U.S. to close..

[NevilleCat]

Originally Posted by Singularity

Perhaps strategic use of the ignore list feature can keep this thread alive.

Yes, it's better for the blood pressure sometimes.
(Sorry peoples, for my up-thread outburst)

[Exile]

Originally Posted by SalingSue

Not remotely overrun, but I do know some people who have been sent home from hospitals due to lack of work.

I do too, but that was months ago. Things are worse now with the 2nd wave and hospital/ICU beds are filling in many areas. In my (small) home state the hospitals are already past 85% capacity with infection and hospitalization rates increasing daily.

Highly doubt I’ll have that “empty chair” at the dinner table, GREAT image and marketing for whomever thought that line up by the way.

It’s a 99% survival rate, I would say my survival rate constantly fighting for my rights that my busy body neighbors gave away on me, that would be much more bloody and risky.

I can commiserate over what I've observed as an overabundance of people these days staying busy minding other peoples' business, but I don't think this generalized complaint applies to the issue at hand.

I honestly laugh at many of the government “experts”, tons of photos of them not following their own mandates, give it a rest when you don’t even buy the product that you’re pitching to me.

Troubling isn't it. I agree but it only means that power is all too often occasioned by a sense of privilege and entitlement. It's always been that way. But you still just need to call them fools and then get on with following best practices.

Also what about all the businesses that have been destroyed, the massive number unemployment leading to addiction, taking ones own life, having your families whole lifestyle forced to change because folks fell victim to mass hysteria and forced you into that spot.

Been discussed quite thoroughly in this and other threads. People have differing views, most sincere and others perhaps more influenced by partisanship, but all worthy of respectful discourse and debate.


What’s your point?

I’m not sure what that has to do with the ideas communicated.

On that note you’re in China, same place the virus came from, a place that embraces communism, in many ways the anthesis of American values, I would say the two different cultures of China and the US are very much incompatible.

You don't know a thing about this poster. Your assertions and assumptions are irrelevant in any event.

Again, I’m 100% ok with others wearing masks, deciding not to go out, deciding to close down or destroy their own business, what I am not OK with is others making that choice for me or my friends. It reminds me of the religious people who would use force to convert others to their religion, or to a extreme burn them alive, all to “save them”.

All fine and good until your right to be left alone infringes on other peoples' health, safety and welfare. No easy answers, only a difficult balancing which is not amenable to broad generalizations.

Just race your own race and don’t meddle with strangers.

Good advice . . . until it isn't. Life is much more complicated, especially when the entire world is afflicted with a highly contagious respiratory pandemic.

[SalingSue]

Originally Posted by Yihang

I think everyone else got the point.

But you didn’t make a point.

You attempted to invalidate the ideas Mr Sowell expressed only by attempting to assail the medium those thoughts were expressed upon.

You didn’t explore his thought process, let alone debunk a single line item.

[Yihang]

I tried to say the ideas are not without flaws. That we should not forget who funds the Hoover institute. Take it as part of a conservative viewpoint not as some infallible truth. But like I said take in as many viewpoints as you can.

If you want to walk across the country then you can race your own race but if you want to hop on a plane with 200 other people you are no longer racing your own race.

Maybe the irony is lost on you but you do realise its basically an intellectual in a conservative funded think tank talking **** about other intellectuals on the other side of the aisle. Not to say nothing he says is true in some context. But i just thought it was a bit ironic.

[SalingSue]

Originally Posted by Yihang

I tried to say the ideas are not without flaws. That we should not forget who funds the Hoover institute. Take it as part of a conservative viewpoint not as some infallible truth. But like I said take in as many viewpoints as you can.

If you want to walk across the country then you can race your own race but if you want to hop on a plane with 200 other people you are no longer racing your own race.

Maybe the irony is lost on you but you do realise its basically an intellectual in a conservative funded think tank talking **** about other intellectuals on the other side of the aisle. Not to say nothing he says is true in some context. But i just thought it was a bit ironic.

Again, I’m only interested in the ideas, I don’t care who owns the cameras.

I could say if the masks work and you wear yours it shouldn’t matter if I wear one.

