Coronavirus COVID-19

[JohnStOnge]

Trump can't single handedly take credit for politicizing and causing a mistrust in science - that's giving him way too much credit. Pretty sure we've had plenty of quotes on here by folks on the left, including the presumptive Democratic nominee in 2024, saying that they wouldn't trust a "Trump vaccine" during the leadup to last year's election. And frankly, blindly throwing out the "we'll follow the science" mantras, and only picking the results that tie to whatever political opinion you have at the time while ignoring the science that contradicts other stances you take also has done a marvelous job of causing a mistrust of science.

That’s why I said he “helped”.

Mistrust of institutions is also cyclical so if not Trump the humble masses would have blindly NOT followed science anyway.

Trump didn’t help though.

It's not Trump as much as it is the idiots that would support somebody like that to be President of the United States. THAT'S the problem. What we have learned during the past five years is that we have a real, significant problem in that the majority of the base of a major political party is composed of hateful, ignorant nut jobs. It's bad.

[SeattleGriz]

Latest UK data release now showing the vaccinated are the majority of the hospitalized down to the 30-39 age group. Last report showed it was 40-49 for the cutover.

[JohnStOnge]

It's a very rational observation. And the fact that we have people who don't recognize it as such is a problem.

Provide the (verifiable & quantifiable) data to back up your assertion that it is a rational observation. Nothing anecdotal please. Otherwise it's a theory based on your (biased) opinion. My (biased) opinion says that both parties are part of the problem.

Here is one example: https://news.yahoo.com/poll-two-thirds- ... 34695.html

The survey of 1,552 U.S. adults, which was conducted from July 30 to Aug. 2, found that 66 percent of Republicans continue to insist that “the election was rigged and stolen from Trump,” while just 18 percent believe “Joe Biden won fair and square.”

If, as of August 2, 2021, a person still did not believe that Biden won fair and square, that person was not rational. And all but an estimated 18 percent of Republicans were in that category.

Here are some things from the more recent poll at https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/j46zs8picp/ ... Report.pdf :

29% of all respondents thought students should NOT be required to wear masks in school and 33% thought students should NOT have to be vaccinated. Those are irrational positions. And if you just look at Republicans it's 66% and 61%; respectively.

And, really, we should not have to look farther than the fact that 88% of Republicans voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 94% of Republicans voted for him in 2020. Voting for somebody like Trump, at any point, is not rational. The case really should be closed just by virtue of the fact that the Republican Party ever nominated somebody like that.

Having said all that: You don't have to have quantitative certainty to reach a rational opinion. To me any sensible person should be able to just look at what's going on qualitatively right now and see that the Republican Party is out of its mind. It's kind of like what I've said before about the principle that a controlled experiment is necessary to infer cause and effect. But that doesn't mean that if you see an 18 wheeler hit a dog you can't say getting hit by an 18 wheeler killed the dog. The problem with the Republican Party is really, really obvious right now.

[UNI88]

Provide the (verifiable & quantifiable) data to back up your assertion that it is a rational observation. Nothing anecdotal please. Otherwise it's a theory based on your (biased) opinion. My (biased) opinion says that both parties are part of the problem.

Here is one example: https://news.yahoo.com/poll-two-thirds- ... 34695.html

The survey of 1,552 U.S. adults, which was conducted from July 30 to Aug. 2, found that 66 percent of Republicans continue to insist that “the election was rigged and stolen from Trump,” while just 18 percent believe “Joe Biden won fair and square.”

If, as of August 2, 2021, a person still did not believe that Biden won fair and square, that person was not rational. And all but an estimated 18 percent of Republicans were in that category.

Here are some things from the more recent poll at https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/j46zs8picp/ ... Report.pdf :

29% of all respondents thought students should NOT be required to wear masks in school and 33% thought students should NOT have to be vaccinated. Those are irrational positions. And if you just look at Republicans it's 66% and 61%; respectively.

And, really, we should not have to look farther than the fact that 88% of Republicans voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 94% of Republicans voted for him in 2020. Voting for somebody like Trump, at any point, is not rational. The case really should be closed just by virtue of the fact that the Republican Party ever nominated somebody like that.

