Whose going to jail?
5. How much non-political true and complete investigative reporting is going to happen?
My thoughts.
1. Just a few.
2. In the long run, nothing.
3. No one.
4. No one.
5. Next to none if even that.
Oh there will be cherry picked data for both sides. The right will report their parts. The left will find all sorts of comments and say how this is a miscarriage of justice, how the justice department has been taken over for political gain and every other blue talking point. Anything that Joe B. can use for the campaign.
The bare minimum requirement for your “side” to be worth hearing is that your choices are the same regardless of what foot the shoe is on.
If you supported Blaisley Ford and you think Reade is a flake, then your oppinions, arguments, viewpoint are not worth considering.
Obama pardoned people who actually committed perjury who were less deserving that Flynn.
Regardless, I am so not interested in hearing Obama pontificate on the rule of law.
Pretty much everything that happened with CIA, NSA, DOJ, FBI in the last few years of his presidency was reprehensible. At a minimum he gets the blame because it happened on his watch. Further he gets the blame because he politicized the entire government – from ATF to FBI to CIA to State, to CIA to …
And finally he gets the blame because he lead the conspiracy.
OK, you care, but what difference does that make. I care, but what difference does that make?
Do enough care that Obama was involved? Do enough care that Susan Rice and James Clapper to the house investigators there was no evidence of Russian collusion, then went out and spread Russian collusion far and wide? Do enough care that Flynn was set up by the FBI and to get info, threatened his family?
Do individuals like Jay care rights of one man were trampled on, or is it fine to listen to talking head morons on the news and injest their brain washing verbal solutions.
I am not listening to the news. So far I have scanned the house transcripts of Clapper and Rice because they were the key guests on left wing news. It supports much of what is now being reported. But who takes the time to do what I am doing? Those like Jay? Or will they just consume the left wing Kool-Aide?
Or is it a fact that people for the most part dont care because it does not impact them personally?
What difference does it make ?
Many people are coming arround. Lots of people who at most quietly defended Trump some of the time in the past, have come to recognize:
This is not about Trump, it is about “the rule of law” and that damn if it was not true that the nutjobs were right.
We are living in a moment where it is asif we suddenly had proof of a shooter on the grassey know, or that the moonlandings were faked, or that the jews took down the WTC and blamed Al Queda.
We have a real live conspiracy theory that is now self evidently true.
We have spent most of our lives watching TV and movies that offered us clandestine government conspiracies. Now we have one exposed to the sunlight.
Do I think that Jay, or Rachel Maddow, or Chris Cuomo are going to become Trump supporters ? Nope. I am not sure Anyone will become Trump supporters. But the trust and credibility of government ALL government has been severely damaged
AND THAT IS A GOOD THING.
While I do think that the Obama administration was uniquely lawless,
I also think that to SOME EXTENT the claims of many on the left that the FBI does this all the time is absolutely True. In fact we know it is true, there are lots of other cases. But few get the attention of EVERYONE, and way too many that are discovered result in …. nothing.
I am suspicious this will effect Republicans more than democrats.
Unfortunately we will renew the Patriot act – we shouldn’t.
But there will be constraints.
It is also possible that Congress – possibly led by Republicans will reign in the FBI.
We should repeal 18 USC 1001 – onlhy the federal government has a statute like this – and BTW it is NOT specific to the FBI, it did not even originate with “law enforcement”
It came about because 100+ years ago there was nothing government could do if people, businesses, etc filled out paperwork fraudulently to either hide wrongdoing, or to gain a benefit. The right answer would have been to make fraud illegal (it already is in every state, and the Fed’s could have sought state prosecutions).
Regardless, as I noted local and state law enforcement have never had a problem despite the fact that no state has a law equivalent to 18 USC 1001.
What else might this change ?
Try the courts. Do you think that Federal Judges are not paying attention ?
Sidney Powell was just viewed as a high power hyperpartisan advocate at the start of this.
She argued from the start that the prosecutors were lying to the court. While she made excrutiatingly slow progress on that with Sullivan, mostly no one beleived the outrageous claims she was making.
Right now not only have ALL of them proven true, but we jave an even bigger claim that Powell Alleged. The effort to “get Flynn” went all the way to Obama.
He would be wise to lay low rather than pontificate (badly) about the rule of Law.
This is going to effect the courts. This is also going to effect legislators. Atleast republicans.
The GOP has been the “law and order” party forever. Their idea of “the rule of law” used to mean “law enforcement is always trustworthy”
Other effects – Jay is CONSTANTLY arguing (alteast regarding republicans) that you can discount prosecutors, lawyers, pretty much anyone based on their politics.
We can debate the extent to which that is true of republicans.
But it is self evident that everyone involved in the Clinton email investigation and Trump/Russia all the way through the Mueller team and democratic congressmen was not merely politically biased, but KNOWINGLY politically biased.
Nunes is crowing right now. One of his points – one that is broader than even he knows, is that the House and Senate KNEW all of this in mid 2017. He was personally appalled because Clapper, Rice, Yates, Comey, … would come before congress under oath and say they did not even have sourced rumors that there was any connection between Trump and Russia, and as they were testifying Democratic congressmen would go on the news and LIE about the testimony, and the witnesses would leave the hearings and go on the news and completely contradict their testimony.
Do you beleive the Intelligence community assessment anymore ?
Do you understand just the past week of Flynn revalations has not just proved Flynn innocent and put the final nail in the Trump/Russia idiocy.
But the really big deal is that EVERYONE KNEW there was nothing. Obama knew, Comey knew, McCabe knew, Strzok knew, Rosenstein knew, Mueller knew, congressional democrats knew. And ALL of them knew in very early 2017.
What will change ? I do not know, but if nothing changes this will happen again and again.
I have said REPEATEDLY as have others – that this has NEVER happened before.
The big reveal on Flynn was not that he was “setup” but WHY he was setup.
Not because they hated him – though we knew that.
But because they were going to have to tell him what they had been up to.
Obama’s direction to Yates to go after Flynn is damming. He Knew Flynn had done nothing.
But more importantly he, and Comey and all the rest of them KNEW that the moment that Flynn got word of how big a steaming pile of schiff Crossfire Huricane was he was going to take a scythe to the intel community and the DOJ.
When Obama talks about not sharing with the Trump administration – something he has ZERO authority to do, it is not because Trump is compromised. It is to bury the secrets of their own malfeasance.
I would also note, this is far from over.
While I think that Obama’s actions in this are absolutely heinous, I am sure we will hear from Jay that this is all OK and normal.
But the claim Obama had no involvement is shattered.
In early Jan. 2017 – Obama was personally aware of and upto the moment on CrossFire Huricane.
Even Jay is going to have trouble now Denying Obama’s personal involvement as the timeline rolls backward – to October, and August and march and finally to Dec. 2015.
We have been told over and over Obama had nothing to do with this – that was a lie.
As we start to re-examine the period BEFORE Jan 5 2017 – with new information – what are you going to beleive ? Are you going to give these people the benefit of the doubt – even a little anymore ?
We have all the same players going all the way back to the Clinton email saga, U1, IRSgate, Fast and Furious.
There is zero doubt that Flynn was “setup” right now. The argument from the left is NOT that he was not setup – but that this is SOP and Flynn was stupid enough to step into the trap.
Maybe, that is a different debate.
But is there the slightest doubt that these guys perverted law enforcement to suit their personal political goals ?
If they setup Flynn – why can we trust anything else they did ?
And to Jay’s “whataboutism”.
If Republicans are doing this kind of shit too – lets go after them too.
Find me examples of this conduct, regardless of party and I will lock people up.
I do not give a shit about party.
I do not care if you are using the power of government to hide crimes or to commit crimes or to manufacture crimes – you go to jail – red/blue – still jail.
“Even Jay is going to have trouble now Denying Obama’s personal involvement as the timeline rolls backward – to October, and August and march and finally to Dec. 2015.”
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂!!!!
Oh Jay will will find many tweets from twits on twitter to share
Forget talking heads on the right or left.
Are YOU capable of a modicum of objectivity ?
For get left/right, red/blue.
I think the FBI’s conduct “investigating” flynn was reprehensible – criminal.
And it would be so if “Trumpsters” did it to Trump enemies.
I do not BTW think that “the resistance”, ” the deep state” is especially progressive.
The federal government leans left, but not extremely left. The FBI less so.
I do not beleive that much of the nonsense in CIA FBI, DNI, …. was left right political.
It was more about power and preserving it.
I do not agree with the left that the conduct of the FBI was acceptable.
I do agree with the left that it is near SOP within government – and left or right that must end.
I am speculating, but I think we have been on the cusp of a tektonic political realignment for almost a decade.
I think the pendulum is starting to swing right. Or more accurately rightish.
It never goes back precisely where it came from. We are not returning to the Bush era.
I think the Obama administration was the appogee of a modern left swing. The pendulum is moving the other way for now.
Republicans atleast partly lead by Trump have made a shift on policies and values.
It has cost them many neocons, But it has gained them many blue collar workers.
And won them a presidential election. Further it has positioned them to make inroads among minorities. No change is permanent – the earliest progressives were republican.
But for the foreseable future the GOP power will be Trumpian. That does not mean all republicans will have the same style or character – though even that you will likely see more of, because what works is repeated.
Democrats should have adjusted to this shift in 2016. after the election they should have tried to get back the voters they lost. In 2020 they should have done the same. Instead they moved left pretty hard. I do not think there is any chance they can win that way.
The democrats problems are not permanent. Democrats MUST ultimately change or become irrelevant. We still have to see how the democrats decide to change.
British Erudition Enumerating Trump Triteness
https://coming42.livejournal.com/479179.html
“A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.”
I thought aside from a few stupid errors – Trump is quite funny, just not in a british way, regardless Nate is quite accurate, and could be trivially simplified.
The British do not like Trump because he is american, and absolutely Obama was not.
Trump does not apologize for being american, or for america.
I like british Humor, but Mr. White’s claim that Trump is humorless beautifully captures the fact that British humor is what is narrow and dry.
Worse White’s essay is pretty damaging to the British – or atleast Whites narrow view of them. I doubt Boris Johnson, or an ordinary liverpoolean, share the same character as White. Regardless the gargantuan failure of self awareness is White’s not Trump.
Contra White Trump is quite good at Humor – if you have ever watched even part of a Trump rally you would know that. He is also very good at self deprecating humor – a halmark of those who ARE self aware.
The essay is also interesting because it reflects the left right split in our country.
Contra White and the left Both Trump and the right and most of the country have a real sense of humor.
There is a kind of self referencing meme today – “the left can’t meme”. It is a powerful meme because it is very close to true. look at those on the left, those attacking Trump,, the talking heads of the media – they have no sense of humor.
A generation ago comics were mostly lefties. Lenny Bruce and the like. But comics will not visit college compuses and are increasingly shifting right – because the left has murdered humor.
Just look at your own posts. You go to a great deal of trouble to try to be funny – but you fail badly all or nearly all the time. You just come off as mean and bitter.
Trump is only humorless to people who only watch clips of him on the MSM.
Trump is very much like his voters. It is shocking that he is wealthy. He is the guy with the gold toilet seat. Or at TV bloopers.
Most importanly while he often laughs at himself – he laughs WITH his voters, not at them.
The left laughs AT Trump voters in that very dry sarcastic down the nose way of british elites – like White, like you.
What white has observed – is that Trump is american. And too many in this country – like you and Obama are not. Just to be clear – no one is asking you to leave. Just quit trying to turn this country into europe. We left there. We saved their bacon TWICE. We have gone from barely surviving in the wilderness to the worlds only superpower. We are not especially interested that some British snob thinks we do not meet his elite standards.
This is why we do not trust the media.
Todd play an edited clip of AG Barr – that is “sort of” OK, We can all judge on our own the editorial decisions of the media.
But then Todd saysBarr did not mention “upholding the rule of law”
That was a lie on Todd’s part as in the part of the sentence that Todd cut, Barr explicitly stated his decision was required by the rule of law.
it is not the “deceptive editing” that is the problem. It is that Todd outright lied about what Barr said.
And we see this all the time. This is why one should NEVER use what the press says that anyone said anymore.
The press has done this with Trump and anyone who is not a never Trumper constantly.
Nor is this a rare occurance. It happens pretty much everytime Trump speaks.
Regardless, We do not need Chuck Todd to tell us what AG Barr said. We can listen to AG Barr.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/may/10/chuck-todd-accused-deceptive-editing-william-barr-/
More brainwashing. And people believe this edited crap. Both sides do it.
“More brainwashing. And people believe this edited crap. Both sides do it.”
Do people beleive this ? Some do, some don’t. the more the media lies to us and gets caught the less they are beleived. The approval rating of the media makes Trump look like a god.
“Both sides”
Maybe, but what matters is separating Truth from lies.
If you want to beleive that Side A lies more or less or the same as B, that does not matter, so long as you have enough distrust to spot the lies.
I think the lies from the left are more frequent and more egregious.
The evidence supports that.
But even if you disagree, so long as you question claims and seek the truth without blinders you will mostly get it right.
“Do people beleive this ? Some do, some don’t. the more the media lies to us and gets caught the less they are beleived. The approval rating of the media makes Trump look like a god.”
Well crap, I must have some really dump friends and neighbors.
Oh well, Jay and Roby think I am some numb-nut myself, so I am in a group of.like minds. (Simple, but not like thinking).