That being said, if you’re getting on a plane, especially packed like sardines these days, and you think your cotton fashion mask is going to protect you, you might want find better “experts” or just read the warning on the side of the bag most of those cotton masks come in, lest we even into the point that 9 out of 10 people don’t know how to use PPE anyways. It’s mostly all psychological, like a weighted blanket.

Now if the airlines as a private (kinda sorta) company wants to make a rule, no matter how silly, their business their rules.

[Yihang]

Sure. Absorb the ideas compare it with others and your own experiences and decide on its value. But we can’t ignore who pays for the cameras and the ideas are always tainted with those biases. On both sides.

Obviously no one is gonna make you wear a mask. But would you for the sake of others? If asked nicely. If the answer is no then I guess thats that.

[SalingSue]

Originally Posted by Yihang

Sure. Absorb the ideas compare it with others and your own experiences and decide on its value. But we can’t ignore who pays for the cameras and the ideas are always tainted with those biases. On both sides.

Obviously no one is gonna make you wear a mask. But would you for the sake of others? If asked nicely. If the answer is no then I guess thats that.

I’m just interested in the ideas, I really don’t care who owns the cameras, like at all, find merit or fault with a idea, but going off on a medium seems like a bailout when you can’t argue the facts.

If someone asks me to wear a mask
If I’m in their home/business, I’ll ether oblige them or excuse myself.
If I’m not in their home or business, that’s a hard no

[Yihang]

Originally Posted by SalingSue

I’m just interested in the ideas, I really don’t care who owns the cameras, like at all, find merit or fault with a idea, but going off on a medium seems like a bailout when you can’t argue the facts.

If someone asks me to wear a mask
If I’m in their home/business, I’ll ether oblige them or excuse myself.
If I’m not in their home or business, that’s a hard no

There is nothing to argue. He isn't really talking about anything directly related to covid. In fact he is saying listen to the experts not to the professors and researchers, so basically him? He is advocating listening to the experts. Did you actually watch the video or just the headlines?

Scott Atlas, a professor of neuroradiology who is also a researcher/professor at the hoover institute tried to tell people masks don't work and they should rise up against the state restrictions. That is what I call an arrogant intellectual. He became trumps advisor on covid-19. Basically without any qualification in the matter.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

. . . DH, I think you've misunderstood, or misread my comment. I was responding to the query posed as to whether I thought the US military would act against its own people.. .

Who are "the people"? A bunch of peaceful protestors? A bunch of civilians going about their business? NO. That is not the scenario which was posed. The scenario posed was ARMED citizens seeking to overthrow a "tyrannical" government. Reference was made to the time this was done in 1776. Re-read the post you were responding to. You got sucked into a false equivalency between unarmed protesters and armed insurrectionists.

There are different movements on the fringes of our politics -- as a Canadian we can't expect you to know all of our dirty secrets -- who believe that having armed militias ready to overthrow the government by force as it becomes excessively "tyrannical" is aligned with American tradition and is even allowed by the Constitution Read up about the Boogaloo Boyz, which is just one of a number of such movements.

The logic of this is that the state does NOT embody the people, that the people retain all of their natural law rights, and that the state exists at the pleasure of the people. The 9th amendment (the least well known and least understood part of the Bill of Rights) gives some weight to this idea, and philosophically I actually kind of agree with it.

I REALLY agree that the state does not embody the people, and that the state should not be treated like that. And we see some bizarre convergences where certain white supremecist militia groups come out in support of Black Lives Matter (because BLM is anti-police and against the force of the state) and even support that NFL player Kaepernik who refused to salute the flag at football games, kneeling instead. Some Boogaloo Boyz militia groups (who are not officially white supremecists but have a lot of those elements in their midst) actually marched with BLM to protest police violence -- as an aspect of the tyrannical state (and it's hard to disagree with their view of this).