Having said all that: You don't have to have quantitative certainty to reach a rational opinion. To me any sensible person should be able to just look at what's going on qualitatively right now and see that the Republican Party is out of its mind. It's kind of like what I've said before about the principle that a controlled experiment is necessary to infer cause and effect. But that doesn't mean that if you see an 18 wheeler hit a dog you can't say getting hit by an 18 wheeler killed the dog. The problem with the Republican Party is really, really obvious right now.

It's also not rational to believe that socialism will work this time but there are plenty of people on the left who do believe it. That's just one of many examples of irrational beliefs/behavior on the left.

It's not a one-sided argument but your bias prevents you from seeing how illiberal and irrational the so-called progressives are.

[JohnStOnge]

Latest UK data release now showing the vaccinated are the majority of the hospitalized down to the 30-39 age group. Last report showed it was 40-49 for the cutover.

So what does it show about the likelihood that a randomly selected fully vaccinated person is hospitalized vs. the likelihood of a randomly selected unvaccinated person is hospitalized? That's the important question.

If you want you can link the report and I'll see if it has the information necessary to calculate that.

[JohnStOnge]

Here is one example: https://news.yahoo.com/poll-two-thirds- ... 34695.html


If, as of August 2, 2021, a person still did not believe that Biden won fair and square, that person was not rational. And all but an estimated 18 percent of Republicans were in that category.

Here are some things from the more recent poll at https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/j46zs8picp/ ... Report.pdf :

29% of all respondents thought students should NOT be required to wear masks in school and 33% thought students should NOT have to be vaccinated. Those are irrational positions. And if you just look at Republicans it's 66% and 61%; respectively.

And, really, we should not have to look farther than the fact that 88% of Republicans voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 94% of Republicans voted for him in 2020. Voting for somebody like Trump, at any point, is not rational. The case really should be closed just by virtue of the fact that the Republican Party ever nominated somebody like that.

Having said all that: You don't have to have quantitative certainty to reach a rational opinion. To me any sensible person should be able to just look at what's going on qualitatively right now and see that the Republican Party is out of its mind. It's kind of like what I've said before about the principle that a controlled experiment is necessary to infer cause and effect. But that doesn't mean that if you see an 18 wheeler hit a dog you can't say getting hit by an 18 wheeler killed the dog. The problem with the Republican Party is really, really obvious right now.

It's also not rational to believe that socialism will work this time but there are plenty of people on the left who do believe it. That's just one of many examples of irrational beliefs/behavior on the left.

It's not a one-sided argument but your bias prevents you from seeing how illiberal and irrational the so-called progressives are.

I am extremely unbiased. There are many areas in which "liberals" or "progressives' are irrational. But, right now, they are not as dangerous. The Republicans, right now, are a threat to our Democratic Republic system of government.

Look, as I've written before: I voted Republican in every election of my life but one 1975 through 2015. The one exception was voting for a Pro life Democrat over a Pro Choice Republican in a Lt. Governor's race. But when the Republican Party got Trumped the worm turned. There is no way any rational person could support making somebody like Trump President. And since that has happened the Republican Party has just gone totally off the rails.

[SeattleGriz]

Latest UK data release now showing the vaccinated are the majority of the hospitalized down to the 30-39 age group. Last report showed it was 40-49 for the cutover.

So what does it show about the likelihood that a randomly selected fully vaccinated person is hospitalized vs. the likelihood of a randomly selected unvaccinated person is hospitalized? That's the important question.

If you want you can link the report and I'll see if it has the information necessary to calculate that.

Welp! Looking at wrong chart. It was positive cases, not hospitalized.

But here is the link, to which I'm a little confused. Seems to be putting the report in a new spot.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... eek_40.pdf

[JohnStOnge]

So what does it show about the likelihood that a randomly selected fully vaccinated person is hospitalized vs. the likelihood of a randomly selected unvaccinated person is hospitalized? That's the important question.

If you want you can link the report and I'll see if it has the information necessary to calculate that.

Welp! Looking at wrong chart. It was positive cases, not hospitalized.

But here is the link, to which I'm a little confused. Seems to be putting the report in a new spot.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... eek_40.pdf

Ok. I went to the document and I am not going to even try to parse everything. It is pretty clear that the authors think that vaccination is effective against infection, symptomatic disease, and death. I will just invite anyone who wants to look to navigate to your link and look.