I try hard not to call others dumb. I call ideas dumb, not people.
I sometimes fail at that. I apologize – no one posting here is stupid.
But many of the ideas offered here are stupid.
Well I guess I have called some voters stupid. And I guess I should not have done that.
So I will say they are educated by false facts used by the media to brainwash them into thinking those media outlets facts are true.
If you say the same things over and over they become truth.
I would note the source on this is the German BND not Trump
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8304471/Chinas-president-Xi-Jinping-personally-requested-delay-COVID-19-pandemic-warning.html
There is also indications that are being looked into that this started in October in Wuhan. Someone has cell phone data of that area and in October movement in and around that lab became almost non existent. They are also tying to determine if the same took place around schools. But movement throughout Wuhan during that time decreased substantially indicating the virus had escaped in October. And that is supported by another report that France documented its first case in November, That I have not researched yet.
There is very strong suspicion that the first cases hit CA in late Dec or very early Jan. and that CA got it directly from Wuhan and got version A which is aparently less fatal, and that CA was mostly infected and working past this before Newsome locked the state down.
BTW Data from Europe is showing that they have 0.03% excess deaths thus far in 2020 compared to the same period in 2018.
Two reasons.
1. 2018 had a higher than average number of deaths due to the heat wave that impacted all of Europe and
2. deaths due to the flu are down due to milder winter ( or people got covid-19 instead of the flu)
Do the reasons matter ? The fact is that 2020 mortality thus far is not different from 2018 to any statistically significant degree.
I can list other possible explanations, but they do not alter the fact that though we have forked over our economy, total mortality is virtually unchanged.
One other possible reason is that Flu deaths are down because they are being reported as Covid19 deaths.
Another is that people coming to the hospital with a very serious flu, pickup Covid19 while they are there – and then often die of Pneumonia.
It is possible that a substantial portion of new fatal covid19 cases are hospital acquired – come to the hospital with one serious problem – leave in a box with Covid19.
As best as I can tell – while European total mortailty is up a miniscule amount, US overall mortality remains down a small amount. People may be dying of Covid19, but deaths overall are down.
jay;
Atleast temporarily you have lost at SCOTUS and given the information in the article is correct that loss is likely permanent.
I see zero likelyhood of SCOTUS approving the public release of eitehr grand jury or investigative material. That has pretty much never happened before.
Further it is not just Trump that has an interest. But every single person interviewed by Mueller.
I know this is hard for you to understand – but we do have a 4th amendment.
The premise of the 4th amendment – the right to privacy, is the foundation of griswald v connecticutt and Rowe.
If you want access to the GJ and investigative materials, you need to have an existing criminal investigation – that means you need to meet the predicate for such an investigation, and what should be crystal clear from the Recent Flynn debacle – is that you have not basis for any investigation. Even in the event of a bonafide criminal investigation, you would still likely have to go to court to get the material, you would have to establish that it was germain to what you were investigating, and you would get only that information that the court found germain. And to make any of it public, you would have to conduct a trial and present it as evidence. Because every single person involved in an investigation has a right to privacy.
Government, the house, the DOJ do not get to violate a person’s right to privacy merely because they wish to.
https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/scotus-grants-trump-administrations-request-shield
So Comey and McCabe testified that Clapper briefed Obama on the Flynn-Kislyak call,
But Clppper testified that he did not brief Obama on that call.
Someone is lying – actually under oath.
You can not tell me for certain what the Lie Flynn told was,
According to the early versions of the FBI D302’s when asked about the Kislyak Call Flynn told Strzok he did not remember the call, but that it could have happened and that Sanctions might have been discussed.
This is Not Flynn, that the the FBI saying that is what he said.
So no one can tell us what it is that Flynn lied about. So how is it we know it was a lie ?
Conversely McCabe Comey, and Clapper testified under oath to the house.
They were all clear, and it is not possible for all of them to be telling the truth.
So are you going to stand behind sending people to jail for perjury ?
So CNN has admitted that they deceptively edited the Barr interview and that Chuck Todd’s claim that Barr never mentioned the rule of law is false.
Of course it is, the full video is available to everyone.
Kudo’s to CNN and Todd for admitting they Forked up.
If only it were possible to beleive it was an innocent mistake.
“Steele recently testified in a British court that he believed both then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and then-Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice were aware of his dossier research as it was going on in summer 2016.”
So the House transcripts are out and low and behold – even Crowdstrike refuses to say for certain that the Russians hacked the DNC.
In fact he can not even say for certain that the DNC emails were part of the hack.
Put simply Crowdstrike is not sure who did it.
And not sure what was taken.
And no one but Crowdstrike ever exaamined the servers.
So one by one EVERY SINGLE Democratic claim is burning to ash.
Trump did not “collude” with the russians, the Russians may not have hacked the DNC,
and whoever hacked the DNC may not have taken the emails.
Dave you have posted a multitude of information concerning Flynn, but nothing in chronological order. Do you know of any site that has created from start to current day what happened, including the house and senate investigations.
I would like to find something like this that has no political leaning, just a site like a legal site that has listed all the legal decisions and actions to read and understand what happened, including anything adverse to the Trump administrations and Flynn.
All I see right now is left leaning info that offers no defense of Flynn and right leaning info that does noting but attack the past actions with no defense of any of that action. And I know Flynn was not a choir boy, so I know there is something not totally kosher.
I think you can google Flynn Timeline.
I also think that Some recent articles by john Solomon will have overview Timelines.
But I am not aware of a detailed time line.
A detailed timeline has numerous complexities:
Ever “fact” has multiple data associated with it.
1). When did that allegation come to the FBI/DOJ/…
2). When did they determine it was false or not criminal.
3). When did the Obama Administration (outside of DOJ/FBI) learn those things.
4). When did Mueller learn those things.
5). When did congress learn those things.
6). When did the public first hear those things.
7). When did the public have PROOF of those things.
All of those dates are incredibly important.
But 4 dates are of monumental significance.
When did the administration Know that Flynn was innocent.
The investigation should have been closed Prior to Jan. 4, 2017.
The involved FBI players KNEW that on Jan. 4, 2017.
On Jan 5. 2017 we KNOW that Obama, and Key figures in DOJ, DNI, FBI, CIA, NSA all ALSO know.
That Jan. 5th Oval office meeting is CRITICAL. It is the “smoking gun” – it is the instant that we can PROVE this was a criminal conspiracy. Using the power of government to investigate someone you know to be innocent, is a violation of 42 USC 1983.
So we have Flynn’s civil rights being violated AND we have a clear CONSPIRACY to do so, going all the way to Obama.
Everything that everyone in that meeting – and their subordinates did from that moment forward was a criminal conspiracy to violate Flynn’s rights.
Later when Congress started investigating – it became OBSTRUCTION OF CONGRESS.
At some later point it became OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE.
In Mid Jan 2017 – I beleive it was Jan. 17th, the FBI interviewed Steele’s primary Sub Source who vaporized what little remaining credibility that the whole CrossFire Huricane investigations had. So By Jan. 17, 2017 at the latest XFH was over or should have been and those involved KNEW it.
All actions by all these parties especially in DOJ/FBI after that date are a CONSPIRACY to violate the civil rights of the numerous people they were investigating/spying on.
Again a 42 USC 1983 violation.
At later dates Obstruction of Congress and Obstruction of Justice are added.
Next 2 months Before Mueller was appointed all the players KNEW they had nothing.
And yet Mueller was appointed to investigate people that they already knew were innocent, and to investigate something they already knew had not happened.
At his appointment Mueller and his team – except those part of XFH (which is many of them) can be given the benefit of the doubt. HOWEVER, it can not have taken them long to find out all the things we now know.
Once Mueller and his team learned that XFR should have been closed on Jan 4, and XFH on Jan 17, and they still continued – they made themselves part of the conspiracy.
There are alot of people on the right ranting “Treason”. Treason is defined in the constitution. and this is not treason. But it is a criminal conspiracy, and it is a criminal coverup of a conspiracy, and it is an attempted Coup of sorts.
What the public NOW knows, Was known by FBI, DOJ, CIA, NSA, DNI, Even Obama and Biden YEARS AGO. Those involved – and even some not involved have fought for YEARS to keep what they did secret.
This is not a “few bad apples” – this is a very large segment of the top of many government agencies under Both Obama and Trump.
Democratic congressmen are protected – atleast with respect to their statements, by the speech and debate clause of the constitution. Regardless, many key democrats have know everything we are just finding out for atleast 2 years – and they have been LYING to us about it.
There is no differences of point of view or oppinion here.
They have been lying about facts.
They have told us the closed door testimony they heard was evidence of criminal conduct by Trump, when in fact what they heard was not just that Trump was innocent, but that there was a criminal conspiracy to frame him.
And they made themselves a part of that.
I hope you can find what you want.
But if you do not trust the media – something I completely understand.
What is important is the raw documents – not the editorials about them.
With respect to Flynn the FBI finding prior to Jan. 4 2017 that the FBI had no derogatory information on Flynn. That means that they had checked every allegation and discredited it.
Absent a credible allegation there is nothing to investigate. Absent a credible allegation, there is no legitimate investigation. When the FBI interviewed Flynn later in January, it did not matter whether he lied to them – because there was no legitimate investigation.
18 USC 1001 is about lying to an investigator. No investigation, no investigator.
Lying to an FBI agent in a Bar about football is not a crime.
The “there was not a legitimate investigation” fact has much broader implications – and those apply to CrossfireHurricane.
If there was not legitimate investigation of Flynn in Jan 2017. Absent a new allegation or new evidence – which no one has seen – Mueller had no basis to investigate Flynn or Crossfire Huricane.
So doctors are now claiming that CDC guidelines are requiring them to over report Covid19 deaths and cases.
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/doctors-and-clinical-researchers-challenge-uns-who-cdc-and-dr-faucis
So the facts say the US is doing better than Europe, but a plurality of americans beleive we are doing worse.
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/polling/us-death-rate-lower-many-euro-countries-yet-38-voters-think-us-doing-worse
So lets get rid of the logan act
https://justthenews.com/government/congress/congressman-introduces-legislation-repeal-logan-act
Now that we know that the effort to get Flynn came from the whitehouse,
Is it easier to beleive that the IRS targetting of the Tea Party did too ?
And now we have Vindman.
Vindman in his closed door testimony admitted that his summary of the Trump call was inaccurate.
He claims that the summary is not false – because it was consistent with US policy.
But that the section of his call summary on rooting out corruption – i.e. the section on Biden did not occur
And we impeached over this man ?
Dave, now that the U.S. Attorney’s Durham, Jensen or Shea are going full steam on investigating, I wonder if anything will develop quick enough to materialize into anything useful, or when Biden takes office, he will shut down the investigation and classify everything so it cant become public.
If Biden is elected, Democrats flip the Senate and hold the house – this all ends.
Everything gets buried. The press ignores it, Republicans rant in the wilderness and no one hears them and they can do nothing.
But none of that it happening. I think it is probable that Biden makes it all the way to election day. But probable like 60:40 – not even close to certain.
Biden is going to be dogged by questions of competence from now until the election.
He is likely to face questions about Reade.
He is going to be under more stress and spotlights than ever – and he does very poorly under those
Trump is going to own his ass over his and Hunters dealing with china.
The Trump/Russia story is DEAD.
There are two big negative stories for Trump between now and the election.
The constant – Trump said something stupid stories.
And the economy. If things are improving in the fall
Trump wins.
If Democrats continue to be the obstacle
Trump wins.
At this time I do not think the election will be about Trump winning.
I do not think it will be about Democrats taking the Senate.
I think the election will be about whether the GOP retakes the House.
And I think that is possible.
“Biden is going to be dogged by questions of competence from now until the election.”
You mean like dopy Donnie was plagued by questions of incompetence during his campaigning, through the election, and for the last four years? Biden confidently wins that arm wrestle.
And Trump is hated exponentially more than Biden; a flip-flop of the Hillary hatred that mobilized Republicans in 2016. And who do you think is going to win the rectitude contest after 4 years of Trump being Trump, with reams of media footage of him making an asshole of himself daily shown over and over? His Cartoon image is firmly chiseled in the national Mt Rushmore of Ignoramuses.
“Biden confidently wins that arm wrestle.”
Nope!
It is highly unlikely that Trump has lost very many votes since the election – and on NET he has gained votes.
Biden needed to be viewed as Competent to beat Trump in swing states.
The week before the 2016 Election polls said Clinton was up by 6 in PA.
Biden is currently up by 6 in PA – and has a long way to go before the election.
There is a long way until the election, but the probability of any Trump negative “october surprises” is slim to none.
While nothing is likely to get better for democrats between now and the election.
“And Trump is hated exponentially more than Biden;”
True. Trump is also loved exponentially more than Biden.
“a flip-flop of the Hillary hatred that mobilized Republicans in 2016.”
This election is more similar to 2012. Biden is a sort of Trump lite.
That is not a winning strategy. It did not work for Obama.
Regardless you are correct – Most voters hate trump or love him.
Almost no one hates or loves Biden.
And the hard left is incredibly disillusioned with Biden.
That has been problem for democrats from day one.
A Sanders like candidate can not win. But a less radically democrat will trade votes from the left for a smaller number from the middle.
“And who do you think is going to win the rectitude contest after 4 years of Trump being Trump, with reams of media footage of him making an asshole of himself daily shown over and over? His Cartoon image is firmly chiseled in the national Mt Rushmore of Ignoramuses.”