Where I part ways with them, however, is the idea that it's ok to take this as far actually overthrowing the "tyrannical state" or in any respect using violence in public discourse. The difference between now and 1776 is that in 1776 we had no influence of any kind over how we were governed, and in particular, what taxes were imposed on us (the American Revolution was fundamentally a tax revolt). King George III and his court and his tax collectors were far away, and redcoats were thin on the ground. But in 2020, we have democratic means to influence how we are governed. We have a Constitution and we have an independent judiciary to enforce our rights under it. A majority of elected representatives in Congress can pass (or repeal) any law which is not contradicted by the Constitution. There are many flaws in this imperfect system, but the people do have the legal means to throw off a tyrannical government. You don't even need a majority of the voters to get rid of a president in charge of an oppressive executive branch, if enough states are disaffected (the whole point of the electoral college).

And that is the WHOLE POINT of our system of governance, and is the cornerstone of civilization in our land -- the WHOLE POINT is a government by laws, not men, and for sure not by force. Armed militias contesting their own reading of the Constitution by force is exactly what the Founders were seeking to prevent. When force is used in public discourse, then only the most violent, the cruelest, and the most ruthless prevail.

The post you responded to presumed that the U.S. military would look the other way as armed militias go about dismantling the supposedly tyrannical state, in the name of not "shooting our own people". Dream on! We are not nearly that dysfunctional yet. The state, as I wrote, knows how to protect itself against armed insurrection, and as much as I hate the way the police shoot innocent people, and so many other things about our society, I am VERY GLAD that the state has the means to prevent an armed putsch by militia groups, white supremecist or otherwise, and otherwise to prevent force, rather than the Supreme Court, from being used to decide what the Constitution means.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._United_States

If you want to know the context of that post you were responding to, read this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consti...rs_Association

"Members of the far-right, self-described 'constitutional sheriffs' movement believe that sheriffs are the highest governmental authority and that they have the power and duty to defy or disregard laws they deem unconstitutional.[1][2] The movement is related to previous 'nullification' and 'interposition' notions,[3] and promotes such efforts."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consti...rs_Association

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_movement

You will see that over there beyond Lake Ontario lies a strange, strange land . . .

[Supercat568]

An intelligent thinker recently said "there are no longer facts, there's no longer truth, there's only who you choose to believe." Obviously this doesn't apply to 2+2 and other things. But the booming economy in the late 90s, was that due to Reaganomics or the sitting President Clinton? Valid intelligent arguments can be made for both sides, so it comes down to who you believe. There is no truth to why our economy was booming in the late 90s.
None of us will ever know the truth about cv19. You've got both micro biologists and virologists making statements claiming it's a fraud, and statements thst it's absolutely horrible and dangerous. We had a hospital in the southern US caught having a disaster drill during covid with news cameras and reporters on site filming and carrying on pretending it was all the covid apocalypse, and at the same time, I'm one level separated from someone who died from cv19. I don't know the truth, and nobody else does either, well..nobody that's going to talk.
I created the following video because i was blown away with what they were saying on 60 Minutes. It immediately reminded me of 1984 double speak where they make something bad sound good and vice versa. Do "they" really think we're all that stupid? You've got to listen to what they're saying while trying to make it seem horrible..but it was all good news.
https://youtu.be/tTdIahIEw6I

This one is similar, cbs evening news, 2 minutes of cv19 doom and gloom, then right at the end he says "that majority of people who get sick will not need to be hospitalized or see a doctor"

https://youtu.be/hluBheaz0u8


Here's info on the cdc's published "Pandemic Preparedness Plan" which they spent $6B between on 2002 and 2006 but never engaged the plan. The cdc and w.h.o. should've had dozens of pandemic drills over the years to prepare the world for it. And for the record, nowhere in the $6B plan does it say anything about the President. This is a public health issue, not an executive branch of our government issue. The $6B included spending from each and every state, so each state has their statewide pandemic preparedness plan within the master plan. I never heard of this super expensive plan, but it's on the cdc.gov website and is supposed to be engaged in a natiinwide or global pandemic. Run the plan, don't hand the gun to an executive branch official and have him shoot from the hip.

https://youtu.be/eLVm_ePM3Zc


And finally to the people who criticize others because they think something different about cv19, you do not know the truth. Period. You might believe someone who thinks cv19 is absolutely horrible, that doesn't really mean it is. All the reported deaths are computer models pulling numbers out of bits and bytes based on 10% of the US population in 13 geographical areas that they do not disclose. That's a fact, both seasonal flu deaths and covid 19 deaths are calculated by a model, theyre not counted off of death certificates...which they ABSOLUTELY should be. So nobody really knows. Watch for alterior motives, proposed changes to "save us". Be vigilant. Possibly be a vigilante!!

