U.S. to close..

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Supercat568

... 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.

We know quite a lot about why the economy boomed in the 90s. And the answer to that first question is "both".

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 that it's absolutely horrible and dangerous.

Our understanding of COVID-19 is far from complete, but we have known a lot about coronaviruses for years, and we've learned quite a a bit about this one over the last 10 months. Maybe you just need to be more discerning about where you draw your info from.

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.

Do you have a cite for the $6B number? There's little doubt that many countries had a pandemic plan but failed to execute it in a timely manner, when COVID-19 was breaking out.

Run the plan, don't hand the gun to an executive branch official and have him shoot from the hip.

... in the US and elsewhere, the departments that control and run pandemic programs all serve at the pleasure of the administration, so it's bound to fall under their control, since they will be held accountable for it. Besides, good leaders should know how to lead.

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.

COVID death counts are reported deaths, not models.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by Exile

An important one of which is the parliamentary system which generally forces more mainstream parties to find consensus and compromise with more ideological and extreme factions. As has been discussed elsewhere, the US system seems more vulnerable in recent times since, unlike parliamentary systems, it's basic structure allows for "winner-take-all" scenarios after basic civility and compromise break down.

Not really. It's basically a similar situation. Both systems make it difficult for 1 party to gain unfettered power.

If 1 party gets the majority of seats in parliament, they can push thru pretty much anything they want...at least until it drives some MPs to defect...and in practice it's rare to get a majority control under one party.

In some ways, the US system is even harder to control. To pass a law, you have control the majority of the House, the majority of the Senate and the Presidency...on top of that the Supreme Court can cancel what they do if it violates the Constitution. It's relatively rare to control all the branches and even then it's typically by small margins so a handful of defecting party members limit more extreme laws.

The one advantage with the Parliamentary system does make the 2 party system a little more difficult to maintain as you aren't just throwing away your vote if you vote for a 3rd party.

You can argue fine details but both systems really make it hard to push extreme laws thru.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by Wotname

That was the point. My comment only makes sense if the 'rights' were made up (initially) out of thin air.

Nothing wrong with that of course. At one point in time they did not exist and then the USA founding fathers (and others) made them up, most agreed with them and there is a process in place to ensure they stay in place.

That is why they exist in the USA and not in all places. Some other places haven't made them up.

At the end of the day, the 'rights' that exist in the USA remain in place by the consent of it's citizens via the mechanisms of the various arms of governance that were put in place by the citizenry.

Sure but the rights enumerated in the Constitution were brought about by widespread agreement and a difficult process.

You as an individual, just making up rights that are not in the Constitution is a different thing...and that's what your prior post appeared to be doing.

[GordMay]

Exponential growth curves are small - until they aren't.
As long as each person who gets COVID-19, infects, on average, more than one other person, that means we are on track for runaway exponential growth in cases again.
Our human brains are not good at thinking intuitively about exponential functions.
For the classic illustration of this, imagine a petri dish with bacteria that double in number each day. If the petri dish is full on day 30, on which day is the dish half-full?
The answer, of course, is Day 29, which makes perfect sense when you think about it: if the bacteria double each day, that means they have to double from half-full to full between Day 29 and Day 30.
But when you're reasoning forward from day one, when the numbers are still tiny, it's hard to appreciate just how suddenly those tiny numbers can snowball into gigantic numbers.
Our intuitive reasoning apparatus is further impaired by the fact that our observations about Covid-19 all come with a delay. The time lag from exposure to onset of symptoms averages five days. For people who need to be hospitalized, the time lag from symptoms to hospitalization averages another ten days or so. And for people who die, the time lag from hospitalization to death is a further two to three weeks. And of course it takes time for these events to be recorded and published.

So no, we should definitely not expect to see the dramatic uptick in cases over the past few weeks fully reflected in either the hospitalization, or fatality numbers.

But we will see it.
If we do not get our Rt back below 1.0, it will only be a matter of time until our hospitals are overwhelmed by exploding case numbers. That understanding needs to drive our individual and collective actions to avoid infecting each other.
The good news is, that we now have more nuanced levers to pull, than we had in March, when the unfolding emergency nature of a brand-new disease, and the missed window of a truly preventive strategy entailed a dramatic shutdown of all non-essential services.

If we want to avoid another lockdown, we need to make sure the measures we take now are effective and adequate to reduce the effective reproduction number below 1.0 again.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by 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.

I will try to avoid derailing this into an unrelated subject...but yes, people are denying 2+2 type subjects.

Now while I understood the ideas behind them, I finally got around to actually reading "animal farm" and "1984" recently.

I don't think we are quite there or that we will get to the extremes shown in the books but many of the ideas presented are very much in play (doublethink is widespread). I suppose in some ways it's more insidious as the books are fairly heavy handed about what is happening. In the real world, in many ways it's more subtle and harder to see from the inside.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by GordMay

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.

Apparently UK is similar. Saw a recent article that the average age of fatalities is 85.

Really, the countermeasures while waiting on a vaccine should be incredibly focused on the elderly (say 60 and older) pushing measures that protect them and if successful, you could cut deaths and serious health issues by probably 90% or more.

[Singularity]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

Apparently UK is similar. Saw a recent article that the average age of fatalities is 85.