Neither is winning that contest – and that is the point.
You and the press have spent 4 years trying to paint that carciture of Trump.
The only people who bought it, are those who bought it in Nov. 2016.
That will not win the election.
Sometimes Trump is an asshole. Americans are often Assholes.
Assholes the rest of the world depends on.
Patton was an Asshole.
Grant was an Asshole.
Sherman was an Asshole.
MacArthur was an Asshole.
Those right wing voters are more motivated than ever.
They are very happy with Trump’s court appointments – that is a HUGE deal for them.
They are getting their wall.
They got their tax cuts.
They got out from under oppressive government regulations.
You have told me that Farmers hurt by Trump’s tarrif’s would vote against him.
Yet Trump’s support among farmers is higher than ever.
His blue collar support is stronger than ever – and that is really important – that is why D’s picked Biden, to recapture blue collar voters.
https://jonathanturley.org/2020/05/11/chuck-todds-inadvertent-journalism/
Well dang, who would have ever thought regulations would get in the way?
https://www.aier.org/article/yet-another-regulation-that-blocked-widespread-testing/?fbclid=IwAR2_l-Gvy4M62AldKRFfs-mKcxh1AjCD5vFbFCTzp5_ue4ohpladBr2dQJQ
And I verified the Nebraska information. found this on Omaha.com dated March 27, 2020
“Gov. Ricketts said this week that the state had started expanding testing capacity by “pooling” tests at public laboratories, combining multiple samples in one test tube. The state, he noted, also was making greater use of commercial testing laboratories.”
This increased their state labs ability to run 400 samples a day instead of 100. I did not go further to find out how many they were doing 5 weeks later.
https://www.newsweek.com/curious-case-michael-flynn-opinion-1503033
So Farkas is running for office because she claims to have been among the first to have “raised the alarm” regarding Trump/Russia collusion, and she is doing so AFTER testifying under other that “I did not know anything” and that she did not know anoyone who knew anything.
How can we expect that people will not lie, when we reward them with plum consulting spots and elect them to congress for doing so.
In another era if one were caught in lies like these, one would not be able to show ones face in public.
https://jonathanturley.org/2020/05/11/i-didnt-know-anything-former-obama-official-criticized-after-classified-testimony-contradicts-her-public-statements/
Dave, the sad part of all of this is right now there is no information being written anyone on the left will believe and few in the center are paying much attention.
Not until something big happens, like charges brought against some important democrat will it make a difference.
Do you think Jay believes a word of this?
https://jonathanturley.org/2020/05/11/logan-act-is-the-last-refuge-for-the-american-prosecutorial-scoundrel/
NPR recently ran a story that 4 state governors, All democrats, ordered Nursing Homes to accept recovering Covid19 patients.
This was disasterously stupid.
Fully expect adds about Democrats killing people – they deserve them.
I have been all over Nursing Home issues for a couple weeks!
I read this morning that Long Term Care (LTC) facilities, which would include nursing homes, rehabilitation centers, group homes for developmentally and physically disabled, etc., account for 80% of Minnesota’s total covid deaths.
I’m guessing that, when this is over (if it’s ever over!) we will discover that well over 50% of ALL deaths, throughout the country, were from LTC facilities. Not infections, mind you, but deaths.
And isn’t it the death rate the reason why we have destroyed the economy?
“And isn’t it the death rate the reason why we have destroyed the economy?”
Only if they vote! Not many in NH’s are voters, so why waste supplies and meds on them.
Not until even the left media started covering NH’s did they start getting what they needed to reduce infections. But that was too late. Our governor did not allow the deaths in NH’s to be reported as such. Just X number died in whatever county. Not until the press became aware did they catagorize NH deaths.
I suspect when this is all over we will find that the total number of people who died in 2020 is not different from prior years.
We will have blown $3T and destroyed millions of jobs to accomplish nothing.
So 50% of the deaths weren’t of the elderly.
That’s a still a lot of deaths. Equivalent to calculating that US flu related deaths doubled when adding Covid deaths to normal flu deaths.
“So 50% of the deaths weren’t of the elderly.
That’s a still a lot of deaths. Equivalent to calculating that US flu related deaths doubled when adding Covid deaths to normal flu deaths.”
We will have to get to the end of this to be certain.
But through to May 1, US total deaths for the Year from all causes were DOWN from the average of the past 4 years.
It is highly likely that by the time this is completely over we will find that there was little of no increased mortality over the prior years.
While C19 Deaths were rising. Flu deaths were dropping.
Part of that is because flu season was ending.
But part of that was because:
Flu deaths were counted as C19 deaths.
Because people who were seriously ill with the Flu went to the hospital where they got C19.
There is a building body of evidence that a significant portion of the C19 deaths were “hospital acquired” That people with very serious health problems went to the hospital where they contracted C19 and died.
Regardless almost 8K people in the US die every day 365 days a year.
C19 Deaths are now about 10days of that. Further the evidence strongly suggests that an extremely large portion of C19 deaths are deaths that were going to happen in the next 6 months no matter what.
Ultimately we are likely to find that C19 is significantly Less harmful than the Flu.
While the Flu NORMALLY kills more old than young – not in the radically disproportionate way C19 does. C19 kills very very few younger people and nearly all of those have life threatening health problems.
The Flu kills mostly people who are going to die, but still a much larger proportion of people who would not have died otherwise.
One can make numbers fit any narrative.
Covid =80,000+
Other deaths down.
Flu listed as Covid
People dying of other issues who contact Covid listed as Covid.
And car accident deaths way down
Yes, if you make up the numbers and you make up the facts you can make them fit any narative,
I have offered a few conclusions that are almost certain given what we know.
Such as Lockdowns do not work – there is not sufficient difference in the results accross the globe based on different approaches to give any strong indication that any specific action of government works.
I have offers some that are more oppinions.
I strongly suspect the evidence will be that Social Distancing does not work either – or the effect is quite small. But SD is more problematic is there is no clear example of a country with good data that did NOT do SD.
There is very strong data that nations all over the place started Social Distancing atleast a week and often significantly earlier than government started issuing directives.
Regardless it is going to take more data to establish that.
I also strongly suspect that there will be negligable impact on the global mortality (or that of the US) Basically very few people die of C19 that were not going to die soon regardless.
Not none, but the overwhelming majority of the C19 deaths are deaths WITH C19 rather than FROM C19 or they are like my fathers death “from Pnuemonia” – Deaths that were inevitable, but possibly advanced a month or so (or less) because in a weakened state the dying caught C19.
There will absolutely be counter examples – possibly thousands, but not 80K or 40K.
The argument that 1 death is too much is FALSE.
My father died of medical malpractice. But no one was going to sue. As I said before he was dying no matter what. He was ready to die. What he wanted – which he did not get, was to die at home.
I doubt C19 is a pleasant way to die. But I have watched several people die. There are certainly worse ways.
Regardless, when the dust settles – C19 will likely prove to have been no big deal.
While the economically destructive lockdown will prove to be a huge mistake.
Unfortunately those conclusions will all occur after people have lost interest.
From my ‘elderly’ over 65 perspective Covid has increased my ‘Early Termination’ chances, adding one more deadly wolf to the life-shortening pack.
Fiscal US conservatives should see this as a silver lining to reduce expected Social Security outflows for a decade at least.
The impact of C19 on SS is likely to be very small.
80K people who were going to die in the next 6 months anyway is not much savings.
It is likely the C19 hospital costs will exceed any savings.
No one is telling you not to take precautions.
But if you are 65, then your odds of dying in a car accident this year are greater than C19.
“So 50% of the deaths weren’t of the elderly.” No, that’s not what I said, Jay.
The percentage of covid deaths of those over 65 is almost 80%.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-05-07/comparing-coronavirus-deaths-by-age-with-flu-driving-fatalities
What I said is that 50% of the deaths may end up being from LTC’s. Those would include nursing homes, but would also include assisted living homes, rehabilitation homes, group homes for the disabled,etc. Any facility which is a primary residence for medically at risk adults. Mostly adults who are dependent on their caregivers.
Many LTC facilities get most of their funding from Medicaid. In that case, an elderly person entering a nursing home is generally required to sign over,or to have their family sign over, all of their assets to the facility. Once those assets are gone (which doesn’t take long) the nursing home agrees to accept Medicaid as full payment for the care of the patient. As a result, nursing homes that accept Medicaid tend to have severely overworked and underpaid staff. In short, they are aften crappy facilities, and provide crappy care to people who are not financially able to pay for anything better.
The failure of many states to recognize and secure LTC’s , even though the very first serious outbreak occured in a nursing home in Washington state, is a terrible failure of government.
In the case of the governors of NY and PA (and maybe NJ and MA) elderly covid patients who had been discharged from the hospital were sent back to their nursing homes before they were fully recovered, and resulted in thousands of deaths.
Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order mandating that all nursing homes accept covid positive patients. An order that he only reversed this past Monday. NY’s nursing home deaths are over 5000, more than the TOTAL deaths of any state, other than NJ.
Thanks for the clarification, Priscilla.
If that’s what happened it was a STUPID directive.
Decided to share this (stepping on your response to Priscilla)
https://nypost.com/2020/04/26/cuomo-doubles-down-on-sending-coronavirus-patients-to-nursing-homes/
Now he probably used “state law”” as a cover like our Gov. did for certain issues. But governors cant hide behind “state law” because they all find ways to circumvent laws when the poop moves them to do so. He did so on May 11 once the political heat got to hot.
The state law nonsense it idiocy.
The entire purpose of this “state of emergency” nonsense is to allow governors to act – sometimes without a legal foundation, sometimes contrary to law on a TEMPORARY emergency basis.
The entire point of emergency powers is to overcome stupid laws.
NPR reported that atleast 4 state govenors Requires LTC’s to take recovering C19 patients and likely triggered more infections and deaths in those fascilities.
We agree it was a STUPID directive.
More importantly – it KILLED people.
Government management kills people.
Not ending the lockdowns.
Interesting.
But the charts are not in agreement.
The death risk by age graph has Covid19 very similar to the Flu.
But the data tables have is C19 much lower for young people and much higher for older people.
Perhaps we could call Gov. Cuomo a “deadly wolf.”
I’m not sure one can single out Cuomo unless they have a family member impacted.
Other states have issues with NH’s, but just dont get the attention like NY. And the greatest number of voters dont give a damn about the elderly confined to these facilities. Even a large percentage of family put loved ones in these facilities and hardly ever visit.
And with voters not caring, just search Covid 19 nursing home deaths and look at the results. There is no national reporting that I can find over the past 2-3 weeks and probably little before that. So the main stream media could care less.
And Jay is the perfect example of not caring. Did he respond in a caring way after our comments, or puke up liberal responses one would find on the Twit or MSNBC/CNN? As long as Trump is defeated, who cares about a few older individuals that should have died months/years earlier?
And as you say, once you spin down assets, the patients are covered by a national health insurance program.
PA has had less than 4,000 COVID deaths. 70 percent have been in nursing homes after the governor ordered them to take covid patients (just like Cuomo). That leaves about 1000-1,200 of non-nursing home deaths, or .008 percent of the population. And I have not seen data on other (non-nursing home) LTC deaths, which may lower that percentage even more.
Yet, the gov. of PA, Tom Wolf, just extended the lockdown into June.
I don’t think that it’s a conspiracy theory to say that many blue state governors are intentionally trying to crash the economies of their states, in order to get federal bailouts to cover the huge pre-coronavirus deficits in their state budgets. NY’s is more than 6. 5 billion~ NJ ‘s about the same the same. Illinois is right in there, as well as Massachussetts and Pennsylvania. And, while they can order people around during this crisis, they can’t print money.
They all face hundreds of millions in Medicaid costs (thanks to Obamacare), unfunded pensions, and public education costs. NY and NJ, especially, are seeing the mass exodus of middle class taxpayers to lower-tax states.
They see the suffering and death from covid as an opportunity to squeeze the federal government for enough aid to cover those deficits. If the Trump administration refuses, they will ratchet up the suffering longer, inflate the death rates, and attempt to lay it all at the WH doorstep. What’s a few more dead old people, if it can close a multi-billion deficit?
We’d better get a handle on the true costs of this pandemic, as well as the financial consequences of continuing the shutdown, or we are really and truly screwed, for good.
I do not think that Blue state governors are intentionally trying to crash their economies.
I do think that democrats and republicans have a CLEAR difference on the legitimate role of government, as well as its effectiveness.
The mistakes of these governors have with certainty killed people.
There is a giant gulf between we should not limit the liberty of ordinary people in order to prevent dying people from dying a bit sooner from a natural cause, and we should by affirmative actions shorten their lives.
And yet, for the moment these governors remain popular – so far.
Regardless, there is a massive political bet in play. And time does not favor the left.
Ultimately there will be outcome comparisons between red states and blue ones.
Between places that locked down and those that did not.
Right now we are still anxious, if not panicked – but we will get over that, and our decisions will become more evidence based.
The left and the media have clearly lied to us about Trump, about Russia. But mostly those things do not effect us personally. They do not cost us our liberty, or jobs, the quality of our lives.
I do not think that the future is bright for those caught lying to us about Covid19.
Well, I don’t think that they are necessarily doing this intentionally to crash the economy. But, they are making no effort to balance the suffering and risk caused by the virus against the suffering and risk caused by the shutdown.