[UNI88]

It's also not rational to believe that socialism will work this time but there are plenty of people on the left who do believe it. That's just one of many examples of irrational beliefs/behavior on the left.

It's not a one-sided argument but your bias prevents you from seeing how illiberal and irrational the so-called progressives are.

I am extremely unbiased. There are many areas in which "liberals" or "progressives' are irrational. But, right now, they are not as dangerous. The Republicans, right now, are a threat to our Democratic Republic system of government.

Look, as I've written before: I voted Republican in every election of my life but one 1975 through 2015. The one exception was voting for a Pro life Democrat over a Pro Choice Republican in a Lt. Governor's race. But when the Republican Party got Trumped the worm turned. There is no way any rational person could support making somebody like Trump President. And since that has happened the Republican Party has just gone totally off the rails.

and I'm a unicorn that burps skittles and farts rainbows.

The Republican Party has gone off the rails but they and the Democratic Party are playing leapfrog when it comes to irrationality.

[BDKJMU]

It's also not rational to believe that socialism will work this time but there are plenty of people on the left who do believe it. That's just one of many examples of irrational beliefs/behavior on the left.

It's not a one-sided argument but your bias prevents you from seeing how illiberal and irrational the so-called progressives are.

I am extremely unbiased. There are many areas in which "liberals" or "progressives' are irrational. But, right now, they are not as dangerous. The Republicans, right now, are a threat to our Democratic Republic system of government.

Look, as I've written before: I voted Republican in every election of my life but one 1975 through 2015. The one exception was voting for a Pro life Democrat over a Pro Choice Republican in a Lt. Governor's race. But when the Republican Party got Trumped the worm turned. There is no way any rational person could support making somebody like Trump President. And since that has happened the Republican Party has just gone totally off the rails.

[SeattleGriz]

Welp! Looking at wrong chart. It was positive cases, not hospitalized.

But here is the link, to which I'm a little confused. Seems to be putting the report in a new spot.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... eek_40.pdf

Ok. I went to the document and I am not going to even try to parse everything. It is pretty clear that the authors think that vaccination is effective against infection, symptomatic disease, and death. I will just invite anyone who wants to look to navigate to your link and look.

This is why I was complaining earlier in the year when the CDC said they would stop tracking cases. I realize the states track them, but our CDC should be collecting and publishing the data like the UK.

[SDHornet]

Blood on Bidens* hands. Own it.

Will you own Trump’s mistakes? Or that he helped create a mistrust of of science that still is inflicting way too many today?

Trump had lots of mistakes, but none of the China Virus deaths since 1/20/21 are his fault.

Sorry, them's the rules yo.

[SDHornet]

Because Covid is date conscious.

Biden flat out said he was going to FIX this. Just another failure in his long litany of failures in just 9 months.

[SDHornet]

Sununu calls for removal of GOP lawmaker for spreading vaccine conspiracies



WTF is wrong with people?

Yeah, that dude is apparently whacky - in that 52 page (seriously, 52 pages, that's a crap-load amount of pages) diatribe, he also said this about the Catholic Church...

The document also made a series of bigoted and unfounded claims about the Catholic Church while objecting to Pope Francis’s calls for the faithful to be vaccinated. It claimed that the Church is controlled by multiple popes who operate in the shadows and “are satanists, also called luciferians.”

Frankly, I think New Hampshire just needs to rethink the size of their legislature. They have the 3rd largest democratic body in the world (after the English parliament and the US HOR) - maybe there just aren't enough rational people in New Hampshire to properly fill out such a body. 400 legislators is hard to find if you want them all to be sane and rational, most states can't find enough for state legislatures that are a fraction of that size.

Wow, that's amazing for a state that size.

[SDHornet]

Didn't Biden* say he'd get this under control when he became POTUS?

Promises made, promises kept.

Ok. I had time to really look at it. And it's another example of the problem we have in the "conservative" world right now. It's completely intellectually dishonet.