Really, the countermeasures while waiting on a vaccine should be incredibly focused on the elderly (say 60 and older) pushing measures that protect them and if successful, you could cut deaths and serious health issues by probably 90% or more.

I submit that you've got to come down on one side or the other of the following assessments of what is causing economic contraction in the first place.

1) contraction caused most by innate economic behavior where people spend less during times of uncertainty, etc, etc, that results in contraction

2) contraction is caused by most ham-handed "lockdown" of business where said business are hamstrung, weakened, ripple effects contracting the economy.
[[Indeed ham-handed govt behavior in the first place, independent of business shutdowns leads to uncertainty, but and some point you've got to slice things]]

It hadn't previously occurred to me that folks do not understand that #1 is correct...instead they blame ~lockdowns for the contraction. If one does not conceptualize #1 on their cognitive balance, then they cannot understand that any measure that allows Covid to in any way linger in the community will just cause doubt-associated contraction (the principle driving force of contraction) to persist.

Insofar as "targeted measures" (e.g. protecting 85yo ppl) invariably will have some death spill over in the larger population, such measures ought to be understood to be, sort of, the worst of both worlds. Which indeed is what we're seeing in the US.

[Wotname]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

Sure but the rights enumerated in the Constitution were brought about by widespread agreement and a difficult process.

^^Agreed

You as an individual, just making up rights that are not in the Constitution is a different thing...and that's what your prior post appeared to be doing.

You have misunderstood one of my previous posts then, possibly something taken out of context from a response to other posters. No harm, no foul; all is good.

[SalingSue]

Originally Posted by Yihang

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.

That’s not remotely what he said.

His point was when the people can make their own decision, vs some government “brain trust” you have a much better outcome, being a self proclaimed “expert” doesn’t mean you know nearly enough to run the lives of people who work outside of your very limited area of expertise

I also didn’t see where he said he should be the king or anything like that.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

Any Military member with any longevity in the Service knows what Posse Comitatus is, and the few who don’t will certainly be educated by the old guys.
Yes I’m aware that in one instance it was broken, but I do not believe that in any real way any troops would fire on citizens, Kent State not withstanding, I believe that was the actions of a rare few and not representative of the rank and file Military.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act

That legislation of course allows congress to order the army to act. It also doesn’t apply to the national guard

The world is full of examples of armies turned on its people , the US should such circumstances arrive ( and at the current rate we might yet see it ) would unlikely to be any different

[SalingSue]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

Apparently UK is similar. Saw a recent article that the average age of fatalities is 85.

Really, the countermeasures while waiting on a vaccine should be incredibly focused on the elderly (say 60 and older) pushing measures that protect them and if successful, you could cut deaths and serious health issues by probably 90% or more.

So people who were going to die soon anyways die and that’s a surprise?
Nursing homes are where people send their old family members who they don’t want to deal with anymore to die. It’s like the glue factory, but for humans.

[SalingSue]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

That legislation of course allows congress to order the army to act. It also doesn’t apply to the national guard

The world is full of examples of armies turned on its people , the US should such circumstances arrive ( and at the current rate we might yet see it ) would unlikely to be any different

“ The state of Wisconsin has gone an entire deer hunting season without someone getting killed. That’s great. There were over 600,000 hunters.

Allow me to restate that number. Over the last two months, the eighth largest army in the world – more men under arms than Iran; more than France and Germany combined – deployed to the woods of a single American state to help keep the deer menace at bay.

But that pales in comparison to the 750,000 who are in the woods of Pennsylvania this week. Michigan’s 700,000 hunters have now returned home. Toss in a quarter million hunters in West Virginia, and it is literally the case that the hunters of those four states alone would comprise the largest army in the world.”

It would be a good deal different, I know a good deal of army folks, many are not gun people, didn’t hunt, they joined because it was the best deal for them at the time, they wanted to get out of that small town, or they traded it for college education. Compare them to hunters, that city kid with a few months of training and a M4 isn’t gong to do too hot walking through the woods going up against men who have been stalking and hunting animals in the same woods for as long as he has been alive and fully understand why they are fighting. Send a drone? Good idea, and when it’s known where the drone guy sleeps and his family sleeps, seeing it’s the same country this war would be waged in, well I think you get where this would be headed. It’s easy to be brave when you have the otherside outgunned, have half a world between them and all that you hold dear, flip that on it’s head and that kid who joined the army is more likely to have a little less gusto, add a story around the mess of how that dude in the other company’s entire family was burned alive after he was in the battle of Sacramento, well now I’d say he’s as likely to defect to the citizens side as he is to keep fighting for the gov.

[sv_pelagia]

Originally Posted by SalingSue

So people who were going to die soon anyways die and that’s a surprise?
Nursing homes are where people send their old family members who they don’t want to deal with anymore to die. It’s like the glue factory, but for humans.

So wrong...

[GordMay]

FWIW: A little about mask/filtre efficacy.
➥ https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...ml#post3278421

[AA3JY]

Originally Posted by SalingSue

So people who were going to die soon anyways die and that’s a surprise?
Nursing homes are where people send their old family members who they don’t want to deal with anymore to die. It’s like the glue factory, but for humans.

Wow!! This comment is kinda cold...