Three weeks ago, everyone was shrieking that Gov. Kemp of GA would have blood on his hands, because he was opening up the state too soon. Even Trump was willing to openly criticize him, although he admitted that it was each individual state’s decision. Georgia’s covid numbers have declined in almost all the critical metrics ~ infections, hospitalizations, deaths. And people are going back in for necessary screenings and surgeries, Schools will remain closed for the rest of the academic year, while they work on a safe plan for reopening in September.
In my opinion, states that say they are using data to determine the reopening schedule, but their data only includes covid deaths and not deaths from economic and social decline, are not really basing their decision making on data, but on politics.
The whole FBI/FISA/General Flynn thing is interesting to me on this level ~ it provides further evidence that the country is so massively divided along partisan lines, that no amount of hard proof, such as documents showing that Flynn was innocent of any collusion, but set up for a process crime by the FBI, will sway those who judge every event by whether or not it will help or hurt Trump.
Same with the reopening. It is now apparent that reopening the economy in time for it to be showing clear signs of improvement by November is considered a pro-Trump position.
The media is anti-Trump, so most of what we hear from them is either distraction or outright fear porn (“if you go back to work now, you will have blood on your hands!!!)
So, the average voter is left in a position to be just as confused and scared as s/he was when this whole lockdown started. The coronavirus has been thoroughly politicized by both sides, and we all recognize that ~ or, at least most of us do, So our default position is to believe that “our side” is more credible than “their side.” Polls show that Democrats are more concerned about the spread of the virus, and Republicans are more concerned about the loss of jobs. Democrats think that Republicans are not taking the virus seriously enough, and Republicans think that Democrats don’t realize the collateral damage cause by the shutting down of the economy.
Data continues to be presented in skewed and dishonest ways. I don’t know if all of you have the opportunity to sit through Andrew Cuomo’s rambling and self-serving press conferences each day, but he is now patting himself on the back for reversing his order to send nursing home patients with covid19, back to their nursing homes. Talk about closing the barn door, after all the horses are dead! Trump, in his press conferences, continues to claim that we are ready to open up, without giving any clear guidance on what that means. I respect his deference to federalism, but he needs to reassure us that our governors are getting the data and guidance that they need in order to make the right decisions, and I don’t hear that from him.
Right now 40 out of 50 states have decided to loosen their lockdown restrictions. How is it going? You would think that that would be a big story. What’s going on in Georgia ~ it’s been open for 2 weeks now? Any outbreaks? How about Ohio? South Dakota? The only states I ever hear much about are NY and CA. And that seems to be because their respective governors have national political aspirations, more so than that they are representative of the struggles of most states.
Political priorities in America.
1. Me
2 My family
3. My party
4. My sponsors
5. My county
Division will grow because priorities are screwed up.
With rare exceptions, your priorities are NOT “partisan”,
they are just human norms.
I have written before that because I adopted children from foreign countries my “tribe” is now different.
That does not mean yours must be, that you are required to share my values.
We can not “save the world”.
I care more about starving kids in foreign countries than
the relatively rich poor in the US.
You care about different groups – that is OK.
So long as I do not force you to care about what matters to me and you can not force me to care about what matters to you.
We can not have a family of 7B people.
I agree Priscilla, both sides distort facts for political advantage.
These facts pertaining to Flynn are plain truth: he lied under oath and admitted it, citing god as his witness; he lied to the VP (Trump admitted that); he smoozed with Putin for a $45,000 payment. Feet of clay.
“These facts pertaining to Flynn are plain truth: he lied under oath”
ABSOLUTELY FALSE
If you do not know that – then you are completely clueless.
1). He was not EVER under oath.
2). At the time he “purportedly” lied, he was nut legitimately under investigation.
We do not criminalize all misstatements or you would be serving life right now Jay.
3). What was the lie he told ? Even the FBI does not know.
According to the FBI D302’s Flynn’s answer to Strzok was that he did not recall the specifics of the call to Kislyak and he could have discussed sanctions.
That is from the FBI records – so what is the Lie ?
“and admitted it,”
No he agreed to a plea deal for a crime he did not commit.
That is unbeleivably common.
“citing god as his witness;”
Again did not happen EVER!!!!
That is called a falsehood.
His remarks to Strzok were NOT under oath. God never came up.
And they were not false
And there was no legitimate investigation.
“he lied to the VP (Trump admitted that);”
Actually, No Trump did not.
Please go back and review the clip.
Trump was very confused by Flynn’s resignation.
Trump said that he had been told that Flynn lied to the VP,
But said he did not understand how what he purportedly said was a lie or wrong.
Regardless, why is your false perceptions of what Trump said now the standard for truth ?
“he smoozed with Putin for a $45,000 payment.”
False, and irrelevant.
Should we throw Bill Clinton in Jail – he took 10 times as much ?
Regardless, provide evidence that Flynn took money for Russia.
While that would be legal. there is no evidence of that.
“Feet of clay.”
There are lots of people calling Flynn some great hero.
Maybe he is, maybe he is not. I do not know about that.
Nothing in this makes Flynn a hero.
But it does make him the innocent victim of criminals in government.
Regardless, I do not care if Flynn is a drug dealer.
What was done to him is criminally wrong.
And it was done to him by our government.
And that went all the way to Obama.
These are not issues that should be partisan.
Most of the issues we fight over should not be partisan.
The FBI should not lie to the courts (or really anyone).
The FBI should not frame people or violate their civil rights.
No part of government should start investigations without basis
nor continue them once they are false.
We are supposed to be a limited government.
Leaving the greatest freedom for individuals.
But even that is somehow partisan.
Flynn and the Trump campaign are not only innocent, they did not do things that would not be illegal had they done them.
The whole Logan act crap is a farce. How do democrats carp about the Logan act while John Kerry dances arround the world telling foreign countries to ignore US Foreign policy because Trump will be gone soon ?
Kerry is free to do that. And Flynn is free to talk to Russians or Turks or ….
What disappoints me the most is that the left has no values. Truth depends on who is doing it,
Kavanaugh should not be on the Supreme court but Biden should be president ?
There is no world in which those positions are no hypocracy.
The left or right do not matter. The hypocracy does.
Hypocrits can not be trusted – they lie to themselves, and beleive their own lies.
Ron complains about stupid voters. Better an idiot than a hypocrit.
Dave, ignorant voters elect hypocrites because they are brain washed by the media.
One of the most telling remarks of the Swedish health ministers was that if you do not lock things down – you will never have to figure out when it is safe to reopen.
When you trust people to make their own choices, even if they do not make good ones – they can change – on their own, quickly, Or not.
If you do not want to go back to work – don’t.
If you want to do so, but you want to wear lots of PPE – do so.
I am being fairly careful – not because I have been ordered to, but because I am in a moderate risk group. If I was 15 I would be making radically different choices.
And that is OK.
My wife is more concerned than I, and being even more careful.
Regardless neither of us are likely to be less careful for a long time.
No one needs to force us.
But even that does not mean i support being forced.
I am not happy being told to do things, I would likely do voluntarily.
The swedes do not have that problem.
I beleive I have posted that the mortality rate in Blue states is radically higher than in red states.
I think there are other factors in play, such a higher population density, age demographics, and latitude.
But looking at the numbers you could easily conclude that lockdowns make this worse.
Probably that is not true.
But it is also not true they make anything better.
WTF is wrong with Barr?
Brain FUBARed?
Ethically retarded?
https://gen.medium.com/the-minister-of-justice-meets-the-minister-of-propaganda-d604c98ba11a
You do know that Rupert Murdoch is almost 90 years old, and has not had anything to do with the day to day operations of FNC for years, despite being nominally its CEO?
“WTF is wrong with Barr?”
Nothing.
Do you really beleive that Holder did not meet with all kinds of left wing nuts ?
He WAS a left wing nut.
He did not have to do anything but go down the hall a bit to meet with left wing nuts.
He put them into government.
Hillary met with Russian Oligarchs – Holder likely did too.
This story is just idiocy.
I expect that Barr has met with all kinds of people – left and right.
Are you going to whigg out if Barr met with Bezos ?
Your rant is just idiocy.
I do not give a shit who Barr meets with.
I care what he does.
I think the political analysis in this article is garbage.
But it is from a lefty who wants to beleive that Biden is going to win, but does not beleive that is going to happen.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/trump-reelection-2020-odds-biden-coronavirus-economy.html
I do not agree with much of what is in this article.
But that does not mean that the polls it cites or the changes in attitude are not very real and happening.
Jay,
You say that Biden is going to beat Trump.
Really ? How do you expect that to occur in a political season in which negative attitudes towards China had increased 50% and are held by a Supermajority of the people ?
Where support for immigration restrictions is at an all time high ?
Trump has consistently sought to reign in China, and immigration.
While Biden has a long track record of opposing the very things that 60-80% of americans now support.
Trump is already running Adds attacking Biden for his ties to China.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-coronavirus-could-create-a-new-populist-backlash/
As of 12am PT the Republican in CA25 was leading the Democrat by 12%.
This is a district that Democrats won by 9pts just a year ago.
This is a district that Clinton Beat Trump in.
The Democrat, made the election about the republican’s support of Trump.
The Republican made it about The democrats ties to CA Democrats.
Turnout has been much higher than expected, and has skewed older.
This is a district that registered democrats heavily outnumber registered republicans.
Maybe this will flip over the course of the day, but right now it looks like a 21pt swing in a single district in California.
If republicans are winning districts Clinton won in CA.
If they are winning districts in CA they lost in 2018
If they are winning big in districts that lost big in 2018,
You really expect Trump is losing in November ?
You really expect that Democrats are going to hold the house ?
Or gain in the Senate ?
There is a long way to go until November.
But democrats are in trouble.
Well dont get overjoyed. This has been a swing district and “moderate” for sometime, They voted Bush both times, Obama, Romney and Clinton. And going back before 2013 is no indication because the district was changed in 2013 to cover much different demographics.
However, the bright side is this is 100% mail in ballots, so a large GOP return and a lower one for Democrats, as being reported by some sites, could be a bad deal for the left.
Mail In ballots are a mistake.
I do not care whether the results favor democrats or republicans
The opportunity for Fraud is gargantuan.
Now thats a good conundrum for the Dems. If they lose, its mail fraud! So now how do they investigate fraud when the have defended mail in ballots.
I do not give a crap about any partisan advantage for either party with mail in ballots.
They are a REALLY bad idea. It is alteast 10 times as easy to commit election fraud.
The more mailing ballots you have the greater the fraud.
Does it matter which party is engaged in the most fraud ?
So lets say when this is over it turns out that the Republican engaged in massive ballot Fraud.
Would that get people like Robby and Jay to grasp that mail in ballots are a massive opportunity for Fraud, and where oportunity exists, it WILL be used.
So more evidence that the much touted Intelligence Community Assessment was just a political hit job. Whistle Blowers and now declassified documents show that Brennan supressed high quality intelligence that Putin Favored Clinton and pushed low quality intelligence that Putin favored Trump.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/trump-spy-chief-declassifying-documents-showing-ex-cia-director-john-brennan-suppressed-russia-intelligence-report
So again tell me why all this matters? What difference is going to make?
I say not a damn thing!
And turn about is fair play, so when Biden gets in office the GOP should set him up just like Trump got set up. They need to start working on it now so its well in place should B win!
The only way this will ever stop is if it has significant damage to either party, much like Nixon resigning. Short of that,WHO CARES?
“So again tell me why all this matters? What difference is going to make?”
Because these people lied – KNOWINGLY.
When under oath they said one thing.
When on Televsion they said the opposite.
Schiff is still muttering nonsense claiming he has seen real evidence.
So WHERE IS IT ?
He fought to stop the release of these transcripts – it is obvious why.
The House Intel committee appears to have interviewed EVERYONE who said anywhere anytime that they knew of evidence of Russian collusion.
Under oath EVERYONE of them said they knew nothing.
Not directly
Not indirectly
Not even gossip with an indentified source.
This is called LYING.
Most of these people are NOT elected officials on the campaign trail – not that that is an acceptable excuse. These are people in CIA, DNI, NSA, FBI, DOJ, ….
We might expect these people to keep secrets. We do not expect them to lie blatantly to the public.
You are deathly affraid Biden will get elected.
Well if he does – these are the people who will have similar positions in a Biden administration. Where they can LIE to us all again.
If republicans are engaged in this kind of conduct – EXPOSE IT.
But so far I have not seen evidence of that.
“And turn about is fair play”
In politics – yes, in government – the use of FORCE NO!
“so when Biden gets in office the GOP should set him up just like Trump got set up. They need to start working on it now so its well in place should B win!”
Absolutely NOT!!!!
I do not want to see anything like this ever again. Not against a republican, not against a democrat.
“The only way this will ever stop is if it has significant damage to either party, much like Nixon resigning. Short of that,WHO CARES?”
Nixon resigning stopped something ? what ?
This mess gets bigger by the minute.
Tucker Carlson just reamed out Trey Gowdy for being too deferential to the FBI and DOJ,
And Gowdy agreed.
Watergate had a handful of people who were part of government. But they all ACTED outside of Government. The Plumbers were NOT the FBI, CREEP was NOT the NSA.
We now have something a bit less than 100 people who to varying degrees were either conspiring together, or where aware of a conspiracy and not merely did nothing – but LIED about it publicly for years.
What we are finding to be true is WORSE than the tinfoil hat conspiracies that Alex Jones tried to sell in 2017.
