Virus thread, the political one.

[murphy]

And I'll acknowledge your dismissiveness.

I replied to a post about Canada's situation vis-à-vis the United States. It struck me as smug. Especially when, by a critical metric, Canada should not be promoted as a model. 5 million more people live in California than all of Canada and the number of deaths are comparable. No one here is bragging that only 9500 people have died. So let's get beyond that.

According to the IHME's social distancing model, typical mobility only dropped by 58% in Canada. Mask rates are lower in Canada than the US. And, the lockdowns were lifted relatively early. So, if we must compare our two nations, who's most responsible for the "extra 23 dead (and growing) per 100K?" Trump, Republican governors, 25 year olds?

Canadians less likely than most to wear masks when out in public, poll finds | CTV News

I don't think that any nation is coming out completely clean; there are lessons to be learned in each respective case, but some nations will come out looking better than others and I think Canada's optimism for their respective performance probably is in some part due to leadership actually leading and, at the very least, giving science a voice. With respect to Canada, from what I have read, it seems like they were hit hard early so their infections graph more matches the normal bell(ish) curve that many nations have seen whereas the US has more in common with Brazil's plateau style graph (although we did have a dip it is on the ascent again).

[thollandpe]

California and Canada do have comparable populations (39.5 million and 37.8 million, respectively)
The deaths due to COVID-19 are comparable and a crying fucking shame (9500 and 9000, according to Worldometer)

However, the total number of cases in California is over four times higher than in Canada.
And the number of active cases is almost 50 times higher.

[Chik]

There seems to be a muppet on the loose in Sarasota, specifically at Arlington Park. If you’re in the area, beware.
Mimi Gonzalez - ALERT AT ARLINGTON PARK:
I was walking my... | Facebook

[beeatnik]

California and Canada do have comparable populations (39.5 million and 37.8 million, respectively)
The deaths due to COVID-19 are comparable and a crying fucking shame (9500 and 9000, according to Worldometer)

However, the total number of cases in California is over four times higher than in Canada.
And the number of active cases is almost 50 times higher.

What a fucked up state of reality that having a dialogue about statistics would be interpreted as preferring the shitty situation of one place over the shittier (shittiest) situation of another. Ah, but there's New Zealand.

edit: referring to the response to my initial call out.

[thollandpe]

What a fucked up state of reality that having a dialogue about statistics would be interpreted as preferring the shitty situation of one place over the shittier (shittiest) situation of another.

We are in deep shit indeed. Some more than others. It hurts my head and breaks my heart that one aim of our government’s colossally botched response to this pandemic could be passive aggressive ethnic cleansing.

And we’re teeing up school reopening as the next stage in the ongoing disaster that is Operation Clusterfuck.

[Too Tall]

Election Countdown - Countdown to Nov 3, 22 in Washington DC, District of Columbia

[Sbti]

It is what it is!

[Mark Kelly]

Quote from Rob Reiner:

Watching the Jonathan Swan interview reminded me of my interview with Chris Guest as Nigel Tufnel in Spinal Tap. Trump’s stupidity goes to 11.

[TMB]

Quote from Rob Reiner:

Summed up perfectly by a friend in the middle of it all ..

Attachment 116324

[vertical_doug]

Several Republicans are helping Kanye West secure a place on the 22 ballot | Daily Mail Online

West’s ties to the four individuals has raised questions about the intentions of his White House bid and whether the campaign is all a just a GOP-orchestrated ruse
Petitioning company Let the voters Decide, which is headed by Mark Jacoby, has been helping the West secure signatures to run in three states
Jacoby was arrested on charges of voter fraud in 2008 while working for the Republican Party in California
West’s nominating petitions were dropped off with state regulators in Madison, Wisconsin on Tuesday by Lane Ruhland
Ruhland, a top Republican lawyer and former general counsel for the state GOP, was filmed dropping off the signatures
Gregg Keller, the former executive director of the American Conservative Union, has been listed as a contact for West’s campaign in Arkansas
Keller was previously under consideration to become Donald Trump’s campaign manager in 2015, but lost out to Corey Lewandowski
The fourth person with partisan ties linked to the West campaign is Chuck Wilton, from Vermont, who is listed as a convention delegate for Trump
If West’s intentions are to disrupt the general election between Biden and Trump, his presence in states such as Wisconsin could be pivotal in deciding the race
Trump narrowly won Wisconsin in 2016, snapping a string of Democratic presidential candidates winning the state going back to 1988

[guido]

Trump’s Axios interview on HBO was a disaster - Vox

"President Donald Trump’s interview with Jonathan Swan of Axios began with him telling a dizzying string of lies about his coronavirus response and the state of the pandemic in the country. It ended with Trump making the death of civil rights leader John Lewis about himself. It didn’t go any better in between.

For the second time in a month, Trump’s attempt to sit down for an interview with a journalist willing to challenge him ended in disaster. Over the course of 37 minutes, Swan repeatedly exposed Trump’s inability to respond to the most basic of follow-up questions.

Trump’s difficulty with push-back is often concealed when he answers questions beside a loud helicopter or in the friendly confines of Sean Hannity’s show. But the Swan interview, which came out just two weeks after Trump’s similarly disastrous performance on Chris Wallace’s show, highlighted the degree to which Trump is unable to defend his record in the face of even mildly challenging questions.
Trump’s coronavirus comments continue to be an embarrassment

Perhaps the most terrifying part of the interview came early on when Swan peppered Trump with a string of questions about why he isn’t doing more to fight the coronavirus and why the virus has hit the US so much harder than other comparable countries.