I am using Worldometers data. Through yesterday (today is not done yet), Biden had been in office for 261 days. During those 261 days, there were 305,197 COVID-19 deaths. During the 261 days prior to when Biden took office, which is the period 5/4/2020 through 1/19/2021, there were 354,531 COVID-19 deaths.

The average daily rate during Biden's 261 days through yesterday was 1169. The average daily rate for the 261 days before he took office is 1358. You can use the Poisson means test calculator at https://www.evanmiller.org/ab-testing/p ... means.html to determine that the rate for the 261 days since Biden took office is "significantly" lower than it was during the 261 days before he took office at 99.9% confidence.

Now, that does not mean that Biden caused an improvement. Obviously Biden has the advantage of having had the vaccinations going on. Also natural immunity. BUT: Things have improved, on balance, since Biden took office. That Tweet is a classic example of lying with statistics. This is why statistics gets a bad name. But, as I am now demonstrating, it only works if you are dealing with people who are not going to look at the attempted deception closely.

Now normalize deaths based on who had a "vaccine" to mitigate the deaths longer.

[SDHornet]

Latest UK data release now showing the vaccinated are the majority of the hospitalized down to the 30-39 age group. Last report showed it was 40-49 for the cutover.

Oh....

[SDHornet]

Ok. I went to the document and I am not going to even try to parse everything. It is pretty clear that the authors think that vaccination is effective against infection, symptomatic disease, and death. I will just invite anyone who wants to look to navigate to your link and look.

This is why I was complaining earlier in the year when the CDC said they would stop tracking cases. I realize the states track them, but our CDC should be collecting and publishing the data like the UK.

There's a reason they stopped tracking data.

[SeattleGriz]

Ok. I had time to really look at it. And it's another example of the problem we have in the "conservative" world right now. It's completely intellectually dishonet.

I am using Worldometers data. Through yesterday (today is not done yet), Biden had been in office for 261 days. During those 261 days, there were 305,197 COVID-19 deaths. During the 261 days prior to when Biden took office, which is the period 5/4/2020 through 1/19/2021, there were 354,531 COVID-19 deaths.

The average daily rate during Biden's 261 days through yesterday was 1169. The average daily rate for the 261 days before he took office is 1358. You can use the Poisson means test calculator at https://www.evanmiller.org/ab-testing/p ... means.html to determine that the rate for the 261 days since Biden took office is "significantly" lower than it was during the 261 days before he took office at 99.9% confidence.

Now, that does not mean that Biden caused an improvement. Obviously Biden has the advantage of having had the vaccinations going on. Also natural immunity. BUT: Things have improved, on balance, since Biden took office. That Tweet is a classic example of lying with statistics. This is why statistics gets a bad name. But, as I am now demonstrating, it only works if you are dealing with people who are not going to look at the attempted deception closely.

Now normalize deaths based on who had a "vaccine" to mitigate the deaths longer.

I didn't know you could analyze something so much that 'more deaths this year than last year' is no longer true. Who da thunk it?

[AZGrizFan]

Now normalize deaths based on who had a "vaccine" to mitigate the deaths longer.

I didn't know you could analyze something so much that 'more deaths this year than last year' is no longer true. Who da thunk it?

so pretty much as many have died WITH vaccines in play as without. But Biden is a God and Trump is the devil.

[JohnStOnge]

Ok. I had time to really look at it. And it's another example of the problem we have in the "conservative" world right now. It's completely intellectually dishonet.

I am using Worldometers data. Through yesterday (today is not done yet), Biden had been in office for 261 days. During those 261 days, there were 305,197 COVID-19 deaths. During the 261 days prior to when Biden took office, which is the period 5/4/2020 through 1/19/2021, there were 354,531 COVID-19 deaths.

The average daily rate during Biden's 261 days through yesterday was 1169. The average daily rate for the 261 days before he took office is 1358. You can use the Poisson means test calculator at https://www.evanmiller.org/ab-testing/p ... means.html to determine that the rate for the 261 days since Biden took office is "significantly" lower than it was during the 261 days before he took office at 99.9% confidence.

Now, that does not mean that Biden caused an improvement. Obviously Biden has the advantage of having had the vaccinations going on. Also natural immunity. BUT: Things have improved, on balance, since Biden took office. That Tweet is a classic example of lying with statistics. This is why statistics gets a bad name. But, as I am now demonstrating, it only works if you are dealing with people who are not going to look at the attempted deception closely.