Can you name a single bat shit crazy right wing conspiracy theory about all this that has NOT proven to be true ?
Dave, again I ask, “What difference does this make”?
Yes, I agree with everything you wrote. This is about the 3rd or 4th time I asked that question and you have basically answered all the same way.
So again, next year, 5 years, 10 years, what is going to be different?
I would bet good money it will be another Hillary Clinton ” lock her up” investigation.Other than a handful of political ads, nothing will come of it.
When left leaning outlets like “The Rising” are bothered – that is a difference.
CA25 Special Election (100% Reporting)
Mike Garcia (R) 56.05% ✔️
Christy Smith (D) 43.95%@DecisionDeskHQ
Clinton Won The District By 7 Points In 2016, And Katie Hill (D) Won it by 9 points in 2018
So this is a 22pt flip in California.
There was no special problem with either candidate.
Neither had naked pictures floating around or Yearbook photos in blackface.
Both claimed to be moderate and painter the other as extreme.
Smith was a respected local politician.
Garcia was an ex-soldier in a community with lots of government contracts.
Democrats have a 30K registration advantage over republicans.
You can make all kinds of “special election” arguments – and these MIGHT be true.
But going from losing by 9 to winning by 13 is not merely a fluke.
It is a warning.
If the GOP recovers every CA seat that it lost in 2018, that is nearly sufficient to flip the house (narrowly).
At this point Dir. Wray has to go.
I do not have a special axe to grind with him, but like Barr he was brought in to restore the reputation of the FBI.
He has failed.
While he does nto get the blame for Comey and the corruption or his predecessor,
rather than work to clean things up, he has been part of hiding things.
Wray has been an impediment to declassifying the misconduct of his predecessor.
You can not restore the integrity of the FBI until you are prepared to look clearly at the past failures.
Further the IG report on RECENT FISA warrants find that nearly all had the same problems as prior FISA warrants.
Why did it take Trump appointing Grennel as Acting DNI to get all this stuff declassified ?
Why did it take Barr asking for Jensen to review the Flynn case to expose the misconduct ?
Jay wants to fixate on the fact that Flynn entered a guilty plea.
He did. And not only did the FBI lie to him in their faux interview in Jan 2017,
But they and the Mueller team lied to him at every moment since.
Providing defendants with Brady material is not optional.
Failure to do so is a fraud on the courts, and a violation of civil rights.
It is also lying.
So are we going to prosecute Van Grack ? Mueller ? the assorted FBI Agents ? For lying to the courts and to Flynn ?
Jay, if the FBI arrests you and charges you with kidnapping, but they KNOW that you did nothing wrong – and they have proof that you did nothing wrong.
But they lie to you and threaten to jail your family members,
And they refuse to even tell you that proof of your innocence exists – is that OK with you ?
If you have a choice between 6 months in jail for a crime you did not commit, and rolling the dice for the possibility of 20 years with the Juries in DC that would just as soon hang any republican – as Stone and Manafort, and possibly jail time for your son – because DC juries do not require evidence, what would you do ?
A more thorough examination of the Crowdstrike DNC server nonsense.
There is no actual evidence that the Russians supplied the DNC emails to Wikileaks.
More specifically there is no evidence that the emails were copied off the server by the Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear hacks.
Henry’s “screenshot” argument is damning. It means that Crowdstrike did not find evidence that the emails were copied and transfered directly.
The screenshot claim is a “hail mary”. 70GB of emails were somehow from the DNC server,
Doing so view “screenshots” would be tediously slow, further Wikileaks released actual emails, not screenshots. Converting screenshots back to 70GB of emails would be a massively complex and error prone operation.
This is just nonsense. What Henry just testified to is that the Email release was a LEAK, not a hack, and that means it was an inside job, and absent a russian agent in the clinton campaign this had nothing to do with Russia.
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/05/13/hidden_over_2_years_dem_cyber-firms_sworn_testimony_it_had_no_proof_of_russian_hack_of_dnc_123596.html
So it appears children do not pass C19 to adults (or other kids)
Even if they did, there is excellent reasons to NOT close schools.
But this pretty much puts the nail in the coffin of the idea that shutting down schools was a good idea.
https://spectator.us/evidence-children-passing-covid-19-relatives-icelandic-study/
If thats the case, whats that crap kids are getting in NY and the UK?
If you have more information on NY and UK I would be interested.
There is alot of conflicting information out there.
There is also alot that we do not yet have explanations for.
But all the data I have seen is that if you are under 30 this is Much LESS serious than the Flu. If you are over 65 it is much MORE serious than the Flu.
It is actually important to understand these things.
Understanding the risk patterns is incredibly important to decisions we might make,
and again relevant to whether people should be allowed to make their own choices.
If the risk is widely variable in a predictable way there is no justification for the use of force – government.
If it is incredibly hard for children to get this, to spread this and even if infected they get a very mild case, then closing schools is idiocy.
So it is important to know the actual demographics of the disease.
Early on it MIGHT have been reasonable to be unsure.
With millions of cases and 10’s of thousands of deaths we should have a pretty good idea of atleast the broad strokes.
So its hard for kids to get it?
Well WTF. Fauci told America on CNN Jan 26th, “nothing to worry about”
Fauci told America in a interview with USA Today mid Feb ” no human to human transfer. ”
6 weeks later on March 30 America was a scared $%&#less when he said 1.6M -2M could die.
So just because a few kids have this now, what could it look like in 6 weeks?
https://www.health.com/condition/infectious-diseases/coronavirus/mysterious-illness-children-covid-19
Ron, this article is interesting, in that it never says that these children have covid19 or ever had it. Seems to me that it would be an important detail, and it would be easy enough test these kids for covid or covid antibodies.
This is my huge problem with the reporting on this disease ~ it seems more focused on, as you say, scaring the @#%& out of people, that actualy facts:
“On Wednesday, New York Gov. Mario Cuomo said the state Department of Health is investigating 102 suspected cases of a mysterious illness that, health officials speculate, could be related to COVID-19.”
(Interesting fact check Mario Cuomo is the father of Andrew, who is the governor of NY. No proofreading either, lol. It’s a minor detail, but still….)
Ok, ok, my bad. It DOES seem to say that these kids had been tested for covid and either had it, or had antibodies.
So, I take back my previous comment. On the other hand, it doesn’t make clear whether or not the cildren involved had or have other diseases or risk factors.
Why would only 100 kids in NYC have this problem, when the disease has been spreading all over the world and we haven’t heard of this before. At the very least, it seems premature to frighten parents, if there is no empirical evidence that the covid infection caused the symptoms of Kawasaki disease.
There does appear to be some serious C19 cases in Kids – but they are Very Rare.
It would be shocking if there were absolutely ZERO
If I found 500 women who had covid, and were then subsequently diagnosed with breast cancer, I could write an article and say that there “may be some connection between the two”
If that was widely reported, as empirical evidence that covid may well cause breast cancer, it would be dishonest fear mongering.
(Of course, my hypothetical couldn’t happen, because we are not allowing women to get breast cancer screenings, biopsies or surgeries, because those are “elective” procedures)
Alot of people are dying with Covid.
A very small but real fraction of these are people who would not likely have died otherwise.
That is lamentable. But it appears the number of “preventable” deaths. The number of people what are dying who would not have died otherwise is small – much SMALLER than the flu.
The number of people under 9 who have died GLOBALLY is double digits – and many of them really were deathly ill already.
That is NOT how the flu works.
Absolutely the flu has an age preference – but I do not recall any disease that has so pronounced an affinity for killing people who are going to die soon anyway.
Someone claimed C19 might “save” social security.
It WONT. It is not killing people a decade early. It is killing them a few weeks or months early.
The cost of treating C19 exceeds the cost of caring for them a few more weeks.
Well we know a couple contracts Dave has for income. Advising Cuomo and Wolf on covid 19 elder care.
Most of the people who are looking at the data, and drawing rational conclusions are being called “Science Deniers”.
But what is new. Anyone who takes real world observations over malthusian models is a “science denier”.
Just so we are all straight – Science is NOT making up theories to suit your ideology.
It is not creating castles in the sky – not rosy ones, not dark ones.
It is important to be able to hypothesize. It is important to theorize, It is the third step in most descriptions of the scientific method.
It is NOT the last step.
Hypothesis must be tested, and refined, and retested.
There is no absolute scientific truth. But there are conclusions of extremely high probability.
Those are hypothesis that have consistently accurately been confirmed with real world testing.
Those who are “science deniers” are the ones who “stop” with a hypothesis.
In numerous areas we are PAST the point at which the data is too poor to draw strong conclusions.
We have pretty good ideas what measures work and which do not.
There is no evidence todate that the overwhelming majority of FORCED Government choices have proven effective. In fact it is near certain that most if not all have done more harm than good.
Conversely the behavior of ordinary people changed – it changed weeks BEFORE they were ordered to change. It changed pretty much everywhere in the world – though to differing degrees.
It remains to be seen whether those changes in behavior reduced the death toll.
It is more likely than not that they actually did not.
The most likely impact of voluntary (and later ordered) changes in behavior, is slowing the spread of C19.
That is NOT automatically a good thing. It is good – if it reduces the death toll, and that Only occurs if the healthcare system fails otherwise.
It is good(maybe) if it actually reduces rather delays the spread of C19.
Dave you keep harping about force. What I am addressing has NOTHING to do with force.
If you are in a nursing home or rehab facility and have an underling medical condition, what are your expectations while in that facility?
I am expecting that facility to provide adequate care to maintain a safe and clean environment and providing adequate foods and medicines to meet my needs. And at sometime I am expecting to die from natural causes.
That is not force.
As for the nursing home to provide the safe environment, I expect them to let those that have resources to help them maintain that safe environment to be told what the nursing homes needs are during any and all situations impacting care in their facility.
That is not force.
As one of the resources that is available to the nursing homes to access is government. when supplies of anything is in short supply, someone has to determine how that shortage is distributed. Is it given to one or two distributors that distribute it to one or two of their best customers? Is it distributed to red states more than blue states when a republican is in office or the opposite when a democrat is in office, Is it distributed based on tax revenues the states send the feds? Or is it distributed based on citizens needs and the safety of those citizens?
Try setting 50 states and hundreds of mayors around a theater and have them agree on a distribution of needed medical supplies to all sections of the county. Crap, they would not be able to decide what they were going to have the caterer serve for lunch, let alone something this big.
That is not force.
So government plays a role. Experts decide who is most at risk, who needs to be tested, who needs training, who needs PPE and then based on those experts advice, a plan is put into place to make sure that their advice is followed.
That is not force.
Governor in your state, who you agree with, Cuomo in NY and others “FORCED” nursing home to take Covid19 patients. Nursing homes knew that was dangerous, it did not protect patients and patient weer going to die. They were playing GOD, deciding that 90 year old grandma who was in a wheel chair, but otherwise healthy for her age, was going to be exposed to the virus and die.
That is FORCE.
Governors across the country, except for florida and maybe a couple others recognized and followed nursing home advice and did everything they could to HELP and ASSIST nursing homes and residential living facilities to reduce the possibility of infection
That is not force.
So you can run your mouth or fingers all you want about deaths going to happen in nursing homes all you want, but what you are saying is bull crap. Governors should not be playing GOD. Governors should be following advice of experts and only Florida and maybe a couple others did that. Dying 6 months before your predefined expiration date comes due is unacceptable if that was forced by government actions/inactions/choice.
If you do not need FORCE – you do not need Government.
PERIOD, End of Story.
Government exists SOLELY to legitimately excercise FORCE to protect individual rights.
PERIOD.
“expectations” are not force.
(attempting) Achieving expectations through government is FORCE
“Try setting 50 states and hundreds of mayors around a theater and have them agree”
Why ? It is not their business.
Regardless, if you involve government you are using FORCE. PERIOD!
There is not some debate about this. This is just a fact.
If you think otherwise – see what happens if the directions of Government are not followed – FORCE.
When Cuomo directs that Ventalators be moved from Upstate NY to NYC – he sends the State Police – FORCE.
His directions are not “suggestions” – they are mandatory, and if you do not comply MEN WITH GUNS WILL MAKE YOU.
Experts deciding things is Not force.
Compelling the decisions of said experts IS FORCE.
Plans are not force.
Government implementing Plans IS FORCE – ALWAYS!
Who said I agreed with my Governor ?
I do not understand your confusion.
If I choose on my own to follow the recomendations of others – private experts, government experts, Presidents, Governors, Mayors, …. That is NOT FORCE.
If I am COMPELLED to do so – That is FORCE.
While I do not understand your claim that I agree with Gov. Wolf. I pretty much disagree with him across the board.
Whether I agree or disagree is completely irrelevant.
I have ZERO problems with anyone offering advice, recommendations, “expert” opinions.
My agreement or disagreement does not change whether they constitute FORCE or not.
They are NOT FORCE, if there is no compulsion. If I am not required to, if failure to comply will not result in MEN WITH GUNS making sure that I do as directed, or lose my property, my liberty or my freedom.
Look at Ms. Luther in Dallas. The Mayor said Salons are not essential businesses and must be closed. Ms. Luther disagreed and opened her Salon.
MEN WITH GUNS came, arrested her, drug her to court, where she was convicted of not following the ORDER of the Mayor, fined, and thrown in jail.
Getting her Out required more Government ORDERS.
Ron – this is FORCE.
If you do not need FORCE, you do not need government.