Asked how he can say the pandemic is under control when roughly 1,000 Americans are dying from Covid-19 each day, Trump said, remarkably, that “it is what it is.”

“They are dying. That’s true. It is what it is. ... It’s under control as much as you can control it.”

On the topic of America’s struggles with coronavirus testing, including long wait times for test results that render testing almost worthless, Trump resorted to making stuff up.

“There are those that say you can test too much. You know that?” Trump said at one point.

“Who says that?” Swan responded.

“Read the manuals. Read the books,” answered Trump.

“What books?” Swan challenged, but no answer was forthcoming. Instead, Trump said that “when I took over we didn’t even have a test” — as if the Obama administration was supposed to develop a test for a virus that didn’t exist until nearly three years after Trump’s inauguration.

A few minutes later, just as he did on Wallace’s show, Trump waved around pieces of paper with charts and graphs in an unconvincing effort to make it seem as though the US coronavirus death toll of more than 150,000 isn’t as bad as it seems.

“Right here, the United States is lowest in ... numerous categories ... ah, we’re lower than the world,” Trump stammered, which prompted Swan to respond, incredulously, “lower than the world? In what?”

“Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases,” Swan continued. “I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the US is really bad. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc. ... Look at South Korea: 50 million population, 300 deaths.”

Trump responded by suggesting South Korea is faking its numbers. But when Swan challenged him on that point, Trump quickly changed the topic back to his pieces of paper."

[vertical_doug]

At least he didn't say he heard it in a book.

You aren't setting the bar low enough.

[ides1056]

I actually took the time to watch the whole interview despite my fundamental aversion to the man. He is incapable of thinking. It's plain as day.

[Sbti]

[url=https://www.vox.com/2020/8/4/21354055/trump-axios-interview-jonathan-swan]

“Read the manuals. Read the books,” answered Trump.

Manuals and books? He threw them out and/or ignored them.

1. One week before Trump’s inauguration, officials briefed him on a likely viral pandemic.
2. In 2017, he cut the Federal health department by nearly 18%.
3. He was briefed on a 69-page NSC report in 2017 for dealing with a pandemic, “Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents”.
4. In 2018 he fired the NSC pandemic preparedness team and the global health security team.
5. Jan. 2019, the DNI released the “worldwide threat assessment of the intelligence community report” which outlined a pandemic threat for Human Security and Global Health for the US.
6. In 2019, he placed large tariffs on Chinese imports of medical supplies that would be needed to fight a pandemic
7. In 2019 a joint CDC/HHS exercise showed large problems with pandemic preparedness.
8. Azar and Morrison, at the BioDefense Summit in April 2019 briefed Trump about the threat of a pandemic
9. FEMA released “The 2019 The National Treat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment” in July that predicted that a nationwide pandemic would result in a shortage of medical supplies, hospitals would be overwhelmed and the economy would shut down.
10. Sept. 2019, Trump cut the Pandemic Early Warning System (PREDICT) to save 200 million dollars.
11. In late 2019 the WHO transmitted real-time information about the Covid-19 discovery and spread in China to Trump.
12. He is stalling the release of the 2020 Intel report warning that the U.S. isn’t ready for a global pandemic.
13. Nov. 2019 the military's National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI) analysts reported that the upcoming possible pandemic “could be a cataclysmic event.”
14. Dec. 2019-Feb 2020 NCMI briefed the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the WH several times.
15. He ended a $200M program of US scientists working in the Wuhan lab USAID’s Predict Program.
16. Ignored over 12 PDB’s in Jan-Feb and lied to the public

[vertical_doug]

A defeat for Donald Trump is not a defeat for autocracy
Voters are rejecting the president’s incompetence, not his authoritarianism

From the Editorial page of the FT. The implications of this is frightening. You have the MOB on the left, and fascists on the right. How do we get a middle again?

[guido]

A defeat for Donald Trump is not a defeat for autocracy
Voters are rejecting the president’s incompetence, not his authoritarianism

From the Editorial page of the FT. The implications of this is frightening. You have the MOB on the left, and fascists on the right. How do we get a middle again?

Was there a link?

[theflashunc]

A defeat for Donald Trump is not a defeat for autocracy
Voters are rejecting the president’s incompetence, not his authoritarianism

From the Editorial page of the FT. The implications of this is frightening. You have the MOB on the left, and fascists on the right. How do we get a middle again?

Don't even have to read it to know it's some both sides-ism nonsense.

Only one party in the US has lost its mind.

[guido]

Don't even have to read it to know it's some both sides-ism nonsense.

Only one party in the US has lost its mind.

I was at least being nice and giving them the benefit of the doubt...

[vertical_doug]

Don't even have to read it to know it's some both sides-ism nonsense.

Only one party in the US has lost its mind.

The bothism is mine, not the article. Democrats are still more centered, but go out far enough and you begin to get dumb too.. I use Bill Deblasio as exhibit A.
The current crop of Democrat politicians are still reasonable, but if they continue to shift left like the republicans shifted right, you will get crazy on both sides. My daughter is left of me, and reasonable. But she has friends which are farther left, and even she finds them unreasonable on issues.

[j44ke]

The bothism is mine, not the article. Democrats are still more centered, but go out far enough and you begin to get dumb too.. I use Bill Deblasio as exhibit A.
The current crop of Democrat politicians are still reasonable, but if they continue to shift left like the republicans shifted right, you will get crazy on both sides. My daughter is left of me, and reasonable. But she has friends which are farther left, and even she finds them unreasonable on issues.

DeBlasio isn’t bad because of his politics. He’s bad because he’s incompetent.