Now normalize deaths based on who had a "vaccine" to mitigate the deaths longer.

The vaccinations are clearly a factor. However, on the other side of the coin, Biden was president when the Delta variant made it here. The Delta variant is a lot more contagious than the variants that were circulating in the United States before Biden took office.

The point is that the tweet is extremely misleading. It is clearly meant to create the impression that the death rate increased under Biden. And it didn't. It decreased; especially as compared to what was going on right when he took office. When he took office on January 20, the average daily death rate during the previous week was 3,206. See image below. Biden literally took over when things were at their absolute worse.

Biden is following the science. Trump paid some lip service to the science. But he was constantly compromising the efforts of Public Health officials by making statements giving credence to complete nonsense as well as statements undermining confidence in the truth. He was awful.

[JohnStOnge]

I am extremely unbiased.

and I'm a unicorn that burps skittles and farts rainbows.

The Republican Party has gone off the rails but they and the Democratic Party are playing leapfrog when it comes to irrationality.

I think that fact that I am as hard on the Republican Party as I am right now is an indication of being unbiased. As noted: I voted for that Party very consistently from age 18 through age 59. When the Republican Party nominated Trump I was objective enough to conclude that was not a good thing and that the Republican Party had indicated that it has a serious problem.. Most people just stick with their "tribe" no matter what they do. I don't do that. I recognize it when the "side" I have been on is wrong.

Any objective assessment of the situation indicates that Trump support indicates a serious underlying issue. It's very bad. I am being objective. All the stuff about Trump not having a significant positive impact on the economy and instead just benefitting from a decent economy that was already in place is also objective. It is what the data clearly indicate.

And I can't believe you think that this is a symmetrical situation with both major Parties being equally as bad at this time in history. To me that is absurd. To me all you have to look at is what we have been going through with the nonsense about the election for the past 11 months. We had a President try to stay in power through illegitimate means and we have now had a major Political Party fail to repudiate that and even facilitate it for 11 months. It's just horrible and absurd and the Democrat Party has never done anything remotely like this.

Meanwhile the Republican Party is responding by trying to decrease voting among groups likely to vote Democrat and even trying to set up systems to allow partisans to overturn results.

To me, if you don't see that we have a bigger problem with the Republican Party right now than we have , or have EVER had, with the Democrat Party you are being willfully blind.

[AZGrizFan]

You are as objective as MSNBC. Don’t kid yourself.

[JohnStOnge]

It's also not rational to believe that socialism will work this time but there are plenty of people on the left who do believe it.

We're way off topic but I'll comment on that. I don't think anybody wants pure socialism any more than anybody wants pure capitalism. People say all the time that "socialism" has never worked. Yet we have the 800 pound Gorilla China debunking that. People will argue that China has capitalist elements. And it does. But it's a socialist/communist country. I would not want to live under China's system. But saying that it isn't a successful nation is pretty self evidently false. I don't think anyone who got into a time machine, traveled 50 years into the future, and saw that China had replaced the United States as the world's dominant nation would be surprised. It's not inevitable. But it wouldn't be a surprise. And right now it's clearly in second position.

I don't think there are any examples of successful purely capitalist nations either. The United States is not a purely capitalist nation. Government does exercise some control over the means of production. There is an awful lot of regulation of what industry does. It is not, as the definition of capitalism goes, a country where "...trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state." The State exercises plenty of control.

In addition to that, there is no indication that any Democrat wants totalitarian socialism where government owns all means of production. I think that what Democrats want when they say "socialism" is really "social democracy." They want something along the line of the Nordic Model, though I think they may believe in more corporate taxation. But they don't want a system where Mom and Pop can't start a grocery store or Aunt and Uncle can't start a hair salon as private businesses.

I think Democrats like Sanders and AOC do make a mistake in using the term "Socialist" when that's not even really what they are talking about. But the Democrats are not a threat to make us a Socialist nation. And they are not a threat to create a minority rule situation. The Republicans are such a threat. I also think they are a threat to turn us into a Fascist country. I don't think their rank and file generally realize that. But they just supported an effort by a would be banana-republic style strong man to stay in power when he clearly lost an election. And they continue to support it. That's very bad. Very dangerous.