There is absolutely nothing involving government that is voluntary.
“So you can run your mouth or fingers all you want about deaths going to happen in nursing homes all you want, but what you are saying is bull crap.”
I am clearly not communicating. I do not recall ranting about what WILL happen in Nursing Homes. I have merely noted as has NPR what HAS happened in Nursing homes.
And I think you and I both agree that sending C19 recovering patients to NHs is an idiotic idea, that likely significantly increased the death toll.
But most importantly it was a use of FORCE!!!!!
When the governor orders that recovering C19 patients are to be sent to NH’s – they can not say NO!!
They MUST take those patients.
When you are compelled to do something – by men with guns or the threat of men with guns that is FORCE!!!
I have zero problems with Cuomo or Wolf or Whitmer recomending whatever they want.
And I may CHOOSE to do as they suggest.
But they are NOT suggesting, They are ORDERING.
It is irrelevant whether their directions are wise.
They are FORCE, whether they are wise or not.
OK, we are both blind to what the other is saying.
So let me ask a question.
Every state has a need for their citizens. Testing PPE, medical supplies
Now lets make an assumption. Examole only, no where near actual.
The total estimated needs for testing is 200M kits across the country, all 50’states
Current supply available is 50M with 5M coming each week.states
What is your idea of how these should be distributed and who decides how that happens.
Everything that you write increasingly rests on the presumption that whatever the issue – it is a government issue.
That is FALSE.
States, do not have needs, people do. Hospitals do.
Next, your numbers do not matter.
There is a shortage or not, it is small or large.
You are correct about one thing – “Who decides”
And the answer is NOT Government.
the free market is specifically about “supply and demand”.
They are NEVER in perfect agreement.
The only effective, efficient, means to work out the allocation of scarce resource is the free market.
It does not work perfectly – perfection is not possible, but it does work better than all alternatives.
The moment you say “government” should decide – you are making myriads of false presumptions.
As Lord Acton stated
“Power Corrupts”.
If you take control of resources from markets where power is diffuse and distributed and corruption is small and difficult and you place that power in the hands of a president, a governor, a mayor – why do you presume the choices they make will be wise ?
Why do you not expect that with that power will come great effort to corrupt the use of that power ?
Next, it should by know be obvious that the situation changes rapidly and dynamically.
We know more now than 2 months ago. But many things we know are wrong, and will still change. The amount of knowledge needed to make these choices is near infinite AND CHANGING.
This is called “the knowledge problem” – Free markets solve it. A free market is essentially a massively parallel computer made of all the brains of all the people on earth. No individual will outperform it in either speed or accuracy EVER.
The knowledge problem is why socialism MUST FAIL – in all forms,
But the knowledge problem is not unique to socialism.
It is a fundimental problem of “bigness” and top down planning.
Even big businesses ultimately fail – because they can not indefinitely get things right all the time. Bigger systems more centrally planned systems are more fragile and ultimately must fall victim tot he knowledge problem.
In a free market – the inevitable knowledge problem failure of big business is not an issue – there will be competitors big and small to replace those who fail.
This is also why CEO’s of fortune 500 companies earn so much.
They are being paid to get the right answers all the time, in a world where a few wrong answers will doom a F500 company.
This applies to non-socialist government.
There are many many compelling arguments for limited government.
One is “the knowledge problem”. F500 companies can fail and the world does not end.
Lots of failure is normal in a free market.
Existential failure by government is catastrophic. If possible we NEVER want that to happen.
The weimar republic is an example of what happens when government fails.
The way to avoid government getting trapped into knowledge problem failures – is to limit government.
leave all these choices to the free market – it is very good at exactly these problems.
And it is never a victim of “the knowledge problem” because it near instantly and dynamically self corrects – millions of times a second.
Dave, you would.make a perfect politician. You just wrote a book and said nothing.
So here we go.
You are in charge. CEO, Governor, President, Director of a non-profit. Whatever you thinknis the appropriate business, agency, organization, etc.
Not enough supplies to meet everyones needs.
What do YOU do to distribute supplies so each goegraphic region can meet some of their critical needs.
Or do you just allow the markets to meet the needs of those with the most money?
If I own 1M N95 masks I get to decide who I sell them to – because they are MINE.
You – a CEO, a president, a Governor, a Mayor, a NP director, can buy them from me if I choose to sell them to you, and then you can do as you want with them.
You can not Distribute what is mine – unless I choose to sell it to you, unless you use FORCE.
There are no loopholes.
What you seek to redistribute exists only because someone else made it exist.
They bought the raw materials, they hired the labor, they built the factories.
And then they produced what you wish to take from them.
You can confiscate what they produced. If you do they will not voluntarily produce more.
Your entire argument rests on numerous false premises.
False not merely because they violate libertarian principles,
but because they can not and will not work.
I linked the trial of Hank Reardon – it is short, it bluntly an eloquently addresses your argument. Rand does a better job of addressing all the details in the Book, but she does so at the expense of the brutally honest simplicity from the movie script.
Particularly in representative governments we try to hide from the fact that all government is force. But a pleasant dress do not alter that government is force.
You are not free to disregard the orders of government. If you do you will lose your property, your freedom, and possibly your life.
We are having a “trial of Henry Reardon” moment right now.
You can support those protesting assorted orders of various governors, or oppose them.
You can think that these protests want to behave dangerously and stupidly.
But you can not hide from the fact that but for FORCE they would act differently.
There are moral constraints on our private actions.
But the most important moral constraints are those regarding the use of force.
All unjustified uses of force are CRIMES.
All action by government is FORCE, we must take great care that use is justified.
You keep asking “what would you do ?”, that question elides the real problem.
I can do as I please with what is mine. I may well chose to do exactly as you or someone else wishes. Regardless, it is a free choice, and whatever that free choice it is a moral one.
You jump to what is the best way to solve some problem, skipping entirely the fact that you have moral right to use force, you have leapt from “my masks” to “your masks” skipping entirely the fact that you took from me what is mine without my consent.
You say you may do that because there is a shortage. That is no excuse. Supply and demand NEVER track perfectly. Shortages and surpluses are both commonplace and dynamically shifting.
At the start of this I had 2 N95 masks with 10 replaceable filters, It took two weeks to get ten more, It took another 2 weeks and now I have a dozen masks and maybe 40 replaceable filters.
There were LOTS of times I did not have what I wanted. Had I been able to purchase more hand sanitizer, more wipes, more toilet paper, more PPE – I would have. But I couldn’t so I didnt. But the free market – not government ultimately made sure that even though I did not have what I wanted, I had what I needed. Further at any time, I would have been able to get what I wanted rather than merely what I needed. All that was necescary was being willing to pay enough.
In the real world with this current global catastrophe – it is free markets, not governors that have provided you what you need.
They have done so despite the numerous blunders of government.
Last you posit a shortage. That is your premis.
Assuming a shortage – AND assuming that you will not allow the market to function, which is the way you eliminate shortages, it ultimately matters very little how you allocate scarce resources.
Is distributing to those willing to pay, somehow less “fair” that giving to those politically connected ?
There is absolutely no means if “fairly” dividing 1,000 masks amount 100,000 people.
The BEST means to do so is the one that increases the odds that in a week there WILL BE 100,000 masks. And that is the Free market.
Again GOVERNMENT IS FORCE. If you task government with solving the problem – it will be solved by FORCE.
Just as recovering C19 patients were FORCED into Nursing Homes.
You can not re-frame the fundamental problems with your argument away.
And yes, I would leave government out of this completely and let the Free Market solve the problem. The problem is going to be solved by the market NO MATTER WHAT.
The only question is whether the solution will be voluntarily or by FORCE.
I do not accept your conclusion that the rich would get priority – but even if true.
YOUR PREMISE assumes a shortage, and that means SOMEONE is getting priority.
Whatever you might think of the problems with distributing based on price, all other schemes are immoral – they involve theft, and no other scheme results in a better outcome.
But all other methods diminish the incentive to produce more.Making them doubly immoral.
Who decides ? No ONE person. Free markets do not have presidents or mayors.
Decisions are made by billions of people.
Each of us figures out how to get the PPE we think we need. We do not all make the same decisions. Some decisions by some people prove better than others.
Further the decision that is BAD by one person in one circumstance may be GOOD for another.
Absolutely NO ONE gets to decide for ALL.
Hospitals decide on their own for themselves,
Nursing Homes decide on their own.
You and I decide on our own for ourselves.
Further a huge missing element from your discussion is the FACT that,
the free market and unregulated supply and demand is what results AUTOMATICALLY in supply and demand dynamically adjusting.
I keep making this argument here but speculators – what you call price gougers, perform a valuable service. They smooth discontinuities between supply and demand. They transfer goods from the past when they were relatively abundant to the future when they are scarce.
Additionally spiking prices signal produces to boost production. The higher the price goes the greater the impetus to produce.
When supply is short and demand is high even new inefficient producers can profit.
There is no sane world in which “myPillow” would switch to producing masks.
But C19 brought about an unforeseable insane world. And suddenly it makes sense.
Further rising prices are not always MONEY.
MyPillow may not get a higher price for PPE,
But there will have accomplished two things.
They will have kept their factory open during a time people were not buying pillows.
And they will have greatly increased the value of their brand.
When many people go to buy a pillow next – they will remember MyPillows contribution to the fight against C19. And that has real value.
I have told you already – Companies like Dennies, WalMart, HomeDepot DO NOT price gouge in disasters. Even though they could. They use disasters as opportunities to build their reputation in local communities. And they KNOW that will translate to money in the future.
During Katrina one Walmart store manager had a problem – the store was full of good that were there when the store flooded. Some where still good some were not.
But out in the parking lot were tractor trailors full of new goods that were what the people of New Orleans needed the most.
The manager tool a bulldozer and pushed the entire contents of the store out into the parking lot and put a sign on it telling people to take whatever they wanted.
And then unloaded the tractor trailors into the store.
She was promoted and praised by Walmart.
One of the problems with your question – “Who decides”, is it fails to grasp there are an infinite number of decisions – not one. And even the same question is not best answered in the same way in ever circumstance.
The moment you frame the question as “who decides” you have rushed past the fact that there is infinite decisions by many people.
You have assured that no matter how you answer Your question, the answer will be wrong.
because the question is wrong.
“Governors should not be playing GOD. ”
That is actually wrong. on multiple facets.
God does NOT interfere in our free choices – not even the poor ones.
Governors should follow the example of God.
That said Governors do have the legitimate role of securing our rights through FORCE,
That is MORE proactive than God. God waits till we are dead to Judge us and punish us.
Governors are actually expected to make judgments and impose punishment while we are alive.
But they are supposed to be very narrowly constrained in doing so.
We may not use FORCE, just because we think something is good advice.
“Governors should be following advice of experts”
Absolutely not.
If the word of experts is law – why bother having presidents, governors, congress.
This is a ludicrously stupid assertion.
First, as is completely self evident at the moment – the “experts” do not agree.
Second, also self evident – the “experts” are constantly wrong.
Third, the expertise of “experts” is narrow. Faucci is an expert in managing an epidemic – reducing the loss of life from the disease. (I know you loath Faucci, I am just using him because most everyone accepts him as an expert – even if they think he is wrong)
But there myriads of factors and impacts that have nothing to do with medicine or his area of expertise.
Neither of the above is intended as condemnation of “experts”.
We do not lockstep do what experts advise, because most problems are much larger than the narrow expertise of some person or group of people.
We have CEO’s and Mayor’s and Governor’s and president’s to gather information from many experts, as well as experts in different fields, and work out the best overall solution.
One of the most obvious examples is that Epidemic experts MIGHT be able to tell us how to reduce the loss of life as a result of the disease, but they can not tell us about the 2nd and third order effects of their recommendations. They can not tell us what the impact outside the disease itself of Lockdown’s. They can not tell us the people who will die from 2nd and 3rd order effects of the “cure”.
This is NORMAL. And it is why we do not automatically do as experts direct – in the rare instances the experts are unanimous.
“Dying 6 months before your predefined expiration date comes due is unacceptable if that was forced by government actions/inactions/choice.”
Almost every word in this is wrong.
There is no “predefined expiration date”
My father had liver failure – that was not detected until the autopsy.
Crones Disease and colitus – that were treatable but untreated would result in his bleeding to death.
Vascular problems that were causing strokes and Dementia – also treatable, but that would still with treatment ultimately kill him anyway.
The treatment for Crones increased the vascular problems.
The treatment for the Vascular problems made the Crones worse.
either treatment made the liver failure worse.
Ultimately he contracted pneumonia in a NH and died of that.
He was dying. There was no “predefined expiration date”.
Further he knew he was dying and he was far more concerned about how he died,
or better put how he lived for the little time he had left.
He CHOSE to risk dying by bleeding to death, that was more important than WHEN.
Because that choice meant preserving as much of what remained of his competence for as long as possible. He would not have chosen to live twice as long with reduced competence.
But in the end, he did not get what he choose.
That can be “unacceptable” to you as it is to me.
But what is truly unacceptable is not that he died of Pneumonia, but that his choices were taken away BY MEN WITH GUNS.
He was quite litterally removed from his home and the care of his MPOA and POA by force – a court order, by MEN WITH GUNS. He Violently physically resisted and was manhandled and beaten up – and though he was dying he was also quite big and quite strong, so LOTS of FORCE was required to compel him to obey the edict of the court.