[HR42]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

I don't claim to know anything about it. Australia is a long ways from here and I've never even visited the country.

But I was responding to a post which proudly referred to the Victorian lockdown as the "strictest outside of China".

When it's all over, figure the total bill of that lockdown, including bankruptcies, lost jobs, deaths from other causes, suicides, early deaths because of poverty, etc., and then see whether it was really worthwhile or not.

It's a very hard policy question, which can't be answered with rabble-rousing slogans like "people before profits".


And if people were vigorously discussing, and even protesting -- there's nothing wrong with that. It's natural for there to be a variety of opinions on hard questions like this which don't have obvious answers.

From my observations if countries and or regions take a heavy medicine ( a lockdown) then they largely avoid these peak figures which some countries suffer from. I read somewhere that if the whole world went into lock down for two weeks that not only would COVID be eradicated but also the influenza and the common cold. I think that would be a really short term economic hit for a huge gain.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by HR42

From my observations if countries and or regions take a heavy medicine ( a lockdown) then they largely avoid these peak figures which some countries suffer from. I read somewhere that if the whole world went into lock down for two weeks that not only would COVID be eradicated but also the influenza and the common cold. I think that would be a really short term economic hit for a huge gain.

Perhaps this is true. Or perhaps such an action would just kick the can down the road by two weeks. I don't think anyone knows for sure, and probably a lot depends on how the country comes out of such a lockdown, and what measures are used afterwards.

But "from my observations"? What have you observed? With very few exceptions (one province in China, and two small countries, Australia and New Zealand), the countries with the worst outcomes, are the ones which had lockdowns (all without exception of the hardest-hit U.S. states, all without exception the hardest-hit European countries, representing nearly a billion people), and the countries with the best outcomes (Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Nordic countries, Germany), had no lockdown. That doesn't prove that lockdown causes bad outcomes, but you certainly can't say that there is evidence from correlation with outcomes, that lockdowns produce better outcomes. There is fairly strong negative correlation between lockdown and good outcomes.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

... Now I am all for individual rights, but to not be vaccinated is stupid, even with only a 1% chance of death, which I think for a normal healthy individual it’s actually far less than 1%, all those old, fat, chain smokers really skew the odds.
It’s like the mask thing, I don’t think they do much good, and I hate the things, they make it difficult for me to breathe, which is odd as I’ve Scuba dove a lot of my life, worn O2 masks flying and sleep every night with a CPAP mask, it’s the recirculated hot air that I don’t like, but anyway they are so inexpensive and really don’t cause any big deal, there is just no valid reason not to wear one

Indeed.
I've read (but NOT confirmed) that: Nursing home patients, for instance, comprise about 0.62% of the U.S. population, but contribute about 42% of all covid deaths.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Exile

Why not? Does this mean a conservative should be able to tell you not to get all your academic research from a liberal think tank, one that he/she personally believes may rank about the same as MSNBC? Why not rely on both so you can better understand where the other side is coming from? I bet it wouldn't even be that scary.

The point might be that if someone is genuinely concerned about the facts and the truth, they wouldn't be running back to and citing an intentionally-biased "institute", of any stripe. Especially one who shares their viewpoint. If you're gonna do that, at least acknowledge their bias, then go on to state that you agree with it because X.

Despite all the moaning about media bias, there are better and worse sources. And there are still primary sources - research papers etc - from which all the other sources spin their stories.

[clockwork orange]

Originally Posted by Pegu Club

Don’t worry about it to much, if we pull/ work together as each other’s fellow country men and women, which we are, this will get under control to the point of our lives starting to resemble normalcy in a relatively short period of time. United we beat this, divided it will continue to be the sh-t show it has been. If we get over ourselves and work together we will beat this.

Fair winds,

How do you figure we are working together? if we were we would have had it under control months ago like some other countries have.