[AZGrizFan]

It's also not rational to believe that socialism will work this time but there are plenty of people on the left who do believe it.

We're way off topic but I'll comment on that. I don't think anybody wants pure socialism any more than anybody wants pure capitalism. People say all the time that "socialism" has never worked. Yet we have the 800 pound Gorilla China debunking that. People will argue that China has capitalist elements. And it does. But it's a socialist/communist country. I would not want to live under China's system. But saying that it isn't a successful nation is pretty self evidently false. I don't think anyone who got into a time machine, traveled 50 years into the future, and saw that China had replaced the United States as the world's dominant nation would be surprised. It's not inevitable. But it wouldn't be a surprise. And right now it's clearly in second position.

I don't think there are any examples of successful purely capitalist nations either. The United States is not a purely capitalist nation. Government does exercise some control over the means of production. There is an awful lot of regulation of what industry does. It is not, as the definition of capitalism goes, a country where "...trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state." The State exercises plenty of control.

In addition to that, there is no indication that any Democrat wants totalitarian socialism where government owns all means of production. I think that what Democrats want when they say "socialism" is really "social democracy." They want something along the line of the Nordic Model, though I think they may believe in more corporate taxation. But they don't want a system where Mom and Pop can't start a grocery store or Aunt and Uncle can't start a hair salon as private businesses.

I think Democrats like Sanders and AOC do make a mistake in using the term "Socialist" when that's not even really what they are talking about. But the Democrats are not a threat to make us a Socialist nation. And they are not a threat to create a minority rule situation. The Republicans are such a threat. I also think they are a threat to turn us into a Fascist country. I don't think their rank and file generally realize that. But they just supported an effort by a would be banana-republic style strong man to stay in power when he clearly lost an election. And they continue to support it. That's very bad. Very dangerous.

Maybe we should ask the PEOPLE of China and not view it from the standpoint of how their government actually operates.

[JohnStOnge]

We're way off topic but I'll comment on that. I don't think anybody wants pure socialism any more than anybody wants pure capitalism. People say all the time that "socialism" has never worked. Yet we have the 800 pound Gorilla China debunking that. People will argue that China has capitalist elements. And it does. But it's a socialist/communist country. I would not want to live under China's system. But saying that it isn't a successful nation is pretty self evidently false. I don't think anyone who got into a time machine, traveled 50 years into the future, and saw that China had replaced the United States as the world's dominant nation would be surprised. It's not inevitable. But it wouldn't be a surprise. And right now it's clearly in second position.

I don't think there are any examples of successful purely capitalist nations either. The United States is not a purely capitalist nation. Government does exercise some control over the means of production. There is an awful lot of regulation of what industry does. It is not, as the definition of capitalism goes, a country where "...trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state." The State exercises plenty of control.

In addition to that, there is no indication that any Democrat wants totalitarian socialism where government owns all means of production. I think that what Democrats want when they say "socialism" is really "social democracy." They want something along the line of the Nordic Model, though I think they may believe in more corporate taxation. But they don't want a system where Mom and Pop can't start a grocery store or Aunt and Uncle can't start a hair salon as private businesses.

I think Democrats like Sanders and AOC do make a mistake in using the term "Socialist" when that's not even really what they are talking about. But the Democrats are not a threat to make us a Socialist nation. And they are not a threat to create a minority rule situation. The Republicans are such a threat. I also think they are a threat to turn us into a Fascist country. I don't think their rank and file generally realize that. But they just supported an effort by a would be banana-republic style strong man to stay in power when he clearly lost an election. And they continue to support it. That's very bad. Very dangerous.

Maybe we should ask the PEOPLE of China and not view it from the standpoint of how their government actually operates.

As I said, I would not want to live under China's system. But to say it has failed as a nation at this point is pretty self evidently wrong. You have people running around repeatedly saying "Socialism has always failed" and it's pretty self-evidently a false statement at this point due to China being pretty much the #2 most dominant country in the world right now with people in the United States pretty obviously worried about it eventually becoming #1. People need to stop with the obviously false talking point.