Dying of Pneumonia was only “unacceptable” because it was a side effect of the use of FORCE.
He nearly died a month earlier of a very serious rectal bleed – and that would have been perfectly acceptable.
He also could have died at home of Pneumonia. That too would be acceptable.
People who are dying rarely die from the problem that is killing them.
They die from something else – like Pneumonia that strikes because they are weakened.
They almost never die on their “expiration date”
Quite often that is a blessing. My father-in-law essentially died of a gall bladder attack because they could not operate on him. Unfortunately he was very strong for his age, and it was a very painful, unpleasant, and not easy death. He would have been much happier to die of Pneumonia a month earlier.
You can rant that acts of god or nature are “unacceptable” – but they are for the most part outside our control.
There was really only one oportunity to deal with C19 – that was early on in Wuhan, when the numbers were small and actually eradicating the disease from the face of the earth was possible.
Trump failed to stop C19 at our borders, but that failure was almost meaningless.
Unless every other nation in the world stopped C19 at its doorstep and again we Eradicated it from the face of the earth, stopping it or failing to, in the long run means nothing.
One of the things that Sweden does understand that no one else seems to is that once eradicating the disease is no longer a possibility – or atleast not possible inside of a year,
Most other measures are futile.
So long as C19 exists and we do not have one of the following
an effective treatment
Herd immunity
an effective vaccine
The only thing that everything government has done accomplishes is forestalling the inevitable.
It is my beleif – based on my personal analysis of the global and statewide data, and particularly the lack of differences between Sweden and non-lock down states and lock down states, that there will not be a 2nd wave, or spikes after opening the economy.
And that is a strong demonstration that Social Distancing and lock-downs are ultimately ineffective.
But even if I am wrong. Sweden will likely be through this in about a month.
It will not have shutdown its economy, and it will not see significant C19 infections and deaths in the future. Because C19 in Sweden burned itself out naturally, that means it spread about as far as it could spread and in the future will not be able to spread much in Sweden.
For that to be wrong, Immunity to C19 would have to be short-lived and we will have C19 with us until we have a cure.
Conversely – if Lockdowns and Social Distancing were effective – they did work, every nation or state that successfully did them will face new C19 infections in the future.
They will face them as they open, or they will face them in the fall.
Put simply absent a cure or a vaccine, C19 WILL in ALL PLACES spread until herd immunity is acheived. Government measures might (or might not) delay the spread, but they will not accomplish anything beyond delay.
You can call that “unacceptable” all you want.
A man said to C19:
“premature death is unacceptable!”
“However,” replied the C19,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
Your determination that something is unacceptable does not change the fact that it will happen.
Huricanes happen, lightning strikes happen, floods, draughts, forest fires, happen,
people die. That is unacceptable, but it happens all the same.
Humans bear responsibility when:
Their ACTS make things worse.
In the rare instances where there is an actual duty to act.
Humans die, whether that is acceptable to you or not.
This speaks for itself
https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-cia-believes-china-tried-stop-who-alarm-pandemic-1503565
I love the Hill. There is alot I disagree with. But unlike most of the left, they are MOSTLY not hypocritical.
https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-cia-believes-china-tried-stop-who-alarm-pandemic-1503565
So Jay,
Now we have the list of “unmaskers” of Gen. Flynn.
Just so you are clear on what “unmasking” is.
US intelligence services Gather Raw intelligence from numerous sources.
Many of those sources constitute spying, nearly all raw intelligence gathered by our Intelligence community would be a violation of the civil rights of a US citizen absent a warrant. In many cases the methods used to gather the intelligence would be a crime if used against a US Citizen. Pretty much everything the intelligence community does violates the 4th amendment.
The intelligence community is permitted to gather and diseminate all this intelligence with a few caveats:
If the target is a US Person – there must be a FISA Warrant.
If the Target is NOT a US Person, then outside the producers of intelligence – that is the “gatherers”, not the analysts and not the consumers of intelligence the identities (not just names) of any US person must be “masked”.
For most of the past 2 decades “unmasking” has been relatively rare.
I beleive the entire Bush administration averaged 300 unmasking requests per year.
Through until Obama’s 2nd Term the average was about the same.
But early in Obama’s 2nd Term Adm Roger’s discovered that private Contractors working for the NSA had access to and were performing thousands queries against NSA databases – completely bypassing the FISA and unmasking rules. Roger’s shut this down, and there was an investigation by the FISA court and alot of nasty findings.
After Rogers shutdown the Private Contractor,s suddenly there was an increase in unmasking requests. Roger’s shut that down too. And then very late in the Obama administration Obama issued an EO relaxing the rules for “unmasking”
Just so you are clear “unmasking” is spying on americans without a warrant.
So now we have a long list of requests to unmask Flynn, It looks like about two dozen people, Nearly all are the names of the “conspirators” in the Trump/Russia Hoax.
Several people made numerous requests. It looks like there might have been 50+ unmasking requests regarding Flynn over a 2 month period.
Again remember during the Bush administration and most of the Obama administration there are not 300 requests in the entire year – much less 50 on a single person in 2 months.
There are a few names that are redacted, but of the names that are not redacted, there is not anyone who has an obvious basis for asking for Flynn’s identity to be unmasked.
But in among all the “usual suspects” – one name really sticks out.
Vice President Biden.
You tried to impeach Trump for asking for an investigation into a political candidate.
“Unmasking” is NOT asking for an investigation.
It is an investigation. It is spying. It is a warrantless search.
If Trump’s request of Zelensky was impeachable – asking for Flynn to be unmasked during a political campaign is much worse.
It is not asking, it is doing.
Worse still Biden’s request was on Jan 12, 2017.
This is AFTER the FBI determined that there was no case against Flynn.
So this is clearly a search without any basis.
Lastly, this was done in the last 8 days of Biden’s term as VP.
What rational purpose did this serve ?
I’m busy learning Photoshop on the IPad, an even more unintuitive process than reading your babbling, John-Dave.
There’s NOTHING illegal about unmasking if the declassified names are released following proper procedures. The Flynn unmasking followed those procedures. And you really have to be obtuse not to know that; and a dumb dingleberry not to know it’s routine during surveillance of foreign targets that names of Americans occasionally come up in conversations. Those names are unmasked when there may be a real intelligence value in knowing who that person is. And anyone who doesn’t think it was VALUABLE to national security for high ranking government officers like the President and VP to learn the name of one of our HIGHEST RANKING ex military generals who was physically cozying up with Russian operatives like Putin is dumber than dirt.
And by the way, The Trump administration has issued more unmasking requests than Obama’s did. Why aren’t you incensed by that?
“There’s NOTHING illegal about unmasking if the declassified names are released following proper procedures. ”
That is correct.
“The Flynn unmasking followed those procedures.”
That is incorrect.
The “procedures” are specified in the 4th amendment.
We are actually playing an ass backwards game with the constitution in counter intelligence.
Ordinarilly a WARRANT is required to search someone (there are exceptions, but they are not relevant here).
But no warrants are required for foreign intelligence gathering – because the targets are not US Persons.
But when a search occurs – such as wiretaps of foreigners, and that warrantless search becomes a search of a US person, then the same standards apply as are required for a search of a US person.
But because the search has already occurred the process is to mask the names of US persons in intelligence reports.
The legal argument is that there is no violation of the 4th amendment if most of government does not know the identity of the US person.
You say “procedures must be followed” – that is correct. But those procedures are not “made up”. The president does nto get to decide what the procedures are. the AG does not get to decide, the FBI agent does nto get to decide.
The procedures are essentially determined by two centuries of 4th amendment case law.
This is also why the FISA court exists. The FISA court provides (purportedly) the consitutional review required for a search of a US person, but in a context where national security can be protected.
A FISA warrant is not the only means to “unmask” someone who was exposed incidentally in intelligence gathering. Though is IS the only means to “unmask” a US person who is the TARGET of intelligence gathering.
But the fact that there are a few other legitimate ways to unmask someone, does not mean it is commonplace, or that it is easily done.
There are half as many requests to unmask Flynn in a 2 month period as there were total unmasking request Per Year from approx 2000-2014.
That alone should tell you that “unmasking” is not easy.
“unmasking” is inherently a warantless search.
It is legal with a warrant.
Without a warrant it is ONLY legal in the narrow circumstances that our existing criminal law allows warrantless searches.
Further as a general rule warrantless searches are only allowed when exigencies preclude getting a warrant. Unmasking NEVER meets that criteria.
The intellegence has already been gathered.
There is no danger of the results disappearing.
There is plenty of time to go to court.
This is WHY “unmaskings” only occured 300 times per year on average from 2000-2014.
“And you really have to be obtuse not to know that; and a dumb dingleberry not to know it’s routine during surveillance of foreign targets that names of Americans occasionally come up in conversations.”
That is correct, and that is WHY they are masked. That is what has been worked out over the course of two centuries to avoid requiring warrants for foreign surveilance.
The altrernative is to require the intelligence community to get criminal warrants for all spying.
“Those names are unmasked when there may be a real intelligence value in knowing who that person is.”
Not the standard. That is logically devolves trivially to “I want to know”.
“And anyone who doesn’t think it was VALUABLE to national security for high ranking government officers like the President and VP to learn the name of one of our HIGHEST RANKING ex military generals who was physically cozying up with Russian operatives like Putin is dumber than dirt.”
So many errors.
You do not get to spy on people because you want to, or because you decide it is “valuable”.
Flynn’s actual “physical” cozying with russians, was done with the involvement of the US govenrment, he was briefed before hand and debreifed afterwords, He did this voluntarily
as did Carter page.
You are repeating the Thoroughly debunked “everyone I do not like is a russian agent” nonsense. Neither Page nor Flynn was Russian Agents. but were actually american Agents.
The FBI and CIA knew that.
One of the reasons that the FBI concluded there was “no derogatory information” on Flynn was because all his contacts with Russians were not merely reported to the US, but under the supervision of the US Intelligence community.
Further you are out in never never land. Flynn’s actual physical contact with Russians, is completely outside the unmasking issue.
And it would fall under completely different law.
When Flynn was meeting with Russian’s he was a US operative.
They do not get “unmasked” for entirely different reasons.
If when Flynn met with Putin and came back and filed a report with the DNI, and that report somehow made it to Obama or Biden’s desk – Flynn would be masked AS A US AGENT,
And it would be very hard to get DNI to unmask him.
The “unmasking” requests were NOT about Flynn’s physical meetings with Russians.
If they were – those requesting unmasking have even MORE SERIOUS problems.
We would be talking essentially the same as the Valerie Plame affair.
The unmasking requests were regarding Flynn’s contact over the phone With Kislyack After Trump was elected and After Trump selected him as his NSA.
These occurred at a time when Flynn was on government payroll – if you did not know it during the presidential transition, incoming appointments are federal employees.
So even if the Logan act is constitutional – which it is not, It would not apply to Flynn.
Regardless, the bottom line is there does not exist a reason for “unmasking” Flynn.
And the Biden “unmasking” request is particularly troubling.
When Biden made it he was only a day or two away from being a private citizen.
There is not any legitimate purpose that the outgoing administration with only days left, has for spying on the incoming administration.
“And by the way, The Trump administration has issued more unmasking requests than Obama’s did. Why aren’t you incensed by that?”
Yes, though unlike you I do not presume that they are Trump personally looking into his opponents.
The vast majority of people in the Trump adminstration are people who have been there since Obama atleast.
How many people has ltc Vindman “unmasked” ? Eric Ciarmello ?
Rosenstein ? McCabe ? Strzock ? how about the SC’s office ?
Regardless if you want to go digging into “unmasking” during the Trump administration.
I will be happy to join you in supporting that.
Whoever is doing it, it is happening way too much.
Are you prepared to agree on that ?
We know that Biden has extensive Ties to China.
Would it be acceptable based on the information we have right now, for Dir. Wray to pull a FISA Warrant on Hunter Biden ?
A FISA warrant allows the FBI to go 3 hops from the target – that would include the entire Biden family, the Biden Campaign, and a significant part of the DNC.
After Wray gets this FISA Warrant – is it OK for him to Send Spies to see if they can lure members of the Biden Campaign into some inoportune remarks ?
I am sure there are plenty of members of the Biden Campaign that have connections to China, Russa, the Ukraine, Romania, … a whole host of problematic connections.
After that Can we have Grennell, Mulvaney, Pence, start unmasking assorted members of the Biden Campaign enmasse ?
Lets assume that by some miracle (CNN now says Trump is up +7 in swing states), Biden wins the election. Can we have Wray secretly continue investigating Biden and his staff and new appoints during the transition and Well into Biden’s term ?
Can Pence spy on Biden’s selected National Security Advisor ? Have his phone Tapped ?
Leak conversations he has with Foreign leaders ?
Can the upper echelons of the Trump administration meet in their last days and plot how to keep all of the above Secret, and how to hide from the incoming president and his advisors information regarding their investigations, or China, as well as try to see how to continue those investigations ?
So Jay,
Given all that we know now, Or more accurately what we KNOW that the FBI, DOJ, Intelligence Community KNEW in later 2016 early 2017,
And more specifically what Rosenstein knew or should have known,
What is it that Mueller was appointed to investigate ?
And Why having been appointed did Mueller spend 2 years to find what everyone knew at the start ?
And on what basis did Mueller convene a grand jury ? Issue Subpeonas ? Warrants ?
Is there any circumstances under which you think any investigation must end ?
You told me that Trump was not permitted to ask for an investigation of Biden because the claims against him had been debunked.
Well the FBI seems to have “debunked” all the claims against Trump, Flynn, Page, …. long before Mueller was appointed.
Why did we have a Mueller investigation ?
And aside from a negative Spin (and several clear lies) what is it that Mueller found that was not Known in early 2017 ?
Why does Obama chief of staff Denis McDonough
need to unmask Flynn ?
or Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew ?
or UN Ambassador Samantha Power. ?
Or the Syrian Ambassador ?
Hitler thought it was “valuable” for the German Government to gas the jews.
And in fact Germany found innumerable ways to profit from the murder of about 7M people.
the fact that knowledge of Flynn might be of value to these people is a motive. It is NOT a justification.
The constitution does not say that
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” – except where it might be valuable to those in government.
The standard the government must meet for the rarely justified breaches of our rights is much higher than merely that they think it is valuable to do so.
I fully support a deep dive into who is unmasking who – across the board.
O think we should make public everyone who has unmasked anyone else regardless of party or administration – with one caveat.
The names of people who were unmasked who are purely private individuals can not be exposed. That would violate the 4th amendment.
Dave’s got you dead to rights here, Jay.
It is unconstitutional to spy on an American citizen without a warrant . There are no “procedures” that make that possible.
Prove me wrong with facts.
Jay has ONE point.
We have emasculated the 4th amendment over time.
It is routinely breached constantly, with very little justification.
That is done by both parties.
I am still able to lambaste him because I have uniformly opposed that.
Rand Paul can stand up for the 4th amendment, But Schumer and McConnell can not.
Jay is correct that many whose panties are currently in a bunch have had no problems with obliterating the 4th amendment – until it was all that was left protecting them.
There is a whole series of cases in front of SCOTUS over executive priviledge.
I have no idea how SCOTUS will decide that.
But they are deciding the wrong issue.
Trump’s tax returns are not protected from congress because he is president.
They are protected because congress has no right to anyone’s taxes, or other personal papers.
There is no legislative exception to the 4th amendment – and yet to listen to ALL the supreme court justices, there was an inherent presumption that congresses need for legislative information is sufficient to demand it. The 4th amendment did not even come up.
That is how much we have weakened it.
The same is true of this ludicrously stupid “law enforcement” claim.
The core of this is the SPECULATION that Trump’s payment to Daniels might have been done in some way that avoided taxes.
If True absent specific intent – that is STILL not a crime. And you do not evercome the 4th amendment without a crime.
Further NY AG is using that speculation to demand 10 years of taxes on Trump AND his family.
There is a pretty trivial solution to the NY AG issue. that is a version of what was done with Cohen. The court can appoint a special master. Their job is to go through Trump’s records and provide those relevant to the payment to Daniels to the NY AG.
Personally I think that is more than they are entitled.
But absent finding an actual crime in the Daniels payment the NY AG is DONE.
You should never be able to leverage a SPECULATIVE crime into a fishing expidition.
And I am not comfortable with even this. The claim that the Daniels payment bight have criminally avoided taxes is as I said SPECULATION. There is no actual evidence of anykind.
It is not different from my claiming Jay avoided taxes by illegally deducting the expense of his purchases of butter.
Jay probably did purchase butter. And I can claim that he did not pay taxes on it.
But I have no evidence beyond my oppinion of Jay to support that.
And the final issue is the Grand Jury material.
The answer there is simple – NO!
It is not even about Trump.
Every single person Mueller interviewed, every single person those people mentioned has their rights violated by releasing GJ material.
There is actually law on the release of GJ material.
There is no provision for congress to subpeona it.
You will note – none of my arguments are based on any executive priviledge.
they are also rooted in the 4th amendment – as WRITTEN.
They are not specific to Trump. They apply to you and me, and everyone else.
The most rights each of us has is the rights we allow to those we hate the most.
If your hatred of Trump will allow you to ignore his rights, then no one has those rights.
So if you are going to go after people for ACTUAL perjury – how about this.
Amb. Yavonovich testified that she had no direct knowledge knowledge regarding Hunter Biden and Burisama. That everything she knew came from a state department briefing prior to appearing before the senate for her confirmation, and newspaper reports.
Rep. Zeldin cross examined her vigorously in this point. Specifically because there was LOTS of reporting that she had run interferance for Burisma and the Biden’s as Ambassador.
i.e. that she was deeply involved personally.
Well now FOIA requests have revealed numerous embassy meetings with representatives including lawyers from Burisma specifically about the Ukriane investigation of Burisma that Amb. Yavonovich participated in.
OOPS!
https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/impeachment-boomerang-contacts-exposed-between-us
Yavonovich sent 150 pages of Emails specifically related to the Burisma investigation and Hunter Biden. And yet she testified that she did not become ambassador until Aug 2016 and that the investigation was over and she had no involvement in it.
So Jay. I can come up with NUMEROUS actual lies that assorted people – like ltc. Vindeman or amb. Yavonovich told under oath.
What is the lie that Flynn told ?
Please identify ?
This is “The Young Turk’s” on Biden Lying about Iraq.
TYT is not some right wing site. They are about as far left as Alex Jones is right.
Who thinks we still live in a democracy?
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/13/judge-appoints-retired-judge-to-represent-flynn-prosecution-256509
Who believes Santa brings adult presents?
Sulivan is going bonkers.
And it is very odd. This is NOT the first time he has seen this kind of idiocy.
Sullivan presided over the Ted Stevens case where the FBI agent hid not merely exculpatory evidence, but evidence that Stevens was absolutely innocent.
Sullivan was “not amused”.
Interestingly the “whistleblower” agent – lost his job.
The one who hid the evidence, is still with the FBI.
Regardless, Sullivan has been unexpectedly Bonkers on this case.
Several Former Prosecutors who actually Like Sullivan – like Andrew MacCarthy, have said what he is doing is batshit.
I beleive he has now created an oportunity to appeal.
And this is just not happening.
I have NEVER heard of an amicus brief in a criminal case outside of appeals.
Even there they are rare.
The only times I have ever heard of a judge bringing in another judge is when there is an issue that might require them to recuse themselves.
Sullivan is a reagan appointee.
And this is not a hard issue.
If DOJ will not prosecute the case – it can not continue.
Sullivan does not have the authority to appoint an alternative prosecutor.
Further in criminal cases where defendents rights have been infringed on,
the courts typically err on the side of the defendant.
While I think this case is a no brainer,
Lets assume hypothetically there is some issue here.
Lets assume the worst – mostly.
Lets assume Flynn has irrevocably plead guilty,
that he cooperated with the prosecutors, who recomended a zero jail time sentence for a process crime.
The difference from the perspective of the state between a zero time sentence and dropping the charges is very minor.
There is no significant policy legal or constitutional issue.
The only issue is political.
Further Sullivan is just dragging out the inevitable – and BTW has been for a long time.
Long before the recent revalations there was more than enough to drop this.
Finally Sullivan has 3 options.
Accept the motion to drop the case.
Accept Flynn’s withdrawl of the guilty plea – which absent a prosecutor has the same effect.
Sentence Flynn – which will result in an appeal that Sullivan will most certainly lose.
I would further note that lets say Sullivan lets Flynn crop his plea and schedules a trial and someone agrees to prosecute.
Sidney Powell is going to have a field day.
The last thing anyone on the left really wants if they are smart is to see this prosecuted.
I am not familiar with federal guilty pleas, but at the state level:
You can withdraw a plea at anytime until sentencing is complete.
It is USUALLY a bad idea.
After sentencing you can withdraw a plea after sentencing, even after jailing, if there is prosecutorial misconduct.
There is LOTS of prosecutorial in this case.
Successful aquitals after a guilty plea are rare. But they do happen, and this case has more than enough to accomplish that.
Another degree increase in the American Rights slow cook water.
https://reason.com/2020/05/13/senate-votes-down-protections-against-warrantless-government-collection-of-americans-browser-and-search-history/fbclid=iwar3npltl2wwzl17k5lhulxdg_ndd9bqwbyvtvhdjrmom6ocs4mofldkqrom
Use the DuckDuckGo Search browser I recommended, Ron.
Not perfect, but a step in the right privacy direction…
jay, thanks, I have started using this because I have found that google list most of the stuff first from a select few sites and then after 5-6 pages they may get into the stuff they dont favor. Duck Duck Go list more sites that do not have such a political leaning as frequently at the first couple pages of results as the political stuff. There are still things with pay walls I can’t get past. But I find the info other places.
I see where Cal State system has cancelled on campus learning. Would not be surprised if the University System does the same. Thats going to kill PAC 10 football this year and many other non revenue sports. I feel sorry for the kids that cant afford college without a scholarship that will have their sports cancelled.I heard TCU and Alabama are working to play the games with Cal and USC that most likely will be cancelled against each other so they don’t lose a game. Wonder what the non- California Pac 10 teams are going to do.
Again we agree!
Anyone think China has us by the you-know-whats?
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3077314/coronavirus-china-ramps-covid-19-test-kit-exports-amid-global
Friend from Fresno Ca ask a question on why we still had test kit shortages.Get past the political news media reports and into actual data driven sites and it is shocking what you can find.
China has a major piece of the reagent market.
There are only two companies in the world making the specialized swabs. And they are not just Q tips like President Know-it-all says.
There were just a few companies making reagents outside china.
And no leader can say much about china, because based on a couple articles they have threatened to cut off some meds that are not Covid-19 medications.
Dave, you keep telling everyone how wonderful it is for china to have so much of our business. I will keep saying how 41, Clinton, 43 and Obama did us no favors with their trade policies.
It’s not free trade, if the “free” part only goes one way.
Too many just wanted cheap crap and took their eyes off the big picture for looking for the cheapest solution. Kind of like “the forest for the trees” with the. problem of only one supplier being the forest hidden by the cheapest trees right in front of their face.
And I have said many times, Trump is walking on thin ice trying to be strong against China. He praises Xi all while criticizing China due to their character demanding respect. Piss them off and who knows which supply chain they would turn off. Thats why he has been so buddy huddy with Xi all during the trade issues earlier.
If you feel as you do. DO NOT BUY FROM CHINA!! Or Russia or ….
No one is forcing you to.
“Too many just wanted cheap crap and took their eyes off the big picture for looking for the cheapest solution. ”
While that is simplistic and false, it is also irrelevant. If I want to “buy american” – that is my choice. If I want to “buy cheap” that is my choice. If I want to buy expensive well made goods – My choice.
Most americans have serious problems with the GOVERNMENT CONDUCT of China recently. In fact most through out the world.
And China is going to pay a high price for that – because people will change their FREE CHOICES.
But if you dictate where I can and can not buy from – you are no different from the chinese government.
The solution to the problem of robbery is not more robbery.
I do not think Trump has said anything nice about Xi in months.
this was well before Covid 19 and well before people really started talking about Chinas supply chains.. This is now becoming a topic of concern in HFMA (Healthcare financial management Association) and the impact this has on financial operations.
And if you don’t believe this, do some research on your own.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/u-s-officials-worried-about-chinese-control-american-drug-supply-n1052376
At some point your going to stop believing Trumps bull shit and start reseaching stuff like Q-tip test kits and water and our drug chain is safe.
I have no idea what Trump is saying about Test kits.
But I do have a working brain.
If the price of test kits was high enough someone would make them in the US.
If no one else did it – I WOULD.
The only reason I do not go into business making almost anything – even things I am completely clueless about, is because if the prices actually were high enough to lure me.
They would be high enough to lure someone who would pummel my ass.
There is no product in existance that can not be made in the US.
If it is not made in the US, that is because it does not make sense to make it in the US.
I do not give a frack what “us officials” are worried about.
Govenrment is not competent to do the few tasks that only it can do.
I do not want it sticking its nose into other things.
But if you want to start up a plant making US antibiotics – GO for it.
I am not stopping you.
You say you can not buy X in the US and that is important to you.
Well if it is important to you – maybe it is important to alot of other people/
And if there is enough people it is important to, then you can profit from meeting their need.
I get really tired of this – “I am not free, because other people have not given me the choices I want”
That is bullshit.
As I have said – I fully expect a shift away from China over the next year in myriads of areas.
Some things will move to the US. Some to other poorer countries.
It does not matter.
The market will change. Choices that I personally liked may disappear.
That is life. It is not a plot.
I do not have the right to force others to produce what I want – in China, in the US or anywhere. But I am free to buy what I want from where I want – from the choices that exist.
And if a choice I think is important does not exist – I am free to bring that choice about,
and if others share that value, I will profit.
There is no place for Force in this.
I do not care, I might even celebrate if some of what you want comes about ON ITS OWN.
But government stepping in is immoral – PERIOD.
No amount of ranting will change that.
You say you can not buy US made antibiotics.
Well I can not find diamonds in my back yard either.
The absence of the choices you want is not force, and is no infringement on your rights or liberties.
But using force to take away choices others have – that is immoral. It is wrong.
The fact that China is behaving immorally with its own people, does not permitt you to use force against americans.
Again the results you want MIGHT happen naturally.
Or by persausion.
That is the only moral way they can happen.
How did the shortage of PPE work out ? Did we solve that ? Did China have us over a barrel ?
How about ventalators ?
There is nothing that this country can not manufacture in enormous quantities quite easily if we wish to do so.
And I actually expect to see alot of manufacturing return to the US over the next year.
I am not sure whether all of that is truly